The Pullman Strike of 1894 was known as the turning point for US labor. In the late 1800’s a successful railroad car manufacturer names George M. Pullman, declared his goal to build a model industrial town. He wanted to build the factory in a cheap area where the evil influences of the cities wouldn’t affect his workers. The word of the town of Pullman soon spread and was seen as a great American landmark as it showed the harmony between factory owners and workers (background essay). Although the Pullman town was a going well, it didn’t last. Soon after the one of the great economic depressions, came the Pullman Strike of 1894. “The Pullman strike is the greatest and most far-reaching of any strike on record in this country...great financial depression, the employees laid down their tools and, on the 11th of May, walked out of the great shops to face and unequal and apparently hopeless conflict (document one).” After the crisis of the depression, George lowered the worker’s wages, but not their rents. The sudden decrease in money angered the workers and caused them to start a strike, followed by railroad workers nationwide. Many of Pullman’s workers began to join the A.R.U (American Railroad Union). “In 1893, Eugene Debs founded the American Railway Union, the first organization of railway workers to include unskilled…show more content… The aftermath of the boycott was the leader of the American Railway Union, imprisoned and George Pullman’s image and experiment was destroyed. “For those of us who lived in Chicago during the summer of 1894,...a quick series of unusual events had shown the ugliness of the industrial situation...the barbaric instinct to kill, roused on both sides, the sharp division into class lines, with the resultant distrust and bitterness, can only be endured if we learn from it all a great ethical lesson (document twenty
