Railroad Strikes of 1877

Railroad Strikes of 1877. The strikes that spread over the nation's railroads and other workplaces in July 1877 were so massive that they sometimes have been called the “Great Labor Uprising.” The strikes unfolded in the middle of the so‐called Long Depression that began in 1873. Seeking to economize during the depression, the Pennsylvania Railroad and several of its competitors instituted 10 percent wage cuts in the summer of 1877. Almost immediately a secret society of the various railway crafts, the Trainmen's Union, organized in protest. On 16 July, 1,200 brakemen and firemen in West Virginia followed the example of Baltimore railway workers and struck against the wage cuts. Seizing the depot at Martinsburg, they stopped all freight traffic. Despite the dispatch of federal troops, the strike spread. When Pennsylvania Railroad strikers and their supporters in Pittsburgh confronted state militiamen, indiscriminate firing from the troops caused twenty deaths and sparked a pitched battle during which the city's roundhouse and Union Depot burned. Ultimately the strike stretched from coast to coast, halting movement of freight on the Erie Railroad, the New York Central, the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore and Ohio, and scores of lesser lines. In St. Louis, the socialist Workingmen's party (WPUSA) led a general strike shutting down production in all industries for nearly a week. In Chicago, a similar WPUSA initiative led to a police attack on demonstrators and onlookers that killed at least eighteen people. In San Francisco, demonstrations by strike supporters degenerated into violence against Chinese Americans. The railroad strikes ended, mostly in defeat, by the end of July, in large part because of state intervention. The enduring impact of the strike wave included a successful campaign for a more effective militia and an impetus toward stronger labor organization by railroad employees and other workers.
See also Depressions, Economic; Gilded Age; Industrial Relations; Labor Movements; Pullman Strike and Boycott; Strikes and Industrial Conflict.

Bibliography

Robert V. Bruce , 1877: Year of Violence, 1959.
Philip S. Foner , The Great Labor Uprising of 1877, 1977.

David R. Roediger