I
The President inaugurated on the fourth day of March, 1893, and
those associated with him as Cabinet officials, encountered, during
their term of executive duty, unusual and especially perplexing
difficulties. The members of that administration who still survive,
in recalling the events of this laborious service, cannot fail to fix
upon the years 1894 and 1895 as the most troublous and anxious of
their incumbency. During those years unhappy currency complications
compelled executive resort to heroic treatment for the preservation of
our nation’s financial integrity, and forced upon the administration a
constant, unrelenting struggle for sound money; a long and persistent
executive effort to accomplish beneficent and satisfactory tariff
reform so nearly miscarried as to bring depression and disappointment
to the verge of discouragement; and it was at the close of the year
1895 that executive insistence upon the Monroe Doctrine culminated
in a situation that gave birth to solemn thoughts of war. Without
attempting to complete the list of troubles and embarrassments that
beset the administration during these luckless years, I have reserved
for separate and more detailed treatment one of its incidents not yet
mentioned, which immensely increased executive anxiety and foreboded
the most calamitous and far-reaching consequences.
In the last days of June, 1894, a very determined and ugly labor
disturbance broke out in the city of Chicago. Almost in a night it grew
to full proportions of malevolence and danger. Rioting and violence
were its early accompaniments; and it spread so swiftly that within
a few days it had reached nearly the entire Western and Southwestern
sections of our country. Railroad transportation was especially
involved in its attacks. The carriage of United States mails was
interrupted, interstate commerce was obstructed, and railroad property
was riotously destroyed.
This disturbance is often called “The Chicago Strike.” It is true that
its beginning was in that city; and the headquarters of those who
inaugurated it and directed its operations were located there; but the
name thus given to it is an entire misnomer so far as it applies to the
scope and reach of the trouble. Railroad operations were more or less
affected in twenty-seven States and Territories; and in all these the
interposition of the general Government was to a greater or less extent
invoked.
This wide-spread trouble had its inception in a strike by the employees
of the Pullman Palace Car Company, a corporation located and doing
business at the town of Pullman, which is within the limits of the city
of Chicago. This company was a manufacturing corporation--or at least
it was not a railroad corporation. Its main object was the operation
and running of sleeping- and parlor-cars upon railroads under written
contracts; but its charter contemplated the manufacture of cars as
well; and soon after its incorporation it began the manufacture of its
own cars and, subsequently, the manufacture of cars for the general
market.
The strike on the part of the employees of this company began on the
eleventh day of May, 1894, and was provoked by a reduction of wages.
The American Railway Union was organized in the summer of 1893.
It was professedly an association of all the different classes of
railway employees. In its scope and intent it was the most compact
and effective organization of the kind ever attempted. Its purpose
was a thorough unification of defensive and offensive effort among
railway employees under one central direction, and the creation of
a combination embracing all such employees, which should make the
grievances of any section of its membership a common cause. Those
prominent in this project estimated that various other organizations
of railroad employees then existing had a membership of 102,000 in
the United States and neighboring countries; and they claimed that
these brotherhoods, because of divided councils and for other reasons,
were ineffective, and that nearly 1,000,000 railroad employees still
remained unorganized.
The wonderful growth of this new combination is made apparent by the
fact that between the month of August, 1893, and the time it became
involved in the Pullman strike, in June, 1894, it had enrolled nearly
150,000 members.
The employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company could not on any
reasonable and consistent theory be regarded as eligible to membership
in an organization devoted to the interests of railway employees; and
yet, during the months of March, April, and May, 1894, it appears that
nearly 4000 of these employees were enrolled in the American Railway
Union.
This, to say the least of it, was an exceedingly unfortunate
proceeding, since it created a situation which implicated in a
comparatively insignificant quarrel between the managers of an
industrial establishment and their workmen the large army of the
Railway Union. It was the membership of these workmen in the Railway
Union, and the union’s consequent assumption of their quarrel, that
gave it the proportions of a tremendous disturbance, paralyzing the
most important business interests, obstructing the functions of the
Government, and disturbing social peace and order....
No injury to the property of the Pullman Palace Car Company was done or
attempted while the strike was confined to its employees; and during
that time very little disorder of any kind occurred.
It so happened, however, that in June, 1894, after the strike at
Pullman had continued for about one month, a regular stated convention
of the American Railway Union was held in the city of Chicago, which
was attended by delegates from local branches of the organization in
different States, as well as by representatives of its members among
the employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company. At this convention the
trouble at Pullman was considered, and after earnest efforts on the
part of the Railway Union to bring about a settlement, a resolution
was, on the twenty-second day of June, passed by the convention,
declaring that unless the Pullman Palace Car Company should adjust the
grievances of its employees before noon of the twenty-sixth day of
June, the members of the American Railway Union would, after that date,
refuse to handle Pullman cars and equipment.
The twenty-sixth day of June arrived without any change in the attitude
of the parties to the Pullman controversy; and thereupon the order made
by the American Railway Union forbidding the handling of Pullman cars,
became operative throughout its entire membership.
At this time the Pullman Palace Car Company was furnishing drawing-room
and sleeping-car accommodations to the traveling public under contracts
with numerous railway companies, and was covering by this service
about one hundred and twenty-five thousand miles of railway, or
approximately three fourths of all the railroad mileage of the country.
The same railroad companies which had contracted to use these Pullman
cars upon their lines had contracts with the United States Government
for the carriage of mails, and were, of course, also largely engaged
in interstate commerce. It need hardly be said that, of necessity, the
trains on which the mails were carried and which served the purpose of
interstate commerce were, very generally, those to which the Pullman
cars were also attached.
The president of the Railway Union was one Eugene V. Debs. In a sworn
statement afterward made he gave the following description of the
results of the interference of the union in the Pullman dispute:
The employees, obedient to the order of the convention, at
once, on the 26th, refused to haul Pullman cars. The switchmen,
in the first place, refused to attach a Pullman car to a train,
and that is where the trouble began; and then, when a switchman
would be discharged for that, they would all simultaneously
quit, as they had agreed to do. One department after another
was involved until the Illinois Central was practically
paralyzed, and the Rock Island and other roads in their turn.
Up to the first day of July, or after the strike had been in
progress five days, the railway managers, as we believe, were
completely defeated. Their immediate resources were exhausted,
their properties were paralyzed, and they were unable to
operate their trains. Our men were intact at every point, firm,
quiet, and yet determined, and no sign of violence or disorder
anywhere. That was the condition on the thirtieth day of June
and the first day of July.
The officers of the Railway Union from their headquarters in the city
of Chicago gave directions for the maintenance and management of the
strike, which were quickly transmitted to distant railroad points and
were there promptly executed. As early as the 28th of June, two days
after the beginning of the strike ordered by the Railway Union at
Chicago, information was received at Washington from the Post-Office
Department that on the Southern Pacific System, between Portland
and San Francisco, Ogden and San Francisco, and Los Angeles and San
Francisco, the mails were completely obstructed, and that the strikers
refused to permit trains to which Pullman cars were attached to run
over the lines mentioned. Thereupon Attorney-General Olney immediately
sent the following telegraphic despatch to the United States district
attorneys in the State of California:
WASHINGTON, D. C., June 28, 1894.
See that the passage of regular trains, carrying United States
mails in the usual and ordinary way, as contemplated by the
act of Congress and directed by the Postmaster-General, is not
obstructed. Procure warrants or any other available process
from United States courts against any and all persons engaged
in such obstructions, and direct the marshal to execute the
same by such number of deputies or such posse as may be
necessary.
On the same day, and during a number of days immediately following,
complaints of a similar character, sometimes accompanied by charges
of forcible seizure of trains and other violent disorders, poured in
upon the Attorney-General from all parts of the West and Southwest.
These complaints came from post-office officials, from United States
marshals and district attorneys, from railroad managers, and from
other officials and private citizens. In all cases of substantial
representation of interference with the carriage of mails, a despatch
identical with that already quoted was sent by the Attorney-General to
the United States district attorneys in the disturbed localities; and
this was supplemented, whenever necessary, by such other prompt action
as the different emergencies required.
I shall not enter upon an enumeration of all the disorders and
violence, the defiance of law and authority, and the obstructions of
national functions and duties, which occurred in many localities as
a consequence of this labor contention, thus tremendously reinforced
and completely under way. It is my especial purpose to review the
action taken by the Government for the maintenance of its own authority
and the protection of the interests intrusted to its keeping, so far
as they were endangered by this disturbance; and I do not intend to
specifically deal with the incidents of the strike except in so far as
a reference to them may be necessary to show conditions which not only
justified but actually obliged the Government to resort to stern and
unusual measures in the assertion of its prerogatives.
Inasmuch, therefore, as the city of Chicago was the birthplace of the
disturbance and the home of its activities, and because it was the
field of its most pronounced and malign manifestations, as well as the
place of its final extinction, I shall meet the needs of my subject
if I supplement what has been already said by a recital of events
occurring at this central point. In doing this, I shall liberally
embody documents, orders, instructions, and reports which I hope will
not prove tiresome, since they supply the facts I desire to present,
at first hand and more impressively than they could be presented by any
words of mine.
Owing to the enforced relationship of Chicago to the strike which
started within its borders, and because of its importance as a center
of railway traffic, Government officials at Washington were not
surprised by the early and persistent complaints of mail and interstate
commerce obstructions which reached them from that city. It was from
the first anticipated that this would be the seat of the most serious
complications, and the place where the strong arm of the law would
be most needed. In these circumstances it would have been a criminal
neglect of duty if those charged with the protection of governmental
agencies and the enforcement of orderly obedience and submission to
Federal authority, had been remiss in preparations for any emergency in
that quarter.
On the thirtieth day of June the district attorney at Chicago reported
by telegraph that mail trains in the suburbs of Chicago were, on the
previous night, stopped by strikers, that an engine had been cut off
and disabled, and that conditions were growing more and more likely
to culminate in the stoppage of all trains; and he recommended that
the marshal be authorized to employ a force of special deputies who
should be placed on trains to protect mails and detect the parties
guilty of such interference. In reply to this despatch Attorney-General
Olney on the same day authorized the marshal to employ additional
deputies as suggested, and designated Edwin Walker, an able and
prominent attorney in Chicago, as special counsel for the Government,
to assist the district attorney in any legal proceedings that might
be instituted. He also notified the district attorney of the steps
thus taken, and enjoined upon him that “action ought to be prompt and
vigorous,” and also directed him to confer with the special counsel
who had been employed. In a letter of the same date addressed to this
special counsel, the Attorney-General, in making suggestions concerning
legal proceedings, wrote: “It has seemed to me that if the rights of
the United States were vigorously asserted in Chicago, the origin and
center of the demonstration, the result would be to make it a failure
everywhere else, and to prevent its spread over the entire country”;
and in that connection he indicated that it might be advisable,
instead of relying entirely upon warrants issued under criminal
statutes against persons actually guilty of the offense of obstructing
United States mails, to apply to the courts for injunctions which
would restrain and prevent any attempt to commit such offense. This
suggestion contemplated the inauguration of legal proceedings in a
regular and usual way to restrain those prominently concerned in the
interference with the mails and the obstruction of interstate commerce,
basing such proceedings on the proposition that, under the Constitution
and laws, these subjects were in the exclusive care of the Government
of the United States, and that for their protection the Federal
courts were competent under general principles of law to intervene by
injunction; and on the further ground that under an act of Congress,
passed July 2, 1890, conspiracies in restraint of trade or commerce
among the several States were declared to be illegal, and the circuit
courts of the United States were therein expressly given jurisdiction
to prevent and restrain such conspiracies.
On the first day of July the district attorney reported to the
Attorney-General that he was preparing a bill of complaint to be
presented to the court the next day, on an application for an
injunction. He further reported that very little mail and no freight
was moving, that the marshal was using all his force to prevent
riots and the obstruction of tracks, and that this force was clearly
inadequate. On the same day the marshal reported that the situation was
desperate, that he had sworn in over four hundred deputies, that many
more would be required to protect mail trains, and that he expected
great trouble the next day. He further expressed the opinion that one
hundred riot guns were needed.
Upon the receipt of these reports, and anticipating an attempt to serve
injunctions on the following day, the Attorney-General immediately sent
a despatch to the district attorney directing him to report at once
if the process of the court should be resisted by such force as the
marshal could not overcome, and suggesting that the United States judge
should join in such report. He at the same time sent a despatch to the
special counsel requesting him to report his view of the situation as
early as the forenoon of the next day.
In explanation of these two despatches it should here be said that
the desperate character of this disturbance was not in the least
underestimated by executive officials at Washington; and it must be
borne in mind that while menacing conditions were moving swiftly and
accumulating at Chicago, like conditions, inspired and supported from
that central point, existed in many other places within the area of the
strike’s contagion.
Of course it was hoped by those charged with the responsibility of
dealing with the situation, that a direct assertion of authority by the
marshal and a resort to the restraining power of the courts would prove
sufficient for the emergency. Notwithstanding, however, an anxious
desire to avoid measures more radical, the fact had not been overlooked
that a contingency might occur which would compel a resort to military
force. The key to these despatches of the Attorney-General is found in
the determination of the Federal authorities to overcome by any lawful
and constitutional means all resistance to governmental functions as
related to the transportation of mails, the operation of interstate
commerce, and the preservation of the property of the United States.
The Constitution requires that the United States shall protect each of
the States against invasion, “and on application of the legislature,
or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened), against
domestic violence.” There was plenty of domestic violence in the city
of Chicago and in the State of Illinois during the early days of
July, 1894; but no application was made to the Federal Government for
assistance. It was probably a very fortunate circumstance that the
presence of United States soldiers in Chicago at that time did not
depend upon the request or desire of Governor Altgeld.
Section 5298 of the Revised Statutes of the United States provides:
“Whenever, by reason of unlawful obstructions, combinations or
assemblages of persons, or rebellion against the authority of the
United States, it shall become impracticable in the judgment of the
President to enforce, by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings,
the laws of the United States within any State or Territory, it
shall be lawful for the President to call forth the militia of any
or all of the States, and to employ such parts of the land or naval
forces of the United States as he may deem necessary to enforce the
faithful execution of the laws of the United States, or to suppress
such rebellion, in whatever State or Territory thereof the laws of
the United States may be forcibly opposed, or the execution thereof
be forcibly obstructed”; and Section 5299 provides: “Whenever any
insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combinations or conspiracies
in any State ... opposes or obstructs the laws of the United States,
or the due execution thereof, or impedes or obstructs the due course
of justice under the same, it shall be lawful for the President, and
it shall be his duty, to take such measures, by the employment of the
militia, or the land and naval forces of the United States, or of
either, or by other means as he may deem necessary, for the suppression
of such insurrection, domestic violence or combinations.”