assured by the company that that no member of the committee would be fired. The next day, three members of the committee were laid off.Turning to Debs for help, the of the American Railway Union in the company declared a strike. Pullman shut down the whole plant. His plan was to wait until the workers and their families starved, driving them back to work. In a few short weeks the workers’ families were starving. Debs tried repeatedly to settle the dispute. The company remained was not interested. The American Railway Union decided to boycott Pullman cars, refusing to handle them anywhere. On the first day of the boycott, switchmen detached all Pullman cars from the trains. They were all fired immediately. That act provoked other members of the American Railway Union to walk off the job in protest. The boycott evolved into a strike. By the second day 40,000 people refused to work. By the forth, 125,000. “Soon, nearly every train in the country was dead on its tracks,” (Meltzer 155). It was already deemed the most effective strike on this scale the country had ever seen. The union had grown in importance so that a strike against one company, the Pullman Company for example, escalated into an industry-wide strike.The General Managers Association, a semi-secret organization representing twenty-four of the nation’s biggest railroads, came to Pullman’s aid. Though the Association knew the strike was aimed at Pullman, they saw in the strike, a chance to destroy a new industrial union movement before it could dramatically influence American labor.From his years of experience with strikes, Debs knew that if the union were to win, they would need to keep it peaceful. He sent out numerous telegrams advising members of the union to stop no train by force. They would only refuse to handle Pullman cars.The Association was moving fast to end this one. Due to the depression and joblessness, the search f...
