At a time when women had trouble finding work and workers were often oppressed, Boyce felt their rights were important: his businesses employed many women and he supported labor unions. His newspapers often carried stories about the "nobility of labor". His businesses were able to pay out wages and benefits during the Panic of 1893, a time when many businesses were laying off workers and cutting wages. During the Pullman Strike of the Pullman Palace Car Company in 1894, which spread to 20 companies in over half the states, Boyce called Eugene V. Debs, the socialist labor national leader of the American Railway Union, a "great labor leader" and industrialist George Pullman, inventor of the railroad passenger and sleeping car, the man "who caused all the trouble" (then current labor and social/political strife of the 1890s). In 1901 when the Boyce Paper Manufacturing Company in Marseilles, Illinois, burned down, he paid the workers immediately and then hired them back as construction workers to rebuild the paper mill so they would not lose income. Yet, he was also protective of his money. In late 1894, when two of his workers were injured by a fallen smokestack and won $2,000 each in a court judgment, Boyce appealed the case all the way to the Supreme Court of Illinois, and lost. He was also persistent in getting what he wanted; in 1902, he sued the Marseilles Land and Power Company for not supplying enough water power to his mills and won a $65,300 judgment. By 1903, the Marseilles Land and Power Company fell into receivership and Boyce bought the company up.