William L. Strong.
CHAPTER VIII.
LABOR AND THE RAILWAYS
In March, 1894, bands of the unemployed in various parts of the West, styling themselves “Commonweal,” or “Industrial Armies,” started for Washington to demand government relief for “labor.” “General” Coxey, of Ohio, led the van. “General” Kelly followed from Trans-Mississippi with a force at one time numbering 1,250. Smaller itinerant groups joined the above as they marched. For supplies the tattered pilgrims taxed the sympathies or the fears of people along their routes. Most of them were well-meaning, but their destitution prompted some small thefts. Even violence occasionally occurred, as in California, where a town marshal killed a Commonweal “general,” and in the State of Washington, where two deputy marshals were wounded. The Commonwealers captured a few freight trains and forced them into service.
Coxey’s army on the march to the Capitol steps at Washington.
Only Coxey’s band reached Washington. On May Day, attempting to present their “petition-in-boots” on the steps of the Capitol, the leaders were jailed under local laws against treading on the grass and against displaying banners on the Capitol Grounds. On June 10th Coxey was released, having meantime been nominated for Congress, and in little over a month the remnant of his forces was shipped back toward the setting sun.
The same year, 1894, marked a far more widespread and formidable disorder, the A. R. U. Railway Strike. The American Railway Union claimed a membership of 100,000, and aspired to include all the 850,000 railroad workmen in North America. It had just emerged with prestige from a successful grapple with the Great Northern Railway, settled by arbitration.
The union’s catholic ambitions led it to admit many employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company, between whom and their employers acute differences were arising. The company’s landlordism of the town of Pullman and petty shop abuses stirred up irritation, and when Pullman workers were laid off or put upon short time and cut wages, the feeling deepened. They pointed out that rents for the houses they lived in were not reduced, that the company’s dividends the preceding year had been fat, and that the accumulation of its undivided surplus was enormous. The company, on the other hand, was sensible of a slack demand for cars after the brisk business done in connection with World’s Fair travel.
