Pullman Strike Is Crushed By Federal Troops

1894

USA

"On Sept 1st, 1894, we will not renew our loans under any consideration. On Sept 1st we will demand our money. We will foreclose and become mortgagees in possession. We can take two-thirds of the farms west of the Mississippi, and thousands of them east of the Mississippi as well, at our own price... Then the farmers will become tenants as in England..." — 1891 American Bankers Association as printed in the Congressional Record of April 29, 1913

The Pullman strike is crushed by federal troops and ARU president Eugene Debs imprisoned.

1895

USA

The US was still in an economic depression and the US Gold Reserves were dwindling. President Grover Cleveland was a supporter of the traditional Gold Standard and his popularity was dwindling. J.P. Morgan offered to help the government (for a profit) by forming a syndicate (which he headed) that bought bonds from the US in exchange for $62 million in European gold. The banks resold the bonds a marked-up rates. News of the deal and the amount of profits made by the bank outraged the public. One of the banks in the syndicate was the Rothchild Bank and this fact generated an Anti Semitic mood in the country.

"There was no longer any common ground for understanding between the silver and gold forces; and the agrarian regions were suffering too keenly to reason calmly. Bryan, denouncing the sale in the House, had the clerk first read Shylock's bond. The World declared that the syndicate was composed of bloodsucking Jews and aliens." — President Grover Cleveland [1]

"By hundreds of thousands, hard handed Americans believed that Cleveland and Carlisle [Cleveland's Secretary of Treasury] had sold the credit of the republic to the Morgans and the Rothchilds, and had pocketed a share of the price. Their vituperative anger was additional evidence of a sectional and class bitterness that now made even armed revolution seem far from impossible. But Cleveland... was unmoved by abuse when he felt he had done right." — President Grover Cleveland [2]

If he had saved the gold standard, he had not saved the country. But he never regretted his action. Years after his retirement, he said so. By that time no one was likely to accuse him of profiting from the deal himself, but he was still not forgiven for allowing the financiers to profit or for holding to gold when easy money was about to be achieved." — President Grover Cleveland [3]

In the case of U.S. v. E.C. Knight, the court held that the Sherman Antitrust Act, adopted five years earlier, did not apply to companies located within a single state. This decision severely weakened the ability of the federal government to enforce antitrust laws.

In the case of Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Co., an attorney named Joseph H. Choate persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court declare an income tax approved by Congress unconstitutional. As a result the United States did not institute an income tax until the 16th Amendment was ratified in 1913.

"The act of Congress which we are impugning before you is communist in its purposes and tendencies and is defended here upon principles as communistic, as socialistic, what shall I call them, as populistic as ever have been addressed to any political assembly in the world." — Joseph H. Choate in his address to the Supreme Court

[1] [2] Allan Nevins, from Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage, p.665-666

[3] Rexford G. Tugwell, from Grover Cleveland, p.259

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