ONLINE VERSION	VOLUME 106 - NUMBER 10 - NOVEMBER 1997

The Great Railroad Strike of 1877

Historical Marker Dedicated in Pittsburgh During the AFL-CIO Convention, three labor history sites in Pittsburgh were dedicated with Pennsylvania State historical markers. On Liberty Avenue at the 26th Street crossing, the heart of the old rail yards of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the marker commemorating the railroad strike of 1877 was dedicated on Sept. 23, 1997. The railroad strike of 1877, often referred to by historians as the "great upheaval," was a massive revolt of railroad and other industrial workers against the growing concentration of wealth and the economic disruption wrought by rapid technological change. Nowhere was the union movement stronger than Pittsburgh. After serious violent incidents in Martinsburg and Baltimore, the Pittsburgh strike began as a protest against job combinations. Since local political leadership and the Pittsburgh militia took a friendly stance toward the strikers, Philadelphia militia were brought in at the request of the Pennsylvania Railroad. In a confrontation with thousands of citizens on July 21, the militia opened fire, killing about twenty people. A pitched battle ensued during which the militia was besieged overnight and the railyards were looted and burned. Federal troops occupied the city on July 27 as the strike and the union collapsed. The events marked the bloodiest day in Pittsburgh labor history. The official death toll was 26, but some estimates place the number of dead around 40. Speaking at the ceremony on behalf of the BMWE, President Mac A. Fleming, said, "As President of the BMWE, I constantly try to view the world from the point of those who elected me to this position and who pay my salary. And when I take part in a ceremony like this, I also try to view the world from the standpoint of those who were doing maintenance of way work at a moment in time when the events we commemorate occurred. "What did workers in general, organized workers and railroad workers in particular, think during the strike of 1877? Their employer cut wages by ten percent. This was not the first time. The economists of the day felt these cuts were necessary to strengthen the position of the railroad. The economy was also bad at the time. "The world my predecessors looked at was quite different from our modern world, yet, in many ways, it was not all that much different. "At that time, there were no airplanes--no automobiles or trucks. There were horse drawn freight, ship-drawn freight, and the new-fangled, high technology railroads. The country was in a massive period of expansion and robber barons were in their heyday. Immigrants were pouring into the country, a never-ending source of cheap labor for the industries which were rapidly changing America from a rural-based economy to an industrial one. The BMWE would not even come into existence until a decade after the great railroad strike of 1877. "Yet, the great expansion was on. Native Americans were resisting the irrepressible expansion of the industrialists. Eugene Debs, the great railroad labor leader and visionary was young and had not yet formulated his progressive ideology. And yet, despite the differences in technology, the differences in time, temperament and even landscape, the same principles of greed against economic fairness, of backward government and management against the poor and downtrodden were powerful and prevalent. "And so, the railroad decides to cut its workers' wages and a strike erupts on the railroads. And the strike spreads across Maryland and Pennsylvania. Politicians panic. Business calls for the heads of the strikers. The periodicals damn organized labor. And the government calls in the militia. "At first they attempt to mobilize the militia in Pittsburgh to attack the strikers. But the local militia would not shoot their neighbors. And so non-local troops are called to quell the riot. Eventually the troops crush the strike, killing scores of workers and their families and injuring hundreds more. And they killed engineers and conductors, shopmen and trackmen and clerks. The killing did not happen by craft--it happened so long as your were a worker or the family of a worker. "The forces of greed are as evident today as they were when my predessors were killed during the great railroad strike of 1877. In the United States today the manner in which greed operates is somewhat more sophisticated. They are better able to use laws and courts to line their pockets at our expense. When railroad workers strike today, whether it's over safety or economics or dignity, the courts enjoin us or the Congress mandates us back to work. If we don't comply, they send in the marshals or the police or the military. "And they use the laws and the courts to thwart union organizing here. Because unions provide more for workers and cut down their profit margins. Today, there are less robber barons and more robber corporations, even though many of their CEOs are wealthier than the most greedy robber baron ever dreamed of being. "And now, in addition to using cheap labor by contracting our work, double breasting, short lining, downsizing and merging, they also send the work of organized workers to countries who repress organizing and kill strikers the same way they did during our formulative period. The difference, and the only difference, is that we have a powerful, dynamic labor movement that is sophisticated, growing and has their number--because we have numbers. "And so, when I think of what maintenance of way workers who fought and died during the strike of 1877 would be thinking--they would be thinking that the new AFL-CIO--the new direction of the labor movement--would be what they would want to happen. They would demand we organize, mobilize and fight back in the United States and with workers throughout the rest of the world. Because they would realize that only a large, powerful, intelligently led international, organized workers movement could make it possible that the sacrifices they made would not have to be also made by their grandchildren. And they would be proud that we remembered their sacrifice and heeded the lessons they taught."