Details how a labor dispute in Chicago during 1894 progressed into a strike which held up train service in twenty-seven states.

Discusses the people and events involved in the unsuccessful but influential strike by railroad workers at the Pullman Company in Chicago in 1894.

Joseph Rayback’s history of the American labor movement. A compact and comprehensive chronicle of where labor has been and where it is today.

The Pullman strike of 1894 shut down the rail system from Chicago to the West Coast, culminating two decades of labor unrest and helping to define an epochal transition in American history. In this wide-ranging collection, leading labor historians use the prism of the Pullman strike to broaden our understanding of the crisis of the 1890s. By examining the strike in the context of continuities and changes in labor organization, the influences of gender and community, the public representation and contested meaning of labor conflict, the emergence of a new politics of progressive reform, the development of a regulatory state, and a changing legal environment, these essays resituate the Pullman conflict in its historical context. Illuminating one of the most important events in labor's past, The Pullman Strike and the Crisis of the 1890s testifies to the pivotal importance of the Pullman conflict and its aftermath for understanding the course of American history.

Describes the violent Pullman strike of 1894 which closed railroads across the midwestern United States and which made the nation's leaders see the need for addressing the concerns of the country's workers.

Labor and the Red Scare; Seattle and Winnipeg general strikes; Boston telephone and police strikes; Streetcar strikes in Chicago, Denver, Knoxville, Kansas City; strikes in clothing, textile, coal and steel; The open-shop drive; Strikes and Black-white relationships; the AFL and the Black worker; the IWW; Communist Party founded; Political action 1918-1920.