From the Dustbin of History...

THE GREAT STRIKE OF 1877

The recent split in the AFL-CIO got me thinking about the long, proud history of organized labor in America--a history that, for the most part, is barely taught, with the result that most young people know little and care less. One episode that I never learned about in school was the Great Strike of 1877--the closest thing to a workers' rebellion the U.S. has ever seen, and one that shook the country to its foundations. Reporting on it at the time, Harper's Weekly wrote: "Scenes of riot and bloodshed accompanied it such as we have never before witnessed in the uprising of labor against capital. Commerce has been obstructed, industries have been paralyzed, hundreds of lives sacrificed, and millions of dollars' worth of property destroyed by lawless mobs."

Here is what happened:

In the 1870s, the railroad companies had become what Wal-Mart is today, that is, the largest employer in the U.S. And just like Wal-Mart, they were not known for their fair and just treatment of workers. Much to the contrary: railroad jobs were dangerous and poorly paid. Although workers were often hurt or killed in accidents during railroad line construction and operation, there was no workers' comp or any other benefits to ensure the family's survival. During periods of economic fluctuation, the railroad bosses kept their own large salaries and safeguarded stockholders' dividends, but cut their employees' already slim wages, pushing these workers to the breaking point.

One such wage cut was announced by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in July 1877. Already struggling to feed their families on their pitful salaries, the B & O workers decided they couldn't afford to accept a lower wage. With little prior planning, firemen, brakemen and other employees walked off the job on July 16. Soon many others all up and down the rail line joined them, stopping freight traffic and paralyzing the B & O. The company, instead of negotiating, called upon the president for help. President Hayes sent troops to restore order, but it was too late: the uprising had begun.

All over the country, railroad employees and other workers soon learned of the workers' actions against B & O, and began to initate actions of their own. Buildings and train cars were burned, stores were looted, industry and commerce shut down. Kids, women the unemployed--all joined in to support the workers. In some cities, the strikers openly battled with national guardsmen and other authorities; in others such as Pittsburgh and Newark, the men in uniform, working class themselves, sympathized with the strikers and refused to use violence against them. From New York to San Francisco, and especially in the major industrial centers of the East and Midwest, hundreds of thousands of discontented poor people joined together to protest their miserable condition and demand better treatment. Their actions destabilized the country for two weeks, frightening the middle and upper classes (who blamed foreigners and communists and felt that civilization itself was under seige) but in some cases, achieving true improvements in their salaries and working conditions.

According to Page Smith's book The Rise of Industrial America* (from which this account is mostly taken), the perplexing question about the Great Strikes is, "why does the knowledge or historical memory of it exist so marginally in our consciousness?" Smith's answer is that "it is human to suppress what we wish to forget. The story of the Great Strikes is incompatible with the 'image' of America we have generally wished to project--one of 'freedom and justice for all.'" We must further ask, however, who it is that supresses, who wishes to forget, and why. The long struggle for the eight hour workday is another case in point; though much of the world celebrates Labor Day on May 1st in honor of this struggle and its martyrs, it is not honored in the U.S. itself. Workers here who are currently being "asked" to work longer and longer hours without overtime pay thus have little awareness that others died to win the rights they are now being forced to relinquish.

O employees of Wal-Mart, ponder these reflections of Walt Whitman regarding the Great Strike:

While pride upon her easy finger wears
The bread of thousands in a brilliant stone,
The eyes of Wretchedness must stream with tears,
And groaning labor be content to groan.

--Elissa R.

*Page Smith.The Rise of Industrial America: A People's History of the Post-Reconstruction Era. McGraw Hill, 1984.

Images from Thomas Ehrenreich's Railroad Extra at the Catskill Archive

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