The Laborer's Right to Life

A popular tool for curbing union effectiveness in the 1890s was the court injunction that prohibited union members from engaging in strike activities. This injunction was first issued in the 1894 Pullman strike by the US District Court of Illinois, impairing the strength of the American Railway Union. Eugene V. Debs, president of the A.R.U., was summoned before a grand jury for violating the injunction, and Judge Peter Grosscup used the traditional anti-union argument that union organizing constituted a conspiracy. Samuel Gompers, the first president of the American Federation of Labor, was asked by the North American Review to write an article about the strike, which elicited a letter from Grosscup pointing out that Gompers had misquoted him. This is Gompers' reply to Grosscup on August 14, 1894, that continues to attack the judge's charge to the jury. This specific section of Gompers’ reply argues the rights of laborers and men. He mentions how the wealth of the country is deniable, but on the inside, men and women suffer the “pangs of hunger” and “hours of toil”. At the end, he suggests that a balance of rights between the worker and the master must be maintained in order to improve labor.