Michael
Dimotsis
May 8, 2013
Great
Railroad Strike of 1877
When
people look back and think of the violence in labor history in the
United States some may think back to the Great Railroad Strike of
1877. This strike was our country’s first major railroad strike.
The United States needed railroads to function properly in this
period and the strike threatened this system. It threatened the
system by bringing about much violence and disaster to not only the
railroad tracks thus hurting the companies but to the cities that the
tracks passed through as well. This strike also negatively affected
many lives. Many fires raged in places such as Philadelphia, and many
people were killed or injured, not just strikers and militia/troops
but also bystanders. Even though the Great Railroad Strike lasted
only a couple of weeks, the violence that tore through the nation had
effects that lasted much longer.
There
is not one single reason why this strike occurred but many reasons
that all came together to bring about this catastrophic event. One
reason is that there was a reduction in wages. The president of the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, John W. Garrett, said in a
letter to his railroad employees, that the pay of every company
employee who received more than one dollar a day would be reduced by
ten percent on and after July 16, 1877. 1
The workweek was also slashed to sometimes only two or three days a
week. In addition, many people were still affected by the Panic of
1873 so lowering the already low wages outraged many railroad workers
that needed the money to survive.2
On other railroad lines in July, The Pennsylvania Railroad publicized
that they would be adding to their eastbound trains, almost doubling
the size, but there would be no additions to the crews. Without an
increase in the size of the crew, these workers would be working much
harder for the same wages. The workers at the Pennsylvania Railroad
responded by taking control of the switches at the rail yard, which
then blocked the movement of the trains.3
Railroad workers all over did not feel that they deserved the wages
they had. They definitely did not deserve their wages being cut or
the workload increasing at the same time. For them the solution was
simple: strike.
On
July 13, 1877, right after the Baltimore and Ohio Company cut wages
by ten percent again forty workers walked out of the job. This starts
the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. By the end of July 13, workers
successfully blocked freight trains around the Baltimore area and in
West Virginia. These workers only allowed passenger traffic flow to
go by. Soon this strike escalated into violence. Violence broke out
in cities such as Baltimore, Chicago, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, St.
Louis and Kansas City. Some governors called in the state militias to
help get the violence under control. The militia in many places
responded with more violence; they fired their bayonets at the
strikers and innocent people were caught up in the fighting. When the
mobs fought back against the militias with fierce violence governors
in some states, like Maryland, asked President Rutherford Hayes if he
could send in the troops because of how bad the violence was. 4
In
some places, the militia did not respond with violence to the
strikers. Some saw the strike as reasonable and empathized with the
railroad workers. This occurred in Pittsburgh. When the militia
became sympathetic with the railroad workers campaign the governor
had to call in the National Guard to put a stop to the strikers’
violent tendencies. The National Guard came in, and like militias in
other cities, they used intense violence to push back the strikers.
The National Guard fired into a group; they not only hurt strikers
but innocents as well. Twenty civilians were killed which included at
least three young children. One newspaper in the area wrote, “Shot
in Cold Blood by the Roughs of Philadelphia. The Lexington of the
Labor Conflict at Hand. The Slaughter of Innocents.”5
It’s tragic how the strike shifted so quickly from being about
working disputes and wages into a battle of violence where innocent
people got killed. Also on July 25, 1877, violence broke out in
Chicago when five thousand vigilantes came in to try to restore order
but their presence ended up only increasing the bloodshed. The day
later was even worse, as more violence broke out which resulted in
the death of eighteen people.6
At this point, the strike, which started out with good intentions of
the strikers over disputes on wage relations, started to escalate
into a bloodbath of violence.
Pittsburgh
was hit hard with the violence. First, the National Guards shot into
crowds, hitting innocents. Secondly, fires went through the city,
burning over thirty buildings almost fifty passenger cars on trains
as well as over a thousand freight cars. There were millions in
damages. By the end of the strike, about forty people were killed in
just Pittsburgh alone. Over the entire country, there were more than
a hundred deaths.7
This strike was far from peaceful; it was one of the most violent of
the time. At the full strike, fourteen thousand rioters took to the
street to wreak mayhem. It seems like chaos was the norm for this
strike.
The
main activity of the strikers was to shut down the freight traffic on
the railroads. On July 21st
1877, strikers in the east of St. Louis shut down the freight traffic
there and not long after the 24th,
mobs that were in Chicago closed railroads in Baltimore, Maryland as
well as railroads in Illinois and Ohio. Strikers in other cities
later that day also shut down their railroads as well. 8
Even though the strike was pretty much over by the end of July, by
shutting down the railroads these strikers felt powerful, important
and noticeable.
There
were certain groups who were blamed for the Great Railroad Strike of
1877. Many people believed that foreigners were to blame. Some people
blamed the violence on Bohemians and Germans; while others say the
event was a lot like how Paris was during the reign of the Commune
that happened in 1870 not long before the strike. Another possible
theory is that the strike came out of Marxist ideas that in some
states made anti-union sentiment grow. A prominent person, Governor
Cullom of Illinois, believed that it was simply the unemployed and
idle people that sparked the strike.9
Some say that the strike was not completely made up of just railroad
workers and that many people that made up the mobs were just lawless
violent people. In Chicago, the police arrested Mr. Clinch, a man who
was a prominent activist of the present lawless movement. He was
present during the attacks on the police and he liked to facilitate
violence.10
Even though lawless men were part of the strike for the violence
aspect, there was still railroad workers part of it because of their
grievances. "The strike," an anonymous merchant in
Baltimore said, "is not a revolution of fanatics willing to
fight for an idea. It is a revolt of working men against low prices
of labor, which have not been accomplished with corresponding low
prices of food, clothing and house rent.11”
More realistically, it was probably a combination of factors that
truly influenced the spark that started the strike and the depression
that was occurring probably had some effect on influencing the
strike.”
The
strike may have lasted only a few weeks but it will forever be etched
into the past of United States labor history as a bloody, intensely
violent strike in which not only were innocents killed and injure but
also strikers themselves did not achieve much out of the strike. One
thing that this strike did do is set a precedent for strikes to come.
Strikes continued throughout the 19th
century as labor strikes related to the railroads occurred again from
1884 to 1886 and from the years 1888 to 1889 and finally again in
1894.12
The Great Railroad Strike was the first major rail strike in the
United States to occur. The strike also misused the railroad network
that was needed for national unity, without this network, chaos was
wreaked throughout major cities. As much as we would wish to forget,
this is a part of our history. The bloodshed is important to remember
because it shows how labors can only take so much abuse before they
snap, turn to violence, and scream: strike!
1
Lesh, Bruce. "Using Primary Sources to Teach the Rail Strike of
1877." OAH Magazine of History (Organization of American
Historians), 1999: 38-47 JSTOR.
2
Digital History . Digital History . 2013.
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&psid=3189
(accessed April 29, 2013).
3
Digital History . Digital History . 2013.
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&psid=3189
(accessed April 29, 2013).
4
Digital History . Digital History . 2013.
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&psid=3189
(accessed April 29, 2013).
5
Digital History . Digital History . 2013.
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&psid=3189
(accessed April 29, 2013).
6
St. Louis Research Project. East St. Louis Action Research
Project. 2000.
http://www.eslarp.uiuc.edu/ibex/archive/vignettes/1877_rr_strike.htm
(accessed April 29, 2013).
7
Digital History . Digital History . 2013.
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&psid=3189
(accessed April 29, 2013).
8
St. Louis Research Project. East St. Louis Action Research
Project. 2000.
http://www.eslarp.uiuc.edu/ibex/archive/vignettes/1877_rr_strike.htm
(accessed April 29, 2013).
9
St. Louis Research Project. East St. Louis Action Research
Project. 2000.
http://www.eslarp.uiuc.edu/ibex/archive/vignettes/1877_rr_strike.htm
(accessed April 29, 2013).
10
"Railroads and the Making of Modern America." Pittsburgh
Daily Post . 28 1877, July .
http://railroads.unl.edu/documents/view_document.php?views%5B0%5D=Strike&rends%5B0%5D=newspaper&publication=The+Daily+Post&per_page=20&page=2&id=rail.str.0295
(accessed May 1, 2013).
11
Digital History . Digital History . 2013.
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&psid=3189
(accessed April 29, 2013).
12
Digital History . Digital History . 2013.
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&psid=3189
(accessed April 29, 2013).
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