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The Pullman Strike occurred when 4,000 Pullman Palace Car Company workers reacted to a 28% wage cut by going on a wildcat strike in Illinois on May 11, 1894, bringing traffic west of Chicago to a halt.^[1]

The owner of the company, George Pullman was a "welfare capitalist." Firmly believing that labor unrest was caused by the unavailability of decent pay and living conditions, he paid unprecedented wages and built a company town by Lake Calumet (Pullman, Chicago) in what is now the southern part of the city. Instead of living in utilitarian tenements as did many other industrial workers of the day, Pullman workers lived in attractive company-owned houses, complete with indoor plumbing, gas, and sewer systems, in a beautifully landscaped little town with free education through eighth grade and a free public library stocked with an initial gift of 5,000 volumes from Pullman's own personal library.

While the company town did make a high-quality life possible, the system of interrelated corporations that owned and operated it all did presuppose that workers would live within their means and practice basic budgetary prudence. Some workers did find themselves locked into a kind of "debt slavery" (one form of truck system), owing more than they earned to the company stores and to the independent sister company that owned and operated the town of Pullman. Money owed was automatically deducted from workers' paychecks, and a worker who had overspent himself might never see his earnings at all.

During the major economic downturn of the early 1890s, the Pullman Palace Car Company cut wages, but, inexplicably, the corporation that operated the town of Pullman didn't decrease rents. Discontented workers joined the American Railway Union (ARU), led by Eugene V. Debs, which supported their strike by launching a boycott of all Pullman cars. It is likely that paternalism, as practiced in the town, also contributed to the workers’ unrest and subsequent strike.^[2]

The strike effectively shut down production in the Pullman factories and led to a lockout. Many supply routes were cut off for everyone when railroad workers across the nation striking in sympathy strike blocked Pullman cars (and subsequently Wagner Palace cars) from moving.

On July 5, in an act of arson that may or may not have been related to the strike, the buildings of the World's Columbian Exposition around the Court of Honor were torched. Buildings caught in the blaze included the administration hall, the manufacturer's hall, the electricity hall, the machinery hall, the mining hall, the agricultural hall, and the fair's train station. This increased national attention to the matter and fueled the demand for federal action.

The strike was broken up by United States Marshals and some 2,000 United States Army troops, commanded by Nelson Miles, sent in by President Grover Cleveland on the premise that the strike interfered with the delivery of U.S. Mail. During the course of the strike, 13 strikers were killed and 57 were wounded. An estimated 6,000 rail workers did $340,000 worth of property damage, and Debs was tried for, and found guilty of, interfering with the mail. He was sent to prison for six months.

At the time of his arrest, Debs was not a Socialist. However, during his time in prison, he read the works of Karl Marx. After his release in 1895, he became the leading Socialist figure in America. He ran for President for the first of five times in 1900.

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1. ^ "Within three days 40,000 railroaders had walked out in a sympathy strike, bringing traffic west of Chicago to a halt." (Marxian Socialism in the United States, Daniel Bell, page 49)
2. ^ Sennett, Richard (1980). Authority. Vintage Books.  ISBN 0-394-74655-4

• Pullman Strike Timeline
• Chicago Strike
• Pullman strike town