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Who was Eugene Debs?

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) was a labor leader who, in 1893, founded the American Railway Union (ARU), an industrial union for railroad workers. He was a charismatic (the ability to lead and gain devotion of large numbers of people) speaker, but he was also a controversial figure in American life. In 1894 workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company, which manufactured railway cars in Pullman, Illinois (near Chicago), went on strike to protest a significant reduction in their wages. Pullman was a model "company town" where the railway car manufacturer, founded by American inventor George W. Pullman (1831–1897) in 1867, owned all of the land and buildings and ran the school, bank, and utilities. In 1893, in order to maintain profits following declining revenues (income from sales), the Pullman Company cut workers' wages by 25 to 40 percent. Yet the company did not adjust rent and prices in the town, forcing many...

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