Danver Steven L. (Edited). Revolts, Protests, Demonstrations, and Rebellions in American History: An Encyclopedia (ENG)
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monopolistic practices of the railroads and the unrestrained economic power
wielded by the “robber barons” who headed these corporations.
Violence broke out in many large industrial cities during the strikes. Strikers and
demonstrators fought against the police, the state militia, and the federal troops
called in to restore order. Much railroad property and equ ipment was destroyed,
and much freight was looted by rioters. Eleven people died in strike-related vio-
lence in Baltimore, 12 in Reading, Pennsylvania, and over 100 nationwide. Nearly
half of those who died nationwide were killed in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the
scene of t he wo rst violence during the strike. The strike s reached Pittsburgh on
July 20. Local authorities were powerless to respond, since the police and local
units of the state militia generally sympathized with the strikers. Militia units from
Philadelphia were sent to Pittsburgh, because the commanders believed these troops
would be less likely to side with the local strikers. When the Philadelphia militia
units marched into Pittsburgh, they were met by a large mob of workers and the
unemployed. In initial skir mishes with the mob, the troops shot into the crowds,
killing 21 people, including one woman and three children. This violence prompted
many other workers in the city to join with the railroaders in the strike. Much rail-
road equipment and property was burned or otherwise destroyed over the next sev-
eral days. The militiamen had taken refuge in a railroad roundhouse, and when the
crowd set fire to the building the following day, the troops came out shooting. In
this incident and others over the next few days, another 20 civilians and five militia-
men were killed. Thomas A. Scott, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, called
for federal forces to break the strike. Scott had been an important s upporter of
President Hayes in the disputed election of 1876. Hayes authorized sending federal
troops and ordered the strikers to disperse within 24 hours. On July 28, Pennsylva-
nia governor John F. Hartranft arrived in Pittsburgh with more state militia and 700
federal soldiers, bringing the total number of tro ops to nearly 4,000. This large
show of force eventually brought order. After several days of unrest, public support
for the strike and the accompanying violence began to wane, as people feared the
spread of violence and destruction into their own neighborhoods. Volunteer citizen
patrols were created to help the authorities keep order, with some of these patrols
being armed with weapons from the Allegheny Arsenal. By the time the rioting in
Pittsburgh had ended, more than 100 locomotives and more than 2,000 railroad cars
of all types had been destroyed. Through the industrial heart of Pittsburgh, a swath
about two miles long had been burned, with 79 buildings destroyed.
The strikes of 1877 impacted most of the large industrial cities in t he United
States, with the exception of the South and the New England region. The strikes
did impact the Pacific Coast, especially in San Francisco, but there was little strike
activity in the Pacific Northwest. It is generally thought that more than 100,000
workers had gone on strike, and were joined in mass meetings and demonstrations
566 Great Railroad Strikes (1877)
by thousands of the unemployed. In 1877, there were approximately 75,000 miles of
railroad track in the United States, and the lines affected by the strike amounted to
about two-thirds of this mileage. Overall, about half of all freight traffic was dis-
rupted, along with some of the passenger service. Strikers often allowed passenger
trains to pass unmolested, however, because they wanted to maintain the general
public’s support for their efforts. Besides the impact on the railroads, factories and
other industrial firms were closed by mob action in at least a half-dozen cities.
Nationwide, about 100 people died in strike-related violence, and more than 1,000
were arrested. Generally, those arrested faced little jail time. Many cases were dis-
missed in the preliminary stages. Workers who were tr ied by jury often found the
jurors sympathetic to their cause, and even judges when handing down sentences
seemed to take into account the fact that tensions still ran high in many communities.
Just as the strike had begun spontaneously in many localities, it seemed to peak
and then wind down after a time in each community. While strike-related activity
continued into early August 1877 in some localities, generally July 25 marked the
beginning of the winding-down of the strikes.
Historians still debate the outcome of the strikes. Railroaders and other workers
were a ble to ga in few concessio ns from their employers. Many railroad laborers
were fired for participating in the strikes, but on many lines, participation was so
widespread that only a small percentage of those involved were ever di scipline d.
The WPUS, the first Marxist worker’s party in the country, played a significant role
in the strikes in some cities, but in general, s ocialists were too few in the United
States to gain any substantial lasting benefit from the strikes. In communities with
a large working-class population of German Americans, there was a b rief rise of
interest in socialist politics and the creation of English-language workers’ newspa-
pers, but these developments were short-lived. Railroad workers may have gained
some sympathy from the general public that helped th em in later struggles with
management, but on the other hand, the violence associ ated with the strikes dis-
credited much of the labor movement in the eyes of many Americans.
—Mark S. Joy
See also all entries under Molly Maguires (1870s); Haymarket Riot (1886); Homestead
Strike (1892–1893); Pullman Strike (1894); Lattimer Massacre (1897); Black Patch War;
Ludlow Massacre (1914); B oston Police Strike (1919); Battle of Blair Mountain (1921);
Bonus Ar my (1932); Toledo Auto-Lite Strike (1934); World Trade Organization Protests
(1999).
Further Reading
Brecher, Jeremy. Strike! Rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1999.
Bruce, Robert V. 1877: Year of Violence. New ed. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1989.
Great Railroad Strikes (1877) 567
Burbank, David. The Reign of th e R abble: The St. Louis Gen eral Strike of 1877.New
York: Augustu s M. Kelley, 1966.
Dacus, J. A. Annals of the Great Strikes in the United States. Chicago: L. T. Palmer and
Company, 1877. Reprint ed., New York: Arno Press, 1969.
Foner, Philip S. The Great Labor Uprising of 1877. New York: Monad Press, 1977.
Gordon, John Steele . A n Emp ire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic
Growth. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.
Jones, Peter, ed. The Robber Barons Revisited. Boston: Heath, 1968.
Josephson, Matthew. The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists, 1861–1901.
New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1934.
Salvatore, Nick. “Railroad Workers and the Great Strike of 1877: The View from a Small
Midwest City.” Labor History 21, no. 4 (1890).
Stowell, David O. Streets, Railroads, and the Great Strike of 1877. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1999.
568 Great Railroad Strikes (1877)
Pittsburgh
While rioting and other acts of violence occurred in several U.S. cities during the
Great Railroad Stri kes of 1877, the worst violence was in Pittsburgh, Pennsylva-
nia. The strikes, w hich had begun on July 16 in Martinsburg, West Virgin ia, and
Bal timore, Maryland, spread to Pittsburgh by July 20. Strike organizers in Pi tts-
burgh struggled to keep the situation from get ting out of hand, realizing that vio-
lence might turn public opinion a gainst the workers. Robert Ammon, a railroad
brakeman and leader of the Trainmen’s Union, led meetin gs in which he tried to
explain the workers’ goals to the general public.
Thomas A. Scott, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and Robert Pitcair n,
the superintendent of the Pennsylvania’s Pittsburgh division, appealed to President
Rutherford B. Hayes to send federal troops to break the strike. Scott had been an
importan t supporter of Hayes in the di sput ed election of 1876, which may have
influenced Hayes’s quick and positive response—he authorized sending federal
forces and ordered the strikers to disperse within 24 hours.
When loc al authorities tried to send the Pittsburgh police and local units of the
Pennsylvania National Guard to deal with the s trikers, they found that many of
these men sympathized wit h the workers and would not ta ke action against them.
Pennsylvania governor John F. Hartranft ordered National Guard units from the
Philadelphia area to go to Pittsburgh, supp osing that these troops were less likely
to be sympathetic to the Pittsburgh strikers. The Philadelphia militia units were
met with large crowds of workers and the unemployed. When fighting broke out,
the troops fired into the crowd, killing 21 people, including one woman and three
children. The violence between the crowds and the militiamen inflamed many
workers in the city, who joined with the railroad strikers. Workers from iron mills
and other industrial firms in the area poured into the railroad yards. After the initial
skirmish, the militiamen took refuge in a railroad roundhouse. The next day, rioters
set fire to the roundhouse, and the militiamen came out shooting. In that i ncident
and over the next few days, another 20 civilians and five guardsmen were killed.
On July 21 and 22, the buildings and equipment of several of the railroads in
Pittsburgh were burned. On July 28, Governor Hartranft personally arrived in Pitts-
burgh, with more Philadelphia National Guard troops and 700 U.S. regular army
troops. With a total of nearly 4,000 troops, H artranft restored order, and railroad
operations were mostly back to normal within two days. City residents finally grew
worried about the extent of rioting, looting, and the spread of fires, especially after
fires in the Pan Handle Railroad’s yards spread to nearby homes. Crowds that had
formerly cheered looters began condemning them and even stepping in to stop
them. Volunteers formed patrols, and were armed with weapons from the
569
Allegheny Arsenal. When the rioting ended, a strip of about two miles in the indus-
trial heart of Pitt sburgh had been burned. More than 100 locomotives and more
than 2,000 railroad cars of all types had been destroyed, along with 79 buildings.
—Mark S. Joy
Further Reading
Brecher, Jeremy. Strike! Rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1999.
Bruce, Robert V. 1877: Year of Violence. New ed. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1989.
Railroad Workers
The Great Railroad Strikes of 1877 began with railway workers walking off the job in
sev eral cities, but railroaders were not the only workers to strike, and in many local-
ities, the unrest was a community uprising including workers from various industries,
the unemployed, and large numbers of children and women. The railroaders’ strikes
were prompted by many long-simmering issues, but the immediate “sparks” in most
cases were wage reductions and the railroads’ attempts to run longer trains with fe wer
crewmen. The Pennsylvania Railroad reduced most wages by 10 percent in the spring
of 1877, and the Baltimore and Ohio followed suit that summer.
Railroad workers were some of the first workers to organize craft or trade
unions, in which each job specialty or “craft” had its own union. While craft unions
fostered solidarity among the members who all had the same job, there often was
little feeling of common concern across craft lines. Many of the railroad workers
involved in the 1877 strikes were brakemen and switchmen, who felt that the fire-
men and engineers did not support their efforts for better wages and working con-
ditions. While workers from virtually all railroad trades took part in the strikes at
various p laces, afte r the strikes ended, both the Brothe rhood of Railway Conduc-
tors and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers distanced themselves from the
violence of the Great Strikes. Eugene V. Debs, who became a Socialist and a radical
labor organizer, was at this time the editor of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Fire-
men’s union newspaper, and his editorials condemned the violence of the strikes.
Union leaders generally did not orchestrate the activities of the Great Strikes. In
many cases, it was workers who had no union who were striking and keeping
others from operating the trains. Many of the job actions by unionized railroad
workers were “wildcat” strikes—workers walked off the job without a strike being
called by the national union leadership.
While it was not only railroad workers that formed the protesting crowds during
the Great Strikes, railroads often were the targets of many of those in the crowds.
570 Great Railroad Strikes (1877)
Historian D avid O. Stowell has argued that the uprisings of 1877 often pitted
whole communities against the railroads because of the danger and inconvenience
that railroad tracks laid in the city streets posed for urban dwellers and small
businessmen. Additionally, in many areas, people of all economic classes felt their
communities to be at the mercy of railroad monopolies.
While railroad workers brought nationwide attention to their concerns and needs,
the long-term benefits they gained from the strikes were few. Historians still debate
the extent to which the Great Railroad Strikes of 1877 contributed to the develop-
ment of a worker’s consciousness that aided the further growth of organized labor.
—Mark S. Joy
Further Reading
Bruce, Robert V. 1877: Year of Violence. New ed. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1989.
Salvatore, Nick. “Railroad Workers and the Great Strike of 1877: The View from a Small
Midwest City.” Labor History 21, no. 4 (1980).
Stowell, David O. Streets, Railroads, and the Great Strike of 1877. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1999.
Robber Barons
The term “robber barons” originated in medieval Europe, where it referred to
powerful feudal lords who looted trade caravans passing through their lands, or
charged exorbitant tolls for such passage. In the 1850s, the New York Times used
this image, although not the exact term, to refer to the business practices of Cor-
nelius Vanderbilt. In the 1930s, the writer Matthew Josephson applied the term
to the powerful businessmen who amassed great fortunes in the late 19th and early
20th centuries. The significance of the railroads in American economic life in that
era can be seen by the fact that many of those labeled robber barons were railroad
executives—such as Vanderbilt, James J. Hill, E. H. Harriman, Leland Stanford,
and Jay Gould. Even those not directly associated with the railroads often had sig-
nificant ties to the industry—Andrew Carnegie’s steel mills made the iron and
steel the railroads used for rails, bridges, and equipment, and oilman John D.
Rockefeller controlled so much of the oil traffic on U.S. rails that he was able to
demand significant rebates from the railroads for the oil he shipped. Even before
the term “robber barons” had been coined, these industrialists were among the
favorite targets of the muckrakers, the Progressive Era journalists who specialized
in a literature of expose
´
concerning the problems in American industry,
government and society.
Great Railroad Strikes (1877) 571
Industrialists amassed wealth on an unprecedented scale in this era, in part
because the growth of truly large businesses was possible for the first time. Advan-
ces in transportation and communications made it possible to do business on a
national and international level much more efficiently than ever before. A stable
government that provided safeguards for private property and fortunes and was
slow to embrace the role of a regulator in the economy also contributed to the
emergence of the robber barons.
While critics like the muckrakers and the Progressive Era historians attacked the
robber barons, their contemporaries often saw them in a more favorable light due to
the prevalence of Social Darwinist thinking in America. Some saw the rise of such
a powerful business elite as a natural phenomena—in the jungle of a modern indus-
trial economy, the robber barons had emerged as the fittest competitors.
In recent years, scholars have tended to see that the Great Railroad Strikes of
1877 were more than just “job actions” of railroad workers. In many cities, work-
ers besides railroad employees, and even the unemployed, were heavily involved
in the uprisings. These nonrailroaders were not simply protesting the poo r wages
and undesirable working conditions of railroad employees, but were also address-
ing the extraordinary power the railroads, and the robber barons who owned a nd
operated them, exercised in America.
—Mark S. Joy
Further Reading
Gordon, John Steele . A n Emp ire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic
Growth. New York: Harper Collins, 2004.
Jones, Peter, ed. The Robber Barons Revisited. Boston: Heath, 1968.
Josephson, Matthew. The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists, 1861–1901.
New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1934.
Workingmen’s Party of
the United States (WPUS)
The Workingmen’ s Party of the United States (WPUS), the nation’ s first Marxist work-
ers’ party, was founded in Philadelphia in 1876. It resulted from the merger of four
existing regional socialist organizations. At its founding, the WPUS represented about
3,000 members, who were mostly recent immigrants. By 1877, the WPUS had approx-
imately 4,500 members. The party played a significant role in some cities during the
572 Great Railroad Strikes (1877)
Great Railroad Strikes of 1877, although contemporary observers were generally mis-
taken in crediting it with a central part in directing and even instigating the strikes.
During the Great Railroad Strikes, the leadership of the WPUS tried to mobilize
workers nationwide. But the party was strong only in large industrial cities, and
did not have the power to promote a nationwide general strike. In many localities,
it played no significant part in the strike. The party was headquartered in Chicago,
and the national leadership was preoccupied with the local situation there.
In Chicago, the WPUS called mass me etings at two locati ons on July 21. The
next day, the party issued a statement demanding the nationalization of the rail-
roads and the telegraph system, and the eight-hour workday. On July 23, perhaps
15,000 people attended meetings called by the WPUS in the heart of Chicago’s
industrial district. The strike began o n Chicago’s railroads that night, and by the
following evening, no freight trains were moving through the city. Over the next
few days, many workers in the stockyards, packing plants, and factories through-
out the city joined the strike.
St. Louis was the city where the WPUS played the most significant role in the
strike. The St. Louis Times estimated the party’s total membership in the city
was about 1,000. During the strike, an “Executive Committee” was formed at the
WPUS headquarters in St. Louis, which provided leadership for the uprising. For
several days, mass meetings and demonstrations swept the city, halting work in a
variety of industries. Besides stopping railroad traf fic, strikers closed more than
60 factories. The city police seemed powerless to restore order, and eventually,
300 U.S. Army troops were sent from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Even in St.
Louis, however, the Great Strikes began to lose momentum by July 25. The Exec-
utive Committee called for an end to mass demonstrations, fearing they would get
out of hand. Simultaneously, many of the city’s workers began to lose confidence
in the party’s leadership.
During and after the Great Strikes, editorialists and politicians put much of the
blame for the strikes on the WPUS. In recent years, however, scholars have gener-
ally concluded that the party simply did not have the strength or national organiza-
tion to have accomplished much of what its critics claimed it did during the strikes.
In December 1877, the WPUS changed its name to the Socialist Labor Party.
—Mark S. Joy
Further Reading
Bruce, Robert V. 1877: Year of Violence. New ed. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1989.
Burbank, David. The Reign of the Rabble: The St. Louis General Strike of 1877.New
York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1966.
Foner, Philip S. The Great Labor Uprising of 1877. New York: Monad Press, 1977.
Great Railroad Strikes (1877) 573
Haymarket Riot (1886)
On May 5, 1886, a riot between striking workers and the police occurred in Hay-
market Square, Chicago. Both workers and policemen were wounded and killed
during a bomb explosion, the exchange of blows, and gunfire. The tragedy was a
climax to labor unrest that had begun to boil over the previous day. The trial that
followed was a grave miscarriage of justice. Ironically, the Haymarket Riot, which
lasted only a few minutes, had long-lasting effects that were felt for many years to
come. Most notably, the riot created a newfound awareness and distrust of social-
ist, communist, and anarchist ideologies, and resulted in a great setback for union
membership and union influence.
Work in the factories was hard in the 1880s. Men, women, and children worked
long hours, under very dangerous conditions, for low wages. They lived in run-
down apartments and saw little hope of improving their standard of living. Conse-
quently, after employers rebuffed worker demands, workers generally went on
strike. But they soon realized that these efforts stood a much greater chance of suc-
cess if strikes were organized under unions.
Employers fought back aga inst unions by placing names of suspected union
members on blacklists, which barred them from employment. Furthermore,
employer s required workers to sign ironclad oaths, whic h stated that the workers
pledged not to join a union. Also, employers often disregarded laws that were
meant to protect workers’ rights. However, the history of strikes was, perhaps,
the most discouraging to workers. This was because, even though the government
verbalized a noninterference policy in business, the government had, in fact, his-
torically intervened in strikes on behalf of the business owners.
In Chicago in 1877, for example, a strike had failed due to the strong use of the
police force. Many strikers had been killed, and bitt er feelin gs against the police
still existed in 1886. As a result, many workers began arming themselves for pro-
tection, and by 1886, many workers habitually carried handguns. Since employers
continually turned a deaf ear to union demands, and unions saw a need to push
harder to get the desired results, these growing tensions would come to a head
in May.
In 1886, unions made the eight-hour workday a priority, and gave Chicago
employers until May 1 (May Day) to comply. The issue was discussed at great
length in newspapers and in public speeches. The dea dline came and went, but
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