American Railway Union

In June 1893, Eugene V. Debs, secretary-treasurer of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, joined other brotherhood officers to found the American Railway Union (ARU), dedicated to uniting all rail workers "into one, compact working force for legislative as well as industrial action" (Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs, p. 115).

Prior to the formation of the ARU, labor organizing in the railroad industry had primarily been limited to craft unions, each admitting only workers belonging to a specific trade. The most powerful of these were brotherhoods of engineers, firemen, brakemen, and conductors, which strived to win decent wages and working conditions by stressing their members' good conduct and valuable skills. As an industrial union with a keen readiness to strike, the ARU represented a sharp departure from this conservative model of labor organizing.

The ARU was barely a year old when, in April 1894, it led a walkout by employees of the Great Northern Railroad who were protesting wage cuts and dismissals of men who joined the new union. Strikers showed impressive unity and gained the sympathy of communities from Minnesota to Washington State. Eventually Debs maneuvered the railroad's owner, James J. Hill, into agreeing to an arbitration that gave the strikers almost all of their wage demands. After this unprecedented victory, the ARU soon counted 150,000 members, far more than the combined membership of the craft brotherhoods.

Almost immediately, the new union was drawn into a greater struggle. After employees of the Pullman sleeping car company held a strike to protest wage cuts and firings in May 1894, the ARU committed itself to a nationwide boycott of all trains that included Pullman cars. Debs did not think his young union was ready for such an ambitious battle, and events soon proved him right. Arrayed against the ARU were the well-organized forces of the General Managers Association, a coalition of twenty-four railroads, acting in close collaboration with Attorney General Richard Olney. In July 1894, a week after the boycott began, government attorneys persuaded federal judges to grant an injunction prohibiting virtually all ARU activities in support of the action, because it interfered with interstate commerce and the U.S. mail. ARU officers were arrested, and when Samuel Gompers of the American Federation of Labor refused to call for a general strike to support the boycott, the ARU admitted defeat. Within a year, the union was defunct and Debs, convicted of contempt of court, was serving a short prison sentence.

The railroad brotherhoods soon patched themselves together and won a certain measure of success in bargaining with the railroad companies, which were eager to prevent a resurgence of the aggressive spirit represented by the ARU. Industrial unionism on the model of the ARU did not firmly establish itself in the United States until renewed labor militancy combined with new federal protections for organizing to spur the formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1936.

Bibliography

Lindsey, Almont. The Pullman Strike: The Story of a Unique Experiment and of a Great Labor Upheaval. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942.

Salvatore, Nick. Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982.

Stromquist, Shelton. A Generation of Boomers: The Pattern of Railroad Labor Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.

—Eugene E. Leach

The American Railway Union (ARU), was the largest union of its time, and one of the first industrial unions in the United States. It was founded on June 20, 1893, by railway workers gathered in Chicago, Illinois, and under the leadership of Eugene V. Debs (locomotive fireman and later Socialist Presidential candidate), the ARU, unlike the trade unions, incorporated a policy of unionizing all railway workers, regardless of craft or service.^[1] Within a year, the ARU had hundreds of affiliated local chapters and claimed 150,000 members, drawing much of its membership out of the craft unions.^[2]

Beginning in August 1893, the Great Northern Railroad cut wages repeatedly through March 1894. By April, the ARU voted to strike and shut the railroad down for 18 days, pressuring the railroad to restore the workers' wages. It was the ARU's first and only victory.

Similarly, the Pullman Palace Car Company cut wages five times – 30 to 70 percent – between September and March. The Company was based in the town of Pullman, Illinois (since 1889 a part of the city of Chicago), named after its owner, millionaire George Pullman. The town of Pullman was his "utopia." He owned the land, homes and stores. Workers had to live in his homes and buy from his stores, thereby ensuring virtually all wages returned directly back into his pockets. Upon cutting wages, the workers suffered greatly from this setup as rent and product prices remained the same. The workers formed a committee to express their grievances resulting in three of its members being laid off, resulting in a full stop in production on May 11, 1894.

In June, the ARU convened in Chicago to discuss the ongoing Pullman Strike. On June 21, the ARU voted to join in solidarity with the strikers and boycotted Pullman cars. ARU workers refused to handle trains with Pullman cars and the boycott became a great success, especially along the transcontinental lines going west of Chicago.

In response, Pullman ordered Pullman cars be attached to U.S. mail cars creating a backup of the postal service and bringing in the Federal Government. Under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890, which ruled it illegal for any business combination to restrain trade or commerce, an injunction was issued on July 2 enjoining the ARU leadership from "compelling or inducing by threats, intimidation, persuasion, force or violence, railway employees to refuse or fail to perform their duties." The next day President Cleveland ordered 20,000 federal troops to crush the strike and run the railways.

By July 7, Debs and seven other ARU leaders were arrested and later tried and convicted for conspiracy to halt the free flow of mail. The strike was finally crushed while Debs spent six months in prison in Woodstock, Illinois. The ARU eventually dissolved and Pullman reopened with all union leaders sacked. During Debs' time in jail, he spent much of his time reading the literature works of Karl Marx.

The Union continued to stay afloat but eventually lost most of its members. The American Railway Unions was the first industrial union and biggest of its time.

External links

Organized Labour portal

• Proclamation to American Railway Union
• United States Strike Commission: THE AMERICAN RAILWAY UNION
• Gene Debs and the American Railway Union

Notes

1. ^ Marion Dutton Savage, Industrial Unionism in America, 1922, page 277.
2. ^ Marion Dutton Savage, Industrial Unionism in America, 1922, pages 277-78.

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