The 1894 Strike

Ludlow became a prosperous railroad town, but the economic depression of 1893 sharply reduced that prosperity. Two of its biggest employers were the Southern Railroad and the Pullman Car Repair Shops, and Pullman employees saw their wages cut by 25 percent. Unable to support their families or pay their mortgages, Pullman workers in Chicago struck on May 10, 1894, forcing George M. Pullman to close his Chicago plant the next day. Ludlow Pullman employees at first kept working, but in late June officials of the American Railway Union, which represented over 150,000 railroad workers, urged the 136 employees of the Ludlow Pullman shops to strike, and many Southern Railroad workers in Ludlow also left their jobs in sympathy. The union eventually called a general strike that crippled the national railroad system, leaving hundreds of Ludlow families without income. Southern Railroad officials hired replacement workers and brought in federal marshals to patrol the Ludlow yards, angering residents, who showed support for the strikers by wearing white ribbons. In July 1894, President Cleveland sent federal troops to stop property destruction and violence in Chicago, and on July 7, after the troops were attacked, they answered with gunfire that killed at least 7 strikers and injured more than twenty. The violence in Chicago deeply worried Ludlow strikers, and support for the strike began to fade in mid-July as some workers returned to their jobs. By early August 1894, Mayor R. H. Fleming was urging all strikers to return to work, and many did, but the Southern and most other railroads refused to rehire many former employees. Former strikers said they had been blacklisted, legal action failed, and many lost their homes or moved to other cities. Fleming said that more than one hundred families and a number of unmarried men who had depended on railroad work left Ludlow, and that during and after the strike the town’s building associations paid out over $75,000 in withdrawals.

Ludlow, Kentucky · United States