The Pullman Strike & the Crisis of the 1890s: Essays on Labor & Politics (Working Class in American History)

The Pullman strike of 1894 shut down the rail system from Chicago to the West Coast, culminating two decades of labor unrest punctuated by episodes of confrontation and violence.In this wide-ranging collection, leading labor historians resituate the Pullman conflict in its historical context. They offer a close reading of contemporary perceptions of the strike and examine the organizational and political continuities and discontinuities it reveals. These essays demonstrate that Pullman played a pivotal role in defining the crisis of the 1890s, shaping a changing legal environment, spurring the development of a regulatory state, and fostering a new politics of progressive reform.