All those things happened in 1894. If you think people hate “tech billionaires” now: they reallyhated railroad executives back then. The hatred exploded into riots when the strike happened. Railroad workers all over the country refused to allow any train with Pullman cars to run, and the railroads refused to break their contracts with Pullman and eliminate them. The rail barons also wanted to maintain ranks against the American Railway Union. Eugene Debs tried to escalate even further and call a general strike of all labor, everywhere. That didn’t happen.
The Government’s Response
The US Attorney General, Richard Olney, said the country was on “the ragged edge of anarchy.” Imagine if the Internet went down for weeks: that’s what railroads meant in late 19th Century America. The Pullman strike disrupted the entire country, but in the end it was defeated completely, and its leader, Eugene Debs, went to jail.
George Pullman refused to even meet with the union, let alone accede to their demand for arbitration, despite the appeals of the Mayor of Chicago and the Governor of Illinois. Somehow he got away with it and the strike failed. Nowadays, we have the National Labor Relations Board, political leaders routinely mediate disputes, and unions are a fact of life. Back then, there was none of that. Arguably, the failed Pullman strike was a leading cause of the labor reforms in the 1930’s, although Eugene Debs died too soon to see them.