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Labor Unions

Labor Unions Labor unions in the late 1800’s set out to improve the lives of frequently abused workers. Volatile issues like the eight-hour workday, ridiculously low pay and unfair company town practices were often the fuses that lit explosive conflicts between unions and monopolistic industrialists. Some of the most violent and important conflicts of the time were the Haymarket Affair and the Pullman strike. Each set out to with similar goals and both ended with horrifying consequences. The movement for the eight-hour workday was one of the most violent struggles for laborers. Their struggle is defined by protests that were broken up by the police and the Pinkertons. The Pinkertons were a mercenary police group for hire, whose services were often retained to break strikes. Many people were killed before demands to shorten the workday were finally met. In response to a protest at the McCormick Harvester factory in Chicago where the police reportedly killed six workers, local radicals led by Albert Parsons organized a meeting at Haymarket Square in downtown Chicago. Several thousand showed up to hear the speakers. The speakers were very careful to not incite violence in the already agitated crowd. After the speeches had been given large numbers of people left, however those who remained behind would be forever remembered in our history books. An army of police descended on the crowd and gave them an order to disperse. During the confusion, an unknown person threw a bomb into the crowd of police, killing one officer. Police began to fire on the crowd; the agitated strikers retaliated with a hail of bullets as well. A riot broke out in which one worker was killed and twelve were wounded, one policeman was killed and seventy were wounded. The days that followed were spiced with the same flavor as the Salem witch trials once held, as nearly every suspected person in town was arrested and detained. Many homes, meeting halls, and offices where outspoken supporters of the eight-hour movement lived and worked were raided without warrant. Oscar Neebe, Adolph Fisher, August Spies, Louis Lingg, Michael Schwab, Samuel Fielden, Carl Engel, and Albert Parsons were charged with the trumped up charge of accessory to murder for the riot. They were all brought to trial, even though many of the men were not even at Haymarket Square at the time of the melee. With a jury of twelve men found all of the defendants guilty. After an appeal to the Supreme Court, Spies, Parsons, Fischer and Engel were sentenced to hang. Neebe, Fielden and Schwab were given life sentences. Louis Lingg most likely would have served a life sentence as well, however, he committed suicide. "[Pullman] is, in fact, philanthropy made practical; humanity, founded on business principles; sobriety, art music, clean living, refined homes, self-respecting independence of character without paternalism; a vindication of the theory that there is an economical value in beauty, and that the workingman is capable of appreciating and wisely using the highest ministries of art and beauty." The Pullman Strike of 1894 was the first national strike in United States history. George Pullman of Pullman Rail Cars founded the town of Pullman as a place where his workers could live. A problem arose that galvanized Eugene Debs and the American Railway Union when the workers of Pullman received several wage cuts. These cuts were bad enough in themselves, but when coupled with Pullman's actions of not lowering the rents for the company owned homes in Pullman, the laborers began to unite and organize under Debs and the ARU. The workers formed a committee and asked Pullman to lower the rent in the company owned housing but their requests were refused. Three of the committee members were then terminated. This unjustified act set the workers in motion and they were intent on striking, and on May 10, 1894 they walked off of their jobs. The following day the Pullman Plant closed. ARU switchmen refused to switch trains with Pullman cars. In response, the General Managers Association began to fire the switchmen for not handling the cars. The strike and boycott heated up, the Chicago rail yards and most of the rail lines were crippled. A federal injunction was issued against the leaders of the ARU. This Omnibus Indictment prevented ARU leaders from "...compelling or inducing by threats, intimidation, persuasion, force or violence, railway employees to refuse or fail to perform duties..."(U.S. Strike Commission Report pp. 179). Pullman began coupling his cars to trains with mail cars. When the ARU and rail workers refused to do any work on these trains President Grover Cleveland sent federal troops to insure that these trains would not be delayed. The reaction of the strikers to the appearance of the troops was that of outrage. The violence began with mobs of people setting off fireworks and tipping over rail cars. The workers tipped over railcars and built blockades to show their contempt towards the troops. The aggressive behavior accelerated when two federal troops were assaulted and began to fire in to a crowd of people, killing at least four and wounding as many as twenty. All this violence started to cause the strike to slow. Eugene Debs and four other ARU leaders were arrested for violating the indictment. The strike was failing rapidly, the ARU attempted to abandon the strike, on the grounds that workers would be rehired without prejudice except those convicted of crimes. The General Managers’ Association refused this offer. The strike continued to fail, and trains began to move without impediment. The strike became unjustifiable for most of the workers and the Pullman works reopened. "About the only difference between slavery at Pullman and what it was down South before the war, is that there the owners took care of the slaves when they were sick and here they don't." -- Worker to a reporter for the Chicago Herald, 31 May 1890 Both unions failed miserably to affect change that they so ardently stood for. In both cases a massive loss of life and a severely crippled or crushed union was the only real change that they accomplished. The ARU and the unified workers did not get their rents lowered. The eight-hour day strikers eventually would win out, but the fight was to long and costly for many. In the end the only thing either strike really proved was that the federal government was all too willing to intervene and support the monopolistic industrialists. Bibliography:

Word Count: 1078