The leaders of the switchmen's union called on other railroad unions to engage in a general strike in support of their job action. The president of the Switchmen's Mutual Association called the heads of the Order of Railway Conductors, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen to Buffalo for a meeting. But the August 23 conference was brief: The other unions refused to take their members out on strike. Unable to fight both soldiers and scabs without help, the switchmen ended their strike on August 25, 1892. The switchmen agreed to return to work, but the railroads blacklisted most of the workers. Prior to the Buffalo switchmen's strike, most railroad unions in the United States did not engage in consultation and coordination in order to increase their collective bargaining power. Attempts in 1886 and 1889 to form a federation of rail unions quickly collapsed. But the defeat of the Buffalo switchmen's union proved to be a powerful lesson in labor unity. Eugene V. Debs, national secretary of the Locomotive Firemen, resigned his position a month after the switchmen's strike in order to work full-time on the creation of a national union of railway workers. Debs was successful in forming the American Railway Union (ARU) in June 1893. But the ARU would prove to be short-lived. The union was crushed in the violent Pullman strike of 1894. The union's collapse pushed Debs toward Socialism. The Pullman strike also convinced many in the American labor movement that the government was a tool of corporate interests, and that they could no longer openly oppose large corporations. The Pullman strike caused a conservative shift in the American Federation of Labor from which the labor body has not emerged.