Richard Olney Biography

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World of Criminal Justice on Richard Olney

Richard Olney served as U.S attorney general from 1893 to 1895 under President Grover Cleveland. Olney left the post to serve as Cleveland's secretary of state, but he is best remembered for breaking a 1894 nationwide railroad worker strike by prosecuting union leaders for violating a federal court injunction.

Olney was born on September 15, 1835 in Oxford, Massachusetts. He graduated from Brown University in 1856 and earned a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1858. Admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1859, Olney joined a prestigious Boston law firm and established a lucrative practice working with railroad companies. He was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1874 but served only one term. He appeared to be firmly established in the private sector until President Cleveland appointed him attorney general in 1893.

Cleveland's second presidential administration was mired in controversy and Olney was at the center of one of the greatest: the 1894 Pullman strike. When Cleveland took office in 1893, he inherited an economy in a deep and prolonged depression. The Pullman Company, based in Chicago, built railroad passenger cars with a large contingent of skilled workers. Pullman responded to the economic downturn by drastically reducing wages, triggering an 1894 strike by its workers. Within weeks other railroad workers around the country applied pressure by refusing to handle Pullman cars. This in turn led to the firing of these workers.

Cleveland and Olney were conservative Democrats and therefore were not sympathetic to the workers and the organizers of a railway workers union. They used the fact that the U.S. mails were being obstructed to take action. Olney ordered 5000 special federal deputies to the troubled areas but their presence led to riots. More importantly, Olney used the federal courts to break the strike. He had union leaders arrested on criminal conspiracy charges and obtained an injunction that ordered the workers to stop obstructing rail traffic. Though the union appealed the injunction, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the court order, giving U.S. corporations a powerful means of stopping labor strikes. The injunction broke the 1894 strike the Cleveland administration's actions alienated millions.

Realizing Olney's unpopularity, Cleveland named him secretary of state the following year. During his brief term of office, Olney became involved in a dispute that implicated the Monroe Doctrine. This doctrine, which was announced by President James Monroe, declared that European nations could not become involved in South American affairs. In addition, it declared that the United States could assert authority in the region, essentially keeping the region within its sphere of influence. When Great Britain and Venezuela became involved in a border dispute over British Guiana, a British colony, Olney stepped in and told Great Britain to back down. The border dispute was then settled through arbitration.

Olney left office in 1897 at the end of the Cleveland administration. Though he returned to his private law practice, he was promoted as a possible presidential candidate in 1904. After he declined to run, Olney remained out of the public eye. He dies on April 18, 1917 in Boston.