But the
Association refused to deal with the union. The strike was already
virtually beaten by the combined moral effect of the indictment of the
leaders and of the arrival in Chicago of United States troops, which
President Cleveland sent in spite of the protest of Governor Altgeld of
Illinois.
The labor organizations were taught two important lessons. First, that
nothing can be gained through revolutionary striking, for the government
was sufficiently strong to cope with it; and second, that the employers
had obtained a formidable ally in the courts.[28]
Defeats in strikes, depression in trade, a rapidly falling labor market
and court prosecutions were powerful allies of those socialistic and
radical leaders inside the Federation who aspired to convert it from a
mere economic organization into an economic-political one and make it
embark upon the sea of independent politics.
The convention of 1893 is memorable in that it submitted to the
consideration of affiliated unions a "political programme." The preamble
to the "programme" recited that the English trade unions had recently
launched upon independent politics "as auxiliary to their economic
action.
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