The History of the Pullman Strike—And How It Led to the First Labor Day

The Pullman Palace Car Company and its workers played an important role in labor history during the American Railway Union (ARU) strike in 1894. This strike was a watershed moment in the U.S. labor moment—and even contributed to the creation of a national Labor Day holiday.

The Pullman company built luxury sleeper train cars for the rapidly expanding American railroad system. As its success grew, Pullman built a planned community for workers 14 miles south of Chicago. Most of the company’s workers lived in the town, also called Pullman. The community was designed as a picturesque utopia but under the surface maintained a rigid social hierarchy with strict limitations on free speech.

The Pullman Strike

Following the economic depression of 1893, the Pullman company laid off hundreds of workers and cut the already low wages of remaining workers by about 25%. Yet the company did not reduce the rents, store prices or other charges in the community where most of these workers lived. Wages had been barely enough to live on, and now there was hardly anything left after the workers paid their rent.

As the situation became untenable, a delegation of workers attempted to present their grievances to George Pullman, the company’s president. He not only refused to meet with them, but also had them fired. In response, Pullman workers went on strike on May 11, 1894. About 35% of these workers joined the ARU, and they looked to the union’s leader, Eugene V. Debs, for help in advocating for their cause.

The ARU began a nationwide boycott of the Pullman company, refusing to handle Pullman cars or any trains that included Pullman cars. Because these cars were used so widely, the boycotts decimated railroad traffic nationwide. Sympathy strikes by local unions around the country also amplified the ARU’s efforts. By June 30, 125,000 workers on nearly 30 railroads had quit rather than handle Pullman cars.

Before long, riots erupted, mostly centered around Chicago. After Debs spoke at a gathering in Blue Island, Illinois, some members of the crowd set fire to nearby buildings and derailed a locomotive that was attached to a U.S. mail train. This disruption of the postal service angered President Grover Cleveland and many members of Congress. U.S. Attorney General Richard Olney asked for an injunction against the strike and its leaders.

With this injunction, Cleveland ordered federal troops to Chicago to suppress the strike, despite the protests of Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld, who was sympathetic to the workers. When the troops arrived, strikers and their sympathizers erected barricades to keep them out and destroyed hundreds of railcars in the South Chicago Panhandle yards. The situation escalated, and on July 7, the National Guard fired into a mob, killing as many as 30 people and wounding many others.

By this time, striking Pullman workers had lost the sympathy of the public. The scope and intensity of the strikes scared and alienated many people who were concerned about how railroad disruptions would impact the price and availability of goods. Debs was arrested along with several other ARU leaders; he was charged with violating Olney’s injunction and served six months in jail.

As the conflict subsided and Pullman hired non-union workers to replace those on strike, trains began to run again on normal schedules. When the Pullman company reopened on August 2, the striking workers were rehired—with the condition that they sign a pledge never to join a union.

The Legacy of the Pullman Strike

The Pullman strike’s legacy looms large over American labor history. It marked the first major instance where the federal government used an injunction to break a strike, though this would later become a common strategy to suppress labor activism. In the following decades, employers and courts used injunctions to prohibit workers from striking, picketing or even forming a union. This period continued until the Norris-LaGuardia Act was passed in 1932, prohibiting federal courts from issuing injunctions in labor disputes, except in limited circumstances.

Another important outcome of the Pullman strike was the establishment of Labor Day as a national holiday. President Cleveland and Congress created this holiday in part as a conciliatory gesture toward the labor movement. Labor Day was declared an official holiday on June 28, 1894, just a few days before Cleveland sent federal troops to Chicago to suppress the Pullman strike.

Today, the historic Pullman community is a neighborhood of Chicago, located on the city’s South Side. In 2015, it was designated as a national monument by President Obama, making it Chicago’s first National Park Service unit. The community remains an important reminder of the challenges and successes of the American labor movement, and how far unions have come in their ability to advocate for their members.