Pullman Strike
When manufacturing demand fell off in 1894, Pullman cut jobs and wages and increased working hours in his plant to lower costs and keep profits, but he did not lower rents or prices in the ecompany town. Eventually the workers launched the Pullman Strike. When violence broke out, he gained the support of President Grover Cleveland for the use of United States troops. Cleveland sent in the troops, who harshly suppressed the strike in action that caused many injuries, over the objections of the Illinois governor, John Altgeld.
A national commission was appointed to study the causes of the 1894 strike. It found Pullman's paternalism partly to blame and described Pullman's company town as "un-American." In 1898, the Supreme Court of Illinois forced the Pullman Company to divest ownership in the town, which was annexed to Chicago.
Read more about this topic: George Pullman
Famous quotes containing the words pullman and/or strike:
“If you find that you can’t make seventy by any but an uncomfortable road, don’t you go. When they take off the Pullman and retire you to the rancid smoker, put off your things, count your checks, and get out at the first way station where there’s a cemetery.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“if thou slip thy troth and do not come at all.
As minutes in the clock do strike so call for death I shall:
To please both thy false heart, and rid myself from woe,
That rather had to die in troth than live forsaken so.”
—Unknown. The Lady Prayeth the Return of Her Lover Abiding on the Seas (l. 19–22)