Three StrikesBaltimore Chicago Pittsburgh

Labor Unrest

• The period of 1877-1919 is marked by MASSIVE, VIOLENT and WIDESPREAD resistance from workers demanding better treatment.

• Many advocacy groups, unions and political groups spring up during this period– Note: Know the difference between a Craft

Union and an Industrial Union!

3 Strikes

There were three strikes that were both significant enough to warrant individual investigation, yet typical enough to embody the labor strife of the gilded age.

• The B&O Railroad Strike of 1877• The Homestead Steel Strike of 1892• The Pullman Strike of 1894THESE WERE NOT THE ONLY MAJOR

STRIKES

B&O Strike

• In 1873, the US faced a MAJOR economic downturn. This was misleadingly called THE GREAT DEPRESSION by many contemporaries– Output rapidly and continuously increased, but prices fell,

affecting profit margins (until a real depression in 1894)– Roughly 27% of Americans were unemployed in 1877.

• Railroads business model faced a drastic challenge– Rate Gouging– Rents– Rebates

• The new economic condition caused the railroads to become even more cut-throat

• In April of 1877, the heads of the major rails met and decided instead to cut worker wages

• B&O workers already made roughly 33% less than other railway workers, having had a large paycut since the start of the depression

• President John W. Garrett announced further cuts on May 13, 1877

Cuts

• Workers would face a 10% wage cut– The same day this was announced, there was

an announcement of a 10% increase in dividends

• Workers would have to pay their own return trip from jobs that took them out of town

• Their work week was further cut to two or three days

Response

• June 16, 1877, forty disgruntled firemen and brakemen walked off the job at Camden Station in Baltimore. They were all immediately fired.

• Strike is officially declared June 27, but the spreading fear of further cuts caused many more to walk off the job.

• Within days, 100,000 workers were on strike, spreading from B&O to other companies and idling 2/3rds of the nation’s rails

• This was a very violent strike that lasted over a month with many Americans sympathetic to the strikers.

Pathology of the Violence

• Striking workers believed they could accelerate negotiations by destroying property, but that caused the states to call in the militias (and attached volunteers or vigilantes)

• The militias were brutal and opened fire on unarmed workers, women and even children. – at least 20 dead including 1 woman and 3 small children with

another 29 wounded

• Strikers retaliated, burning 39 buildings of the Penn Railroad, 104 engines, 46 passenger & 1200 freight cars

• Iron, Steel and Coal workers went on sympathy strikes

The Result

• On July 26, Federal Army troops were used to quell the strike. This marks the beginning of the end as the strikers were hopelessly outgunned.

• Hayes decision to send the Army was incredibly unpopular, as he was already an unpopular president due to the election of 1876.

• Hayes justified the action by saying he had a duty to stop the riots. This is the first major use of the Army to stop labor unrest, but it would not be the last.

• The strike was lost

Emma Goldman

"Ask for work. If they do not give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, take bread."

Homestead, PA

• Andrew Carnegie’s Homestead Mill was very profitable and ran smoothly in the hands of the manager, Henry Clay Frick.

• Frick was very antagonistic of the budding AFL craft unions, and wanted to destroy them at all costs.

• Using the economic difficulties and Labor’s resistance to use new machinery, Frick announced a wage cut of 20%, violating the union contract

• Workers could regain that 20% if they signed a yellow dog contract.

A Lockout, not a Strike

• The workers walked from the plant and began to organize a strike.

• Frick responded by erecting a crude barbed-wire fence and positioning sharpshooters around the perimeter. The shop was closed.

• July 6, 1892. 300 employees of the Pinkerton Detective Agency were brought in under cover of darkness on the river.

Conflict!

• Steel workers got word of the Pinkerton agents and took positions along the river.

• The ensuing 12 hour battle was horrific– possibly one of the worst battles on American

soil outside of the Civil War (but on a smaller scale)

– Everything from Winchester rifles to old Muzzle Loaders to 20 pound cannons to dynamite were used

• Tactically, the workers won the day, but lost the battle.

• Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman’s assassination attempt turned public sympathy away from the strikers and spelled doom for the Steel Union (until 1930)

• Carnegie tried to distance himself from the violence, but his own telegrams to Frick show his involvement. Carnegie’s remorse was great.

The Pullman Strike

Pullman Strike

This extremely violent conflict lasted from May 11 – July 18, 1894

• While the Great Rail Strike of 1877 actually weakened the labor movement, the Pullman Strike helped politicize the issue.– One effect of this strike is it fractures the

Democratic Party!

Reasons for the Strike

• In an ALL TOO FAMILIAR pattern, wages were cut in response to hard economic times. This is exacerbated by the fact that workers were paid in scrip and often never even saw their wages, as Pullman practiced a form of Debt Slavery.– Wage cuts were 25% and did not affect

management– Company control was almost absolute

PULLMAN CONTROL

• EVERYTHING was Pullman owned, even the church.– The company rented out the church as if it

were a factory and the denominations were shifts of workers

– Pullman expected a 6% return on investment for the church. He made money from it

In their own words…

Declared one Pullman employee: "We are born in a Pullman house, fed from the

Pullman shops, taught in the Pullman school, catechized in the Pullman Church, and when we die we shall go to the Pullman Hell."

The Rev. William H. Carwardine, the Methodist minister in Pullman, characterized the town as a "civilized relic of European serfdom."

Some viewed this as “Slavery in gold chains”

How Pullman was different

• Pullman strikers formed a new Industrial Union *(ARU = American Railway Union).

• 3300 workers were left in May of 94, many part-timers or reduced hours.

• The workers asked for arbitration, the company refused. They decided to boycott working any train with a Pullman car until Pullman would arbitrate.

• This is different because it is NOT militant!

Friends in High Places

• The Attorney General, a former railroad attorney named Richard Olney, asked President Cleveland to appoint a special counsel to deal with the strike on the grounds that U.S. mails were being impeded.

• Railroads were deliberately hooking Pullman cars to mail trains!

• Cleveland's choice for the special counsel was none other than Edward Walker, the attorney for the Milwaukee Railroad. – Walker hired 4,000 strikebreakers and made them

deputy marshals armed with badge and gun.

• Great masses of sympathetic workers, particularly in the Chicago area, responded by attacking the trains.

• There were casualties, trains were torched, and 12,000 federal troops deployed (approximately half the U.S. army)

The Aftermath

• An injunction was secured under which ARU president Eugene V.Debs and other leaders were sentenced to jail.

• On July 18, Pullman announced it would reopen the shops and hire only persons who would sign a "yellow dog" contract promising never to join a union while a Pullman employee.

The Unintended Consequences

• While in prison, Debs reads the works of Karl Marx and becomes a Socialist. He will run for president 5 times and gain millions of supporters

• A young attorney for one of the railroads (Clarence Darrow) was outraged by the role of the General Managers. He quit the job, later to become a famous lawyer in the service of labor.

• Illinois Governor John P. Altgeld was incensed at Cleveland. As the leader of the Illinois delegation to the Democratic Party Convention in 1896, Altgeld used his influence and blocked the re-nomination of Cleveland as the presidential candidate.

• Cleveland is the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms. This was largely due to Altgeld’s actions as it denied Cleveland a third term.

• Pullman died two years after the strike, hated and afraid that even his tomb would be desecrated by angry mobs.

• The Utopia had failed largely because it did not follow it’s own rhetoric.