The Great Railroad Strike of 1877, sometimes referred to as "The Great Upheaval," began 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. Striking workers would not allow any of the stock to roll until this second wage cut was revoked.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.
Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, became the site of the worst violence. Thomas Alexander Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad, often considered one of the first robber barons, 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, Scott's request came to pass on July 21, when militiamen bayoneted and fired on rock-throwing strikers, killing 20 people and wounding 29 others. Rather than quell the uprising, this action merely infuriated the strikers who then forced the militiamen to take refuge in a railroad roundhouse, and 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 more than 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, in 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 fury. This city was home of the engine works and shops of its namesake Reading Railroad, against which engineers had already been on strike since April 1877. Sixteen citizens were shot by state militia in the Reading Railroad Massacre. Preludes to the massacre include the following: fresh work stoppage of all classes of the railroad's local workforce, mass marches, the blockage of rail traffic, train-yard arson, and the burning down of the bridge providing this railroad's only link to the West (this prevented 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.
Illinois
On July 24, rail traffic in Chicago 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 20,000 people.
Judge Thomas Drummond of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, who was overseeing numerous railroads that had declared bankruptcy in the wake of the Panic of 1873, ruled 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 5,000 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 read, "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
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 Workingmen'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. This strike was the first general strike in the United States.
The strike on both sides of the river ended when some 3,000 federal troops and 5,000 deputized special police killed at least 18 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 70 strikers.
Resolution
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.
Burning of the Pennsylvania Railroad and Union Depot
Burning of the Pennsylvania Railroad and Union Depot, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, July 21–22, 1877.
The Pullman Strike
The Pullman Strike was a nationwide conflict between labor unions and railroad companies that occurred in the United States in 1894. The conflict began in the town of Pullman, Illinois, on May 11, when nearly 4,000 employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company began a wildcat strike in response to recent reductions in wages, bringing traffic west of Chicago to a halt. Many of the workers were already members of the American Railway Union (ARU), led by Eugene V. Debs, which supported their strike by launching a boycott: Union members refused to run trains containing Pullman cars. The strike effectively shut down production in the Pullman factories and led to a lockout. Railroad workers across the nation refused to switch Pullman cars, and subsequently Wagner Palace cars, onto trains. The ARU declared that if switchmen were disciplined for the boycott, the entire ARU would strike in sympathy. The boycott was launched on June 26, 1894. Within four days, 125,000 workers on 29 railroads quit work rather than handle Pullman cars. Adding fuel to the fire, the railroad companies began hiring replacement workers (strikebreakers), which only increased hostilities.
Breaking the Strike
The railroads succeeded in having Richard Olney, general counsel for the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railway, appointed as a special federal attorney responsible for dealing with the strike. Olney obtained an injunction barring union leaders from supporting the strike, demanding that the strikers cease their activities or face being fired. Debs and other leaders of the ARU ignored the injunction, and federal troops were called into action. The strike was broken up by U.S. marshals and 12,000 U.S. Army troops, commanded by Nelson Miles. The troops were sent in by President Grover Cleveland, who claimed that the strike interfered with the delivery of U.S. mail, violated the Sherman Antitrust Act, and represented a threat to public safety. The arrival of the military and subsequent deaths of workers led to further outbreaks of violence. During the course of the strike, 13 strikers were killed and 57 were wounded. About 6,000 rail workers inflicted property damage estimated at $340,000 (about $8,818,000 in 2010 dollars).