Gerald Eggert, who has studied Olney and the strike more thoroughly than anyone, wrote that Olney's intervention "was not to enforce federal laws, to move the mail or interstate commerce or to protect federal property; it was for the United States government to assert its 'rights' vigorously in Chicago, 'the origin and center of the demonstration,' and thereby, make the strike 'a failure everywhere else and to prevent its spread over the entire country.'"

Eggert, Railroad Labor Disputes, 170.