The Pullman boycott : $b A complete history of the great R. R. strikeBurns, W. F.
History
The Pullman boycott : $b A complete history of the great R. R. strike
Burns, W. F.
Pullman Strike, 1894
After the release of the officers a meeting was called at the Revere
House, of the directors of the American Railway Union. They concluded to
call a convention of the delegates from the different local unions, to
meet in Chicago, August 2d, and take some action on the strike. Each
local union was notified of this action and instructed to send a
delegate with full power to act.
After this meeting of the officers, they at once repaired to Ulrich
Hall, where an enormous crowd greeted Mr. Debs with the greatest
enthusiasm.
Mr. Debs,--after being introduced by the chairman of the meeting, Mr.
Adams,--was given three cheers with such a vim that the building fairly
shook. He then advanced to the platform and said: "I see you have
changed your quarters since I saw you before, and I am glad to say we
have changed ours also.
"When Judge Wood delivered his ruling yesterday he declared it to be
illegal for men to combine and strike.
"If that is the law, labor organizations had better disband at once. If
we have no right to strike, no right to combine, no right to exercise
the functions which are delegated to us, then we might as well give up
and acknowledge that we are slaves.
"If that is the law we have no right to resist or defend ourselves
against the injustice of employers.
"No matter how much has been said about the stars and stripes and the
freedom of the workingman, if that is the final tribunal, corporate
capital has the right to suck the life blood from the toiler who must
make no sign. But I am not prepared to believe that this is in harmony
with the constitution. If this is the constitution, then our liberty is
gone. Mr. Erwin sounded the slogan yesterday when he declared that there
is a higher power than the courts, a power greater than the aggregated
combinations of capital and railroads. That is the inherent rights of
workingmen to strike at the polls.
"What we want then is to rid ourselves of the old party shackles.
"We want to change the constitution so that even federal judges will be
elected by the people. Then no judge will render a decision defying all
law and justice. It is wonderful how sensitive the machinery of justice
is to any complaint directed against the workingman.
"But how is it when corporations combine? Is it of record that any
officials of any one of them has ever been in prison for violating the
law?
"It is a notorious fact that the Santa Fe has robbed the people of
$7,000,000 in the face of the interstate commerce law. Why not bring
these colossal scoundrels to justice too? They say we must obey the law.
I say we are law-abiding, and I defy any man to show a single instance
where the heads of the labor organization have advocated violence. If
the authorities want the law respected let them enforce it against the
rich and poor alike.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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