Reference no: EM133347349

Voices, Chapter.11: Statement from the Pullman Strikers (1894)

Who were the strikers and when did they strike? Why did they strike? What consequences did they face? Were they successful? What does the Pullman strike teach us about early labor organizing in the United States? What does it teach us about the relationship between capitalist owners and the working classes? What does it teach us about the role of the government and the media in the context of labor conflicts? Do you see any parallels to potential twenty-first-century grievances in some sectors of the American working class?

What is the role of labor unions? How did unions during the Pullman strike provide their members with hope? WHat were the potential conflict for union membership and union organizing? How did the Pullman workers support their argument that "Pullman, both the man and the town, is an ulcer on the body politic"? What was the relationship between Pullman and his workers? Why did Pullman decrease wages "from 30 to 70 percent"? Why did he not decrease his worker's rent at the same time? Do you think the strikers exaggerated when they talked about "the dance of skeletons bathed in human tears", the endless cycle of abject poverty and the exploitation of their labor that the Union was called upon to stop once and for all?