Great railroad strike of 1877
Encyclopedia
The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 began on July 14 in Martinsburg, West Virginia
, United States
and ended some 45 days later after it was put down by local and state militias, and federal troops.
and Company. As Cooke was the country’s top investment banker, the principal backer of the Northern Pacific Railroad as well as a prime investor in other railroads, and as the company which had handled most of the government’s wartime loans, its failure was catastrophic. In response, the U.S. economy sputtered and then collapsed. Shortly after Cooke’s demise, the New York Stock Exchange
closed for 10 days, credit
dried up, foreclosure
s and factory closings became common. Of the country's 364 railroads, 89 went bankrupt, over 18,000 businesses failed between 1873 and 1875. Unemployment
reached 14 percent by 1876, while workers who kept their jobs were employed for a mere six months out of the year and suffered a 45% cut in their wages to approximately one dollar per day. This economic cataclysm is now referred to as the Panic of 1873
.
While the public blamed President Ulysses S. Grant
and the United States Congress
for mishandling the economy, in particular Grant's monetary policy
of contracting the money supply
, the causes of the panic were actually much deeper. With the end of the Civil War
, the country experienced feverish, unregulated growth, especially in the railroad industry, with the government giving massive land grants and subsidies to railroad companies. Thus, the massive overbuilding of the nation’s railroads, and the overinvestment by bankers of depositors’ funds in the railroads laid the foundation for the Panic and the depression that followed. A full economic recovery was not seen until 1878-79.
ended, a boom in railroad construction ensued, with roughly 35,000 miles of new track being laid from coast-to-coast between 1866 and 1873. The railroads, then the second largest employer outside of agriculture
, required large amounts of capital investment, and thus entailed massive financial risk. Speculators
fed large amounts of money into the industry, causing abnormal growth and over expansion. Jay Cooke's firm, like many other banking firms, was investing a disproportionate share of depositors’ funds in the railroads, thus paving the way for the ensuing collapse.
In addition to Cooke's direct infusion of capital
in the railroads, the firm had become a federal agent for the government in the government’s direct financing of railroad construction. As building new track in areas where land had not yet been cleared or settled required land grants and loans that only the government could provide, the use of Jay Cooke’s firm as a conduit for federal funding worsened the effects that Cooke’s bankruptcy had on the nation’s economy.The way it trite-pained
In the wake of the Panic of 1873, a bitter antagonism between workers and the leaders of industry developed. By 1877, 10% wage cuts, distrust of capitalists and poor working conditions led to a number of railroad strikes that prevented the trains from moving. This antagonism lingered well after the depression ended in 1878-79, eventually erupting into the labor unrest that marked the following decades and that eventually led to the birth of labor unions
in the United States.
Additionally, the 1876 presidential election between Samuel J. Tilden
and Rutherford B. Hayes
had been a narrow victory for Tilden in the popular vote, but while Tilden had a plurality of electoral votes (184-165) he did not have a majority as is required by the United States Constitution
. This sent the election to the House of Representatives
who were unable to reach agreement. On January 29, 1877, the U.S. Congress passed a law forming a 15-member Electoral Commission
to decide on a winner. Five members came from each house of the U.S. Congress, with the other five members coming from the Supreme Court of the United States
. Thanks in part to a deal brokered by Thomas Alexander Scott
(who will surface as a figure during the strike), the commission awarded the disputed electoral votes to Hayes. Thus, the mood of the country grew darker, as those who had voted for Tilden felt disenfranchised.
The great railroad strike of 1877 started on July 14 in Martinsburg, West Virginia, in response to the cutting of wages for the second time in a year by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O). Striking workers would not allow any of the stock to roll until this second wage cut was revoked. The governor sent in state militia units to restore train service, but the soldiers refused to use force against the strikers and the governor called for federal troops.
, stopping freight and passenger traffic. When Governor John Carroll
of Maryland directed the 5th and 6th Regiments of the National Guard
to put down the strike, citizens from Baltimore attacked the troops as they marched from their armories towards B&O's Camden Station for the train to Cumberland, causing violent street battles between the striking workers and the Maryland militia. When the outnumbered troops of the 6th Regiment fired on an attacking crowd, they killed 10 and wounded 25. The rioters injured several members of the militia, damaged engines and train cars, and burned portions of the train station. On July 21–22, the President sent federal troops and Marines to Baltimore
to restore order.
, Pennsylvania
became the site of the worst violence. Thomas Alexander Scott
of the Pennsylvania Railroad
, often considered one of the first robber baron
s, suggested that the strikers should be given "a rifle diet for a few days and see how they like that kind of bread." However, local law enforcement officers refused to fire on the strikers.
Nonetheless, his request came to pass on July 21, when militiamen bayoneted and fired on rock-throwing strikers, killing twenty people and wounding twenty-nine others. Rather than quell the uprising however, this action merely infuriated the strikers who then forced the militiamen to take refuge in a railroad roundhouse
, and then set fires that razed 39 buildings and destroyed 104 locomotives and 1,245 freight and passenger cars. On July 22, the militiamen mounted an assault on the strikers, shooting their way out of the roundhouse and killing 20 more people on their way out of the city. After over a month of constant rioting and bloodshed, President Rutherford B. Hayes
sent in federal troops to end the strikes.
Three hundred miles to the east, Philadelphia strikers battled local militia and set fire to much of Center City before federal troops intervened and put down the uprising.
Pennsylvania's third major industrial city at the time, Reading
, was also hit by the Strike's fury. This city was home of the engine works and shops of its namesake Reading Railroad
, against which engineers were already on strike since April 1877. Sixteen citizens were shot by state militia in the Reading Railroad Massacre
. Preludes to the massacre include: fresh work stoppage all classes of the railroad's local workforce; mass marches; blocking of rail traffic; trainyard arson; and the burning down of the bridge providing this railroad's only link to the west - to prevent local militia from being mustered to Harrisburg or Pittsburgh. The militia responsible for the shootings was mobilized by Reading Railroad management, not by local public officials.
The 1877 Shamokin Uprising
occurred on July 25, when 1000 men and boys, many of them coal miners, marched to the Reading Railroad Depot in Shamokin
, Pennsylvania. They looted the depot when the town announced it would only pay them $1/day for emergency public employment. The mayor, who owned coal mines, formed a vigilante group that killed 2 out of 14 civilian shooting casualties.
was paralyzed when angry mobs of unemployed citizens wreaked havoc in the rail yards, shutting down both the Baltimore and Ohio and the Illinois Central Railroads. Soon, other railroads were brought to a standstill, with demonstrators shutting down railroad traffic in Bloomington
, Aurora
, Peoria
, Decatur
, Urbana
and other rail centers throughout Illinois
. In sympathy, coal miners in the pits at Braidwood, LaSalle
, Springfield, and Carbondale
went on strike as well. In Chicago, the Workingmen’s Party
organized demonstrations that drew crowds of twenty thousand people.
Judge Thomas Drummond
of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
, who was overseeing numerous railroads that had declared bankruptcy
in the wake of the Panic of 1873
rules that "A strike or other unlawful interference with the trains will be a violation of the United States law, and the court will be bound to take notice of it and enforce the penalty. Drummond told federal marshals to protect the railroads, and asked for federal troops to enforce his decision: he subsequently had strikers arrested and then tried them for contempt of court
.
The mayor of Chicago, [Monroe Heath], asked for five thousand vigilantes to help restore order (they were partially successful), and shortly thereafter the National Guard and federal troops arrived. On July 25, violence between police and the mob erupted with events reaching a peak the following day. These blood-soaked confrontations between police and enraged mobs occurred at the Halsted Street viaduct, at nearby 16th Street, at Halsted and 12th, and on Canal Street. The headline of the Chicago Times
screamed, "Terrors Reign, The Streets of Chicago Given Over to Howling Mobs of Thieves and Cutthroats." Order was finally restored, however, with the deaths of nearly 20 men and boys, the wounding of scores more, and the loss of property valued in the millions of dollars.
On July 21, disgruntled workers in the industrial rail hub of East St. Louis, Missouri, halted all freight traffic, with the city remaining in the control of the strikers for almost a week.
In response the St. Louis Workingman's Party led a group of approximately 500 people across the Missouri River in an act of solidarity with the nearly 1,000 workers on strike. That act transformed an initial strike among railroad workers into a strike by thousands of workers in several industries for the eight-hour day
and a ban on child labor
, the first general strike
in the United States.
The strike on both side of the river was ended when some 3,000 federal troops and 5,000 deputized special police killed at least eighteen people in skirmishes around the city. On July 28, 1877, they took control of the Relay Depot, the Commune's command center, and arrested some seventy strikers.
In Pittsburgh, it was estimated that property damage reached about five million dollars, with Chicago, Baltimore and other cities facing losses of a similar magnitude.
Thus, in the wake of the strike, unions became better organized and the number of strikes increased. In the 1880s there were nearly ten thousand strikes and lockouts and in 1886 nearly 700,000 workers went on strike. As is to be expected, business leaders took a more rigid stance against the unions. Nonetheless, and possibly because of the more rigid stance, the labor movement continued to grow.
One result of the strike was increased public awareness of the grievances of railroad workers. In 1880 the B&O railroad, which had the lowest wage rate of any major railroad, established the Baltimore and Ohio Employees' Relief Association, which provided coverage for sickness, injury from accidents, and a death benefit. In 1884, the B&O became the first major employer to offer a pension plan.
In 1886, there was a national strike aimed at reducing the average workday from twelve to eight hours, and 340,000 workers struck at 12,000 companies nationwide. In Chicago, police were trying to break up a large labor meeting in Haymarket Square, when a bomb exploded without warning, killing a police officer. Police fired into the crowd, killing one and wounding many more. Because of the riot, four labor organizers were hanged. The hangings of these organizers took the steam out of the national labor movement and energized management. By 1890, Knights of Labor
membership had fallen to ten percent of its previous levels.
In 1893-1894, a severe depression swept the nation and America saw some of its worst strikes in history, including that against the Pullman Palace Car Company. The strike, which had been caused by severe wage cuts, stopped railroad traffic, with battles between troops and strikers breaking out in twenty-six states.
The defeat of the Pullman Strike
fed an intense debate within the labor movement between the proponents of craft unionism
and of industrial unionism
, an argument that continued for several decades.
, where the strike began, were declared a National Historic Landmark
in 2003.
Martinsburg, West Virginia
Martinsburg is a city in the Eastern Panhandle region of West Virginia, United States. The city's population was 14,972 at the 2000 census; according to a 2009 Census Bureau estimate, Martinsburg's population was 17,117, making it the largest city in the Eastern Panhandle and the eighth largest...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and ended some 45 days later after it was put down by local and state militias, and federal troops.
Economic conditions in the 1870s
The 1870s saw a significant economic depression in Europe. The effects of this reached the United States on September 18, 1873, with the failure of banking firm Jay CookeJay Cooke
Jay Cooke was an American financier. Cooke and his firm Jay Cooke & Company were most notable for their role in financing the Union's war effort during the American Civil War...
and Company. As Cooke was the country’s top investment banker, the principal backer of the Northern Pacific Railroad as well as a prime investor in other railroads, and as the company which had handled most of the government’s wartime loans, its failure was catastrophic. In response, the U.S. economy sputtered and then collapsed. Shortly after Cooke’s demise, the New York Stock Exchange
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located at 11 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, USA. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies at 13.39 trillion as of Dec 2010...
closed for 10 days, credit
Credit (finance)
Credit is the trust which allows one party to provide resources to another party where that second party does not reimburse the first party immediately , but instead arranges either to repay or return those resources at a later date. The resources provided may be financial Credit is the trust...
dried up, foreclosure
Foreclosure
Foreclosure is the legal process by which a mortgage lender , or other lien holder, obtains a termination of a mortgage borrower 's equitable right of redemption, either by court order or by operation of law...
s and factory closings became common. Of the country's 364 railroads, 89 went bankrupt, over 18,000 businesses failed between 1873 and 1875. Unemployment
Unemployment
Unemployment , as defined by the International Labour Organization, occurs when people are without jobs and they have actively sought work within the past four weeks...
reached 14 percent by 1876, while workers who kept their jobs were employed for a mere six months out of the year and suffered a 45% cut in their wages to approximately one dollar per day. This economic cataclysm is now referred to as the Panic of 1873
Panic of 1873
The Panic of 1873 triggered a severe international economic depression in both Europe and the United States that lasted until 1879, and even longer in some countries. The depression was known as the Great Depression until the 1930s, but is now known as the Long Depression...
.
While the public blamed President Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States as well as military commander during the Civil War and post-war Reconstruction periods. Under Grant's command, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and ended the Confederate States of America...
and the United States Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
for mishandling the economy, in particular Grant's monetary policy
Monetary policy
Monetary policy is the process by which the monetary authority of a country controls the supply of money, often targeting a rate of interest for the purpose of promoting economic growth and stability. The official goals usually include relatively stable prices and low unemployment...
of contracting the money supply
Money supply
In economics, the money supply or money stock, is the total amount of money available in an economy at a specific time. There are several ways to define "money," but standard measures usually include currency in circulation and demand deposits .Money supply data are recorded and published, usually...
, the causes of the panic were actually much deeper. With the end of the Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, the country experienced feverish, unregulated growth, especially in the railroad industry, with the government giving massive land grants and subsidies to railroad companies. Thus, the massive overbuilding of the nation’s railroads, and the overinvestment by bankers of depositors’ funds in the railroads laid the foundation for the Panic and the depression that followed. A full economic recovery was not seen until 1878-79.
Causes of the strike
When the Civil WarAmerican Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
ended, a boom in railroad construction ensued, with roughly 35,000 miles of new track being laid from coast-to-coast between 1866 and 1873. The railroads, then the second largest employer outside of agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
, required large amounts of capital investment, and thus entailed massive financial risk. Speculators
Speculation
In finance, speculation is a financial action that does not promise safety of the initial investment along with the return on the principal sum...
fed large amounts of money into the industry, causing abnormal growth and over expansion. Jay Cooke's firm, like many other banking firms, was investing a disproportionate share of depositors’ funds in the railroads, thus paving the way for the ensuing collapse.
In addition to Cooke's direct infusion of capital
Financial capital
Financial capital can refer to money used by entrepreneurs and businesses to buy what they need to make their products or provide their services or to that sector of the economy based on its operation, i.e. retail, corporate, investment banking, etc....
in the railroads, the firm had become a federal agent for the government in the government’s direct financing of railroad construction. As building new track in areas where land had not yet been cleared or settled required land grants and loans that only the government could provide, the use of Jay Cooke’s firm as a conduit for federal funding worsened the effects that Cooke’s bankruptcy had on the nation’s economy.The way it trite-pained
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
in the United States.
Additionally, the 1876 presidential election between Samuel J. Tilden
Samuel J. Tilden
Samuel Jones Tilden was the Democratic candidate for the U.S. presidency in the disputed election of 1876, one of the most controversial American elections of the 19th century. He was the 25th Governor of New York...
and Rutherford B. Hayes
Rutherford B. Hayes
Rutherford Birchard Hayes was the 19th President of the United States . As president, he oversaw the end of Reconstruction and the United States' entry into the Second Industrial Revolution...
had been a narrow victory for Tilden in the popular vote, but while Tilden had a plurality of electoral votes (184-165) he did not have a majority as is required by the United States Constitution
United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...
. This sent the election to the House of Representatives
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
who were unable to reach agreement. On January 29, 1877, the U.S. Congress passed a law forming a 15-member Electoral Commission
Electoral Commission (United States)
The Electoral Commission was a temporary body created by Congress to resolve the disputed United States presidential election of 1876. It consisted of 15 members. The election was contested by the Democratic ticket, Samuel J. Tilden and Thomas A. Hendricks, and the Republican ticket, Rutherford B....
to decide on a winner. Five members came from each house of the U.S. Congress, with the other five members coming from the Supreme Court of the United States
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
. Thanks in part to a deal brokered by Thomas Alexander Scott
Thomas Alexander Scott
Thomas Alexander Scott was an American businessman. He was the 4th president of what was the largest corporation in the world, the Pennsylvania Railroad, during the middle of the 19th century...
(who will surface as a figure during the strike), the commission awarded the disputed electoral votes to Hayes. Thus, the mood of the country grew darker, as those who had voted for Tilden felt disenfranchised.
The strike
Maryland
Meanwhile, the strike spread to Cumberland, MarylandCumberland, Maryland
Cumberland is a city in the far western, Appalachian portion of Maryland, United States. It is the county seat of Allegany County, and the primary city of the Cumberland, MD-WV Metropolitan Statistical Area. At the 2010 census, the city had a population of 20,859, and the metropolitan area had a...
, stopping freight and passenger traffic. When Governor John Carroll
John Lee Carroll
John Lee Carroll , a member of the United States Democratic Party, was the 37th Governor of Maryland from 1876 to 1880.-Early life:...
of Maryland directed the 5th and 6th Regiments of the National Guard
Maryland Army National Guard
The Maryland Army National Guard is the Army component of the organized militia of the State of Maryland. It is headquartered at the Fifth Regiment Armory in Baltimore and has units at armories and other facilities across the state....
to put down the strike, citizens from Baltimore attacked the troops as they marched from their armories towards B&O's Camden Station for the train to Cumberland, causing violent street battles between the striking workers and the Maryland militia. When the outnumbered troops of the 6th Regiment fired on an attacking crowd, they killed 10 and wounded 25. The rioters injured several members of the militia, damaged engines and train cars, and burned portions of the train station. On July 21–22, the President sent federal troops and Marines to Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
to restore order.
Pennsylvania
PittsburghPittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...
, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
became the site of the worst violence. Thomas Alexander Scott
Thomas Alexander Scott
Thomas Alexander Scott was an American businessman. He was the 4th president of what was the largest corporation in the world, the Pennsylvania Railroad, during the middle of the 19th century...
of the Pennsylvania Railroad
Pennsylvania Railroad
The Pennsylvania Railroad was an American Class I railroad, founded in 1846. Commonly referred to as the "Pennsy", the PRR was headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania....
, often considered one of the first robber baron
Robber baron (industrialist)
Robber baron is a pejorative term used for a powerful 19th century American businessman. By the 1890s the term was used to attack any businessman who used questionable practices to become wealthy...
s, suggested that the strikers should be given "a rifle diet for a few days and see how they like that kind of bread." However, local law enforcement officers refused to fire on the strikers.
Nonetheless, his request came to pass on July 21, when militiamen bayoneted and fired on rock-throwing strikers, killing twenty people and wounding twenty-nine others. Rather than quell the uprising however, this action merely infuriated the strikers who then forced the militiamen to take refuge in a railroad roundhouse
Roundhouse
A roundhouse is a building used by railroads for servicing locomotives. Roundhouses are large, circular or semicircular structures that were traditionally located surrounding or adjacent to turntables...
, and then set fires that razed 39 buildings and destroyed 104 locomotives and 1,245 freight and passenger cars. On July 22, the militiamen mounted an assault on the strikers, shooting their way out of the roundhouse and killing 20 more people on their way out of the city. After over a month of constant rioting and bloodshed, President Rutherford B. Hayes
Rutherford B. Hayes
Rutherford Birchard Hayes was the 19th President of the United States . As president, he oversaw the end of Reconstruction and the United States' entry into the Second Industrial Revolution...
sent in federal troops to end the strikes.
Three hundred miles to the east, Philadelphia strikers battled local militia and set fire to much of Center City before federal troops intervened and put down the uprising.
Pennsylvania's third major industrial city at the time, Reading
Reading, Pennsylvania
Reading is a city in southeastern Pennsylvania, USA, and seat of Berks County. Reading is the principal city of the Greater Reading Area and had a population of 88,082 as of the 2010 census, making it the fifth most populated city in the state after Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown and Erie,...
, was also hit by the Strike's fury. This city was home of the engine works and shops of its namesake Reading Railroad
Reading Company
The Reading Company , usually called the Reading Railroad, officially the Philadelphia and Reading Rail Road and then the Philadelphia and Reading Railway until 1924, operated in southeast Pennsylvania and neighboring states...
, against which engineers were already on strike since April 1877. Sixteen citizens were shot by state militia in the Reading Railroad Massacre
Reading Railroad Massacre
The Reading Railroad Massacre, in which ten people lost their lives, was the tragic climax of local events in Reading, Pennsylvania during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877....
. Preludes to the massacre include: fresh work stoppage all classes of the railroad's local workforce; mass marches; blocking of rail traffic; trainyard arson; and the burning down of the bridge providing this railroad's only link to the west - to prevent local militia from being mustered to Harrisburg or Pittsburgh. The militia responsible for the shootings was mobilized by Reading Railroad management, not by local public officials.
1877 Shamokin Uprising
The 1877 Shamokin Uprising occurred when desperation and starvation drove Pennsylvania's railroad workers and miners to join the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, America’s first nationwide strike....
occurred on July 25, when 1000 men and boys, many of them coal miners, marched to the Reading Railroad Depot in Shamokin
Shamokin, Pennsylvania
Shamokin is a city in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, at the western edge of the Anthracite Coal Region. At the 2000 census the population was 8,009 residents...
, Pennsylvania. They looted the depot when the town announced it would only pay them $1/day for emergency public employment. The mayor, who owned coal mines, formed a vigilante group that killed 2 out of 14 civilian shooting casualties.
Illinois
On July 24, rail traffic in ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
was paralyzed when angry mobs of unemployed citizens wreaked havoc in the rail yards, shutting down both the Baltimore and Ohio and the Illinois Central Railroads. Soon, other railroads were brought to a standstill, with demonstrators shutting down railroad traffic in Bloomington
Bloomington, Illinois
Bloomington is a city in McLean County, Illinois, United States and the county seat. It is adjacent to Normal, Illinois, and is the more populous of the two principal municipalities of the Bloomington-Normal metropolitan area...
, Aurora
Aurora, Illinois
Aurora is the second most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois, and the 112th largest city in the United States. A suburb of Chicago, located west of the Loop, its population in 2010 was 197,899. Originally founded within Kane County, Aurora's city limits have expanded greatly over the past...
, Peoria
Peoria, Illinois
Peoria is the largest city on the Illinois River and the county seat of Peoria County, Illinois, in the United States. It is named after the Peoria tribe. As of the 2010 census, the city was the seventh-most populated in Illinois, with a population of 115,007, and is the third-most populated...
, Decatur
Decatur, Illinois
Decatur is the largest city and the county seat of Macon County in the U.S. state of Illinois. The city, sometimes called "the Soybean Capital of the World", was founded in 1823 and is located along the Sangamon River and Lake Decatur in Central Illinois. In 2000 the city population was 81,500,...
, Urbana
Urbana, Illinois
Urbana is the county seat of Champaign County, Illinois, United States. As of the 2010 census, the population was 41,250. Urbana is the tenth-most populous city in Illinois outside of the Chicago metropolitan area....
and other rail centers throughout Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
. In sympathy, coal miners in the pits at Braidwood, LaSalle
LaSalle
The LaSalle was an automobile product of General Motors Corporation and sold as a companion marque of Cadillac from 1927 to 1940. The two were linked by similarly themed names, both being named for French explorers — Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac and René-Robert...
, Springfield, and Carbondale
Carbondale, Illinois
Carbondale is a city in Jackson County, in the state of Illinois, within the Southern Illinois region. It is located at the junction of Illinois Route 13 and U.S. Route 51, southeast of St. Louis, Missouri, on the northern edge of the Shawnee National Forest...
went on strike as well. In Chicago, the Workingmen’s Party
Workingmen's Party of the United States
The Workingmen's Party of the United States , established in 1876, was one of the first Marxist-influenced political parties in the United States...
organized demonstrations that drew crowds of twenty thousand people.
Judge Thomas Drummond
Thomas Drummond (judge)
Thomas Drummond , was a United States federal judge.Born in Bristol Mills, Maine, Drummond graduated from Bowdoin College in 1830, and read law to enter the Bar in Philadelphia in 1833. He had a private practice in Galena, Illinois, from 1835 to 1850...
of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the courts in the following districts:* Central District of Illinois* Northern District of Illinois...
, who was overseeing numerous railroads that had declared bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
in the wake of the Panic of 1873
Panic of 1873
The Panic of 1873 triggered a severe international economic depression in both Europe and the United States that lasted until 1879, and even longer in some countries. The depression was known as the Great Depression until the 1930s, but is now known as the Long Depression...
rules that "A strike or other unlawful interference with the trains will be a violation of the United States law, and the court will be bound to take notice of it and enforce the penalty. Drummond told federal marshals to protect the railroads, and asked for federal troops to enforce his decision: he subsequently had strikers arrested and then tried them for contempt of court
Contempt of court
Contempt of court is a court order which, in the context of a court trial or hearing, declares a person or organization to have disobeyed or been disrespectful of the court's authority...
.
Chicago Times
The Chicago Times was a newspaper in Chicago from 1854 to 1895 when it merged with the Chicago Herald.The Times was founded in 1854, by James W. Sheahan, with the backing of Stephen Douglas, and was identified as a pro-slavery newspaper. In 1861, after the paper was purchased by Wilbur F...
screamed, "Terrors Reign, The Streets of Chicago Given Over to Howling Mobs of Thieves and Cutthroats." Order was finally restored, however, with the deaths of nearly 20 men and boys, the wounding of scores more, and the loss of property valued in the millions of dollars.
Missouri
- see main article 1877 Saint Louis general strike1877 Saint Louis general strikeGenerally accepted as the first general strike in America, the 1877 Saint Louis general strike grew out of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. The general strike was largely organized by the Knights of Labor and the Marxist-leaning Workingmen's Party, the main radical political party of the era. ...
On July 21, disgruntled workers in the industrial rail hub of East St. Louis, Missouri, halted all freight traffic, with the city remaining in the control of the strikers for almost a week.
In response the St. Louis Workingman's Party led a group of approximately 500 people across the Missouri River in an act of solidarity with the nearly 1,000 workers on strike. That act transformed an initial strike among railroad workers into a strike by thousands of workers in several industries for the eight-hour day
Eight-hour day
The eight-hour day movement or 40-hour week movement, also known as the short-time movement, had its origins in the Industrial Revolution in Britain, where industrial production in large factories transformed working life and imposed long hours and poor working conditions. With working conditions...
and a ban on child labor
Child labor
Child labour refers to the employment of children at regular and sustained labour. This practice is considered exploitative by many international organizations and is illegal in many countries...
, the first general strike
General strike
A general strike is a strike action by a critical mass of the labour force in a city, region, or country. While a general strike can be for political goals, economic goals, or both, it tends to gain its momentum from the ideological or class sympathies of the participants...
in the United States.
The strike on both side of the river was ended when some 3,000 federal troops and 5,000 deputized special police killed at least eighteen people in skirmishes around the city. On July 28, 1877, they took control of the Relay Depot, the Commune's command center, and arrested some seventy strikers.
Strike Over
The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 began to lose momentum when President Hayes sent federal troops from city to city. These troops suppressed strike after strike, until at last, approximately 45 days after it had started, the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 was over.Laying blame
The strike and its repercussions were attributed on a number of factors by contemporaries:- XenophobiaXenophobiaXenophobia is defined as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange". It comes from the Greek words ξένος , meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος , meaning "fear."...
: German and BohemianBohemianA Bohemian is a resident of the former Kingdom of Bohemia, either in a narrow sense as the region of Bohemia proper or in a wider meaning as the whole country, now known as the Czech Republic. The word "Bohemian" was used to denote the Czech people as well as the Czech language before the word...
agitators were blamed most often, but in some cities other ethnic groups were blamed as well.
- Idle hands: Illinois governor Shelby Cullom stated that "the vagrant, the willfully idle, was the chief element in all these disturbances," his premise being that an unemployed man was unemployed due to choice, rather than the paucity of jobs.
- CommunismCommunismCommunism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
: Still others asserted that the Great Railroad Strike was due to Communist influences. The New York WorldNew York WorldThe New York World was a newspaper published in New York City from 1860 until 1931. The paper played a major role in the history of American newspapers...
blamed "the hands of men dominated by the devilish spirit of Communism." Given that the Workingmen’s Party (WP) was a Socialist party affiliated with the Marxist movement sweeping Europe, it is understandable that this connection was made. However, it should be noted that the WP did not instigate the strike, rather it fanned its flames. In his 1878 book Strikers, Communists, Tramps and Detectives, Allan PinkertonAllan PinkertonAllan Pinkerton was a Scottish American detective and spy, best known for creating the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.-Early life, career and immigration:...
blamed the unrest on a combination of Paris CommuneParis CommuneThe Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and Marxists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial Revolution...
proponents and the high degree of transiency of the American working class at the time.
- Lack of Trade unions: While there was some union activity, especially from the Brotherhood of Locomotive EngineersBrotherhood of Locomotive EngineersThe Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen is a labor union founded in Marshall, Michigan, on May 8, 1863, as the Brotherhood of the Footboard. A year later, its name was changed to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, sometimes referred to as the Brotherhood of Engineers...
and Brotherhood of Locomotive FiremenBrotherhood of Locomotive FiremenThe Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen was one of the railroad unions of the 19th century.-History:The Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen was founded on December 1, 1873 in Port Jervis, New York by Joshua A. Leach and 10 other Erie Railroad firemen...
, many of the strikers had yet to organize.
- The 1876 Election Deal: Thomas Scott, of the Pennsylvania Railroad, delivered the disputed congressional votes to Hayes in exchange for a federal bailout of failing investments in the Texas and Pacific railroad. While it is not clear if this deal led to Hayes’ sending of federal troops to the strike-torn areas, the possibility of a quid pro quoQuid pro quoQuid pro quo most often means a more-or-less equal exchange or substitution of goods or services. English speakers often use the term to mean "a favour for a favour" and the phrases with almost identical meaning include: "give and take", "tit for tat", "this for that", and "you scratch my back,...
arrangement is tenable.
Economic impact
While no complete accounting of the economic losses caused by this strike exists, it is known that the engineers' and firemen's brotherhoods lost approximately $600,000 over the forty-five days of the strike, while for the Burlington Railroad the losses were at least $2,100,000.In Pittsburgh, it was estimated that property damage reached about five million dollars, with Chicago, Baltimore and other cities facing losses of a similar magnitude.
Impact on future labor relations
After the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, union organizers planned for their next battles while politicians and business leaders took steps to ensure that such chaos could not reoccur. Many states enacted conspiracy statutes. States formed new militia units, and National Guard armories were constructed in a number of cities. For workers and employers alike, the strikes had shown the power of workers in combination to challenge the status quo. They were driven, as a Pittsburgh state militiaman, who was ordered to break the 1877 strike, pointed out, by “one spirit and one purpose among them -– that they were justified in resorting to any means to break down the power of the corporations.”Thus, in the wake of the strike, unions became better organized and the number of strikes increased. In the 1880s there were nearly ten thousand strikes and lockouts and in 1886 nearly 700,000 workers went on strike. As is to be expected, business leaders took a more rigid stance against the unions. Nonetheless, and possibly because of the more rigid stance, the labor movement continued to grow.
One result of the strike was increased public awareness of the grievances of railroad workers. In 1880 the B&O railroad, which had the lowest wage rate of any major railroad, established the Baltimore and Ohio Employees' Relief Association, which provided coverage for sickness, injury from accidents, and a death benefit. In 1884, the B&O became the first major employer to offer a pension plan.
In 1886, there was a national strike aimed at reducing the average workday from twelve to eight hours, and 340,000 workers struck at 12,000 companies nationwide. In Chicago, police were trying to break up a large labor meeting in Haymarket Square, when a bomb exploded without warning, killing a police officer. Police fired into the crowd, killing one and wounding many more. Because of the riot, four labor organizers were hanged. The hangings of these organizers took the steam out of the national labor movement and energized management. By 1890, Knights of Labor
Knights of Labor
The Knights of Labor was the largest and one of the most important American labor organizations of the 1880s. Its most important leader was Terence Powderly...
membership had fallen to ten percent of its previous levels.
In 1893-1894, a severe depression swept the nation and America saw some of its worst strikes in history, including that against the Pullman Palace Car Company. The strike, which had been caused by severe wage cuts, stopped railroad traffic, with battles between troops and strikers breaking out in twenty-six states.
The defeat of the Pullman Strike
Pullman Strike
The Pullman Strike was a nationwide conflict between labor unions and railroads that occurred in the United States in 1894. The conflict began in the town of Pullman, Illinois on May 11 when approximately 3,000 employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company began a wildcat strike in response to recent...
fed an intense debate within the labor movement between the proponents of craft unionism
Craft unionism
Craft unionism refers to organizing a union in a manner that seeks to unify workers in a particular industry along the lines of the particular craft or trade that they work in by class or skill level...
and of industrial unionism
Industrial unionism
Industrial unionism is a labor union organizing method through which all workers in the same industry are organized into the same union—regardless of skill or trade—thus giving workers in one industry, or in all industries, more leverage in bargaining and in strike situations...
, an argument that continued for several decades.
Commemoration
The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Martinsburg ShopsBaltimore and Ohio Railroad Martinsburg Shops
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Martinsburg Shops is a historic industrial district in Martinsburg, West Virginia. It is significant both for its railroading architecture by Albert Fink and John Rudolph Niernsee and for its role in the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. It consists of three contributing...
, where the strike began, were declared a National Historic Landmark
National Historic Landmark
A National Historic Landmark is a building, site, structure, object, or district, that is officially recognized by the United States government for its historical significance...
in 2003.
General references
- Panic of 1873. By u-s-history
- Panic of 1873. By thehistorybox
- US Grant
- RAILROAD STRIKE OF 1877
- THE GREAT RAILROAD STRIKE OF 1877
- THE GREAT RAILROAD STRIKE.Harper's Weekly—April 21, 1888
- Pages from US Labor History: The Great Railroad Strike of 1877
- The American Heritage Book of the Presidents, Vol VI, American Heritage, 1967
External links
- The Great Strike, Harper's Weekly, August, 11, 1887
- The Great Railroad Strike Harper's Weekly, April 21, 1888
- The Strike of 1877, Maryland State Archives
- The B&O Railroad Strike of 1877, The (Martinsburg) Statesman, July 24, 1877
- The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Network
- The 1877 Shamokin Uprising and the Great Railroad Strike, The News Item of Shamokin, mid-eastern Pennsylvania, July 25, 2007
- Excerpt from A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, New York: HarperCollins, 1999. p.245-251 ISBN 0060528370
- "Reading's Place in The Great Strike & After", Berks County Historical Society
Further reading
- Bruce, Robert V., 1877: Year of Violence, 1959. [Reprinted 1989. ISBN 0-929587-05-7]
- Foner, Philip S.Philip FonerPhilip S. Foner was an American Marxist labor historian and teacher. The author and editor of more than 100 books, the prolific Foner wrote extensively on what were at the time academically unpopular themes, such as the role of radicals, blacks, and women in American history...
, The Great Labor Uprising of 1877, 1977. ISBN 0-87348-828-8 (paper) - Brecher, Jeremy., Strike!, 1997. ISBN 0-89608-570-8 (cloth)
- Dailey, Lucia. "Mine Seed," 2002. ISBN I-4033-6697-7