The Chicago strike was in many respects the grandest industrial battle
in history, and I am prouder of my small share in it than of any other
act of my life.
Men, women and children were on the verge of starvation at the “model
city” of Pullman. They had produced the fabulous wealth of the Pullman
corporation, but they, poor souls, were compelled to suffer the torment
of hunger pangs in the very midst of the abundance their labor had
created.
A hundred and fifty thousand railroad employes, their fellow members in
the American Railway Union, sympathized with them, shared their earnings
with them, and after trying in every peaceable way they could conceive
of to touch the flint heart of the Pullman company—every overture being
rejected, every suggestion denied, every proposition spurned with
contempt—they determined not to pollute their hands and dishonor their
manhood by handling Pullman cars and contributing to the suffering and
sorrow of their brethren and their wives and babes. And rather than do
this they laid down their tools in a body, sacrificed their situations
and submitted to persecution, exile and the blacklist; to idleness,
poverty, crusts and rags, and I shall love and honor these moral heroes
to my latest breath.
There was more of human sympathy, or the essence of brotherhood, of the
spirit of real Christianity in this act than in all the hollow pretenses
and heartless prayers of those disciples of mammon who cried out against
it, and this act will shine forth in increasing splendor long after the
dollar worshipers have mingled with the dust of oblivion.
Had the carpenter of Nazareth been in Chicago at the time He would have
been on the side of the poor, the heavy-laden and sore at heart, and He
would have denounced their oppressors and been sent to prison for
contempt of court under President Cleveland’s administration.
President Cleveland says that we were put down because we had acted in
violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust law of 1890. Will he kindly state
what other trusts were proceeded against and what capitalists were
sentenced to prison during his administration?