The City Guard
9781465671417
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
AS the tiny stream that wends its course down the mountain slope on the way to the sea grows gradually larger and deeper by the successive uniting with it of similar streams until at last it becomes the mighty river in which its identity is completely lost, so a small labor movement springing up in a little town named Pullman in the vicinity of Chicago, and spreading out westward and southward, became larger and greater at each successive juncture with it of the employees of the railroad until at last, when its progress was stopped by the cool waves of the Pacific, it had grown to be a movement of gigantic proportions, stupendous in its effects, in which the primal cause of the movement was lost. California was particularly affected. Never before in the history of the State had she experienced such a movement as this. Traffic was completely stopped. Business was paralyzed. Goods could neither be received nor sent away. Merchants were laying off their employees and getting ready to close up their houses. Not a wheel of the Southern Pacific Company was turning in the State. This movement had its source in a disagreement between the managers and the employees of the Pullman Car Manufacturing Company. By successive reductions the wages of the employees had become greatly reduced, far below that which the existing condition of affairs would seem to justify. This, considered with certain other circumstances, caused a great deal of dissatisfaction among the men of the works. The accompanying circumstances, which served to intensify the dissatisfaction, were of a nature peculiar to the town of Pullman itself. A fair estimate would place the inhabitants of this town at about four thousand, all of whom are directly or indirectly dependent for subsistence upon the Pullman Car Manufacturing Company. Not only are they connected with the company by bond of employer and employee, but also are they related as landlord and tenant, and as creditor and debtor. Pullman has been nicknamed “the model town.” But there is more than one way of looking at this model town, just as there is more than one way of looking at a model jail. To a man like Carlyle, who had no sympathy for transgressors of the law, a jail like the famous Cherry Hill prison of Pennsylvania would be a model jail; for here a prisoner is confined in a single cell for the entire term of his confinement, with no other occupation than that of picking jute. But to the prisoner himself who is incarcerated there, it is a model jail, where he “who once enters leaves all hope behind.” So with the town of Pullman. To the stockholders of the Pullman Car Manufacturing Company, who see in its organization innumerable opportunities for enriching themselves at the expense of the workman, it is a model town. But to the poor employees, who encounter at every turn the grasping hand of the monopoly, it is a model town symbolical of all that characterizes slavery. In the hands of the Pullman Car Manufacturing Company resides the entire property of the town. They not only own the water and gas works, and the houses, but also sell to their employees the very necessities of life. All the inhabitants of the town are tenants; none are freeholders. From this it is easy to imagine the situation when a large cut was made in the wages. The corporation, you may be sure, never thought of making a corresponding reduction in the rent of the houses, or in the water and gas rates, or in the price of food. With greatly reduced wages, reduced to considerably less than what the artisans engaged in similar crafts were getting in the adjacent municipality of Chicago, and with rents and water, and gas rates correspondingly higher, the Pullman Car Manufacturing Company expected its employees to adjust themselves to the new condition of affairs. The chasm, however, was altogether too wide to be bridged. The men were compelled by the force of necessity to resist the reduction.
