Order 1648153: US History – Expanding Rights

Essay5Outline xAssessment5_ExpandingRights60points x3-TakakiLaundries x3-CaliforniaAnti-CoolieAct x2-B_W.E.B.DuBois x2-A_BookerT.Washington x0-PullmanStrikeTexts
 

• Type of paperEssay (Any Type)
• SubjectHistory
• Number of pages2
• Format of citationOther
• Number of cited resources4
• Type of serviceWriting

PROMPT : It is the year 2300. The United Global Government (UGG) now runs planet Earth. Though it pretends to be a democracy, in truth it’s run by a small group of incredibly wealthy and powerful people who keep the rest of the world in a state of poverty and oppression. You are a freedom fighter with the People’s Front (PF), a revolutionary group dedicated to equality and freedom. After years of setbacks, it’s now time for the People’s Front to rethink their strategy for achieving their goals. You will write a four paragraph speech (intro, two body, conclusion) explaining how people in the past worked to overcome similar struggles. – I need direct citations in the essay, coming exactly from the files provided. – 10th grade grammar/writing. – Need it by tonight.

Essay Outline – Assessment 5

How did people on the margins of society fight for change during the early 20th century?

Claim:

Reason 1: Evidence & Explanation

_______________________________

_______________________________
_______________________________

Reason 2: Evidence & Explanation

_______________________________
_______________________________
_______________________________

Reason 3: Evidence & Explanation

_______________________________
_______________________________
_______________________________

Counter-Argument (what does the other side claim?):

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

Weakness (why does the other side have a weak claim?):

__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________

Assessment 5: Expanding Rights (60 points)

Essential Question: How did people on the margins of society fight for change during the early 20th century?

Assignment: It is the year 2300. The United Global Government (UGG) now runs planet Earth. Though it pretends to be a democracy, in truth it’s run by a small group of incredibly wealthy and powerful people who keep the rest of the world in a state of poverty and oppression. You are a freedom fighter with the People’s Front (PF), a revolutionary group dedicated to equality and freedom. After years of setbacks, it’s now time for the People’s Front to rethink their strategy for achieving their goals. You will write a four paragraph speech (intro, two body, conclusion) explaining how people in the past worked to overcome similar struggles.

Evidence may include documents from these lessons:

· 0 – Pullman Strike

· 2 – Jim Crow resistance (Washington, Wells, Du Bois, Garvey)

· 4 – Women’s Suffrage

· *Lessons 1 and 3 will be helpful for contextualizing your evidence, but not for answering the essential question*

Grading:

10

10

10

10

10

Criteria	Total Points
Introductory paragraph makes a specific claim/thesis that directly answers the essential question and is clearly explained						10
Topic sentences of body paragraphs expand on the claim/thesis by giving supporting reasons
Provides relevant evidence from the unit, including context, that relates to the body paragraph’s topic sentence
Explains WHAT the evidence means and HOW it connects back to the claim/thesis
Concluding paragraph restates claim/thesis and summarizes arguments from body paragraphs
Strong organization; contains minimal spelling/grammar errors

Chinese Laundrymen

In this excerpt from his book Strangers from a Different Shore, Ronald Takaki describes the circumstances that led a large number of Chinese men to open and operate laundry businesses in California in the mid-to-late 19th century.

The racially divided farm-labor force generated ethnic antagonism, and Chinese became targets of white-labor resentment, especially during hard times. “White men and women who desire to earn a living,” the Los Angeles Times reported on August 14th, 1893, “have for some time been entering quiet protests against vineyardists and packers employing Chinese in preference to whites.” Their protests did not remain quiet as economic depression led to violent anti-Chinese riots by unemployed white workers throughout California. From Ukiah to the Napa Valley to Fresno to Redlands, Chinese were beaten and shot by white workers; they were herded to railroad stations and loaded onto trains. The Chinese bitterly remember this violence and expulsion as the “driving out.”

“Ethnic antagonism” in the mines, factories, and fields reinforced the movement of Chinese into self-employment – stores, restaurants, and especially laundries. Chinese wash-houses were a common sight as early as the 1850s. A journalist visiting California in 1853 commented on the hardworking Chinese laundrymen: “What a truly industrious people they are! At work, cheerfully and briskly, at ten o’clock at night.” By 1870, there were 2,899 Chinese laundry workers in California, 72 percent of all laborers in this occupation. Twenty years later their number had more than doubled to 6,400, or 69 percent of all laundry workers. During this period, the ratio of laundry workers to all workers in the Chinese population jumped from one out of every seventeen to one out of every twelve. Nearly half of Sacramento’s 103 Chinese establishments listed in the Directory of Chinese Business Houses in 1878 were laundries.

The “Chinese laundryman” was an American phenomenon. “The Chinese laundryman does not learn his trade in China; there are no laundries in China,” stated Lee Chew, who came to America in the early 1860s. “The women there do the washing in tubs and have no washboards or flat irons. All the Chinese laundrymen here [in America] were taught in the first place by American women just as I was taught.” In China, wrote Wong Chin Foo of New York in The Cosmopolitan in 1888, laundry work was a “woman’s occupation,” and men did not “step into it for fear of losing their social standing.”

But why in America did Chinese men enter this line of work? Unlike the retail or restaurant business, a laundry could be opened with a small capital outlay of seventy-five to two hundred dollars. The requirements were minimal: a stove, trough, dry-room, sleeping apartment, and sign. A Chinese laundryman also did not need to speak much English to operate his business. “In this sort of menial labor,” said one, “I can get along speaking only ‘yes’ and ‘no.’” And he could manage without knowing numbers. “Being illiterate, he could not write the numbers,” another laundryman said describing a fellow operator. “He had a way and what a way! See, he would draw a circle as big as a half dollar coin to represent a half dollar, and a circle as big as a dime for a dime, and so on. When the customers came in to call for their laundry, they would catch on to the meaning of the circles and pay accordingly.”

But “Chinese laundrymen” were also “pushed” into their occupation: laundry work was one of the few opportunities that were “open” to Chinese. “Men of other nationalities who are jealous of the Chinese have raised such a great outcry about Chinese cheap labor that they have shut him out of working on farms or in factories or building railroads or making streets or digging sewers,” explained Lee Chew. “So he opens a laundry.” Thus the “Chinese laundry” represented a retreat into self-employment from a narrowly restricted labor market. “You couldn’t work in the cigar factories or the jute or woolen mills any more – all the Chinese had been driven out,” old Chinese men later remembered sadly. “About all they could be was laundrymen or vegetable peddlers then.” Crowded into laundry work, one out of four employed Chinese males in the United States in 1900 was a laundryman.

California’s Anti-Coolie Act of 1862

AN ACT TO PROTECT FREE WHITE LABOR AGAINST COMPETITION WITH CHINESE COOLIE LABOR, AND TO DISCOURAGE THE IMMIGRATION OF THE CHINESE INTO THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

April 26, 1862

The People of the State of California, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows:

SECTION 1. There is hereby levied on each person, male and female, of the Mongolian race, of the age of eighteen years and upwards, residing in this State, a monthly capitation tax of two dollars and fifty cents, which tax shall be known as the Chinese Police Tax; provided, That all Mongolians exclusively engaged in the production and manufacture of the following articles shall be exempt from the provisions of this Act, viz: sugar, rice, coffee, tea. . . .

SECTION 4. The Collector shall collect the Chinese police tax, provided for in this Act, from all person refusing to pay such tax, and sell the same at public auction, by giving notice by proclamation one hour previous to such sale; and shall deliver the property, together with a bill of sale thereof, to the person agreeing to pay, and paying, the highest thereof, which delivery and bill of sale shall transfer to such person a good and sufficient title to the property.

SECTION 7. Any person or company who shall hire persons liable to pay the Chinese police tax shall be held responsible for the payment of the tax due from each person so hired; and no employer shall be released from this liability on the ground that the employee in indebted to him (the employer), and the Collector may proceed against any such employer in the same manner as he might against the original party owing the taxes.

SECTION 8. The Collector shall receive for his service, in collecting police taxes, twenty percent of all moneys which he shall collect from persons owing such taxes. All of the residue, after deducting the percentage of the Collector, forty percent shall be paid into the County Treasury, for the use of the State, forty percent into the general County Fund, for the use of the County, and the remaining twenty percent into the School Fund, for the benefit of schools within the County;

Document B – W.E.B. DuBois

In this 1903 speech, “Training Negroes for Social Power,” W.E.B. Du Bois describes his educational philosophy and in the process, contrasts his views with those of the Tuskegee educator Booker T. Washington who was then at the height of his power.

(1903) W.E.B. Du Bois, “Training Negroes for Social Power”

THE RESPONSIBILITY for their own social regeneration ought to be placed largely upon the shoulders of the Negro people. But such responsibility must carry with it a grant of power; responsibility without power is a mockery and a farce. If, therefore, the American people are sincerely anxious that the Negro shall put forth his best efforts to help himself, they must see to it that he is not deprived of the freedom and power to strive.
Men openly declare their design to train these millions as a subject caste, as men to be thought for, but not to think; to be led, but not to lead themselves. Those who advocate these things forget that such a solution flings them squarely on the other horn of the dilemma; such a subject child-race could never be held accountable for its own misdeeds and shortcomings; its ignorance would be part of the nation’s design, its poverty would arise partly from the direct oppression of the strong and partly from thriftlessness which such oppression breeds; and, above all, its crime would be the legitimate child of that lack of self-respect which caste systems engender.
Such a solution of the Negro problem is not one which the saner sense of the nation for a moment contemplates; it is utterly foreign to American institutions, and is unthinkable as a future for any self-respecting race of men. The sound afterthought of the American people must come to realize that the responsibility for dispelling ignorance and poverty and uprooting crime among Negroes cannot be put upon their own shoulders unless they are given such independent leadership in intelligence, skill, and morality.

Let me illustrate my meaning particularly in the matter of educating Negro youth. The Negro problem, it has often been said, is largely a problem of ignorance-not simply of illiteracy, but a deeper ignorance of the world and its ways, of the thought and experience of men; an ignorance of self and the possibilities of human souls. This can be gotten rid of only by training; and primarily such training must take the form of that sort of social leadership which we call education.

To apply such leadership to themselves, and to profit by it, means that Negroes would have among themselves men of careful training and broad culture, as teachers and teachers of teachers. Such educational leaders should be prepared by long and rigorous courses of study similar to those which the world over have been designed to strengthen the intellectual powers, fortify character, and facilitate the transmission from age to age of the stores of the world’s knowledge.

Not all men-indeed, not the majority of men, only the exceptional few among American Negroes or among any other people-are adapted to this higher training, as, indeed, only the exceptional few are adapted to higher training in any line.

The very first step toward the settlement of the Negro problem is the spread of intelligence. The first step toward wider intelligence is a free public-school system; and the first and most important step toward a public-school system is the equipment and adequate support of a sufficient number of Negro colleges. They can teach valuable lessons as to the meaning of work in the world, but they cannot replace technical schools and apprenticeship in actual life, which are the real schools of work. Manual training can and ought to be used in these schools, but as a means and not as an end, to quicken intelligence and self-knowledge and not to teach carpentry; just as arithmetic is used to train minds and not to make skilled accountants.

But spread of intelligence alone will not solve the Negro problem. If this problem is largely a question of ignorance, it is also scarcely less a problem of poverty. If Negroes are to assume the responsibility of raising the standards of living among themselves, the power of intelligent work and leadership toward proper industrial ideals must be placed in their hands. Economic efficiency depends on intelligence, skill, and thrift. The public-school system is designed to furnish the necessary intelligence for the ordinary worker, the secondary school for the more gifted worker, and the college for the exceptional few.

Technical knowledge and manual dexterity in learning branches of the world’s work are taught by industrial and trade schools, and such schools are of prime importance in the training of colored children. A system of trade schools, therefore, supported by state and private aid, should be added to the secondary-school system.

But intelligence and skill alone will not solve the southern problem of poverty. With these must go that combination of homely habits and virtues which we may loosely call thrift. Something of thrift may be taught in school, more must be taught at home; but both these agencies are helpless when organized economic society denies to workers the just reward of thrift and efficiency. And this has been true of black laborers in the South from the time of slavery down through the scandal of the Freedman’s Bank to the peonage and crop-lien system of today.

Ignorance and poverty are the vastest of the Negro problems. But to these later years have added a third-the problem of Negro crime. That a great problem of social morality must have become eventually the central problem of emancipation is as clear as day to any student of history. In its grosser form as a problem of serious crime it is already upon us. Of course it is false and silly to represent that white women in the South are in daily danger of black assaulters. On the contrary, white womanhood in the South is absolutely safe in the hands of ninety-five percent of the black men-ten times safer than black womanhood is in the hands of white men.

Nevertheless, there is a large and dangerous class of Negro criminals, paupers, and outcasts. The existence and growth of such a class, far from causing surprise, should be recognized as the natural result of that social disease called the Negro problem; nearly every untoward circumstance known to human experience has united to increase Negro crime: the slavery of the past, the sudden emancipation, the narrowing of economic opportunity, the lawless environment of wide regions, the stifling of natural ambition, the curtailment of political privilege, the disregard of the sanctity of black men’s homes, and above all, a system of treatment for criminals calculated to breed crime far faster than all other available agencies could repress it. Such a combination of circumstances is as sure to increase the numbers of the vicious and outcast as the rain is to wet the earth. The phenomenon calls for no delicately drawn theories of race differences; it is a plain case of cause and effect.

Three things American slavery gave the Negro-the habit of work, the English language, and the Christian religion; but one priceless thing it debauched, destroyed, and took from him, and that was the organized home. For the sake of intelligence and thrift, for the sake of work and morality, this home life must be restored and regenerated with newer ideals.

How? The restoration and raising of home ideals must come from social life among Negroes themselves; and does that social life need no leadership? It needs the best possible leadership of pure hearts and trained heads, the highest leadership of carefully trained men.

Such are the arguments for the Negro college, and such is the work that Atlanta University and a few similar institutions seek to do. We believe that a rationally arranged college course of study for men and women able to pursue it is the best and only method of putting into the world Negroes with ability to use the social forces of their race so as to stamp out crime, strengthen the home, eliminate degenerates, and inspire and encourage the higher tendencies of the race not only in thought and aspiration, but in everyday toil.

And we believe this, not simply because we have argued that such training ought to have these effects, or merely because we hoped for such results in some dim future, but because already for years we have seen in the work of our graduates precisely such results as I have mentioned: successful teachers of teachers, intelligent and upright ministers, skilled physicians, principals of industrial schools, businessmen, and, above all, makers of model homes and leaders of social groups, out from which radiate subtle but tangible forces of uplift and inspiration.

The proof of this lies scattered in every state of the South, and, above all, in the half-unwilling testimony of men disposed to decry our work. Between the Negro college and industrial school there are the strongest grounds for cooperation and unity.

We need a few strong, well-equipped Negro colleges, and we need them now, not tomorrow; unless we can have them and have them decently supported, Negro education in the South, both common-school and the industrial, is doomed to failure, and the forces of social regeneration will be fatally weakened, for the college today among Negroes is, just as truly as it was yesterday among whites, the beginning and not the end of human training, the foundation and not the capstone of popular education.

Strange, is it not, my brothers, how often in America those great watchwords of human energy-“Be strong!” “Know thyself!” “Hitch your wagon to a star!”-how often these die away into dim whispers when we face these seething millions of black men? And yet do they not belong to them? Are they not their heritage as well as yours? Can they bear burdens without strength, know without learning, and aspire without ideals? Are you afraid to let them try? Fear rather, in this our common fatherland, lest we live to lose those great watchwords of liberty and opportunity which yonder In the eternal hills their fathers fought with your fathers to preserve.

Document A – Booker T. Washington

This is an excerpt from Washington’s book, The Future of the American Negro, published in 1899.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26507/26507-h/26507-h.htm

CHAPTER I.

After being brought to America, the Negroes were forced to labour for about 250 years under circumstances which were calculated not to inspire them with love and respect for labour. This constitutes a part of the reason why I insist that it is necessary to emphasise the matter of industrial education as a means of giving the black man the foundation of a civilisation upon which he will grow and prosper. When I speak of industrial education, however, I wish it always understood that I mean, as did General Armstrong, the founder of the Hampton Institute, for thorough academic and religious training to go side by side with industrial training. Mere training of the hand without the culture of brain and heart would mean little.

It seems to me that there never was a time in the history of the country when those interested in education should the more earnestly consider to what extent the mere acquiring of the ability to read and write, the mere acquisition of a knowledge of literature and science, makes men producers, lovers of labour, independent, honest, unselfish, and, above all, good. Call education by what name you please, if it fails to bring about these results among the masses, it falls short of its highest end.

The science, the art, the literature, that fails to reach down and bring the humblest up to the enjoyment of the fullest blessings of our government, is weak, no matter how costly the buildings or apparatus used or how modern the methods of instruction employed. The study of arithmetic that does not result in making men conscientious in receiving and counting the ballots of their fellow-men is faulty. The study of art that does not result in making the strong less willing to oppress the weak means little.

One of the weakest points in connection with the present development of the race is that so many get the idea that the mere filling of the head with a knowledge of mathematics, the sciences, and literature, means success in life. Let it be understood, in every corner of the South, among the Negro youth at least, that knowledge will benefit little except as it is harnessed, except as its power is pointed in a direction that will bear upon the present needs and condition of the race.

There is in the heads of the Negro youth of the South enough general and floating knowledge of chemistry, of botany, of zoölogy, of geology, of mechanics, of electricity, of mathematics, to reconstruct and develop a large part of the agricultural, mechanical, and domestic life of the race. But how much of it is brought to a focus along lines of practical work? In cities of the South like Atlanta, how many coloured mechanical engineers are there? or how many machinists? how many civil engineers? how many architects? how many house decorators? In the whole State of Georgia, where eighty per cent. of the coloured people depend upon agriculture, how many men are there who are well grounded in the principles and practices of scientific farming? or dairy work? or fruit culture? or floriculture?

For example, not very long ago I had a conversation with a young coloured man who is a graduate of one of the prominent universities of this country. The father of this man is comparatively ignorant, but by hard work and the exercise of common sense he has become the owner of two thousand acres of land. He owns more than a score of horses, cows, and mules and swine in large numbers, and is considered a prosperous farmer. In college the son of this farmer has studied chemistry, botany, zoölogy, surveying, and political economy. In my conversation I asked this young man how many acres his father cultivated in cotton and how many in corn. With a far-off gaze up into the heavens he answered that he did not know. When I asked him the classification of the soils on his father’s farm, he did not know. He did not know how many horses or cows his father owned nor of what breeds they were, and seemed surprised that he should be asked such questions. It never seemed to have entered his mind that on his father’s farm was the place to make his chemistry, his mathematics, and his literature penetrate and reflect itself in every acre of land, every bushel of corn, every cow, and every pig.

Let me give other examples of this mistaken sort of education. When a mere boy, I saw a young coloured man, who had spent several years in school, sitting in a common cabin in the South, studying a French grammar. I noted the poverty, the untidiness, the want of system and thrift, that existed about the cabin, notwithstanding his knowledge of French and other academic studies.

Again, not long ago I saw a coloured minister preparing his Sunday sermon just as the New England minister prepares his sermon. But this coloured minister was in a broken-down, leaky, rented log cabin, with weeds in the yard, surrounded by evidences of poverty, filth, and want of thrift. This minister had spent some time in school studying theology. How much better it would have been to have had this minister taught the dignity of labour, taught theoretical and practical farming in connection with his theology, so that he could have added to his meagre salary, and set an example for his people in the matter of living in a decent house, and having a knowledge of correct farming! In a word, this minister should have been taught that his condition, and that of his people, was not that of a New England community; and he should have been so trained as to meet the actual needs and conditions of the coloured people in this community, so that a foundation might be laid that would, in the future, make a community like New England communities.

Since the Civil War, no one object has been more misunderstood than that of the object and value of industrial education for the Negro. To begin with, it must be borne in mind that the condition that existed in the South immediately after the war, and that now exists, is a peculiar one, without a parallel in history. This being true, it seems to me that the wise and honest thing to do is to make a study of the actual condition and environment of the Negro, and do that which is best for him, regardless of whether the same thing has been done for another race in exactly the same way.

There are those among the white race and those among the black race who assert, with a good deal of earnestness, that there is no difference between the white man and the black man in this country. This sounds very pleasant and tickles the fancy; but, when the test of hard, cold logic is applied to it, it must be acknowledged that there is a difference,—not an inherent one, not a racial one, but a difference growing out of unequal opportunities in the past.

If I may be permitted to criticise the educational work that has been done in the South, I would say that the weak point has been in the failure to recognise this difference.

Negro education, immediately after the war in most cases, was begun too nearly at the point where New England education had ended. Let me illustrate. One of the saddest sights I ever saw was the placing of a three hundred dollar rosewood piano in a country school in the South that was located in the midst of the “Black Belt.” Am I arguing against the teaching of instrumental music to the Negroes in that community? Not at all; only I should have deferred those music lessons about twenty-five years. There are numbers of such pianos in thousands of New England homes. But behind the piano in the New England home there are one hundred years of toil, sacrifice, and economy; there is the small manufacturing industry, started several years ago by hand power, now grown into a great business; there is ownership in land, a comfortable home, free from debt, and a bank account.

In this “Black Belt” community where this piano went, four-fifths of the people owned no land, many lived in rented one-room cabins, many were in debt for food supplies, many mortgaged their crops for the food on which to live, and not one had a bank account. In this case, how much wiser it would have been to have taught the girls in this community sewing, intelligent and economical cooking, housekeeping, something of dairying and horticulture?

The boys should have been taught something of farming in connection with their common-school education, instead of awakening in them a desire for a musical instrument which resulted in their parents going into debt for a third-rate piano or organ before a home was purchased. Industrial lessons would have awakened, in this community, a desire for homes, and would have given the people the ability to free themselves from industrial slavery to the extent that most of them would have soon purchased homes. After the home and the necessaries of life were supplied could come the piano. One piano lesson in a home of one’s own is worth twenty in a rented log cabin.

All that I have just written, and the various examples illustrating it, show the present helpless condition of my people in the South,—how fearfully they lack the primary training for good living and good citizenship, how much they stand in need of a solid foundation on which to build their future success. I believe, as I have many times said in my various addresses in the North and in the South, that the main reason for the existence of this curious state of affairs is the lack of practical training in the ways of life.

GOOD STOPPING PLACE

Until there is industrial independence, it is hardly possible to have good living and a pure ballot in the country districts. In these States it is safe to say that not more than one black man in twenty owns the land he cultivates. Where so large a proportion of a people are dependent, live in other people’s houses, eat other people’s food, and wear clothes they have not paid for, it is pretty hard to expect them to live fairly and vote honestly.

STANFORD HISTORY EDUCATION GROUP sheg.stanford.edu

Set A: May 12, 1894

The following articles were published the day after the strike began.

Chicago Times Chicago Tribune
PULLMAN MEN OUT

Nearly 4,000 Throw Down

Their Tools and Quit
Refuse to Work Till Wrongs are

Righted
Firing Three Men Starts It

Almost the entire force of men
employed in the Pullman shops
went out on strike yesterday. Out
of the 4,800 men and women
employed in the various
departments there were probably
not over 800 at work at 6 o’clock
last evening. The immediate cause
of the strike was the laying off of
three men in the iron machine
shop. The real but remote cause is
the question of wages over which
the men have long been unhappy.

The strike of yesterday was
ordered by a committee
representing every department at
the Pullman works. This
committee was in session all night
Thursday night, and finally came
to the conclusion to order a strike
4:30 o’clock yesterday morning.

The position of the company is
that no increase in wages is
possible under the present
conditions. The position of the
men is that they are receiving less
than a living wage, to which they
are entitled.

PULLMEN OUT

LAY OFFS THE CAUSE

Committeemen Laid Off and
Their Comrades Act

Two thousand employees in the
Pullman car works struck
yesterday, leaving 800 others at
their posts. This was not enough
to keep the works going, so a
notice was posted on the big
gates at 6 o’clock saying: “These
shops closed until further notice.”

The walk-out was a complete
surprise to the officials. Mr.
Pullman had offered to allow the
men the privilege of examining
the books of the company to
verify his statement that the
works were running at a loss.
When the men quit work at 6
o’clock Thursday evening none of
them had any idea of striking. But
the Grievance Committee of
Forty-six held a session until 4:30
o’clock in the morning. . . . One
department at a time, the men
went out so that by 10 o’clock
1500 men were out. Only 800
came back after lunch.

Vocabulary
comrades: communist companion
grievance: complaint

STANFORD HISTORY EDUCATION GROUP sheg.stanford.edu

Set B: June 26-28, 1894

The following articles were written during the first week of the national
railway boycott.

Chicago Times Chicago Tribune

NOT A WHEEL TURNS IN THE
WEST

Complete Shutdown of All

Roads in the Territory Beyond
the Missouri River

It May Be the Biggest Tie-Up in

All History

All the western half of the United
States has begun to feel the
paralysis of the American Railway
Union’s boycott of Pullman. At
every important division point in
the west, southwest, and
northwest there are trains
blockaded because the American
Railway Union men will not run
them with Pullman cars attached.
Some roads are absolutely and
utterly blockaded, others only feel
the embargo slightly, but it
grows in strength with every hour.

The six o’clock train on the Great
Western started out with two
Pullman sleeper cars and one
Pullman diner. The conductor rang
the bell, the train stopped, the
whole crew got down and cut off
those three cars. The train pulled
out without the Pullmans. It was
the most decisive thing the
boycotters have done yet.

Vocabulary
embargo: ban on trade

DEBS IS A DICTATOR

His Warfare on the Railroads is
Waged Effectively

The American Railway Union
became aggressive yesterday in
its efforts to force a settlement
between Mr. Pullman and his
striking employees. Its freight
service was at a standstill all day
and the same is practically true of
other roads. In no case, however,
did the strikers prevent the
departure of any regular
passenger trains from Chicago.

Deb’s master stroke, however,
occurred at midnight, when every
employee on the Santa Fe
belonging to the American Railway
Union was ordered out. Whether
the men will obey the order will be
learned today.

So far no marked violence has
been attempted. Chief Brennan
says he has 2,000 men who can
be gathered at any point inside of
an hour.

Vocabulary
dictator: leader with total power
freight: shipping

STANFORD HISTORY EDUCATION GROUP sheg.stanford.edu

Set C: July 7, 1894

The following articles were written after federal troops had been in Chicago
for three days.

Chicago Times Chicago Tribune

MEN NOT AWED BY SOLDIERS

MOST OF THE ROADS AT A
STANDSTILL

Railway Union is Confident of

Winning Against Armed Capital

Despite the presence of United
States troops and the mobilization
of five regiments of state militia,
despite threats of martial law
and total extermination of the
strikers by bullet, the great strike
begun by the American Railway
Union holds three-fourths of the
roads running out of Chicago.

If the soldiers are sent to the
southwest section of the city,
bloodshed and perhaps death will
follow today, for this is the most
lawless part in the city. But the
perpetrators are not American
Railway Union men. The people
engaged in this outrageous work
of destruction are not strikers.
The persons who set the fires
yesterday are young hoodlums.

Vocabulary
martial law: military control with
suspension of normal laws
perpetrator: person committing an
act, often a crime

YARDS FIRE SWEPT

Hundreds of Freight Cars,
Loaded and Empty, Burn

Rioters Prevent Firemen from
Saving the Property

The yards from Brighton Park to
61st Street were lit on fire last
night by the rioters. Between 600
and 700 freight cars have been
destroyed, many of them loaded.
Miles and miles of costly track are
in a snarled tangle of heat-twisted
rails. Not less than $750,00—
possibly $1,000,000 of property—
has been sacrificed to the mob of
drunken Anarchists and rebels.
That is the record of the night’s
work by the Debs strikers.

STANFORD HISTORY EDUCATION GROUP sheg.stanford.edu

Set D: July 15, 1894

The following articles were written as the strike was coming to an end. On
July 10, Debs and other American Railway officers were arrested for violating
a court order. They were held for several hours until posting $10,000 bail.

Chicago Times Chicago Tribune
DEBS SURE HE CAN WIN

Says the Battle is But Begun

More than 1,000 railroad men
held an enthusiastic meeting
yesterday afternoon, the speakers
were President Debs and Vice-
President Howard.

President Debs then told the men
the situation was more favorable
than it had been at any time since
the men went on strike. He said
that telegrams from twenty-five
points west of the Mississippi
showed that the roads were
completely tied up. Debs said, “I
cannot stop now . . . I propose to
work harder than ever and teach a
lesson to those bigoted idiots.
The managers refuse to work for
peace.”

“There are men who have
returned to their work, but they
are traitors. We are better without
them. We must unite as strong as
iron, but let us be peaceful in this
contest. Bloodshed is
unwarranted and will not win.”

Vocabulary
bigoted: prejudiced
unwarranted: not called for

WITH A DULL THUD
The Strike Collapses with

Wonderful Rapidity

DEB’S WILD ASSERTIONS

He is Still Defiant While His
“Union” Crumbles About Him

Eugene V. Debs’s statements were
like the last flicker of a candle that
is almost burned out. The men
who first answered his calls for
help deserted him. Those who
followed his banner of revolt and
lost their positions also
denounced him. The very fabric
of the American Railway Union
was falling upon his head and
support was rapidly slipping from
under his feet.

He said, “The Northwestern will
not be turning a wheel tonight.”
At midnight every wheel on the
Northwestern had turned. The
Northwestern people are inclined
to look at Mr. Deb’s declaration as
a huge joke.

Vocabulary
rapidity: speed
assertion: statement
denounce: speak against