COMMISSIONER WRIGHT State your name, residence, and occupation.

CURTIS Jennie Curtis; reside at Pullman; have been a seamstress for the Pullman company in the repair shops sewing room; worked for them five years.

WRIGHT Are you a member of any labor organization?

CURTIS Yes, sir; I am a member of the American Railway Union.

WRIGHT How long have you been a member of that union?

CURTIS Since about the 8th day of last May.

WRIGHT Do you hold any position in the union?

CURTIS I am president of the girls’ union, local, No. 269, at Pullman.

WRIGHT Did you have anything to do with the strike at Pullman, which occurred on the 11th of May, 1894?

CURTIS No, sir.

WRIGHT Had you anything to do with any of the efforts to avoid the strike, or to settle the difficulties?

CURTIS I had not, further than being on a committee which called to see Mr. Pullman and Mr. Wickes, the general manager of the company, to ask for more wages, asking to arbitrate, and such as that.

WRIGHT Were you on those committees, or some of them?

CURTIS Yes, sir; I was.

WRIGHT State briefly what you did as a member serving upon those committees.

CURTIS I was on a committee that went from Pullman to speak for the girls in May before the strike, to ask for more wages. . . .

WRIGHT State what took place at the first interview.

CURTIS We went there and asked, as the men did, for more wages; we were cut lower than any of the men’s departments throughout the works; in 1893 we were able to make 22 cents per hour, or $2.25 per day, in my department, and on the day of the strike we could only earn, on an average, working as hard as we possibly could, from 70 to 80 cents a day.

COMMISSIONER JOHN D. KERNAN Can you give us how the wages changed from month to month?

CURTIS Whenever the men were cut in their wages the girls also received a cut. We were cut twice inside of a week in November, 1893, and in January our wages were cut again; that was the last cut we received, and we worked as hard as we possibly could and doing all we could, too. The most experienced of us could only make 80 cents per day, and a great many of the girls could only average 40 to 50 cents per day. . . .

WRIGHT Do you pay rent in Pullman?

CURTIS No, sir; not now.

WRIGHT You pay board?

CURTIS Yes, sir. My father worked for the Pullman company for thirteen years. He died last September, and I paid the rent to the Pullman company up to the time he died; I was boarding at the time of my father’s death. He being laid off and sick for three months, owed the Pullman company $60 at the time of his death for back rent, and the company made me, out of my small earnings, pay that rent due from my father.

KERNAN How did they make you do it?

CURTIS The contract was that I should pay $3 on the back rent every pay day; out of my small earnings I could not give them $3 every pay day, and when I did not do so I was insulted and almost put out of the bank by the clerk for not being able to pay it to them. My wages were cut so low that I could not pay my board and give them $3 on the back rent, but if I had $2 or so over my board I would leave it at the bank on the rent. On the day of the strike I still owed them $15, which I am afraid they never will give me a chance to pay back.

Source: Executive Documents of the Senate of the United States, 53rd Cong. (1894–1895).