![]() ![]() The Lexington of the Labor Conflict at Hand. "Shot in Cold Blood by the Roughs of Philadelphia. The troops fired into a crowd, killing more than 20 civilians, including women and at least three children. It is a revolt of working men against low prices of labor, which have not been accomplished with corresponding low prices of food, clothing and house rent." In Pittsburgh, where the local militia sympathized with the rail workers, the governor called in National Guard troops from Philadelphia. "The strike," an anonymous Baltimore merchant wrote, "is not a revolution of fanatics willing to fight for an idea. Maryland's governor telegraphed President Rutherford Hayes and asked for troops to protect Baltimore. At the height of the melee in 14,000 rioters took to the streets. protesters burned a switchtown, a passenger car, and sent a locomotive crashing into a siding full of freight cars. "They came armed with stones and as soon as we came within reach they began to throw at us." Fully armed and with bayonets fixed, the militia fired, killing 10, including a newsboy and a 16-year-old student. In Baltimore, a 20-year-old volunteer described the scene: "We met a mob, which blocked the streets, wrote Charles A. Governors in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia called out their state militias. Soon, violent strikes broke out in Baltimore, Chicago, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, St. Railroad employeees responded by seizing control of the railyard switches, blocking the movement of trains. Also in July, the Pennsylvania Railroad announced that it would double the length of all eastbound trains from Pittsburgh with no increase in the size of their crews. By the end of the day, workers blockaded freight trains near Baltimore and in West Virginia, allowing only passenter traffic to get through. Forty disgruntled locomotive firemen walked off the job. It also slashed the work week to just to or two or three days. On July 13, the Baltimore & Ohio line cut the wages of all employees making more than a dollar a day by 10 percent. The Pennsylvania Railroad, the nation's largest, cut wages by 10 percent and then, in June, by another 10 percent. In 1877, northern railroads, still suffering from the financial Panic of 1873, began cutting salaries and wages, prompting strikes and labor violence with lasting consequences. The strike would be broken within a few weeks, but it also helped set the stage for later violence in the 1880s and 1890s, including the Haymarket Square bombing in Chicago in 1886, the Homestead Steel Strike near Pittsburgh in 1892, and the Pullman Strike in 1894 usher in the world's first Labor Day parade in 1882. ![]() The strikes and the violence it spawned briefly paralyzed the country's commerce and led governors in ten states to mobilize 60,000 militia members to reopen rail traffic. The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 was the country's first major rail strike and witnessed the first general strikes in the nation's history. Many of the nation's most famous strikes involved the railroads. The industry's growth was accompanied by bitter labor disputes. ![]() By the eve of World War I, railroads employed one out of every 25 American workers. The total miles of railroad track in the United States increased from just 23 in 1830 to 35,000 by the end of the Civil War to a peak of 254,000 in 1916. ![]()
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