Numerous complaints having reached Washington that the mails were being obstructed and interstate commerce interfered with, President Cleveland decided to send troops to Chicago. The Constitution requires that the United States protect states against domestic violence on the application of the legislature, or of the executive when the legislature is not in session. Moreover the statutes of the United States empower the President to use federal force to execute federal laws. The position taken by the Governor of Illinois, John P. Altgeld, was expressed in his telegram to President Cleveland protesting against the action of the executive:
Should the situation at any time get so serious that we cannot control it with the State forces, we will promptly and freely ask for Federal assistance; but until such time I protest with all due deference against this uncalled-for reflection upon our people, and again ask for the immediate withdrawal of these troops.
The President replied that troops were being sent in accordance with federal law upon complaint that commerce and the passage of the mails were being obstructed. A somewhat acrimonious correspondence between the Governor and the President resulted but the troops were retained and assisted in bringing the strike to a conclusion.
The attitude of the courts, meanwhile, had brought up a serious situation. On July 2 a "blanket injunction" was issued by the United States District Court of Illinois and posted on the sides of the cars. It forbade officers, members of the Union and all other persons to interfere in any way with the operation of trains or to force or persuade employees to refuse to perform their duties. Under existing law, anybody who disobeyed the injunction could be brought before the Court for contempt, and sentenced by the judge without opportunity to bring witnesses and to be tried before a jury. When Eugene V. Debs, the president of the Union, and other officers continued to direct the strike they were arrested for contempt of court and imprisoned.[6] With federal troops against them and their officers gone, the strikers could hardly continue and gave up in defeat. The loss in property and wages had already reached $80,000,000.
The apportionment of the blame for so appalling a controversy was not a simple task. On the one hand, a writer in the Forum declared that
The one great question was of the ability of this Government to suppress insurrection. On the one, side was the party of lawlessness, of murder, of incendiarism, and of defiance of authority. On the other side was the party of loyalty to the United States.
But this was a superficial view. A commission of investigation appointed by President Cleveland looked into the matter more deeply. Its unanimous report made important assertions: the Pullman Company, while providing a beautiful town for its employees, charged rents twenty to twenty-five per cent. higher than were charged in surrounding towns for similar accommodations, and the men felt a compulsion to reside in the houses if they wished to retain their positions; when wages were reduced, the salaries of the better paid officers were untouched, so that the burden of the hard times was placed on the poorest paid employees; there was no violence or destruction of property in Pullman, and much of the rowdyism in Chicago, but not all of it was due to the lawless adventurers and professional criminals who filled the city at that time;[7] when various public officials and organizations attempted to get the Company to arbitrate the dispute, the uniform reply was that the points at issue were matters of fact and hence not proper subjects for arbitration; and the Managers' Association selected, armed and paid 3,600 federal deputy marshals who acted both as railroad employees and as United States officers, under the direction of the Managers.
In view of the amount of labor disturbance after the Civil War, it was noteworthy that it attracted the interest of political parties to so slight a degree previous to 1896. In general the national platforms of the two large parties reflected an indefinite if not remote concern with the welfare of the wage earner. It was urged, to be sure, by both protectionists and tariff reformers that customs duties should be framed with the welfare of the laborer in mind, but the sincerity of this concern was sometimes open to question. The smaller parties, as usual, were far less vague in their demands. The Labor Reformers in 1872 demanded the eight-hour day, for example; the Greenbackers had a definite program for relief in 1880; the Anti-Monopolists in 1884 and the Union Labor and the United Labor parties in 1888. By 1892 the great parties found themselves face to face with a growing labor vote. The labor planks in the two platforms of that year were strikingly similar. Each called for federal legislation to protect the employees of transportation companies, but looked to the states for the relief of employees engaged in manufacturing. Neither the Socialist Labor party nor the Populists, however, were greatly troubled by the question of the proper distribution between state and nation of the responsibility for the welfare of the wage earner. Both proposed definite action; both urged the reduction in length of the working day. The Populists condemned the use of Pinkertons in labor disputes and the Socialists urged arbitration, the prohibition of child labor, restrictions on the employment of women in unhealthful industries, employers' liability laws and the protection of life and limb.
In brief, then, the situation of the wage-earning classes in the middle nineties was becoming accurately defined. The strike as a weapon was open to serious objections. The leaders of the two large parties had given no evidence of an effective and immediate interest in labor unrest. The other political parties were too small to afford chances of success. If less reliance was to be placed upon the strike and more upon political action, either a third party must be constructed or the leadership in one of the old ones must be seized. When the conference of labor officials met in Chicago and concluded that the Pullman strike was lost, it issued an address to the members of the American Railway Union advising a return to work, closer organization of the laboring class and the correction of industrial wrongs at the ballot box. If this advice should be taken, and if the wage earner should attempt to control legislation for his economic interest, as the propertied class had long been doing for its benefit, the struggle might be shifted to the political arena. The interest of the workers in the South and West in the Populist movement suggested the possibility that such a shift might occur.