The Strike of 1894
The initial boycott of Pullman railcars eventually grew into something far larger. Just four days after the start of the boycott, roughly 125,000 railroad workers had quit their jobs1. This posed a serious threat to the profits of railroad magnates. Furthermore, the strikers were blocking mail from being transported by railway, which was what ultimately caught the attention of state and federal officials who had not previously interfered with the strike.
Things worsened when on July 2nd, an injunction was issued against the strikers1. The primary goal of issuing the injunction was to prevent interference with U.S. mail, but the injunction did not end the strike. Many state officials such as the governor of Illinois had urged President Cleveland to not send in federal troops to break up the strike, but President Cleveland sent them anyway.
On July 5th, a mob burned six buildings in Jackson Park1. The next day, two rioters were also shot1. It was clear that the once peaceful boycott had now become something far wose than ever planned. Speaking sometime after the strike, Eugene Debs (the head of the ARU at the time of the Pullman strike), said of President Cleveland's response: "His own commission charges him, in effect, with serving the railroads as strikebreaker by furnishing government employees to take the places of striking railroad men and arming them with pistols and clubs and with all the authority of government officials2." The conflict between massive mobs and the troops sent in by state and federal officials persisted until July 20th, when federal troops were eventually recalled3.
The aftermath of the Pullman strike was anything but small. It left at least twelve dead, and hundreds of thousands of dollars resulted1. Eventually, many of the leaders such as Eugene Debs faced criminal charges, as covered in the final page of this site.
1:Hannon, Michael. “The Pullman Strike of 1894.” University of Minnesota Law Library, 2010. http://moses.law.umn.edu/darrow/trialpdfs/Pullman_Strike.pdf.
2:Debs, Eugene. “The Federal Government and the Pullman Strike: Eugene V. Debs' Reply to Grover Cleveland's Magazine Article,” July 7, 1907. https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/parties/spusa/1904/0707-debs-govandpullman.pdf.
3:Urofsky, M. I.. "Pullman Strike." Encyclopedia Britannica, September 2, 2022. https://www.britannica.com/event/Pullman-Strike.