THE LABOR PROBLEM

The economic depression of 1893 produced significant labor upheaval, particularly in the national railway strike of 1894. Eugene V. Debs had formed an industrial union of railroad workers, the American Railway Union (ARU). The powerful, skilled, and established railway brotherhoods (engineers, conductors, firemen, and trainmen) remained outside of it, and the ARU was limited to men “born of white parents,” but otherwise it included the mass of railway workers. When the Pullman Palace Car Company cut the wages of its employees, the ARU began a sympathy strike, or “secondary boycott,” its members refusing to handle Pullman cars. When the railroad companies discharged ARU members engaged in this boycott and tried to carry on operations with replacements, a general railroad strike ensued, accompanied by violence and sabotage. Over the objections of pro-union Illinois Governor John P. Altgeld, the U.S. Attorney General, Richard Olney, sought an injunction in the U.S. District Court, which ordered an end to all efforts to interfere in the operations of the railroads by “threats, intimidation, force, and violence.” Debs and other ARU leaders violated the injunction, were convicted of contempt of court, and sentenced to jail terms of three to six months.

The Debs case brought into high relief the difficult question of the status of labor unions in American society. It was the common argument of progressive historians, and remains the dominant view to this day, that American law severely disfavored organized labor. But this is quite far from the truth. In the nineteenth century, American courts extended the same privileges to labor organizations as they did to other voluntary associations. They had never treated labor organizations per se as criminal conspiracies, but did hold unions accountable if they used unlawful means to attain their ends.