American Railway Union
The American Railway Union (ARU) was briefly among the largest labor unions of its time and one of the first industrial unions in the United States. Launched at a meeting held in Chicago in February 1893, the ARU won an early victory in a strike on the Great Northern Railroad in the summer of 1894.[1] This successful strike was followed by the bitter 1894 Pullman Strike in which government troops and the power of the judiciary were enlisted against the ARU, ending with the jailing of the union's leadership for six months in 1895 and effectively crushing the organization. The group's blacklisted and dispirited remnants finally disbanded the organization via amalgamation into the Social Democracy of America (SDA) at its founding convention in June 1897.
Organizational history[edit]
Establishment[edit]
Volition for a formation of an industrial union uniting all branches of the railroad industry began in the early 1890s with the failure of an attempt at loose federation of several railway brotherhoods by Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen Secretary-Treasurer and Locomotive Firemen's Magazine editor Eugene V. Debs. A new union bringing together all railway workers, regardless of craft or service, was constructed in a series of meetings held in Chicago, Illinois,[2] beginning with a four-hour session held at the Leland Hotel on February 9 and 10, 1893.[3] Headquarters for the new union were to be rented in Chicago.[3]
This preparatory meeting, chaired by George W. Howard of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, former Grand Chief of the Brotherhood of Railway Conductors, elected a three-person committee to write a constitution and by-laws for the new organization,[3] which was formally launched at a week-long convention attended by 24 delegates representing many of the numerous railway brotherhoods held at Chicago's Greene Hotel from April 11–17, 1893.[4] This gathering formally elected officers for the new union, including Debs as president, Howard as vice president and Sylvester Keliher (Secretary-Treasurer of the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen) as Secretary-Treasurer of the ARU.[5]
Day-to-day governance was by these three officers as part of a nine-member Board of Directors, which also included W.S. Missemer of the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen, W.H. Sebring of the Order of Railroad Conductors, Frank W. Arnold of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, Henry Walton of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, James A. Clark of the Railway Telegraphers and Louis W. Rogers of the magazine Age of Labor.[6]
A convention to introduce the new union to the broader public and to build organizational momentum was scheduled and held in Chicago on June 20, 1893. A mass meeting of railroad employees was held in conjunction with the gathering, meeting at Uhlich's Hall in Chicago at 8 pm, where it was addressed by Eugene Debs and others.[7]