After Grover Cleveland left the White House in 1897, he became a trustee of Princeton University. He delivered several addresses as part of a lecture series on public affairs that was established in his honor. In 1904, a decade after the Pullman strike, he discussed his administration’s role in dealing with the strike in an article in the popular magazine McClure’s.
IN THE LAST DAYS OF JUNE, 1894, a very determined and ugly labor disturbance broke out in the City of Chicago. Almost in a night it grew to full proportions of malevolence and danger. Rioting and violence were its early accompaniments; and it spread so swiftly that within a few days it had reached nearly the entire Western and Southwestern sections of our country. Railroad transportation was especially involved in its attacks. The carriage of United States mails was interrupted, interstate commerce was obstructed, and railroad property was riotously destroyed.
This disturbance is often called “The Chicago Strike.” It is true that its beginning was in that city; and the headquarters of those who inaugurated it and directed its operations were located there; but the name thus given to it is an entire misnomer so far as it applies to the scope and reach of the trouble. Railroad operations were more or less affected in twenty-seven states and territories; and in all these the interposition of the General Government was to a greater or less extent invoked. . . .
The employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company could not on any reasonable and consistent theory be regarded as eligible to membership in an organization devoted to the interests of railway employees; and yet, during the months of March, April, and May, 1894, it appears that nearly 4,000 of these employees were enrolled in the American Railway Union. This, to say the least of it, was an exceedingly unfortunate proceeding, since it created a situation which implicated in a comparatively insignificant quarrel between the managers of an industrial establishment and their workmen, the large army of the Railway Union. It was the membership of these workmen in the Railway Union and the Union’s consequent assumption of their quarrel, that gave it the proportions of a tremendous disturbance, paralyzing the most important business interests, obstructing the functions of the Government, and disturbing social peace and order. . . .
I shall not enter upon an enumeration of all the disorders and violence, the defiance of law and authority, and the obstructions of national functions and duties, which occurred in many localities as a consequence of this labor contention, thus tremendously reinforced and completely under way. It is my especial purpose to review the action taken by the Government for the maintenance of its own authority and the protection of the special interests intrusted to its keeping, so far as they were endangered by this disturbance; and I do not intend to especially deal with the incidents of the strike except in so far as a reference to them may be necessary to show conditions which not only justified but actually obliged the Government to resort to stern and unusual measures in the assertion of its prerogatives. . . .
Owing to the enforced relationship of Chicago to the strike which started within its borders, and because of its importance as a center of railway traffic, Government officials at Washington were not surprised by the early and persistent complaints of mail and interstate commerce obstructions which reached them from that city. It was from the first anticipated that this would be the seat of the most serious complications, and the place where the strong arm of the law would be most needed. In these circumstances it would have been a criminal neglect of duty if those charged with the protection of Governmental agencies and the enforcement of orderly obedience and submission to Federal authority, had been remiss in preparations for any emergency in that quarter.
. . . The Attorney-General, in making suggestions concerning legal proceedings, wrote: “It has seemed to me that if the rights of the United States were vigorously asserted in Chicago, the origin and center of the demonstration, the result would be to make it a failure everywhere else, and to prevent its spread over the entire country,” and in that connection he indicated that it might be advisable, instead of relying entirely upon warrants issued under criminal statutes, against persons actually guilty of the offense of obstructing United States mails, that the courts should be asked to grant injunctions which would restrain and prevent any attempt to commit such offense.
Source: “The Government in the Chicago Strike of 1894,” McClure’s Magazine, July 1904, 227–29, 231–32.