Guarding the Switch: Cultivating Nationalism during the Pullman Strike

By Troy Rondinone, Southern Connecticut State University

The Pullman Strike of 1894 was a cataclysmic event for the nation. During its violent course, the print media provided an interpretive frame that portrayed the strike in large measure as an immigrant-inspired attack on American laws and democratic customs. Often characterizing the strikers as "foreigners" in the thrall of anarchist ideologies and a tyrannous labor chieftain, journalists painted a stark picture indeed. Employing framing theory, Gramsci's notion of hegemony, and recent insights on the ethnic quality of nationalism, this essay argues that newspapers and other major print periodicals significantly contributed to the formation of nationalist attitudes at a time when many Americans were deeply worried over the direction in which the country was headed.
In the summer of 1894, Harper's Weekly dispatched the renowned Western artist Frederic Remington to Chicago to report on the ongoing Pullman Strike. A self-made adventurer pleased with the opportunity to witness an episode of industrial warfare, Remington arrived to find a city confronted by "the mob." In a trilogy of articles with accompanying illustrations, Remington covered the movement of federal troops sent to the area. The story he told was one of struggle and triumph, of the manly imposition of law and order over the chaos of immigrant-inspired anarchy. Included in Remington's cast of characters was the stolid Captain Capron, "standing in front of his battery park, as natural as when I had last seen him at Pine Ridge, just after Wounded Knee." Also among these "tall, bronzed young athletes" was one Lieutenant Sherer.1	1
In a vivid illustration in the July 28, 1894, edition of Harper's, Remington portrayed Sherer facing off against a mob intent on sabotaging a rail switch. The image, titled "Lieutenant Sherer, Seventh Cavalry, Standing off a Mob at the Stock Yards," depicts the young officer standing firm, one hand holding the switch, the other with pistol drawn at his side, ready to be used if necessary. With this image, in no uncertain terms, Remington captured the media's nationalist interpretation of the Pullman Strike. Here a living symbol of the armed American state single-handedly prevented a mob from carrying out an act of sabotage against the national transportation system.2	2
Figure 1: "Lieutenant Sherer, Seventh Cavalry, Standing Off a Mob at the Stock-Yards, 1894," from Harper's Weekly, July 28, 1894.
This depiction of the defense of order by a representative of the state (an image that certainly echoed Remington's oeuvre of illustrations showing the epic struggle between white civilization and native savagery) reveals the underlying crisis of identity that shaped media accounts of the Pullman Strike. Begun as a relatively contained walkout of railroad shop workers in George Mortimer Pullman's eponymous city, the strike had become much more than the sum of its parts once the massive American Railway Union (ARU) became involved. According to much of the mainstream media, the ARU's national boycott of Pullman cars represented an assault on the republic itself. As Remington's articles and images suggested, the Pullman Strike was nothing less than an incipient "civil war" waged between the forces of order and anarchy. It would be up to the citizens and the state to hold the line.3	. . .