The Fight Over Jobs, 1877-2024: An Accounting of Events Distorted, Suppressed or Ignored

By Fred Siegmund

Americans work "at will" and can be fired or laid off at any time. Work and the boss can be difficult; sometimes we strike, picket and protest. Take the time back in July 1877 after the Pennsylvania Railroad cut wages 20 percent and the Pittsburgh superintendent laid off half his conductors, flagmen and brakemen. Striking crews blocked the

• Language: English
• Publisher: SiegmundIndie
• Release date: Apr 30, 2024
• ISBN: 9798990242715

Book preview

I

Part I - Searching for Solidarity – 1877-1913

A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. . . . It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new – north as well as south.

---------Abraham Lincoln, from his House divided speech June 16, 1858

Many times Abraham Lincoln proved himself the best economist of his day as in the quotation above when he reminded the white community that slavery is also a system of cheap labor that will ultimately debase everyone who works for wages. Historical accounts of slavery concentrate on the ethical and moral objections, but Mr. Lincoln needed votes, which helps explain his appeal to working class self interest.

His words suggest a clear understanding that people who work for wages have common legal, social and economic interests. Since Lincoln’s time a few others in politics and the labor movement tried to persuade working people to recognize their common interests, but with limited success. After the civil war southern plantation owners lost the right to own slaves, but they adapted with share cropping and other repressive schemes to maintain the prewar system of cheap labor. Southern white working classes joined in the southern system of oppression, but they lowered their own wages and standard of living in the process. They did not recognize the common interests of labor.

In the struggle for labor rights in the 19th and 20th and 21st century brief periods of economic gain were followed by losses as the courts, business and politicians adapted to restore the supply of cheap labor. Many times the working class divided and some joined in support of repressive and violent tactics used against labor during repeated cycles of unrest. They did not recognize the common interests of labor. It is still so today.

1

Start with the Great Upheaval of 1877

It is cheap labor, more than any other fact, that most endangers our institutions, cheap labor serving corporate wealth, intent upon nothing but more wealth. Here is where capitalists make the gravest mistake, and the great strikes of the present year should be taken as a wholesome warning. Capitalists consider their direct interest in the cheap labor they hire, and not their indirect interest in the dearer labor that buys what wealth wishes to sell.

----------------from the Annals of the Great Strikes in the United States: A Reliable History and Graphic Description of the Cause and Thrilling Events of the Labor Strikes and Riots of 1877, Joseph A. Dacus, editor, St. Louis Republican, 1878

The great upheaval of 1877 erupted as a spontaneous reaction of angry railroad workers mostly unorganized by unions. It was not the beginning of organized labor, or labor law, or labor history, but the actions and reactions of business, labor, the courts and elected officials opened a new age of labor relations. The strikes came during the fourth year of a severe depression that started following the bankruptcy of Jay Cooke’s brokerage house and the collapse of Wall Street in 1873. Early measures of industrial production included indexed series of pig-iron production, coal production, cotton consumption, railroad revenues, merchandise imports and bank clearings. The combined index dropped 32 percent. Prices dropped 20 percent. Unemployment in New York reached 25 percent. Depression continued with little relief until 1879. (1)

The years after 1873 generated desperate homeless wandering the streets of American cities amid growing evidence of starvation. On January 13, 1874 15,000 of the hungry and unemployed assembled on Tompkins Square, New York demanding the government create jobs with public works projects. Even though organizers had a permit, city officials responded to public worries of violence and authorized mounted police to break up the rally, which ended in a riot. All we want is work organizers told the New York Times; they got their heads bashed instead. (2)

The Great Upheaval

The strikes of 1877 started following a cartel agreement by four major railroads for a second round of 10 percent wage cuts. The Baltimore and Ohio became the last of four major railroads to announce wage cuts on July 11th 1877. Strikes broke out July 16 at Camden Junction, Maryland and later the same day at Martinsburg, West Virginia. Strikes quickly spread to other states and other railroads in a mayhem of disruption and violence concentrated over ten days. Strikes that started in West Virginia, and Maryland triggered more strikes in Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Missouri. The railroads refused to recognize or acknowledge workers and rejected strike demands as their unilateral prerogative. Railroad officials demanded immediate police and militia action against the strikes, which city mayors, state governors and President Rutherford Hayes agreed to as their first response. Brute force provoked picketing strikers to disable locomotives, uncouple cars, block tracks and destroy property. (3)

Newspapers favored management and argued the railroads should never give in. Press accounts published comments demanding strikers should be shot like highway robbers. Women’s rights advocate Lucy Stone wrote in the Women’s Journal that The insurrection must be suppressed, if it costs the lives of a 100,000 and the destruction of every railroad in the country. Her comments were published on July 28, 1877 as the strike was winding down so perhaps she was swept up in the hysteria of the moment, but a women’s rights advocate might be expected to recognize the common interests of labor and the country. (4)

Before it was all over President Rutherford Hayes, Governor Henry H. Mathews of West Virginia, Mayor Ferdinand Latrobe of Baltimore, Governor John Lee Carroll of Maryland, Governor Thomas Young of Ohio, Governor John F. Hartranft of Pennsylvania, Governor Lucius Robinson of New York, Mayor Philip Becker of Buffalo, Mayor Monroe Heath of Chicago, Governor Shelby Cullom of Illinois, Governor John S. Phelps of Missouri, and Governor John B. McCreary of Kentucky all deployed military forces to do whatever was necessary to break the strikes.

Four Days on the Baltimore and Ohio

At Camden Junction near Baltimore about noon Monday July 16, 1877 forty locomotive firemen and another twenty or thirty brakemen stepped off their trains and refused to work and then hung about the yards to convince company scabs from taking their place. Mayor Ferdinand Latrobe agreed to call in police and three were arrested, charged with threatening to riot. Others working in Baltimore as box makers, sawyers, and fruit can makers joined them in support, but passenger trains and some freight trains continued to run; all remained peaceful.

The same afternoon the strike spread to Martinsburg, West Virginia, another important Baltimore and Ohio rail junction. Locomotive fireman took over trains and blocked tracks in and out of Martinsburg while crowds gathered to cheer them on. When city police in Martinsburg could not keep order, Baltimore and Ohio Vice-President John King demanded troops, but West Virginia could not afford a National Guard. Instead Governor Henry M. Matthews sent volunteers of the Berkeley Light Guard Infantry that arrived the morning of July 17 with Colonel John Faulkner, 75 troops and orders to prevent obstruction of trains.

Thomas Sharp of the B&O tried to move a cattle train out of Martinsburg, but one of the strikers, William Vandergriff, turned a switch to sidetrack the train and then stood guard with a pistol. As the train approached John Poisel jumped from the train to challenge Vandergriff who shot Poisel in the temple, except the ball he shot only broke the skin. Poisel and several others armed with rifles returned fire at close range. Vandergriff collapsed and died later from his wounds, but the scab crew left the train. Colonel Faulkner decided to withdraw his outnumbered men. He complained Most of them are railroad men and they will not respond. The force is too formidable for me to cope with.

B & O president John Garrett demanded Governor Matthews call for federal troops. The governor assured Garrett another light guard unit was on its way to Martinsburg. When it arrived Wednesday morning under command of Colonel Robert Delaplain all was quiet even though strikers were on the streets and trains were not running. The Colonel worried the troops might further exasperate the strikers and so after delay and deliberation he notified Governor Mathews two hundred federal troops would be necessary. Governor Mathews wired President Hayes: Owing to unlawful combinations and domestic violence now existing at Martinsburg and other points along the line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, it is impossible with any force at my command to execute the laws of the State. I therefore call upon Your Excellency for the assistance of the United States military to protect the law-abiding people of the State against domestic violence, and to maintain the supremacy of the law.

President Hayes stalled. West Virginia needed to be in a state of insurrection to justify federal troops, while Governor Mathews carefully avoided using the word insurrection in his telegram since there was a strike in Martinsburg, not an insurrection. When John Garrett received notice of Governor Mathews telegram, he wrote directly to President Hayes telling him that West Virginia had done all it could to suppress the insurrection and so this great public highway can only be restored for public use by the interposition of U.S. forces. He went on to warn President Hayes the strike will expand if nothing is done now.

President Hayes owed his job to railroad interests given that Tom Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad helped arranging the deal to give him the disputed electors in the Hayes-Tilden election. He ordered all persons engaged in said unlawful and insurrectionary proceedings to disperse and retire peaceably to their respective abodes on or before twelve o'clock, noon, the nineteenth day of July instant, and hereafter abandon said combinations and submit themselves to the laws and constituted authorities of said State … (5)

When Federal troops under Colonel William French arrived in Martinsburg the morning of July 19th they found 1,500 freight cars and 73 locomotives blocking the tracks but no riotous crowds. By afternoon they had a coal train ready to leave for Baltimore under heavy guard, but it proved difficult to find a crew. Management offered substantial pay increases to at least five crews, but all refused. The Newspapers reported a scab engineer, known only as Bedford, was about to leave when his wife arrived, mounted the cab, and with agonizing cries besought him to leave the position. Bedford left his locomotive, but another engineer finally agreed to drive train number 423, which departed Martinsburg late on July 19.

By July 20 officials at Martinsburg declared the strike was over. However, strikes and strikers remained west of Martinsburg at Cumberland, Maryland and at Keyser, Grafton and Wheeling, West Virginia and Newark, Ohio. At Cumberland coal miners, C&O canal boatman and a hellion of young boys, idlers and vagabonds were busy blocking tracks and breaking into freight cars. President Garrett of the B & O met with Governor John Lee Carroll at a Baltimore hotel to demand Maryland National Guard troops to break the strike at Cumberland. Governor Carroll ordered the 5th and 6th Maryland National Guard regiments to assemble at Baltimore armories in preparation to board a B & O train for Cumberland.

The Baltimore Sun reported strikers in Baltimore maintained perfect order in contrast to the serious disturbance" at Martinsburg. By 5:00 p.m. Friday July 20 a troop train was ready at Camden Station to head for Cumberland. Less than half the troops had arrived at the two armories and an impatient Brigadier General James Herbert wanted the City Hall emergency alarm set off to speed up arrivals. It sounded at 6:35 p.m. as the Baltimore working class was leaving work, which brought the curious into the streets around the armories. By 7:30 p.m. thousands filled the streets. The 5th regiment of 250 men marched through and made it to the Depot, but they marched through angry crowds howling abuse and throwing rocks and paving stones; some troops were injured.

Troops of the 6th regiment made several attempts to leave their armory but turned back in a hail of paving stones until finally the troops started shooting. The crowds scattered and several companies of the 6th regiment continued their march to Camden depot with soldiers shooting at the crowds and into restaurants and stores as they marched.

A Baltimore Sun reporter looked on: The streets were quickly deserted and the detachment passed by the Sun office, still firing random shots over their shoulders with apparent recklessness. By the time troops arrived at Camden station ten civilians were dead with twenty-three more sprawled in the streets with gunshot wounds. Baltimore looked like a butcher’s pen. Two more would die to bring the death toll to twelve.

Some of the soldiers dropped out of the march and got away to change into civilian clothes. Only 59 soldiers of 120 of the 6th regiment made it to Camden depot, but they had to charge through crowds with fixed bayonets to get the last few blocks. Police sealed off the depot, but a crowd of 15,000 roamed into the rail yards and circled behind the station to ransack the telegraph office, and set fire to several passenger coaches. The locomotive crew wisely deserted their train even though militia and Baltimore police were able to get in and protect Camden depot. Rioting continued into the evening but petered out by 1:00 in the morning. Saturday was mostly quiet with minor scuffles.

The two National Guard regiments did not leave for Cumberland. Governor Carroll agreed to request federal troops for Baltimore at the insistence of B & O president Garrett. President Hayes promptly authorized troops. General William Barry at nearby Fort McHenry was ordered to protect Baltimore under orders from Governor Carroll. U.S. Major General Winfield Scott Hancock brought troops down from New York. By Sunday July 22, over a thousand troops with Gatling guns and artillery pieces maintained quiet. Police arrested at least ten for inciting riots. The strike was over in Baltimore by Sunday. Trains started running in and out of Camden station on Monday. It would be several more days before trains would run through Cumberland on the B & O.

Railroad workers complained few of them participated in the Baltimore riots as the newspapers correctly reported, but it made no difference to Governor Carroll who lectured them: You are responsible for the violence that his been done whether or not you actually engaged in it or not.

Striking B & O rail crews passed out handbills to publicize their cause. They complained of three hourly wage reductions in three years, a lack of full time work and no pay check on payday: more than a month delay to pay for time worked. Crews were frequently detained in Martinsburg because the B & O would not issue passes to return home by passenger train. They could be stranded for days waiting for a freight train and compelled to pay room and board in company hotels. In some slow months they had no pay at all and could not support themselves or their families working for the B & O. Some of the men could not pay debts and had their wages attached, grounds for dismissal on the B & O R.R.

Another B & O vice president William Keyser answered worker complaints in writing. Rescinding the wage cut would mean all discipline, all law, and all order would be sapped to their foundations and the principle would be established that a small minority of men, discontented with their real or imaginary grievances, could assume the position that the great mass of their colleagues should be forced into compulsory idleness on their account. (6)

Pennsylvania

News of the B & O strikes spread to Pittsburgh, Altoona, Harrisburg, Johnstown, Philadelphia, and Reading Pennsylvania. In Pittsburgh many hated Tom Scott and his Pennsylvania Railroad Empire. The city’s businessmen were bitter enemies of the road on account of the discrimination in freights that existed.

Pittsburgh----On Thursday, July 19, right after the second ten percent wage cut, the Pennsylvania RR superintendent at Pittsburgh, Robert Pitcairn, announced single trains would be converted to doubleheaders, effective immediately. Turning two trains into one eliminated the jobs of a conductor, a flagman and two brakemen for each train and made work more dangerous for those who remained. As at Baltimore and Martinsburg, crews stopped work, and took control of switches to block trains in and out of Pittsburgh. Soon sympathetic mill workers, coal miners and the unemployed described variously as tramps, vagrants and idlers showed up at the Twenty-eighth Street grade crossing in a growing crowd of supporters.

Chief clerk of the Pittsburgh Division, David Watt, demanded Pittsburgh Mayor William McCarthy supply ten police to break up the strikers. When he refused Watt found and paid ten recently laid off police officers to go with him in a futile effort to open switches and run trains. Strikers allowed passenger trains to run, but striking rail crews uncoupled and parked freight cars on the tracks to block freight trains. By 5:00 p.m. Watt was back at the mayor’s office demanding fifty more police before getting Allegheny County Sheriff Richard H. Fife to take up his cause. Late in the evening July 19 Sheriff Fife climbed on a pile of lumber to speak to the crowds who answered his threats and go home orders with hoots and howls.

Pitcairn and railroad attorneys convinced Sheriff Fife to demand National Guard troops in a telegram to Pennsylvania Governor John Hartranft. He was on a western vacation as a guest of the Pennsylvania Railroad but left written authority to Adjutant General James Latta to act in his place. Latta ordered General Alfred Pearson, commander of the 6th division of the Pennsylvania National Guard, to assemble troops from Pittsburgh to break the strike. The 18th regiment assembled first followed by the 14th, and 19th regiments.

Striking rail crews assembled in mass early July 20 and voted resolutions and a committee of five to present demands. Vice president Alexander Cassett told Robert Pitcairn Have no further talk with them. They’ve asked for things we cannot grant them at all. It isn’t worth while to discuss the matter further. Nine hundred freight cars sat idle blocking tracks; no trains could pass.

As Friday progressed more strikers and sympathizers joined the crowds at Twenty-eighth Street and east through the yards and tracks out to a depot at Torrens. Rail officials would not restore wages or make any concession, but demanded more troops. Pittsburgh militia units were slow to arrive for duty and rail officials did not believe they could be trusted to fight their striking friends and neighbors. Latta shared their doubts and so called the rest of the 6th division from Harrisburg and shortly after the 1st division from Philadelphia that would arrive on trains arranged by railroad officials. The 1st division had regiments totaling 1,400 troops. Latta and Cassatt ignored local warnings that Philadelphia troops could provoke violence. Cassatt called it the duty of the government to open the road regardless of the consequences.

Early Saturday afternoon July 21, six hundred troops from several regiments of the 1st Division of the Pennsylvania National Guard stationed in Philadelphia arrived in Pittsburgh under command of General Robert L Brinton. Angry mobs at Harrisburg, Altoona and Johnstown stoned both trains that arrived battered with windows smashed out. The Pittsburgh regiments already there supported or sympathized with strikers. Rather than break the strike they lounged about chatting with friends and neighbors.

Thousands stood about near the depot and along the tracks: miners, steel workers, mechanics, women, children, tramps, idlers and strikers. All remained calm in mid afternoon when rail officials insisted on moving freight trains. Cassett, and Pitcairn marched with the Philadelphia regiments as they made their way to the rail yards. Troops marched in four columns dragging a Gatling gun. Sheriff Fife and local Pittsburgh police walked ahead to arrest strike leaders after an attorney for the Pennsylvania Railroad prevailed on a state judge to write a warrant for the arrest of fifteen strike leaders.

Crowds estimated from 5,000 to 7,000 hissed and booed marchers marching with fixed bayonets. The march rapidly escalated into violence with Sheriff Fife making arrests and General Pearson deciding We must clear the tracks. Crowds along the tracks and the surrounding hillsides taunted troops and threw a hail of rocks and debris down on soldiers. Someone apparently grabbed at a soldier’s rifle that triggered shooting directly into the crowds. Repeated volleys followed from other soldiers over several minutes killing at least sixteen and wounding at least twenty-seven more.

The eight Pennsylvania House and Senate members who later signed the Report of the Committee appointed to investigate the Railroad Riots in July 1877 offered their opinion of the shooting. Your committee have found, from the evidence, that General Pearson did not give the orders to fire, but we are of the opinion that he would have been justified in so doing, and that if he had been present at the time, he would not have been justified in withholding such an order for a moment later than the firing actually occurred. Neither can any blame be attached to the troops themselves.

The shootings provoked an angry surging tide of humanity descending on the rail yards. Rioters fanned out through the streets and rail facilities late Saturday evening and into Sunday breaking into gun stores, looting freight cars and setting fires that burned through the night and into the next afternoon. Thousands looked down from the hillsides. The outnumbered Philadelphia troops took refuge in a roundhouse and machine shops. General Brinton had a Gatling gun and artillery in the roundhouse, but rioters were determined to attack it in the early hours of rioting. Rioters stole an artillery piece of the Pittsburgh militia and trained it on the machine shop, but General Brinton drove them off in a hail of gunfire; at least eleven lay in the street dead or wounded. The Roundhouse was at the bottom of a gentle slope and rioters released burning freight cars to coast down the hill into the Roundhouse. Troops trapped there were able to post pickets, derail some of the cars and hose down their roundhouse haven to survive the night.

About 8:00 a.m. fire spread close to the roundhouse making it necessary to evacuate. Troops towed their Gatling gun and marched east on Pennsylvania Avenue in four columns intending to find safety at the United States Arsenal. The still enraged crowds lined the sidewalks and leaned out of windows cursing troops or followed along the march. One had a breech loading rifle and a cartridge belt full of ammunition to shoot at troops. More rioters fell in behind the march exchanging gunfire with troops. Bullets hit soldiers and bystanders alike as the march progressed eastward. When they reached the arsenal the commander there allowed the wounded to stay but worried about more violence and refused admission to the Philadelphia troops. They kept marching east out of Pittsburgh until they reached the relative safety of the Allegheny County workhouse.

Trains did not move in lawless Pittsburgh on Sunday July 22 when the Pittsburgh regiments had disbanded and the Philadelphia regiments were gone, Sheriff Fife stayed home and Mayor McCarthy and the chief of police tried to organize the few scattered police left at station houses. Looting continued in the rail yards as large numbers hauled wagonloads of booty up the hillsides: barrels of flour, barrels of whisky, bales of cotton, crates of fruit, or shoes, clothes, books, and bibles. News of the rioting spread to surrounding areas and more showed up to have a look or join the looters. Thousands jammed the streets so you could hardly get through.

Fires continued to spread, or be spread, through the day Sunday; rioters cut fire hoses. Rail cars loaded with petroleum and coal helped fuel fires that destroyed 39 buildings of the Pennsylvania Railroad including the depot, a depot hotel, its surrounding buildings, roundhouse facilities along with 126 locomotives, 46 passenger cars and over 1,200 freight cars. Fire left the tracks from the union depot out through the rail yards warped and twisted, ties burned and destroyed.

Fires destroyed other property including a 150 foot grain elevator even though officials complained to rioters it was not owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad, but to no avail; It’s owned by a damned monopoly, let it burn. Crowds cheered as it burned for three hours and collapsed in a heap of rubble. Fires spread and destroyed buildings of the Adams Express Agency, the Pan Handle Railroad freight depot, twelve brick tenements, a blacksmith shop, a cooper shop, a furniture factory, and at least twenty frame houses.

Sunday Governor Hartranft made the call for federal troops. Still vacationing in Wyoming, he wired President Hayes that Pennsylvania needed federal troops to assist in quelling mobs. In the second he claimed domestic insurrection already exists in Pennsylvania which state authorities are unable to suppress…

Rioting petered out by late Sunday evening before federal troops arrived. Monday morning nearly two miles of Pittsburgh lay in smoldering ruins. Some of the dead did not get counted, but the coroner’s office reported receiving twenty-four bodies; three were railroaders; five were Philadelphia guard troops. The strike was over in Pittsburgh, but not in Pennsylvania. (7)

Reading—The 1,500 residents of Reading, Pennsylvania who worked for the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad learned what was going on in Pittsburgh from their Sunday paper, the Reading Eagle. As the riots in Pittsburgh were ending Sunday angry crowds started ripping up tracks and vandalizing railroad property. They dumped oil and set fire to a timber truss railroad bridge. Monday they blocked trains and uncoupled cars.

The President of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad, Franklin Gowen, did not bother contacting civil authorities but had his general manager speak directly to Major General William Bolton of the 2nd division of the Pennsylvania National Guard. Bolton promptly ordered the 4th and 16th regiments to Reading: two hundred and fifty-three troops. It was 7:30 in the evening Monday, July 23 when seven companies of the fourth regiment arrived including one of the companies known as the Easton Grays.

Large crowds blocked a train on the Philadelphia & Reading tracks leading into the Penn depot in Reading. To get to the depot troops from the Easton Grays marched on the tracks through a cut at the bottom of a 30 foot high embankment lined with the bitter and angry residents of Reading. They were armed with piles of rocks and boulders they heaved at the troops below amid a steady stream of taunts and ridicule. There were reports of pistol shots, but injuries were cuts and bruises.

When the Easton Grays made it through the cut and approached the depot and the Penn Street grade crossing they opened fire into the crowds without a word of warning. Six were killed. At least fifty had gunshot wounds including five Reading policemen. More would die later for a death toll of thirteen. The shooting set off a riot. Rioters set fires, tore up tracks, cut telegraph poles and vandalized and robbed freight cars. The 16th regiment of the Pennsylvania National Guard arrived the next morning and took over the depot; the 16th regiment refused to shoot rioters who continued to block tracks and make threats to destroy more railroad property.

Federal troops arrived Tuesday to restore order. The troops of 4th and 16th regiments left Reading, but the Easton Grays had to march home; train crews refused transportation. Tracks were repaired and trains ran Wednesday, July 25, the strike was over in Reading. The July 24, 1877 edition of the Reading Eagle, included a brief assessment of the troops. The shooting down of quiet, inoffensive citizens at Seventh and Penn Streets, and the wounding of good citizens who were standing in the doors of their residences by the militia is little better than cold-blooded murder.

Philadelphia—The Philadelphia Inquirer announced the strikers have declared war on society. Mayor William Stokely apparently agreed. He refused to allow union groups to hold rallies in support of striking trainmen. Police blocked a meeting hall and clubbed protesters on Tuesday. Wednesday two efforts went ahead to hold outdoor mass meetings, but police broke them up, charging in with Billie clubs. More attempts came Thursday at two locations. Rallies stalled police were so aggressive, but 1,500 assembled at another site before 180 police charged into the crowd with Billie clubs and shut it down. Some of the teenagers in the crowd stayed on the streets and eventually exchanged gunfire with police. An 18 year old was killed. Mayor Stokely maintained no meetings could take place for the present. (8)

New York

In the state of New York rail crews took over locomotives and blocked tracks on the Erie Railroad at Hornell, New York. The strike on the New York Central and Lake Shore Railroads started at Buffalo before spreading to Rochester, Syracuse and Albany.

Hornell, NY--The Erie Railroad was bankrupt as a result of financial manipulation and looting by Jim Fisk, Jay Gould and Daniel Drew and so controlled by a court appointed receiver named Hugh Jewett. In June, before the July 1 wage cuts, Erie RR workers in the western division at Hornell New York elected a Committee of Fifty to approach Jewett and explore restoring wages and other grievances. Crews were forced to live in one-room company shacks at confiscatory rents. They were forced to pay train fare home after a day’s run; management refused them return passes. Jewett claimed he could not restore wages and rejected all demands, but after considering the matter for several days train crews and maintenance workers took a vote to keep working. Then Jewett fired all fifty members of the committee for flagrant violations of discipline.

On Friday, July 20 the firings and news of the other strikes provoked a shutdown of the Erie RR at Hornell, a place in western New York vulnerable to shut downs as a major transfer point of three branch lines, north to Buffalo, and east and west. It had a concentration of two hundred working in the maintenance shops and five hundred more engineers, firemen, conductors, brakemen and trainmen in residence.

Word of the strike spread and brakemen, trackmen and trainmen from around New York boarded trains bound for Hornell, hoping to enlarge the strike. The company responded by diverting trains to branch lines and finding ways to keep more strikers away from Hornell, but at least five hundred strikers had freight trains sidetracked at Hornell where 700 cars blocked tracks with cars uncoupled and pins tossed away.

In lieu of negotiations Jewett complained to New York Governor and Erie Board member Lucius Robinson who ordered troops to Hornell: four hundred from the 54th regiment of Rochester and 200 from the 110th regiment of Elmira. A separate train with a load of ammunition and camp equipment arrived later, but there were delays that infuriated Governor Robinson who declared martial law before ordering additional Brooklyn militia regiments to Hornell.

Management attempts to move stalled trains out of Hornell on Monday generated a variety of resistance. Passenger trains with mail cars were sidetracked, the passenger cars detached and passengers stranded; mail cars were allowed through. To keep scab crews from leaving Hornell strikers guarded switches to sidetrack trains and had their wives prepare buckets of thick soap to spread on the tracks of an uphill grade west of town. When a westbound train slowed to a crawl, striking brakemen jumped aboard and set the brakes.

The additional troops left Brooklyn on a train provided by the Erie Railroad. The train had to stop multiple times to repair tracks torn up by strikers, but it finally pulled into Hornell. A thousand troops sealed off the yards and cleared the tracks but there were no crews willing to run trains. Erie management at Hornell agreed to give up rent on company shacks and the Hornell strikers went back to work; trains started running late Wednesday, July 26, after six days of strikes.

Buffalo and Beyond--The strike on the Erie spread to Buffalo, which had ten rail lines into the city including the Erie, New York Central and Lake Shore railroads. Crowds of several thousand surrounded the Lake Shore roundhouse and spent Sunday afternoon blocking freight trains. A single company of twenty-two troops from the 65th National Guard regiment of Buffalo attempted to clear the Roundhouse. An unruly mob howled abuse and tossed rocks at troops who threatened to shoot, but elected to withdraw.

Monday a mob of strikers and sympathizers took over the Erie and Lake Shore maintenance shops and the outnumbered troops could not take them back. Crowds of several thousand blocked tracks, uncoupled cars and pulled crews off stalled trains. Late in the day a passenger train with a coach filled with troops arrived and shooting erupted as rioters swarmed onto the train and exchanged gunfire with soldiers. There were severe gunshot wounds on both sides, but only one confirmed death in spite of reports of counting nine bodies. Travel came to a halt on all ten Buffalo rail lines.

Tuesday another mob ranged about town pressing mill, factory and stockyard workers to join a general strike. Some left work to join the throng but the strike started to lose energy by Tuesday and Buffalo Mayor Philip Becker swore in sixty more police and added a curfew for 10 o’clock. The sheriff added three hundred special deputies and the Grand Army of the Republic supplied volunteers to patrol Buffalo. Governor Robinson did not hesitate to order more National Guard regiments to Buffalo: the 49th regiment from Auburn, the eighth regiment from New York City and the 74th regiment diverted from Hornell. He threatened strikers with prison under state law making it a crime to obstruct rail traffic and offered $500 reward for information leading to convictions.

Troops guarded depots and spread out over nearly ten miles of rail yards east of town while police worked to restore order in town. A mob attempted to burn the New York Central Depot, but police were well enough organized by then to go on the offensive and Bash ‘em away from the depot. Trains started running by Thursday July 26.

Elsewhere in New York William Vanderbilt shut down rail traffic on his New York Central, but periodically offered pronouncements to reporters camped outside his mansion at Saratoga, New York. I am proud of the men of the Central Road, and my great trust in them is founded on their intelligent appreciation of the business situation at the present time. If they shall stand firm in the present crisis it will be a triumph of good sense over blind fury and fanaticism.

Pressured further about switchmen and brakemen who earn $.90 a day after repeated wage cuts he replied wage cuts are a fact of life. … Intelligent men on the New York Central know that, although I may own the majority of the stock in the Central, my interests are as much affected in degree as theirs, and although I may have my millions and they the rewards of their daily toil, still we are about equal in the end.

Strike leaders stalled hoping Vanderbilt would respond to their grievances, but Governor Robinson sent more troops. By July 24, the Third Division of the New York National Guard from Albany, and the Ninth Regiment from New York City had Albany surrounded and officers there pledged to clear the tracks blood or no blood. The Eighth New York regiment was busy clearing out Syracuse and Rochester. On July 26, Vanderbilt posted notice for New York Central employees to return to work by July 30 or be dismissed.

New York City-----The rail strikes did not make it to New York City, but organized labor officials planned a rally for Tompkins Square on July 25 to show solidarity with strikers. The mayor gave in and granted a permit and then worried it would be a repeat of the 1874 rally. He had the entire police force ready and called out the first and second divisions of the New York National Guard. When the first of nearly 20,000 started arriving they found a large sign posted with the slogan Don’t Unchain the Tiger. A message below counseled non-violence and made it clear the Tiger was a working class mob.

The principal organizer, Justus Schwab, addressed the crowd. Fellow workman the newspapers have stated we are a mob, incendiaries, and I know not what else that is bad. I ask you by our orderly conduct tonight to disprove these base and calumnious assertions. Both Justice Schwab and John Swinton of the New York Sun who spoke at the rally recognized the early but growing tendency to label working class gatherings as an unruly and dangerous mob. As the upheavals of 1877 slowed down they wanted to promote collective solidarity while steering the working class to conform to middle class notions of proper behavior.

The needs of the working class during the late years of the 19th century would bring unity and the growth of trade unions, which frightened the propertied classes. The rout of previous riots like the Tompkins Square riot of 1874 encouraged the worriers to feel the contagion that started riots would not infect the truly honest and well meaning laboring masses. Still over the next twenty years the press would describe labor rallies as potential riots and insurrection.

Over 8,000 police and troops looked on as speakers addressed the crowds; there was no riot, only speeches. One speaker wanted to know why three million unemployed vagabonds on the verge of starvation could expect nothing from President Hayes but the hangman’s rope and the soldier’s bullet. (9)

Illinois and Missouri

In Illinois at Chicago thousands gathered for days of street corner lectures, speeches and harangues before a general strike turned into rioting and death. In Illinois at East St. Louis, rail crews voted to strike beginning Monday July 23, which quickly expanded to a general strike in St. Louis.

Chicago-----Chicago was home to the leaders of the Workingmen’s Party of the United States (WPUS), a group combined from the European International Workingmen’s Party and American socialist and labor parties. Three years of depression brought unity to disparate groups of foreign born: German, Polish Bohemian, Irish, Scandinavian living in ethnic districts. Many were factory workers and many worked outdoors as dock workers, lumbershovers, coalheavers as well as railroad workers. Many could only find seasonal jobs and spent months every year with no employment. In spite of ethnic and philosophical differences representatives agreed to unite during meetings at Philadelphia in the summer of 1876; they would all work as one to improve life for the working class.

The Workingmen’s Party had several outspoken and articulate speakers. One was Albert Parsons, a native American living in Chicago. Well before the rail strikes of 1877 the Chicago Tribune decided Parsons was a parcel of blatant Communist demagogues. On Saturday, July 21, Parsons spoke several times on street corners and at Sacks Hall where he attacked the railroad kings and the capitalist press, which he accused of being spokesmen for monopolies and tyrants. He presented the socialist program and demanded government ownership of railroads.

The Workingmen’s Party organized another mass meeting at Market and Madison Streets for Monday evening July 23. Parsons was the third speaker. Thousands of the unskilled and unemployed laborers listened as he denounced the railroads who compelled their employees to work for ninety cents a day and expected them to feed and clothe their families. He ripped into the press who never bothered to visit the factories to see how the toiling millions give away their lives to the rich bosses of the country. He urged them to join the Grand Army of Labor and become members of the Workingmen’s party in search of change and a better life.

Parson’s speeches and the Workingmen’s Party efforts to unify the working class of Chicago horrified city officials and the bosses of Chicago, already worried by the news from Baltimore, Martinsburg and Pittsburgh. Chicago Mayor Monroe Heath worried enough to use emergency procedures to mobilize two regiments of state militia, to authorize the hire of up to 5,000 citizen-deputies in addition to regular police, and advised the better citizens to arm in self defense.

The rail strike started Monday evening when John Hanlon, described as a dark complexioned man with chin whiskers and a pipe in his mouth convinced switchmen to leave their Chicago jobs on the Michigan Central Railroad, followed by maintenance shop workers and yard crews. Tuesday morning Hanlon and forty strikers roamed through Michigan Central rail yards, shops and buildings attempting to persuade others to leave work. They moved on to the Illinois Central, the Baltimore and Ohio and other rail yards with the intention to shut off freight service.

On Tuesday others joined the rail workers in a mass of five hundred strikers, along with some teenage boys, tramps and vagabonds. By noon they roamed through the streets into the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy yards and then to the Rock Island yelling and hooting to get people to leave work; some hesitated, many left to join the throngs. From there it was on to the stockyards, packing houses, mills and factories through the streets that expanded into a spontaneous general strike that paralyzed rail traffic and brought Chicago commerce to a halt. Officials blamed Albert Parsons, who was fired from his job as a typesetter and then police arrested and grilled him for two hours before advising him to leave town: You are in danger. The Workingmen’s Party stayed focused and announced strike demands including a 20 percent wage increase and an eight-hour day. Several thousand attended another rally Tuesday evening, which was broken up by more than a hundred police. Police did not recognize the Workingmen’s Party as a source of order compared to the alternatives.

The alternatives came Wednesday morning July 25 when gangs of fifty to several hundred roamed north side and west side streets attempting to enforce and extend the strike while police and their new deputies demanded everyone go to work or stay home. Police were ready with guns and Billie clubs, but they could not always intimidate the angry, energized crowds that found ways to fight back in what turned into several days of violent street fighting.

At around six in the evening Wednesday 1,500 milled about the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy RR switching yards off West Sixteenth at Halsted Street blocking trains and vandalizing buildings when eighteen police piled out of an omnibus and charged at the crowds, guns drawn. The massive crowd on Halsted Street advanced and forced police to retreat. They retreated on the run until reinforcements arrived and they went back on the offensive, charging and firing directly into the crowd. A press reporter declared They faltered not in the least but stood up under fire like war scarred veterans or men resolved to perish for their cause rather than abandon it. Police wounded nine and killed one; two more would die.

In spite of the shooting and repeated police charges the rioting continued. Mayor Heath wanted federal troops, which Governor Shelby Cullom agreed to request Wednesday afternoon. President Hayes authorized the 9th and 22nd infantry and an artillery unit; six companies of the 9th and two companies of the 22nd infantry arrived late Thursday July 26.

Large numbers of rioters remained through Wednesday night and as many as 3,000 returned Thursday morning stoning streetcars, cutting phone lines and vandalizing property. Between thirty and forty police charged at the crowds on Halsted Street with guns and Billie clubs, chasing them across the Halsted Street viaduct and down a slope toward Sixteenth Street. At Sixteenth Street the police ran into a massive, angry mob of at least 5,000, which surged at the outnumbered police bombarding them with rocks and stones.

The badly outnumbered police fired directly into the crowd. Rioters fell with bullet wounds, but the furious screaming mob had the embattled police isolated and nearly out of ammunition when more police, mounted police and militia troops arrived to carry the fight. Finally, the crowds scattered, mostly south down Halsted Street, fanning onto side streets. Rioters entered Turner Hall at Twelfth and Halsted to escape pursing police who charged in after them to beat rioters, the proprietor, and beat and shoot members of a furniture workers union meeting there. There were many gunshot wounds and broken skulls; at least one at the meeting was killed.

Troops, police and vigilantes totaled 5,000 by late Thursday when the strike and rioting finally petered out; 18 died, officially; none were police or troops, several hundred more were wounded. Trains left Chicago Sunday July 28, with military protection. The rioting in Chicago revealed sharp class divisions. The strike unified the unskilled working class that felt the aristocrats and monopolists looked down on them as a despised and inferior group. The middle class blamed the strike on drinking and alcohol while those with political power made plans to build an armory and expanded the police and militia. (10)

East St. Louis and St. Louis----On Saturday July 21, members of the Workingmen’s Party took part in a meeting of rail workers in East St. Louis, Illinois. They adopted a resolution of support for the eastern strikers. The impoverished unemployed left their tenements and hovels for bigger gatherings Sunday that turned into a daylong carnival of marching, singing and cheering during a succession of incendiary street speeches. That evening train and track crews had the resolve to call a strike. The men elected an Executive Committee to govern decisions, which started with General Order Number 1: stop all freight trains. They took over the depot, guarded the freight yards against vandalism and banned alcohol.

Monday several of the nine rail lines through East St. Louis offered to restore wages, but the Executive Committee wanted all lines to settle at once, a decision that turned out to be a mistake. Neither East St. Louis Mayor John Bowman, nor St. Louis Mayor Henry Overstolz had enough police to cope with the crowds and so did nothing, at first. Passenger and mail trains were allowed to pass but no freight trains moved through East St. Louis for several days. However, James Wilson, the receiver of the bankrupt St. Louis and Southeastern RR had friends in the Hayes Administration. He demanded federal troops to end the shut down and President Hayes ordered six companies of the twenty-third infantry to St. Louis from Leavenworth, Kansas. Wilson also successfully convinced a Federal Court judge that the U.S. Marshall service could be used to break strikes against railroads in receivership.

Monday evening still bigger crowds gathered at Lucas Market in the heart of St. Louis. Speakers used three platforms to speak and urge defiance; capital has overridden the Constitution, capital has changed liberty into serfdom, and we must fight or die. Which shall we do? Tuesday a Grand Procession included thousands from other trades - coopers, moulders, mechanics, machinists – joined striking rail workers to march into the heart of St. Louis to hear more speakers. Resolutions for a general strike to shut down all of St. Louis brought loud cheers from crowds that newspaper reporters estimated at 10,000. The St. Louis Globe Democrat reported that utmost good order prevailed.

By now Mayor Overstolz was discussing the strike with the business community. They wanted organized resistance and so established a Committee of Public Safety with a headquarters at the courthouse. Missouri Governor John Phelps agreed to send arms and ammunition from a state cache. Tuesday, July 24, six companies of Federal troops arrived at St. Louis with two Gatling guns.

Wednesday and again Thursday St. Louis and East St. Louis virtually shut down in a general strike. Both days had mass processions snaking through the streets picking up supporters who walked out of factories to join the strike. That evening at a mass rally the executive committee addressed the crowds with four demands. They wanted the government to take possession of all railroads and run them for the general welfare. They wanted a recall of all charters of national banks, a program of public works and an eight-hour day.

Sixty factories had to close Wednesday because their work force was on the streets; twenty more closed Thursday. A news report declared Business is fairly paralyzed here. Management at a flour mill and a sugar refinery asked the Executive Committee for permission to operate. The newspapers called it the St. Louis Commune and did not deny the Executive Committee ran the city Wednesday and Thursday.

Friday the Executive Committee made their fatal error. They announced in order to avoid riot, we have determined to have no large processions until our organization is so complete as to positively assure the citizens of St. Louis of a perfect maintenance of order and full protection of property. Once the parades and street meetings stopped the mayor had police, troops and armed vigilantes fill the streets and takeover.

The Executive Committee met Friday morning in Schluler’s Hall in St. Louis while a large crowd of strikers waited outside impatient for direction. The Executive Committee posted notice for the workingmen of St. Louis to be patient and wait while they make decisions. By afternoon mounted police and soldiers descended on Schuler’s Hall ready to club the crowds waiting there. The Executive Committee asked for negotiations, but vague threats of a riot were no longer a credible bargaining power. The mayor and the railroads ignored them and the general strike came to an end with barely a whimper of resistance. (11)

Indiana, Ohio and Beyond

In Indiana, train crews stopped work at Fort Wayne on the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago RR on July 21, which spread to other lines through Indianapolis and Terre Haute. At Indianapolis, organizers passed out handbills calling for a mass meeting Monday, July 23 for the purpose of sympathizing and taking action with our starving brothers in the East … Crowds gathered to block trains but only briefly. Here it was federal judge, Walter Gresham, responsible for several railroads in receivership, who notified the federal government the city was controlled by a mob. He used his authority as a judge to swear in deputy U.S. Marshals and organize a committee for public safety. There was no violence and all was quiet but Judge Gresham complained until President Hayes sent a regiment of troops from the U.S. Third Infantry. General Benjamin Spooner and the U.S. Marshals used threats of contempt of court to get rail crews to let the trains run.

The independent Vandalia Railroad at Terre Haute, Indiana followed the four major trunk lines and cut wages. Workers there followed the progress of the strike for a week, but although unorganized by unions they demanded a 15 percent wage increase from owner William Riley McKeen. They set a deadline for Monday July 23, or they would strike and block trains through Terre Haute. When McKeen did not answer, a large crowd took over the rail depot and shut down trains. Strikers protected rail property and avoided violence but they vowed not to accept control of wages by the railroad monopoly, meaning Tom Scott of the Pennsylvania RR.

On July 28 McKeen announced he would open repair shops and shortly the U.S. Third Infantry arrived from Indianapolis to disperse strikers and open the depot. Troops left Terre Haute for Vincennes, Indiana but had to return after McKeen wired Judge Gresham the men are turbulent and the men who desire to work are intimidated. Strikers felt betrayed that a local resident like Riley McKeen would break the strike without bothering to speak with them, but they voted to end the strike rather than resist the troops.

Ohio had strike related disruption in at least six cities. At Cincinnati a Great Mass Meeting went ahead at 2:00 p.m. Monday of July 23. As thousands listened to speakers denounce the slaughter in Pittsburgh, rail crews from the Ohio and Mississippi RR blocked tracks and switches and took over the roundhouse. Nothing happened until Wednesday afternoon when a hundred police moved in to disperse strikers and arrest leaders. At Toledo, a committee of ten organized demonstrations and a parade through the streets to demand higher wages. Enough people left work and joined the parade to shut down Toledo for two days until the mayor ordered the police force to patrol streets and halt the parades. At Cleveland crowds blocked the freight yards Sunday and officials cut off rail service. At Columbus and Zanesville small crowds ballooned to several thousand marched around town disrupting business and shutting down mills and factories. Disruptions petered out with minimal violence.

In Kentucky, ten percent wage cuts July 1 on the Louisville & Nashville RR and the Louisville, Cincinnati & Lexington RR were accepted with little comment. By July 22 the strikes and violence in West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania energized as many as 500 Louisville area rail workers to meet, form a committee, and demand wage cuts be rescinded. The committee met with Dr. E. D. Standiford, president of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, during the day of July 24; he agreed to accede to their requests. However, there were striking construction workers and others unemployed in Louisville ready to demonstrate as part of national labor protest. The evening of July 24, a large crowd gathered in front of city hall when Louisville Mayor Charles Jacobs read a statement. He instructed the workingmen of Louisville to heed not the talk of idle and worthless creatures, who, unwilling to work themselves, would gladly get you in trouble, that they may feast upon your misfortune. His statement did not calm the crowd that dispersed to the streets and paraded to the rail depot. Police arrived there and arrested three as strike leaders. The rest ranged through the streets yelling like fiends and smashing and breaking windows. Enough police arrived to restore order, but Mayor Jacobs wired Kentucky governor John B. Creary to request help. The governor sent four hundred troops with extra rifles and ammunition. Quiet returned to Louisville by evening Wednesday July 25.

Demonstrations and other strike related protest took place in the south at New Orleans, Galveston and Marshall, Texas, and Little Rock, Arkansas, in New England primarily in Boston, and in the mid-west and west at Kansas City, Denver and San Francisco. At San Francisco an open air rally organized by the Workingmen’s Party for Monday July 22 turned into a riot. Crowds listened to WPUS organizers until around 9 o’clock when a mob of disgruntled whites attacked the Chinese and burned and destroyed their Chinatown ghetto. (12)

The Abrupt End

Everywhere strikers and protesters melted away once confronted with regiments filled with armed federal troops. Even though strikes and disruption got started over several days and at dozens of places they ended most places by Thursday July 28, 1877. The railroads refused to restore wage cuts. Hundreds were fired and blacklisted and not just on the railroads, and not just for striking. Hundreds were prosecuted and convicted of crimes: conspiracy, rioting or minor misdemeanors. Many were fined and some served short jail sentences.

President Hayes maintained a command post at the White House during the strike, consulting with cabinet officers and higher ups in the military. Mostly the group read telegrams from Governors that pictured chaos followed by a plea for federal troops. A few railroad officials like Tom Scott and Franklin Gowen had direct access to the president and so offered their instructions, but federal troops were everywhere by the weekend of July 28, 1877.

U. S. Army officers do not decide when or where troops should be used to end civil disorder and protect the public safety; they follow orders. In July 1877, the President instructed military officers to restore order, except that restoring order walks a fine line between breaking a strike and restoring order.

In Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Reading, and Chicago where the primary slaughter of strikers and protesters took place, it was police and state National Guard troops that were there first to lead the slaughter. Federal troops generally arrived later and they were much less violent, and while that is a good thing, neither the President, nor the state governors attempted to mediate or conciliate, or propose a compromise. Instead of an active role to resolve the strikes, the president allowed his army officers to decide how to restore order, which they generally did in consultation with corporate officials, whose primary interest was to break the strike.

Federal troops made it unnecessary for management to negotiate. Soldiers broke up picket lines and union meetings, arrested strikers and strike leaders and provided armed soldiers to escort the trains. Military officers were in daily contact with local officials to discuss the best places and best ways to deploy troops. After the strikes ended at the end of July, the military remained in Maryland, West Virginia and Pennsylvania to harass union members to halt or prevent more strikes. General Winfield Scott Hancock settled into camps at four locations in Pennsylvania, but complained the regular army should not be made into a permanent police force for the state. … (13)

In the minds of constituted authority in 1877, collective action by labor was the equivalent of mob rule. To the capital classes, labor could strike but under no circumstance could labor deny others the right to work or deny capital the use of their property. Picketing strikers claimed the right of free speech and free assembly, but the more solidarity among strikers the more the picketers looked like a mob.

The events of 1877 exposed angry social and class divisions severe enough to recall the civil war. Less than a year after the strikes ended one of those who lived through it wrote a summary opinion.

The strength, the fearful power, which stopped the wheels of commerce, closed the marts of trade, and threatened to engulf all wealth, institutions, social organization —everything in the vortex of ruin, was not the offspring of a conspiracy, was not generated by elaborate planning, and did not result from mature deliberation. And in this very fact, the man of calm reflection discovers, not far ahead, the rocks on which the ship of State is likely to be driven— on which every hope of mankind may be wrecked. If it had been a deliberately planned and concerted movement; if those engaged in it had exhibited evidence of organization, then its failure would have given a better promise of enduring peace and order. But the spontaneity of the movement shows the existence of a wide spread discontent, a disposition to subvert the existing social order, to modify or overturn the political institutions, under which such unfavorable conditions were developed. Somewhere, there must be something radically defective; either in the system, or in the manner of its control. (14)

The defects in the system surfaced again and again over many years and especially in 1886, 1888, 1892, and 1894. During these years the Congress discussed legislation to address strikes in a predetermined way, but always managed to discuss without passing legislation. It would be 1898 before Congress passed the Erdman Act, a modest labor statute that applied only to railroads. During these years the courts tried to end strikes and avoid violence by dividing and suppressing labor unrest with dismissals, threats and injunctions. The use