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Although it began peacefully enough, tensions ran high and there were several sporadic incidents of violence. Unfortunately, President Grover Cleveland, sent in federal troops who fired on and killed at least four strikers. The killings broke the spirit of the strikers, and they gradually went back to work. .
The strike resulted in several consequences: first, it demonstrated the power of organized labor. The railroads lost an estimated $4,672,916 in revenue while the employees lost wages estimated at $1,389,143. It took unprecedented manpower to break the strike: 14,186 strikebreakers, including federal troops, national guardsmen, marshals, and police were sent to Chicago. And yet the strikers did not "win" their case, Pullman kept his rents where they were. The effect on the labor movement itself was tremendous, as more and more workers joined unions. Unions in general became a vital and important part of American society for decades.
In the last analysis, unions in the United States are far less effective than they once were. It may be that the increasing wage gap between the CEO's and their workers might not be so vast if workers had retained some degree of control over their own lives. In recent years, unions have begun to make a comeback but progress is slow, and Corporate America, as might be expected, is not anxious for unions to reassert themselves.
The aggressive rise of the multinational corporation has resulted in concern among labor throughout the world that the prosperity generated by these companies was being returned to company executives in the form of highly inflated salaries, and to stockholders in the form of high return on investment. But as usual, the people who actually do the work that makes the company profitable do not share in the rewards of their hard work. Instead, the multinational corporations have been particularly ruthless in denying benefits to their workers.
