Federal Troops Crush Pullman Strike, Imprison Eugene Debs

On July 3, 1894, President Grover Cleveland deployed federal troops to Chicago to crush the Pullman Strike, marking the first time the federal government used an injunction to break a labor action. The strike began on May 11 when Pullman Palace Car Company workers walked out after the company slashed wages by 25 percent during the 1893 economic depression while refusing to reduce rents in its company town. When management fired workers who attempted to present grievances about starvation wages and 16-hour workdays, Eugene V. Debs’s newly formed American Railway Union (ARU) launched a nationwide boycott on June 26. Within four days, 125,000 workers on 29 railroads had walked off the job rather than handle Pullman cars, effectively halting rail traffic in 27 states from Chicago to the West Coast.

Attorney General Richard Olney, a former railroad attorney, recommended federal intervention despite Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld’s objections that state authorities could maintain order. Cleveland’s deployment of federal troops on July 3 transformed largely nonviolent protests into violent clashes that killed dozens of strikers. The federal government obtained an injunction against the strike, establishing a precedent for using court orders to criminalize labor organizing. By the time federal troops were recalled on July 20, at least 34 people had been killed. Debs received a six-month prison sentence for contempt of court for violating the injunction, upheld by the Supreme Court in In re Debs (1895), despite the ARU’s efforts to maintain peaceful protest.

The strike’s crushing defeat marked a turning point in federal-corporate alignment against organized labor. The ARU disbanded, and Debs emerged from prison having embraced socialism, eventually running for president five times on the Socialist Party ticket. Ironically, just days before sending troops to kill strikers, Cleveland signed legislation on June 28, 1894, making Labor Day a federal holiday—a transparent attempt to placate workers while destroying their most powerful organizing tool. The Pullman Strike established the pattern of federal power being wielded to protect corporate interests over workers’ rights, with injunctions becoming a standard weapon against labor organizing for decades.