What led to the labor wars of the 1890s?

Printed Page 584

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Figure false: National Guard Occupying Pullman, Illinois
Figure false: After President Grover Cleveland called out troops to put down the Pullman strike in 1894, the National Guard occupied the town of Pullman. The intervention enabled owner George M. Pullman to bring in strikebreakers and defeat the unions. Chicago Historical Society.

CHRONOLOGY

1892

  • Homestead lockout.

1893

  • Stock market crash touches off economic depression.

1894

  • Miners’ strike in Cripple Creek, Colorado.
  • Pullman boycott is crushed.

WHILE FARMERS UNITED to fight for change, industrial laborers fought their own battles in a series of bloody strikes historians have called the “labor wars.” Industrial workers took a stand in the 1890s. At issue was the right of workers to organize and to speak through unions, to bargain collectively, and to fight for better working conditions, higher wages, shorter hours, and greater worker control in the face of increased mechanization. Three major conflicts — the lockout of steelworkers in Homestead, Pennsylvania, in 1892; the miners’ strike in Cripple Creek, Colorado, in 1894; and the Pullman boycott that same year — raised fundamental questions about the rights of labor and the sanctity of private property.