The Pullman Boycott. W. F. Burns

CHAPTER II.

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THE BOYCOTT.

       Table of Contents

      The American Railway Union is in every sense an American Institution, whose aims and objects as previously stated are to protect and shield its members from the grinding power of railroad corporations. Its motto is unity: "One for all and all for one."

      The Pullman employes were admitted to this organization and consequently entitled to the protection guaranteed to all members, therefore when they walked out, after every honorable means to avert a strike was exhausted, the American Railway Union was in duty bound to sustain them.

      The strike was ordered on the 11th day of May, after an all night session by a committee of forty-six members representing every department in the Pullman works. When the word was given four thousand employes responded to the call, and this proved to be the beginning of the most gigantic strike in the history of organized labor.

      The wrongs of the Pullman people were not generally known to the public, the cruel and inhuman treatment they were subjected to, was kept strictly from the public ears.

      They were reduced to a condition of slavery beneath that of the black slave of the South prior to the civil war, for while the black slave was clothed, housed and fed, the white slave of Pullman was forced to work for wages entirely inadequate to furnish a sufficient amount of food to keep body and soul together. In this condition, on the verge of starvation, with all hope of justice from the hands of George M. Pullman gone, they revolted. Whether the grievance of these men was a just one, or their resistance to further encroachments on their rights was right or wrong, after reading the report of the committee appointed to investigate and report to the American Railway Union Annual Convention, at that time in session in the city of Chicago, it will be for the reader to decide.

      The report, as condensed, in one of the Chicago daily papers, copied and commented on by the St. Paul Branch of the American Railway Union, was as follows:

      After showing by way of contrast, that $30,000,000 worth of Pullman stock paid its holders 9–½ per cent in dividends last year, the report goes statistically into a comparison of wages in the past year, with the wages received by the Pullman employees when the strike was inaugurated. A fair example of the general reduction is given in a comparison in the price of labor involved in the construction of a freight car in 1888 and 1893.

      Other comparisons in the same department show that the wages of men employed in building freight cars, have been reduced 49, 57–½ and 47 per cent on contract work since 1888 and 89, and a long list of figures from the account of men in the upholstering department, show that cuts have been made in the prices paid for piece work during the last twelve months ranging from 33–⅓ to 50 per cent. The painters, according to the figures given, have been cut 20 per cent since 1893 and were receiving, when the strike went into effect, only 23 cents per hour, while the union men employed by the boss painters in Chicago were all busy under the scale, whereby they are paid 35 cents per hour until June 15th, and 32–½ cents during the summer months.

      The machinists, sheet iron and tin workers, foundrymen and blacksmiths had all been reduced from 30 to 50 per cent during the last year, and even heavier reductions, according to the report, have been made in other departments. Although wages had been previously reduced, the greatest cut went into effect last fall in the higher grades of labor.

      The reduction then made was from 80 to 20 per cent and in the lower grades 30 per cent. For example, the price paid for the decorating finish on the outside of a Pullman sleeper before the reduction, was $40.00, and now it is $18.00.

      By working hard for ten hours a decorator may earn $1.90.

      This sweeping reduction included all classes, and the laborers were compelled to work for from 70 cents to $1.00 per day, all this in the face of the fact that when a reduction was made three years ago, the men were told that as long as the shops stood there would never be another cut in the wages of those who worked upon the Pullman sleepers.

      A committee of girls, from those who were barely keeping body and soul together by working piece work for $2.50 and $3.00 per week, asked the foreman for an increase to enable them to live, and his answer was: If you cannot live upon the pay you are getting, go out and hustle for more. Why should we wonder that houses of prostitution find no difficulty in procuring inmates?

      Think of young women having to board and clothe themselves, and in many instances supporting an invalid mother or young brothers and sisters on such meager wages.

      The cold blooded avarice of the Pullman company is not even satisfied in requiring its employes to work for starvation wages, for in what he exacts from his tenant employes he is even more grasping.

      That model town of Pullman is owned by the Pullman company and everything about it is made to pay toll to this grasping monopoly.

      All employes must rent their houses from this slave driving corporation. There is now in the city of St. Paul a gentleman who formerly worked in Pullman, and growing tired of paying so much rent for such poor accommodations, moved to the adjoining hamlet, and rented a better house for $8.00 per month. He was at once informed that if he wished to retain his situation he would have to move back, and he did so. The house was of the average kind and was called a cottage, consisting of two rooms down stairs, each 10 × 14 feet, and three rooms up stairs, one of which, the front room, was 10 × 12 and the two rear rooms each 8 × 10 feet, lighted front and back, with no bath room or other convenience, and