The Strike
During a severe depression (called panic of 1893), the Pullman Palace Car Company cut wages as demand for new passenger cars plummeted and the company's revenue dropped. A delegation of workers complained that wages had been cut but not rents at their company housing, and other costs in the company town. the company owner, George Pullman, refused to lower rents or go to arbitration.
Read more about this topic: Pullman Strike
Famous quotes containing the word strike:
“What happens in a strike happens not to one person alone.... It is a crisis with meaning and potency for all and prophetic of a future. The elements in crisis are the same, there is a fermentation that is identical. The elements are these: a body of men, women and children, hungry; an organization of feudal employers out to break the back of unionization; and the government Labor Board sent to “negotiate” between this hunger and this greed.”
—Meridel Le Sueur (b. 1900)
“Talk to me not of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)