Danver Steven L. (Edited). Revolts, Protests, Demonstrations, and Rebellions in American History: An Encyclopedia (ENG)

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Wage Cuts

In the ﬁscal year beginning August 1, 1893, the Pullman Company’s orders for

new sleeping cars fell dramatically, reﬂecting the nationwi de panic in business

generally. Between May 1893 and May 1894, the Car Works laid off over 1,000

employees, one-fourth of the workers in that division. After reducing its bids by

25 percent for construction of passenger, baggage, refrigerator, street, and box

cars, somewhat below production costs, Pullman secured 44 contracts bringing

in nearly $1.5 million in new business. The company’s president, George Pullman,

found it advantageous to keep the shops open: his plant would not deteriorate,

competitors would not take over market share, he would have an operation staffed

with experienced workers when business improved , and Pullman Company also

owned the tenements in the town of Pullman, which would bring no rents if too

many employees were laid off and left the area.

However,Pullmanalsodeterminedtoreducewagesinthecompany’scar-

building division, which was operating at a net loss. It seemed expedient to reduce

wages for all employees, rather than pay different rates for similar work in differ-

ent divisions. The Pullman Company was operating q uite proﬁtably overall. The

number of passengers in the company’s palace cars was down only 7 percent,

and revenue was $8.76 milli on in the 1894 ﬁscal year, down less than half a mil-

lion dollars from 1893. The company paid its usual 8 percent dividend to share-

holders, and retaine d $2 million in undistributed proﬁts. Between September 18,

1893, an d May 1, 1894, Pullman Company absorbed $ 52,000 in losses building

rail cars, while wage reductions saved the company at least $60,000. At the time,

materials were three-quarters of the cost of production, and labor only about

one-quarter.

The United States Strike Commission later observed that a more equitable mea-

sure would have been for the company to a bsorb three-fourths of the loss, with

one-fourth distributed in pay cuts. Daily earnings of freight-car builders were

slashed from $2.61 to $1.54 between April 1893 and April 1894. Journeymen

mechanics during t he same period suffered losses from $2.63 to $ 2.03 per day.

Piece rate for seamstresses, ﬁnishe rs, and other employees were slashed by up to

one-third. The salaries of superintendents and foremen were not reduced.

Many employees were left with paychecks that barely covered, or did not even

cover, their rent, leaving little or nothing for food, clothing, and other necessities.

Rents were collected by another division of the Pullman Company, using as their

agent the Pullman Loan and Savings Bank. Often, paychecks would simply be sent

over to the bank, where rent would be deducted before cashing whatever might

remain. George Pullman insisted that a fair return on ren tal property had nothing

656 Pullman Strike (1894)

to do with what the going wage might be in his factory. Local real estate age nts

observed that units comparable to those renting for $17 in Pullman were available

in ne arby communities for $10. The Strike Co mmission estimated that rents in

Pullman were 20 to 25 percent above market rate in surrounding communities.

—Charles Rosenberg

Further Reading

Hirsch, Susan Eleanor. After the Strike: A Century of Labor Struggle at Pullman. Urbana:

University of Illinois Press, 2003.

Lindsey, Almont. The Pullman Strike: The Story of a Unique Experiement and of a Great

Labor Upheaval. Chica go: The University of Chicago Press, 1942.

Schneirov, Richard, Shelton Stromquist, and Nick Salvatore, eds. Th e Pullman Strike and

the Crisis of the 1890s. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999.

Two Excerpts from U.S. Strike Commission Report

on the Railway Strikes of 1894

The 1894 boycott of the Pullman Palace Car Company was one of the most famed clashes of

capital and labor in Am erican labor history . Characterized by violence, the wholesale abuse of

injunctions, and the dramatic leadership of union organizer Eugene V. Debs, the boycott and

strike shocked many Americans. Pullman, Illinois, the company town built by George Pullman,

was considered by many to be a model town. The town of Pullman had an artificial lake, a grand

hotel, wide boulevards, an d neat houses that attracted tourists. Although hailed by some as a

social reformer, George Pullman ensured that his company town, like his railroad slee per and

baggage car factories, was a profit-making enterprise. Rents, utilities, store prices, and rail ser-

vice were mor e expensive in Pullman than in nearb y Chicago. Many workers also resented the

social and cultural control that the moralistic Pullman exercised over their lives. The economic

Panic of 1893 only exacerbated these existing economic and social pressures within the com-

pany town. When the company cut wages but increased rents and other charges, desperate

workers turned to strikes to improve their situation .

The first exce rpt below is from a special govern ment commissi on on P ullman re nts that

proved cri tical of how the town of Pullman operated. The seco nd excerpt describe s the strike

against the Pullman Company in 1894.

If we exclude the aesthetic and sanitary features at Pullman, the rents there are from

twenty to twenty-ﬁve per cent higher than rents in Chicago or surrounding towns for

similar accomm odations. The aesthetic features are admired by visitors, but have little

money value to employees, especially when they lack bread. The company aims to secure

six per cent upon the cost of its tenements, which cost includes a proportionate share for

paving, sewerage, water, parks, etc. It claims now to receive less than four per cent. ...

The company makes all repairs and heretofore has not compelled tenants to pay for them.

Under the printed leases, however, which tenants must sign, they agree to pay for all

Pullman Strike (1894) 657

repairs which are either necessary (ordinary wear and damages by the elements not

excepted) or which the company chooses to make.

The company’s claim that the workmen need not hire its tenements and can live else-

where if they choose is not entirely tenable. The fear of losing work keeps them in Pull-

man as long as there are tenements unoccupied, because the company is supposed, as a

matter of business, to give preference to its tenants when work is slack. The employees,

believing that a tenant at Pu llman has this advantage, naturally feel some compulsi on to

rent at Pullman, and thus to stand well with management. Exceptional and necessary

workmendonotsharethisfeelingtothesameextentandaremorefreetohireor

own homes elsewhere. While reducing wages the company made no reduction in rents.

Its position is that the two matters are distinct, and that none of the reasons urged as

justifying wage reduction by it as an employer can be considered b y the company as a

landlord.

The company claims that it is simply legitimate business to use its position and re-

sources to hire in the labor market as cheaply as possible and at the same time to keep

rents up regardless of what wages are paid to its tenants or what similar tenements rent

for elsewhere; to avail itself to the full extent of business depression and completio n in

reducing wages, and to disregard these same conditions as to rents. No valid reason is

assigned for this position except simply that the company has the power and the legal

right to do it.

Source: U.S. Strike Commission, Report on the Chicago Strikes of June–July, 1894 (U.S.

Government Printing Office, 1895), xxxv–xxxvi.

Mr. President and Brothers of the American Railway Union: We struck at Pullman

because we were without hope. We joined the American Railway Union because it gave

us a glimmer of hope. Twenty thousand souls , men, w omen, and little ones, ha ve the ir

eyes turned toward this convention today, straining eagerly through dark despondency

for a glimmer of the heaven-sent message you alone can give us on this earth.

In stating to this body our grievances it is hard to tell where to begin. You all must

know that the proximate cause of our strike was the discharge of two members of our

grievance committee the day after George M. Pullman, himself, and Thomas H. Wickes,

his second vice-president, had guaranteed them absolute immunity. The more remote

causes are still imminent. Five reductions in wages, in work, and in conditions of employ-

ment swept through the shops at Pullman between May and December, 1893. The last

was the most severe, amounting to nearly thirty per cent, and our rents had not falle n.

We owed Pullman $70,000 when we struck May 11. We owe him twice as much today.

He does not evict us for two reasons: One, the force of popular sentiment an d public

opinion; the other because he hopes to starve us out, to break the back of the American

Railway Union, and to deduct from our miserable wages when we are forced to return to

him the last dollar we owe him for the occupancy of his houses.

Rents all over the city in every quarter of its vast extent have fallen, in some cases to

one-half. Residences, compared with which ours are hovels, can be had a few miles away

658 Pullman Strike (1894)

at the price we have been contributing to make a millionaire a billionaire. What we pay

$15 for in Pullman is leased for $8 in Rosela nd; and remember that just as no man or

woman of our 4,000 toilers has ever f elt the friendly pressure of George M. Pullman’s

hand, so no man or woman of us all has ever owned or can ever hope to own one inch

of George M. Pullman’s land. Why, even the very streets are his. His ground has never

been platted of record, and today he may debar any man who has acquiring rights as

his tenant f rom walki ng in his highway s. And those streets; do you know what h e has

named them? He says after the four great inventors in methods of transportation. And

do you know what their names are? Why, Fulton, Stephenson, Watt, and Pullman. Water

which Pullman buys from the city at 8 cents a thousand gallons he retails to us at 500 per

cent advance and claims he is losing $400 a month on it. Gas which sells at 75 cents per

thousand feet in Hyde Park, just north of us, he sells for $2.25. When we went to tell him

our grievances he said we were all his “children.”

Pullman, both the man and the town, is an ulcer on the body politic. He owns the

houses, the schoolhouses, and churches of God in the town he gave his once humble

name. The revenue he derives from these, the wages he pays out with one hand—the

Pullman Palace Car Company, he takes back with the other—the Pullman Land Associa-

tion. He is able by this to bid under any contract car shop in this country. His competi-

tors in business, to meet thi s, must reduce the wages of their men. This gives him the

excuse to reduce ours to conform to the market. His business rivals must in turn scale

down; so mus t he. And thus the merry war—the dance of skeletons bathed in human

tears—goes on, and it w ill go on, brothers, forever, unless you, the American Railway

Union, stop it; end it; crush it out.

Source: U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, U.S. Strike Commission, Report on the

Chicago Strike (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1895).

Pullman Strike (1894) 659

Lattimer Massacre (1897)

On Friday September 10, 1897, about 4 00 immigrant workers in northeas t

Pennsylvania walked from the Harwood coal-patch town and colliery south of

Hazleton to the Lattimer mines and colliery north of Hazleton. Unarmed and

led by Slovak leaders Mike Cheslak, John Eagler, Steve Jurich, and others, the

laborers marched to join their coworkers in Lattimer to shut down the regional

mining operations of Ariovistus D. Pardee and Company. On learning of the

strike, Luzerne County sheriff James Martin declared a s tate of civil disorder

and deputized 150 men. Many of the deputies were regularly employed by the

coal industry or as Coal and Iron Police and were armed with Winchester

repeating riﬂes recently purchased by A. D. Pardee and Company. It was alleged

that they were loaded with metal-jacket bullets. Both groups met at McKenna’s

Corner in West Hazleton along the public road. In an effort to intimidate the

strikers, Sheriff Martin and his deputies verbally harassed and physically injured

the marching strikers, yet were unable to deter the majority of them. The march-

ers continued, and the sheriff and his deputies boarded a trolley to Lattimer,

where they formed a picket line of 150 men across the public highway. When

the strikers arrived, the sheriff ordered them to disband, and attempted to detain

the marchers. The frontline marchers halted while those behind continued t o

march, unaware of the sheriff’s demands. Amidst this confusion, the sheriff’s

deputies opened ﬁre without provocation. Nineteen marchers died, and 37

known strikers were seriously wounded, some to die later of their injuries.

While the remaining marchers ﬂed the area, some of the deputi es continued to

assault as well as berate the wounded and dying strikers, though some onlookers

attempted to aid the wounded. Among the dead were Poles, Slovaks, and

one Lithuanian, including Cheslak and Jurich. The dead were buried at

St. Stanislaus, St. Joseph’s, and Vine cemeteries in Hazleton, or at St. Patrick’s

cemetery in McAdoo, Pennsylvania.

The Background

Lattimer is part of the Anthracite Coal Region, which is roughly a 500-square-mile

area from Lackawanna County to Upper Dauphin County in eastern Pennsylvania.

Vital to the industrial expansion of the U.S. economy during the 19th and

661

20th centuries, anthracite, or “hard coal,” burned hotter and longer than the bitumi-

nous or “soft coal” and was found only in this region of the United States. Many

sought to proﬁt from its high demand—both the owners of the mines, collieries,

and mining towns, and the many ethnic laborers seeking escape from the impover-

ishment of Central and Eastern European agricultural economies.

Economic class and e thni c differences segregated t he lives of p eopl e with in

coal-mining communities. T he poorest membe rs were the most rece nt laborers

from Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe. Confronted with bigotry and an arro-

gant paternalism from the native mining el ite and their company system, recent

immigrants were continually reminded of the serfdom and disenfranchisement of

their European homelands. As newcomers, many were given the most difﬁcult,

dangerous, and demeaning jobs associated with mining. Language and educational

barriers as well as American-born prejudice kept them from the technical and pro-

fessional positions that native workers held. Additionally, they were required to

spend their wages at company stores, rent company homes, and visit c ompany

doctors, all of which were automaticall y deducted from their wages. The coal

economy’s volatility forced many laborers and their families to accumulate

expenses during difﬁcult times, and often families found themselves indebted to

the coal companies for generations. There was little recourse for local complaint

as the legisla tive system heavily favor ed the companies and their rights over the

workers’ civil liberties.

The year 1897 was difﬁcult for the coal economy. Low anthracite prices led to

low pay or even no pay for extra work and employment became sporadic among

the coal-mining region. On June 15, Pennsylvania governor Daniel H. Hastings

passed the Campbell Act (Act. No. 139) , w hich charged coal companies three

cents per day for every adult immigrant they employed on the payroll. Local

cost-cutting methods in the Hazleton coal community exacerbated the general eco-

nomic instability and contributed to a strike-ready atmosphere. Lattimer was part

of a larger series of strikes throughout the coal-mining towns throughout the

summer and fall. When the law went int o effect on August 21, coal companies

dec ided to cover this cost by garnering the wage s of their work ers. The regional

economic stress combined with local business decisions deﬁnitively led to the

strike and march to Lattimer.

The Aftermath

Within the days following the massacre, public meetings were held in towns

throughout the region. The leaders, often Catholic clergy, urged the residents to

remain peaceful and to work within the American judicial system to bring the per-

petrators to justice. Twenty-ﬁve hundred national guardsmen were sent to the

region the day after the massacre to ensure tha t peace and stabili ty r emained in

662 Lattimer Massacre (1897)

effect. Local residents felt that their presence was unnecessary and insulting given

the circumstances. Many of the meetings unanimously adopted resolutions that

condemned the event and demanded the prosecution of the Luzerne County sheriff

and his deputies as well as his resignation and the removal of the National Guards-

men. On September 15, the National Prosecuting Committee of the Lattimer Vic-

tims (NPCCLV) was established with the primary goal to see the sheriff and his

deputies brought to trial as well as to ensure that the victims of the massacre

received ﬁnancial support.

The regional and national newspapers helped further the outrage over the event

describing the butchery and murderous intent of the lawmen. Victim relief and

money for prosecution trickled in from all area s of the country, primarily from

Slavic communities throughout the United States. Because so many victims emi-

grated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the imperial government conducted

an investigation of the massacre and promptly registered a diplomatic protest with

the U.S. secretary of state . The protest requested an ofﬁcial U.S. investigation of

the event as well as the right to seek indemnity on behalf of its subjects massacred

at Lattimer.

On September 20, the sheriff and his deputies were arrested by the justices of

the peace of Luzerne County, with a murder trial set for February 1, 1898. Attend-

ing the trial was the legal counsel of both the U.S. secretary of state and the

Austro-Hungarian ambassador. All of the gunmen were acquitted of the attack

on March 9, 1898, which was ruled as a riotous condition, and that their actions

were free of malicious intent. The U.S. government accepted the verdict and

refused to pay indemnity to the Austro-Hungarian government or its subjects.

Event Signiﬁcance

As a strike, the Lattimer Massacre was one of many throughout the United States

during the 1890s in which mine laborers and their employers contested the mean-

ing of rig hts guarante ed by t he Bill of Right s to f oreig n laborers. From a legal

standpoint, the massacre represented a denial of the freedom to assemble in a pub-

lic space as decreed by the Bill of Rights, and like many of the strikes during this

period, it was met with swift reprisal by local authority. The strike was unique in

that it represented the largest and deadliest assault on American laborers through-

out the 19th century.

While the United Mine Workers Association (UMWA) claimed the event as part

of their labor history, they actively distanced themselves from the strikes that led

to the massacre in the immediate aftermath. As such, the Lattimer Massacre was

not a deﬁnitive part of the unionization pro cess of the anthracite coal regions,

despite the UMWA’s later inclusion of the event in labor history and physical

memorials to the event. Even so, UMWA membership increased dramatically after

Lattimer Massacre (1897) 663

the massacre within the region, yet the UMWA contri buted lit tle to the relief of

Lattimer Massacre victims.

—Jason Reuscher

See also all entries under Molly Maguires (1870s); Great Railroad Strikes (1877);

Haymarket Riot (1886); Seattle Riot (1886); H omestead Strike (1892–1893); Pullman

Strike (1894); Black Patch War (1909); Ludlow Massacre (1914); Boston P olice Strike

(1919); Battle of Blair Mountain (1921); Bonus Army (1932); To ledo Auto-Lite Strike

(1934); World Trade Organization Protests (1999).