Page:William Zebulon Foster - The Railroaders' Next Step, Amalgamation (1922).djvu/20

Rh swept into its ranks, among whom were large numbers of railroad workers. The organization secured an especially strong grip on several Western and Southwestern roads, winning big strikes on the Union Pacific, Wabash, Missouri Pacific, Missouri, Kansas & Texas, etc., in 1884-5. But the following year the wily and unscrupulous Jay Gould crushed the union on these roads in a bitterly fought two months' strike. A few years later, as the power of the Knights of Labor waned generally throughout the country, its railroad organization went to pieces, leaving the embattled, feeble craft unions alone in the field.

But not for long; soon the greatest of all dual railroad unions was under way. This was the American Railway Union, launched by Eugene V. Debs and a few others in Chicago in 1893. It was opposed by the craft unions, but as they were still weak, they could offer no effective resistance and it spread rapidly over the systems. By the Spring of 1894 it was said to have 465 local lodges and about 150,000 members. It included all classes of railroad workers.

Its first struggle with the employers came in April, 1894, on the Great Northern. That system was tied up from end to end by a general strike. The autocratic Jim Hill capitulated after eighteen days, coming to terms with the organization. But this brilliant victory bred an over-confidence among the men that soon brought about the destruction of their union. In an effort to force a settlement of the then pending Pullman strike, the militant railroad men placed a boycott against all Pullman cars which action produced a general strike, June 26th, 1894, on twenty-four roads centering in Chicago.

The tieup was highly effective and the companies were on the way to defeat, when the Government and courts took a hand. Troops were rushed to Chicago; injunctions were issued against the strikers; their leaders were jailed, and such a general reign of terror set up that the conservative mass became terrified and straggled back to work. Before