basically, george pullman, the owner of the pullman manufacturing company had to cut wages for his workers but he also owned the company town of pullman, illinois and he didn't cut rent or prices at the company store, so they felt unfairly treated and they stopped working. they went on strike. this got eugene debs involved. he was tied in with the american railway union. he managed to get sympathetic rail workers in many places to sympathetically strike with the pullman company strikers. but where it was most prevalent was here in sacramento. this was the home of the southern potential shops. it was a 240 acre facility where every piece of moving equipment on this line went through here for maintenance and repair. this stopped real traffic out of many places. by extension is stopped rail traffic moving out of many other places. so to get rail traffic moving again, the federal government got involved and attached mail cars to every train, and they were federal property so the mail had to move. the very first train moved but was derailed by a broken rail and overturned an engineer and two pe

basically, george pullman, the owner of the pullman manufacturing company had to cut wages for his workers but he also owned the company town of pullman, illinois and he didn't cut rent for prices at the company store, so they felt unfairly treated at they stopped working. they went on strike. involved.ugene debs he was tight in with the american railway union. he managed to get -- in many places to sympathetically strike with the pullman company strikers. but where it was most prevalent was here in sacramento. this was the home of the southern potential shops. every piece of moving equipment on this line went through here for maintenance and repair. this stopped real traffic out of many places. so to get a rail traffic moving again, the federal traffic got involved and they attached mail train, and they were federal property so the trains had to move. -- thery first train moved but wasin derailed by a broken rail and twoturned an engineer and people were killed in the process. so president grover cleveland brought in troops and they marched on the sacramento. they were here for two months