Editing Pullman Strike (section)

==Local responses==
[[File:940707-gwpeters-nationalguardfiring-harpers-940721.jpg|thumb|left|Depiction of Illinois National Guardsmen firing at striking workers on July 7, 1894, the day of greatest violence]]

The strike affected hundreds of towns and cities across the country. Railroad workers were divided, for the old established Brotherhoods, which included the skilled workers such as engineers, firemen and conductors, did not support the labor action.{{citation needed|date=November 2013}} ARU members did support the action, and often comprised unskilled ground crews.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Brendel|first=Martina|date=December 1994|title=The Pullman Strike|url=http://www.lib.niu.edu/1994/ihy941208.html|journal=Illinois History|pages=8|via=Illinois Periodicals Online|access-date=November 16, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171106183904/http://www.lib.niu.edu/1994/ihy941208.html|archive-date=November 6, 2017|url-status=dead}}</ref>{{citation needed|date=November 2013}} In many areas, townspeople and businessmen generally supported the railroads, while farmers—many affiliated with the [[Populist movement (United States, 19th Century)|Populists]]—supported the ARU.{{citation needed|date=November 2013}}

In [[Billings, Montana]], an important rail center, a local [[Methodist]] minister, J. W. Jennings, supported the ARU. In a sermon, he compared the Pullman boycott to the [[Boston Tea Party]], and attacked Montana state officials and President Cleveland for abandoning "the faith of the [[Andrew Jackson|Jacksonian]] fathers."<ref name="Carroll"/> Rather than defending "the rights of the people against aggression and oppressive corporations," he said party leaders were "the pliant tools of the codfish monied aristocracy who seek to dominate this country."<ref name="Carroll">Carroll Van West, ''Capitalism on the Frontier: Billings and the Yellowstone Valley in the Nineteenth Century'' (1993) p 200</ref> Billings remained quiet but, on July 10, soldiers reached [[Lockwood, Montana]], a small rail center, where the troop train was surrounded by hundreds of angry strikers. Narrowly averting violence, the army opened the lines through Montana. When the strike ended, the railroads fired and [[blacklist]]ed all the employees who had supported it.<ref name="Carroll" />

In California, the boycott was effective in [[Sacramento]], a labor stronghold, but weak in the Bay Area and minimal in [[Los Angeles]]. The strike lingered as strikers expressed longstanding grievances over wage reductions, and indicated how unpopular the [[Southern Pacific Railroad]] was. Strikers engaged in violence and sabotage; the companies saw it as civil war, while the ARU proclaimed it was a crusade for the rights of unskilled workers.<ref>William W. Ray, "Crusade or Civil War? The Pullman Strike in California," ''California History'' (1979) 58#1 pp 20–37. {{doi|10.2307/25157886}}</ref>