American Railway Union

The American Railway Union (ARU) was briefly among the largest labor unions of its time and one of the first industrial unions in the United States. The union was launched at a meeting held in Chicago in February 1893 and won an early victory in a strike on the Great Northern Railroad in the summer of 1893.

This successful strike was followed by the bitter 1894 Pullman Strike, in which government troops and the power of the judiciary were enlisted against the ARU, ending with the jailing of the union's leadership for six months in 1895, effectively crushing the organization.

The group's blacklisted and dispirited remnants finally disbanded the organization via amalgamation into the Social Democracy of America at its founding convention in June 1897.

Volition for formation of an industrial union uniting all branches of the railroad industry began in the early 1890s with the failure of an attempt at loose federation of several railway brotherhoods by Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen Secretary-Treasurer and Locomotive Firemen's Magazine editor Eugene V. Debs. A new union bringing together all railway workers, regardless of craft or service, was constructed in a series of meetings held in Chicago, Illinois, beginning with a four hour session held at the Leland Hotel on February 9 and 10, 1893. Headquarters for the new union were to be rented in Chicago.

This preparatory meeting, chaired by George W. Howard of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, former Grand Chief of the Brotherhood of Railway Conductors, elected a three person committee to write a constitution and by-laws for the new organization, which was formally launched at a week-long convention attended by 24 delegates representing many of the numerous railway brotherhoods held at Chicago's Greene Hotel from April 11-17, 1893. This gathering formally elected officers for the new union, including Debs as President, Howard as Vice President, and Sylvester Keliher, Secretary-Treasurer of the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen as Secretary-Treasurer of the ARU.

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