By Patrick Allitt, Emory University
Working class men had turned to trade unionism, hoping to improve their wages, job security, and working conditions. And, with this, came strikes. Now, strikes could succeed if they enjoyed community support. If the middle class took the side of the striking workers, they could win, but if the middle class took the side of the management, usually the strike would fail.
Erie Railroad Strike
In 1874, employees of the Erie Railroad went on strike because the men hadn’t received their pay. Not only were they not paid, but the management also told them that they were going to cut their pay. When they went on strike, the strikers themselves were very careful to maintain good law and order.
Though they stopped all the trains as they arrived at the town of Susquehanna Depot in Pennsylvania, and took away and hid the coupling pins, the little devices that link the locomotive to the first carriage, and each subsequent carriage to its neighbor.
They accommodated stranded passengers in their own homes. And, because the Constitution specifies that one of the roles of the federal government shall be to deliver the interstate mail, they let mail trains through while stopping all the others.
Breaking Down Community Solidarity
At first, it seemed as though the strike was going to prevail, and that the management would have to back down, but in the end the railroad company broke the strike. They threatened to move the entire depot operations to another town completely, with the result that this little town, Susquehanna Depot, would be ruined.
With that threat, the middle-class people lost heart, and community solidarity began to break down, with the result that the employees had to go back to work with their grievances unsettled.
This is a transcript from the video series A History of the United States, 2nd Edition. Watch it now, on Wondrium.
Rioting at the Railroad Strike of 1877
Nothing more quickly alienated the middle-class communities than violence associated with a strike. There was a nationwide railroad strike in 1877, and it began spontaneously in West Virginia, but then spread literally throughout the whole nation, again in response to pay cuts. The management announced it was going to pay less. It resulted in looting and fires in many areas of the country. Ultimately, 100 people were killed in rioting, and sometimes pitched battles between militia and strikers.
At Pittsburgh, the railroad works were burned down completely. A group of militia brought in from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh to try to put down the rioting shot and killed 26 strikers, but then they, in turn, were besieged in the roundhouse, where the locomotives were stored. The strikers set the roundhouse on fire, and the militiamen had to flee by shooting their way out.
American Federation of Labor
In the nature of things, unionization was going to be most effective in skilled and highly skilled trades. If workmen had gone through lengthy apprenticeships to learn that business, it was much harder to get rid of them quickly and to employ strikebreakers, because the strikebreakers wouldn’t know what to do. There was, therefore, normally a very close correlation between the success of a union and the degree of skill of its members.
It was a cluster of skilled men’s unions that created the American Federation of Labor in 1886, first under the leadership of Samuel Gompers.
Samuel Gompers
Samuel Gompers was himself an immigrant. He was a British Jew and came from the cigar-making business.
Gompers was a good, Progressive reformer. He emphasized the importance of nonviolence, he was a bitter foe of anarchists, and he hated Socialism. He was just dedicated to getting good conditions and good wages and short hours of work for the members of his member unions.
Unlike some of the radicals, he wasn’t interested in overthrowing capitalism. He was interested in accepting capitalism by getting a good deal for the workmen within it, and the AFL unions tended to be more successful than many of the unions that incorporated unskilled men.
Effect of Economic Depression
The great economic depression of the early 1890s, the depression that was at its most intense between 1893 and 1897, witnessed a climax of violent encounters between employers and unions. Employers themselves, of course, tried everything they could to prevent unions from forming.
One of the common techniques in places like Pittsburgh at the Carnegie factories would be to hire an ethnically diverse workforce; that is, to have an English foreman overseeing Irish employees because of the Anglo-Irish antagonism, or to have a group of Bohemians and a group of Norwegians, or a group of Jewish employees, so that it was very difficult for men to talk with one another, and so in turn it was very unlikely that they’d feel a ready community of interest, because their ethnic and linguistic remoteness would tend to separate them.
Common Questions about Early Trade Unions, Strikes, and Riots
In 1874, employees of the Erie Railroad went on strike because the men hadn’t received their pay. Not only were they not paid, but the management told them that they were going to cut their pay.
If workmen had gone through lengthy apprenticeships to learn that business, it was much harder to get rid of them quickly and to employ strikebreakers, because the strikebreakers wouldn’t know what to do. There was, therefore, normally a very close correlation between the success of a union and the degree of skill of its members.
A cluster of skilled men’s unions created the American Federation of Labor in 1886, under the leadership of Samuel Gompers. Gompers was a good Progressive reformer. He emphasized the importance of nonviolence, he was a bitter foe of anarchists, and he hated Socialism. He was dedicated to getting good conditions and good wages and short hours of work for the members of his member unions.
