Robert Todd Lincoln --The vitals

[L Verge]

My posting on another thread regarding constitutional powers and the Sedition Act of 1918, led me to try and remember the particulars of the Eugene V. Debs trial and his sentence of ten years for his Socialist activities. I knew that his original claim to fame was his leadership in the fight against railroad corporations for better worker conditions that led to the Pullman Strike in 1894. Guess who was the chief counsel for the Pullman Company at that time -- none other than Robert Lincoln.

Here are some basics from http://fromlaurelstreet.wordpress.com/20...t-lincoln/ There is a line in there (a quote from RTL) that sort of surprised me. See if you can figure out which one.

However, in 1894 Robert Lincoln found himself near the center of “[t]he most famous and farreaching labor conflict in a period of severe economic depression and social unrest” — the Pullman Strike, which began May 11, 1894, with a walkout by Pullman Palace Car Company factory workers after their wages were cut 25% and negotiations failed. The workers “appealed for support to the American Railway Union (ARU), which argued unsuccessfully for arbitration.”

[Graphic - The great railway strikes - scenes in and about Chicago / from sketches by G.A. Coffin. Three bust portraits showing George Pullman, Cushman K. Davis, and Eugene Debs; and four illustrations showing blockade of railroad cars, applicants for appointments as deputies at the marshals office, roundhouse, and deputies trying to move an engine and car at Blue Island. Illus. in: Harpers weekly, 1894.]


It’s very useful to have the only living son of a beloved and assassinated former president for your lawyer in order to avoid contempt charges, as did George Pullman. Robert Lincoln earned his 1897 promotion to president of the Pullman Company.

He served as served chairman of the board from 1911 until his death in 1926.

Despite Pullman’s victory over workers in 1894, the Federal Commission on Industrial Relations convened hearings to look into labor accusations against the Pullman Company. On May 5, 1915, Robert Lincoln, then chairman of the Pullman Company, testified that “the Pullman Company, in employing 6,500 colored car porters, had been one of the greatest benefactors of the age and had secured to the negro race its greatest advance in honest labor.” The Commissioners questioned Robert Lincoln about the fact that Pullman employees were not paid a living wage and had to rely on tips. Asked, “Doesn’t your system amount to practically the same thing as that existing on the railroads of a part of the country before 1863, when the workmen were the property of the railroad companies — were owned in fee 3/4,” Robert Lincoln “showed some hesitation, and finally made answer simply by a chuckle.” He advocated keeping the system of low wages and reliance on tips by the workers because “it is an old custom and one to which the colored race are accustomed.” Despite his active role in the 1894 strike, Robert Lincoln claimed to have never heard “widespread criticism” of Pullman’s wage practices. Robert Lincoln “begged to be excused” when asked to explain “the underlying causes of unrest of the workers.” Others did, however, and the descriptions given were horrific.

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http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/linc...robert.htm Interesting blurb showing Robert's tomb at Arlington and some facts about his burial there (two years after his death) and the supreme secrecy of his final interment when even his two daughters were not allowed to attend.