Late 1800s – Early 1900s U.S. Immigration, Labor, and Political Movements Practice Test

The main idea here is how the federal government began using injunctions to stop strikes, showing a shift toward government support for business interests in the Gilded Age. In 1894 a strike erupted at the Pullman Palace Car Company in Chicago, where workers faced wage cuts and layoffs. The protest quickly spread to the American Railway Union led by Eugene Debs and halted railroad traffic across the nation, threatening interstate commerce and even mail delivery.

The federal government stepped in and obtained a federal injunction to stop the strike, arguing that it disrupted interstate commerce and the mailing system. This intervention, backed by federal troops in some cases, marked a new level of government involvement in labor disputes and demonstrated how authorities would use legal means to curb union action. The episode culminated in Debs being jailed for contempt of court, and the case set a precedent that the federal government could intervene in strikes that affected national interests. The event is widely remembered as the moment when the federal government began to side more openly with business interests against labor unions.

Other well-known labor conflicts of the era occurred in different contexts: for example, the Haymarket incident, Homestead, and later events like the Ludlow massacre did not center on a federal injunction against a nationwide strike in the same way. The Pullman Strike uniquely fits the description of a major Chicago-based confrontation that drew a federal injunction to halt the strike.