Читать книгу The Pullman Boycott - W. F. Burns - Страница 7

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The American Railway Union is in every sense an American Institution, whose aims and objects as previously stated are to protect and shield its members from the grinding power of railroad corporations. Its motto is unity: "One for all and all for one."

The Pullman employes were admitted to this organization and consequently entitled to the protection guaranteed to all members, therefore when they walked out, after every honorable means to avert a strike was exhausted, the American Railway Union was in duty bound to sustain them.

The strike was ordered on the 11th day of May, after an all night session by a committee of forty-six members representing every department in the Pullman works. When the word was given four thousand employes responded to the call, and this proved to be the beginning of the most gigantic strike in the history of organized labor.

The wrongs of the Pullman people were not generally known to the public, the cruel and inhuman treatment they were subjected to, was kept strictly from the public ears.

They were reduced to a condition of slavery beneath that of the black slave of the South prior to the civil war, for while the black slave was clothed, housed and fed, the white slave of Pullman was forced to work for wages entirely inadequate to furnish a sufficient amount of food to keep body and soul together. In this condition, on the verge of starvation, with all hope of justice from the hands of George M. Pullman gone, they revolted. Whether the grievance of these men was a just one, or their resistance to further encroachments on their rights was right or wrong, after reading the report of the committee appointed to investigate and report to the American Railway Union Annual Convention, at that time in session in the city of Chicago, it will be for the reader to decide.

The report, as condensed, in one of the Chicago daily papers, copied and commented on by the St. Paul Branch of the American Railway Union, was as follows:

After showing by way of contrast, that $30,000,000 worth of Pullman stock paid its holders 9–½ per cent in dividends last year, the report goes statistically into a comparison of wages in the past year, with the wages received by the Pullman employees when the strike was inaugurated. A fair example of the general reduction is given in a comparison in the price of labor involved in the construction of a freight car in 1888 and 1893.

Lot 1526.	Oct. 1888.	Nov. 1893.
Car carpenter	$13.00	$7.00
Truck builder	.90	.60
Truck labor	.31	.09
Hanging brakes	1.20	.65
Delivering, forging and casting	1.05	.35
Delivering lumber	.88	.21
Framing	.40	.12
Total	$17.74	$9.02

Other comparisons in the same department show that the wages of men employed in building freight cars, have been reduced 49, 57–½ and 47 per cent on contract work since 1888 and 89, and a long list of figures from the account of men in the upholstering department, show that cuts have been made in the prices paid for piece work during the last twelve months ranging from 33–⅓ to 50 per cent. The painters, according to the figures given, have been cut 20 per cent since 1893 and were receiving, when the strike went into effect, only 23 cents per hour, while the union men employed by the boss painters in Chicago were all busy under the scale, whereby they are paid 35 cents per hour until June 15th, and 32–½ cents during the summer months.

The machinists, sheet iron and tin workers, foundrymen and blacksmiths had all been reduced from 30 to 50 per cent during the last year, and even heavier reductions, according to the report, have been made in other departments. Although wages had been previously reduced, the greatest cut went into effect last fall in the higher grades of labor.

The reduction then made was from 80 to 20 per cent and in the lower grades 30 per cent. For example, the price paid for the decorating finish on the outside of a Pullman sleeper before the reduction, was $40.00, and now it is $18.00.

By working hard for ten hours a decorator may earn $1.90.

This sweeping reduction included all classes, and the laborers were compelled to work for from 70 cents to $1.00 per day, all this in the face of the fact that when a reduction was made three years ago, the men were told that as long as the shops stood there would never be another cut in the wages of those who worked upon the Pullman sleepers.

A committee of girls, from those who were barely keeping body and soul together by working piece work for $2.50 and $3.00 per week, asked the foreman for an increase to enable them to live, and his answer was: If you cannot live upon the pay you are getting, go out and hustle for more. Why should we wonder that houses of prostitution find no difficulty in procuring inmates?

Think of young women having to board and clothe themselves, and in many instances supporting an invalid mother or young brothers and sisters on such meager wages.

The cold blooded avarice of the Pullman company is not even satisfied in requiring its employes to work for starvation wages, for in what he exacts from his tenant employes he is even more grasping.

That model town of Pullman is owned by the Pullman company and everything about it is made to pay toll to this grasping monopoly.

All employes must rent their houses from this slave driving corporation. There is now in the city of St. Paul a gentleman who formerly worked in Pullman, and growing tired of paying so much rent for such poor accommodations, moved to the adjoining hamlet, and rented a better house for $8.00 per month. He was at once informed that if he wished to retain his situation he would have to move back, and he did so. The house was of the average kind and was called a cottage, consisting of two rooms down stairs, each 10 × 14 feet, and three rooms up stairs, one of which, the front room, was 10 × 12 and the two rear rooms each 8 × 10 feet, lighted front and back, with no bath room or other convenience, and the whole, a part of a solid row or block. For this abode there was exacted a monthly rental of $17.00 although the cost would not exceed $1,000. A four room flat rents for $14.50 per month, and if you should want one of these cheap cottages with inside blinds for the front window, you must pay 50 cents per month for that much style. Some tenants have paid 50 cents per month for this luxury for more than thirteen years, which is pretty good interest on the cost of those blinds.

About 100 acres of land is covered with dwellings and the rent derived is about $500,000 annually, which is over 8 per cent per annum on the investment.

In many of these houses families are crowded into attics in order to reduce expenses to enable them to procure the necessaries of life.

Recently a new church was erected in Pullman, known as the Green church and parsonage, for which is demanded a monthly rental of $60.00 and for a good sized audience room, and two smaller ones attached Mr. Pullman charges the Methodist Episcopal society $500 per year. These rents must be paid in advance and are deducted from the wages of the men, and notwithstanding that the wages have been reduced no reductions have as yet been made in the rent.

The manner in which these men have been bled in the matter of rent, is fully equaled in the manner in which money for water and gas has been extorted from them. When the town was built a contract was made with the Village of Hyde Park, to furnish water at the rate of four cents per thousand gallons, and incredible as it may appear, this water was furnished to the Pullman tenants at ten cents per thousand gallons. In other words he charged $3,000 per month for the water which cost him but $1,200. This represents an annual profit on this one item of $21,000.

Could cold blooded heartless avarice go further? Yes; in the matter of gas which was manufactured and furnished to the people by the Pullman company itself, and although the cost is but 33 cents per thousand cubic feet, the tenants pay $2.25 per thousand while the same gas is furnished the residents of Hyde Park for 75 cents per thousand.

This adds from three to four dollars per month to living expenses in the average house at Pullman.

Another source of income which is wrung from the unfortunate victim is for heat, for which the company charges for six months in the year $10.80 per month.

It might be well to state also, that no person is allowed to keep a horse, unless the animal is kept at the company stables for which $3.00 per week is charged.

Such were the conditions of affairs discovered by the investigating committee in this model town, nor was this all. Miss Curtis, a delegate to the convention representing a ladies' lodge of the American Railway Union at Pullman, and whose father died in September, '93, was obliged to work fourteen hours per day in order to earn fifty cents at the same work for which she received prior to the first reduction $2.25 per day, and not satisfied with reducing her wages to this starvation point, the company insisted on the payment of a debt of $60.00 contracted during her father's illness. This is but a sample of the devilish cruelties perpetrated on the employes by the Pullman Company to satisfy their hellish greed for gold.

This corporation cannot plead poverty for thus treating its employes, as its capital stock is $30,000,000 and carries an enormous surplus of $18,000,000 which is termed a reserve fund. Mr. Pullman's personal wealth is estimated at about $25,000,000. Quarterly dividends of not less than two per cent have been paid regularly on the capital stock, and the stockholders receive every three months $600,000 as their share of the earnings. It is to enable them to pay this immense sum every three months, that the wages of its employes have been reduced. Can it be wondered that the American Railway Union took the matter in hand and declared a boycott on Pullman cars. When the report was received every brother present was deeply moved, and it was the unanimous sentiment of the convention to declare a boycott, but before taking action, apprised the various local unions of the state of affairs then existing, and received the sanction of the local bodies. They then decided that if the Pullman Company would not submit the difficulty to arbitration on or before the 26th day of June, to cut off the Pullman cars and refuse to handle them until the matter was settled. This action was taken June 22, and decided action held off until June 26, in hope that committees appointed to wait on Mr. Pullman would be successful in gaining some concessions whereby a peaceable settlement could be arrived at before resorting to the boycott, and, although several committees were sent to the management and every honorable means resorted to in order to bring about an amicable settlement, it was of no avail and there was nothing for the American Railway Union to do but enforce the boycott.