History

Thomas Jefferson, Revolutionary period, and history

SkepticalMetal — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 21:18:18 GMT

[split from Ron Paul's Legacy here]

My brain hurts when I think about Thomas Jefferson. One minute I think the guy is great because of some great quotes and literature, and then I find out he owned slaves and broke a bunch of treaties with Indians (violating their natural property rights, essentially). I'm not sure what to think of the man, but overall he seemed to be a tad on the hypocritical side...I guess he couldn't have been as bad as Hamilton.

WWI History

Jargon — Mon, 06 May 2013 19:36:58 GMT

Can anyone recommend a good one? One that covered the military, as opposed to political, aspect would be the most welcome.

American History Question

Marko — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 15:04:16 GMT

If I am correct in the Reconstruction 11 CSA states were readmitted into the USA. How come?

If the argument of the USA was that states did not have the right to secede, then their original secession had been legally invalid - it did not legally happen. If so why did these 11 states needed to be "readmitted" into something they had supposedly never left de jure?

Does this readmission bussines therefore amount to a recognition of the USA that 11 states had indeed legally seceded and that what it was engaged in 1861-1865 was an invasion of the CSA?

Incan Socialism: some initial thoughts

vive la insurrection — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:41:53 GMT

Let it be known right away, my knowledge of the history of this area or people is very limited.

Most of this info comes from me glancing at this book that was radomly laying around at some dudes house:

http://www.amazon.com/Socialist-Empire-Incas-Peru/dp/1614271534

Some interesting tidbits on the Incas I picked up:

A) That during one of the initial reports on the Inca State to The Acadmy of Paris, a student asked if it was possile this had an influence on Thomas Moore's Utopia (that is some socialist world in perfect equilibrium) - but that would have been impossible because Moore's book was written 15 yrs before the Incan empire was discovered.

Kind of interesting how all this "Rousseau" styled thinking and Platonic formalism seem to be very intuitive to many minds in may cultures (there could probably be an endless list of bad literature, religious sects, cultures, laws, and most abhorrently: intellectual classes placed here in both practice and theory). This is something I always think about, but this seems to be one of those "perfect examples" of an actual historical implimentation of State Socialism observed inmore modern times: Moore, Fourier, etc all have similar themes.

B) That supposedly people (Western Intellectuals mostly, but others as well) would point to this Empire having laws against "mine" and "thine" as some type of desired ideal.

C) What I find most interesting were observations that occured through the book by the Spaniards such as:

- some judge who served in Peru in the sixteenth century, made mention that with the removal of a complete regimentation of life (i.e: the destruction of the Inca Empire), the Peruvians were unable to take on any activity on there own, they were, in a way, "reactive" to external stimuli only. People, according to the Spaniards, acted with aimlessness, complete indifference, and lack of inititive, kind of like hipsters.

Note: THis is not "South Americans" in general, but Incas in particular.

- Due to the massive stadardization anything seen as slightly different was considerd "hostile": even things as silly as unusually shaped rocks, or the birth of twins:

I think it is fairly safe to say it wasn't merely the technology of the 200 Spanish guns that overthrew this empire with such ease: this did not happen so easily with Zulu's or most Native American cultures.

I wonder if the case was (at least in part), an utter lack of initiave and the absolute inertness that was conditioned in these people by a massive bureaucratic state:

One can get similar impressions from other points in history (such as some instances of Persian regimes vs more free peoples, most famously the Hellenes). This may be an interesting thing to think about, and may lead to some odd paths, particularly when thinking about more modernized "mechanized warfare", but all that aside - it is an interesting individual and circumstantial event.

The Dust Bowl

Anarcho-libertarian — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 19:05:29 GMT

I've come accross two ideas as to what caused the dust bowl. Which is correct, or are they both? Murray Rothbard states in For A New Liberty on p. 312:

Another unhappy consequence of the American government’s failure to allow private property in a resource was the destruction of the Western grasslands in the late nineteenth century. Every viewer of “Western” movies is familiar with the mystique of the “open range” and the often violent “wars” among cattlemen, sheepmen, and farmers over parcels of ranch land. The “open range” was the failure of the federal government to apply the policy of homesteading to the changed conditions of the drier climate west of the Mississippi.

In the East, the 160 acres granted free to homesteading farmers on government land constituted a viable technological unit for farming in a wetter climate. But in the dry climate of the West, no successful cattle or sheep ranch could be organized on a mere 160 acres. But the federal government refused to expand the 160-acre unit to allow the “homesteading” of larger cattle ranches. Hence, the “open range,” on which private cattle and sheep owners were able to roam unchecked on government-owned pasture land. But this meant that no one owned the pasture, the land itself; it was therefore to the economic advantage of every cattle or sheep owner to graze the land and use up the grass as quickly as possible, otherwise the grass would be grazed by some other sheep or cattle owner.

The result of this tragically shortsighted refusal to allow private property in grazing land itself was an overgrazing of the land, the ruining of the grassland by grazing too early in the season, and the failure of anyone to restore or replant the grass—anyone who bothered to restore the grass would have had to look on helplessly while someone else grazed his cattle or sheep. Hence the overgrazing of the West, and the onset of the “dust bowl.” Hence also the illegal attempts by numerous cattle men, farmers, and sheepmen to take the law into their own hands and fence off the land into private property—and the range wars that often followed.

Yet Doug French states (http://www.lewrockwell.com/french/french84.html):

The First World War then set off a series of events that would lead to disaster. The dry-land farmers had enjoyed prosperity, working the land and growing wheat with the benefit of new machinery that made them wondrously productive. Then the Turkish navy kept Russian wheat from making its way to Europe and the federal government told farmers to produce more wheat to win the war. And produce they did; from 1917 to 1919, the number of acres put into wheat production increased 70 percent. And why not: the government guaranteed a price of $2 per bushel.

But when the war ended, the price collapsed and there was no one to buy the mountains of grain left rotting in the sun. The debts incurred to buy equipment and property still had to be paid, so farmers continued to plow up the grassland in hopes that the price of wheat would rebound. By 1931, 33 million acres in the Great Plains had been plowed. But farmers could only sell the wheat for half what it cost to produce the golden grain, if they could find buyers at all. And then the winds came.

The black blizzards began in earnest in 1932 and would continue through the end of the decade. These storms would carry enough static electricity that people would avoid shaking hands because the shock would flatten a person. With no rain and temperatures exceeding more than 110 degrees for days on end, more and more bugs appeared. Grasshoppers swarmed over fields; centipedes by the bucketful infested houses, along with Black Widow spiders and Tarantulas. Rabbits multiplied while the people choked from the dust.

Good books on the Rothschild dynasty?

Al_Gore the Idiot — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 11:44:32 GMT

I am interesting in learning about this powerful family and how they influenced major world events and government policy. Anyone can recommend a good book or youtube documentary?

Mises and Austrofascism

Johnny Doe — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 11:48:53 GMT

It`s claimed by a couple of norwegian writers(http://wp.respublica.no/?p=1600) that Mises supported the austrofascist Dollfuss(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engelbert_Dollfuss). Does anyone know anything about it, true/not true?

Pro-libertarian philosophers and anti-libertarian philosophers

SkepticalMetal — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 03:08:08 GMT

What philosophers throughout the years (and contemporary ones) do you think promoted libertarianism through their thought, and what philosophers do you think were the most...anti-libertarian? I can think of some anti-libertarian thinkers (Marx, Hegel, Owen, Sartre, Zizek, blah blah blah).

Did LBJ outright order the bombing of the U.S. Liberty?

No2statism — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 01:45:56 GMT

Or did he just cover it up?

I read something on economic policy journal saying that LBJ ordered it, but that was the first time I'd ever heard that.

It's a shame that the U.S. govt is always on the high seas, so even if he didn't order it the U.S. govt put them at risk anyway. The U.S. govt being on the high seas goes all the way back to the beginning of the Republic... the war of 1812 happened in part because of the U.S. govt on the high seas. The fact that U.S govt agents were being kidnapped was just an excuse for the war.

Public Education

Jeff — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 21:27:09 GMT

I was wondering if anyone could reccomend some good books about the history of education and how American public schools emerged. Was it really true that most people couldn't afford schooling and so the governments "had to" create the public school system, etc?

Was Huxley against modernization?

Al_Gore the Idiot — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 22:53:22 GMT

From reading Brave New World, which I just finished reading, Aldous Huxley was certainly critical of modernization and technology - perhaps even more so than being critical of government. Anybody who read the book feel this way?

Russian Primary Chronicle

FlyingAxe — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 21:41:17 GMT

Here is an excerpt from Russian Primary Chronicle (I am not sure why it's traditionally translated this way; the original title is: Povest' Vremennykh Lyet, which means: Story of Years Gone By):

6368–6370 (860–862). The tributaries of the Varangians [Vikings] drove them back beyond the sea and, refusing them further tribute, set out to govern themselves. There was no law among them, but tribe rose against tribe. Discord thus ensued among them, and they began to war one against he another. They said to themselves, “Let us seek a prince who may rule over us and judge us according to the Law.”

They accordingly went overseas to the Varangian Rus': these particular Varangians were known as Rus', just as some are called Swedes, and others Normans, Angles, and Gotlanders, for they were thus named. The Chuds, the Slavs, the Krivichians, and the Ves' then said to the people of Rus', “Our land is great and rich, but there is no order in it. Come to rule and reign over us.”

They thus selected three brothers, with their kinsfolk, who took with them all the Rus' and migrated. The oldest, Rurik, located himself in Novgorod; the second, Sineus, at Beloozero; and the third, Truvor, in Izborsk. On account of these Varangians, the district of Novgorod became known as the land of Rus'. The present inhabitants of Novgorod are descended from the Varangian race, but aforetime they were Slavs.

Now, it's obviously possible to assume that this is just a legend written by some monk to justify the contemporary Russian dynasty (it's interesting that he doesn't use divine right argument, but uses the implicit contract one). But, ignoring that (assuming the story is correct):

1. Why did these people (Russian Slavs) have to ask some foreigners to come and rule over them to prevent anar... ahem... lawlessness? This seems to contradict the theory prevalent among many libertarians that state was born out of class warfare (the warrior class becoming a government over the farmer class) or foreign conquest of agricultural societies by hunter-gatherer ones.

2. Once this happened, can one argue that the pattern of behavior that the newcomer princes enforced became the law? I.e., if we say that the law is a method of peaceful conflict resolution which doesn't exist in the state of nature, then here was such a method provided by the princes. In the state of nature, it is impossible to determine a priori how the resources should be shared. If one has existing customs, one can rely on them, but the Chronicle suggests that the Slavs did not have stable customs that would prevent violence. The princes created such patterns of law.

3. It's interesting that the "according to Law" is translated from "po pravu". That can be translated from Old Slavonic as "according to law", "according to custom", or "according to truth". It's not clear whether the Chronicle is saying that the Princes were invited to introduce some (presumably Swedish) custom into lawless Slavic lands, or that they were invited to figure out what the truth is (i.e., discover law naturally), or to create positive law de novo.

Anyway, I thought this might be interesting to some people here.

When did China start buying in bulk U.S. bonds?

Aristophanes — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 21:44:51 GMT

I am currently working under the hypothesis that the US's international success (I know many of you won't want to call it that), recently, has been because of two things: 1) the Saudi Arabian petrodollar mechanism and 2) the china production & credit scam. These two things give the US all of the leverage that it needs in the world of international political economy. (I don't want to leave out the fiat nature of the US dollar, but I want to include it in the petrodollar scheme. I also am going to include the US debt dollar - the dollars needed by countries to pay back loans to WB and IMF - in the petrodollar. So more accurately it would be called the US dollar hegemony, but that is what I have to build towards the understanding of.)

The US setup the petrodollar arrangement in 1973 (I think, or formalized it at least) and the US started with the "Chinese deal" (which we see the other end of the specturm of today) shortly after 1972, yes?

The "Chinese deal" is just what I am calling the relationship where at first the US pumped its own capital and credit into China to build up its economy as a hedge to the USSR (China becamse a US ally against the USSR because of this), simultaneously denying China independent energy sources, which has been uber-successful, but that has now turned into the situation where China now loans the US money in order to buy their production goods as a means of sustaining the growth model of the past 40 years.

And then, everyone is somewhat familiar with the petrodollar system, but I do need to know when it was started...

I don't want to make Nixon out to be the most goddamn successful President (mercantilist) in US history, but I'm pretty sure he is.

So, when did China start buying US bonds in bulk and when did the US-Saudi Arabia petrodollar arrangement begin exactly?

What were the profit margins for big businesses during the Industrial Revolution?

Mtn Dew — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 03:39:20 GMT

I'm teaching a lesson to 6th graders about the Industrial Revolution and would like to counter the argument that businesses made as much money as possible while putting workers in danger and that without unions and government regulation we'd still be working 18 hours days 8 days a week in coal mines and factories. I know you can't provide a safe environment without sufficient capital, but I'd like to have some evidence to back that up.

"Robber Barons"-discussion in history class

fegeldolfy — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 00:01:35 GMT

So,today in my U.S. history class we discussed the "robber barons".

It went basically like this:

After the Civil War, entrepreneurs like Rockefeller and Carnegie emerged, along with big corporations. Unfortunately, there was little to no regulation (or Congress was in the back pocket of these men), so the corporations would treat the workers badly and get a monopoly. Thankfully,labor unions emerged, and Congress banned trusts, thereby stopping anyone from getting a monopoly. However, today companies use "interlocking" to basically get a trust.

Companies got a monopoly by using predatory pricing-they would lower their price to drive out competition, and then raise it to hurt consumers and make more money.

Now the only stuff I've really read on this are the sections in How Capitalism Saved America and The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History.

As far as I can tell, the basic austrian critique is this:

1.You must distinguish between market entrepreneurs,like Vanderbilt,Hill,or Rockefeller, and political entrepreneurs, like, well,I don't know.

2."Predatory pricing" is largely a myth. A company could indeed drive out competition by lowering prices, but when it started to raise prices, competition would reemerge.

3.By the time Standard Oil was broken up, it was losing market share.

4.Standard Oil was not broken up because of benevolent politicians, but because of jealous competitors.

5.Workers were not treated badly out of malevolence from the corporations,but because there was a lack of capital there were simply not enough resources,or something.

In addition to that, we talked about "income inequality" and how "median household income" (or something like that) has been going down for the bottom 20 % and up for the top 5 % since 1969. As far as I understand it, the fallacy in this kind of thinking is thinking that the same people are in the groups. A lot of people who were in the bottom 20 % in the 1970s were in the top 20 % by the 1990s.

Anything else? Tomorrow we're discussing what it was like for workers, and on Wednesday we're discussing labor unions.

Government invented GPS?

jmorris84 — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 02:05:42 GMT

This was new to me. I read an article in Cigar Aficionado that made the claim, so naturally when I arrived back at home, I had to look it up and lo and behold, it looks like this is true! Is there some sort of counter to this, like with the "government invented the internet" claim? Not that it really matters much, I'm just curious.

Bathroom breaks banned on factories?

Wheylous — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 04:47:17 GMT

I am critiquing the Raikoth anti-libertarian FAQ and I stumbled on this section:

I note in the same vein stories from the days before labor regulations when employers would ban workers from using the restroom on jobs with nine hour shifts, often ending in the workers wetting themselves. This seems like the sort of thing that provides so much humiliation to the workers, and so little benefit to the bosses, that a free market would eliminate it in a split second. But we know that it was a common policy in the 1910s and 1920s, and that factories with such policies never wanted for employees. The same is true of factories that literally locked their workers inside to prevent them from secretly using the restroom or going out for a smoking break, leading to disasters like theTriangle Shirtwaist Fire when hundreds of workers died when the building they were locked inside burnt down. And yet even after this fire, the practice of locking workers inside buildings only stopped when the government finally passed regulation against it.

We've covered the TSF thing before, so I am not looking for arguments against that specifically (though I would appreciate any you might have). I am more interested in the bathroom break thing. Why would employers do this? Did it really take away that much from employment time? What are some citations on this. How widespread was the issue? Was this a long-term problem or was it restricted to a few situations?

New Haven Colony was with an economy in decline?

John C — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 06:13:14 GMT

In his work Conceived in Liberty, Rothbard said:

The problem was that New Haven, a fading colony with an economy in decline

I want more knowledge about this. I want sources (of 17th century). Where I can find sources?

Achilles and the Tortoise

triknighted — Mon, 21 May 2012 13:22:56 GMT

Trusts at the beginning of the 20th century

Eugene — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 20:21:00 GMT

Ivan Eland says that at the beginning of the 20th century 65% of the American economy functioned as trusts - steel, oil, railroads, banks, etc...

Do you know why this trust arrangement became so popular at that time?

Soviet Union support for overseas Communist groups

Will Stanton — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 05:04:43 GMT

I do have a question regarding Soviet help to other countries. I think it’s been officially proven that the Soviet didn’t have much of a ‘world domination’ policy in mind in the overall scheme of things, but I don't know how I would one go about explaining several aspects like these that keep my head scratching a bit:

1. One of the first things the Soviet Union did was found the “COMMINTERN” i.e. the Communist International, whose explicit purpose was to convert the rest of the world into communism.

“The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International (1919–1943), was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919. The International intended to fight “by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and for the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the State.”[1]”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comintern

2. The Soviet Union had invaded or fomented revolutions and forcibly converted to Communism Belarus, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan… Need I go on?

3. Of course after WWII another dozen nations would become communist. Ho Chi Minh was a founder of the French Communist Party. At the height of the Vietnam War the Soviet Union was spending half of it’s GDP on the communist revolutions in indochina. Of course China and North Korea would soon follow, both with Soviet Communist support.

Would a policy of doing nothing really have stopped all this? Or is there some part of the story I probably ignorant about?!

Göbekli Tepe

gotlucky — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 00:45:31 GMT

Anyone here know much about Göbekli Tepe? It is the oldest man made structure with some of it being made 9000BCE. Just thought I would ask.

Time Travel is Impossible

thetabularasa — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 21:28:58 GMT

The quantum physics discussion in my Holiday Dinner Table thread got me thinking about time and space, what is bendable, what isn't, whether General Relativity is a viable theory and so forth, and naturally I started considering the possibility of time travel. Here's how I know it is impossible:

Time doesn't exist. It is a manifestation of the human imagination. Things change; the world changes, we change and everything seems to be in flux somehow. Even if an object takes millenia to destruct and end, it inevitably does, similar to entropy, I suppose, in the sense that there is a systematic degradation involved in all things. Nevertheless, my point is that things are always changing, and of course distances between objects exist, but time itself does not exist. It is merely a subjective measurement system.

Prove me wrong if you must!

How free was the United States in the GIlded age?

Eugene — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 20:33:25 GMT

There were some taxes obviously, but quite little (even including the relatively high tariffs). Blacks and women probably didn't have full rights (though I am not sure about that since much of it involves the use of public property anyway).

There were some anti free speech laws. I think you couldn't sue polluters. Strikes were sometimes forbidden. There were some labor laws.

What other stuff?

The Pullman Strike

Gero — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 17:45:05 GMT

The description of the Pullman Strike below made me sympathize with the strikers (I am confident that I would have joined them if I was a fellow laborer). Unless they broke a contract that forbids striking, the laborers were within their rights to peacefully protest. The government injunction was a violation of free speech. I think the Panic of 1893 is more complex than the article describes. What do you think?

West's Encyclopedia of American Law said: “The Pullman Strike of 1894 was one of the most influential events in the history of U.S. labor. What began as a walkout by railroad workers in the company town of Pullman, Illinois, escalated into the country's first national strike. The events surrounding the strike catapulted several leaders to prominence and brought national focus to issues concerning labor unrest, Socialism, and the need for new efforts to balance the economic interests of labor and capitalism.

In 1859, 28-year-old George M. Pullman, an ambitious entrepreneur who had moved from New York to Chicago, found success as a building contractor. When a new sewage system was installed that necessitated the raising of downtown buildings by ten feet, he ran a business where he oversaw large teams of men working with huge jacks to raise the buildings. Pullman quickly became wealthy.

Continuing his penchant for innovation, Pullman turned in 1867 to the subject of railroad travel and created a new line of luxury railroad cars featuring comfortable seating, restaurants, and improved sleeping accommodations. As demand for the "Pullman coaches" grew, Pullman further demonstrated his financial acumen. He did not sell his sleeping cars; instead he leased them to railroad companies. By 1893, the Pullman Company operated over 2,000 cars on almost every major U.S. railroad, and the company was valued at $62 million.

A firm believer in capitalism and moral uplift, Pullman gathered a group of investors and began to build the nation's first model industrial town near Lake Calumet on the southwest edge of Chicago. Between 1880 and 1884, the village of Pullman was built on 4,000 acres. In addition to the company's manufacturing plants, the town contained a hotel, a school, a library, a church, and office buildings as well as parks and recreational facilities. Houses were well-built brick structures that featured cutting-edge conveniences of the era such as indoor plumbing and gas heat. Other innovations included regular garbage pick-up, a modern sewer system, and landscaped streets. An equally firm believer in the necessity of making a profit, Pullman operated his town as he operated his company, leasing the housing to his workers and selling them food, gas, and water at a 10 percent markup.

A significant drop in the country's gold reserves, prodigious spending of U.S. Treasury surpluses, and the passage in 1890 of the Sherman Silver Act led to the financial panic of 1893. The ensuing corporate failures, mass layoffs of workers, and bank closings plunged the country into a major depression. In response, the Pullman Company fired more than a third of the workforce and instituted reduced hours and wage cuts of more than 25 percent for the remaining hourly employees. Because Pullman had promised the town's investors a 6 percent return, there was no corresponding reduction in the rents and other charges paid by the workers. Rent was deducted directly from their paychecks, leaving many workers with no money to feed and clothe their families.

In desperation, many workers joined the newly established American Railway Union (ARU) that claimed a membership of 465 local unions and 150,000 workers. ARU organizer and president eugene v. debs had become nationally prominent when he led a short but successful strike against the Great Northern Railway in early 1894. In May 1894, the workers struck the Pullman Company. Debs directed the strike and widened its scope, asking other train workers outside Chicago to refuse to work on trains that included Pullman cars. While the workers did agree to permit trains carrying the U.S. mail to operate as long as they did not contain Pullman cars, the railroads refused to compromise. Instead, they added Pullman cars to all their trains, including the ones that only transported freight.

Despite repeated attempts by the union to discuss the situation with Pullman, he refused to negotiate. As the strike spread, entire rail lines were shut down. The railroads quickly formed the General Managers Association (GMA) and announced that switchmen who did not move rail cars would be fired immediately. The ARU responded with a union-wide walkout. By the end of June, 50,000 railroad workers had walked off their jobs.

The economic threat and sporadic violence led the GMA to call for federal troops to be brought in. Illinois governor John P. Altgeld, who was sympathetic to the cause of the striking workers, refused the request for troops. In July, U.S. attorney general Richard Olney, who supported the GMA, issued a broad Injunction called the Omnibus Indictment that prohibited strikers and union representatives from attempting to persuade workers to abandon their jobs.

When striking workers were read the indictment and refused to disperse, Olney obtained a federal court injunction holding the workers in Contempt and, in effect, declaring the strike illegal. When the workers still refused to end the strike, Debs and other leaders were arrested and Olney requested the federal troops saying they were needed to move the mail. President grover cleveland sent more than 2,000 troops to Chicago, and fighting soon broke out between the rioting strikers and soldiers. Soldiers killed more than a dozen workers and wounded many more.

With strike leaders in prison and a growing public backlash over the looting and Arson committed by some striking workers, the strike was effectively broken. Most of the workers returned to their jobs in August, although some were blacklisted and never again worked for the railroads. Debs was charged with contempt of court for disobeying the court injunction and conspiracy to obstruct the U.S. mail. clarence darrow, an attorney who had quit his job as general counsel of the Chicago and North Western Railway, defended Debs and the other ARU leaders, but they were convicted and spent six months in prison. They were released in November 1895.

Darrow went on to become a prominent defense attorney as well as a well-known public orator. Debs, whose contempt of court conviction was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in In re Debs, 158 U.S. 564, 15 S.Ct. 900, 39 L.Ed. 1092 (1895), was further radicalized by his experiences. In high demand as a popular speaker particularly in the industrial states of the North, Debs became the influential leader of the Socialist Party, running for president several times between 1900 and 1920.

Pullman, who continued to regard himself as a morally upright man despite the critical findings of a presidential commission appointed to investigate the strike, died in 1897. Fearful that his body might be degraded or stolen by former strikers, Pullman's family had his body buried in a concrete and steel casket in a tomb covered with steel-reinforced concrete. In 1971, the former "company" town of Pullman was designated as a national landmark district.

The Pullman Strike of 1894 and its aftermath had an indelible effect on the course of the labor movement in the United States. The use of federal troops and the labor injunction sent a message to U.S. workers that would not change until the New Deal of the 1930s. The polarization of management and labor would continue for decades.”