Frederic Remington (1861-1909)

The present work was published as an illustration for “Chicago Under the Law,” Frederic Remington’s second article about the 1894 Pullman Strike for Harper’s Weekly magazine.


Workers from the Pullman Palace Car Company, a manufacturer of railroad cars, went on strike after management slashed their already low wages without reducing any costs associated with company-owned housing. Out of sympathies with the Pullman workers, the American Railway Union instituted a boycott of all Pullman cars, snarling rail traffic west of Chicago. Eventually, the anger of certain strikers boiled over into a riot, which resulted in President Grover Cleveland’s deployment of cavalry troops, under the command of General Nelson A. Miles, to quash the strike. Remington travelled to Chicago at the request of his friend Miles to write about the incident. In the present work, he depicts Army Major Wallace Randolph who, according to Remington, “is here from Fort Riley with his war paint on, and a new kind of shell, which he is very anxious to try.” (“Chicago Under the Law,” Harper’s Weekly, July 28, 1894, p. 703)