Railroad strike

“ Shifter was allowed to run, and they would move the cars away. I may say, just here, that on inquiry, many men who were connected with the railroad shops here, men that I knew, that always said they had orders that there was a general strike pending, and they were to stop any local or freight trains, and that other trains with the mails, were to go on, and that they had no disposition to give any trouble, and frequently I was appealed to, that we should use our influence to keep the military away; that if the troops were brought on there would be violence. ”

“ In the meantime there did not appear to be any effort made on the part of the railroad authorities to move any more trains after this assault at the switch, and my impression was at the time that they had given the matter up just then. There seemed to be a general disposition on the part of the railroad employés—the men not on strike—to rest easy, as it were. They didn't want to work. I heard the men talking with each other. They did not appear to make any effort to work. Those not engaged in the strike actively—they seemed to be in sympathy with those in the strike. ”

“ Debs: "We did believe it, or the American Railway Union would never have been organized. We see now that it cannot because all the organized forces of society and of the government are arrayed against it. When a strike inconveniences no one, no one is particularly interested in it and it gradually dwindles down to the little end of nothing. But when a strike does inconvenience the public, as railroad strikes must of necessity do, the organized forces of society and the government, a practically impregnable force, and properly so, is arrayed against it. ”

“ The man who keeps on doing what a court of equity has forbidden him to do does commit one.
A conspicuous instance of the efficacy of an injunction was furnished by the great Chicago railroad strike and boycott of 1894, initiated by the American Railway Union. Mob violence followed. More than a thousand freight cars were burned. Trains were derailed, passengers fired at, and lives lost. ”

“ So, when a railroad strike prevents thousands of travellers not owning any railway stock, not having any part or influence in railway management, from reaching their destination, the strikers may be absolute scoundrels in their disregard of the rights of their fellow-men;{319} nevertheless it is entirely true that their own wages may have been ground down to starvation basis, and consequently the men have a right to complain. ”

“ But this brilliant victory bred an over-confidence among the men that soon brought about the destruction of their union. In an effort to force a settlement of the then pending Pullman strike, the militant railroad men placed a boycott against all Pullman cars which action produced a general strike, June 26th, 1894, on twenty-four roads centering in Chicago. ”

“ Q. Did you learn from these men where the first strike was to be made?
A. No. They talked of it as though it would be a general uprising throughout the whole country. They did not designate any particular place.
Q. You did not get the particulars?
A. I never heard the particular place designated as to how it would start, but simply it would be a strike; that they would all quit work; not work themselves nor allow others to work, and block travel and traffic in that way, expecting as the result it would bring the managers of railroads to their terms. ”

“ Another serious strike took place at the Carnegie Steel-Works, at Homestead, Pa., in 1892, which was also attended with bloodshed, the workmen firing on a force of detectives hired to protect the works. The disturbance became so great that the whole military force of Pennsylvania had to be called out. Two years afterwards Chicago was the scene of a great railroad strike, directed against the Pullman Car Works of that city. ”

“ On Monday there had been an order posted on the telegraph that all trains were double-headers, and a new line would ran to Altoona. That would have taken a great deal of work from some men. There would be a good many discharged. They suspended two or three of their oldest engineers. Every man refused to give up. They all talked of it, and went on with the strike, all the other roads striking. On Friday a telegram came from the Erie that all of them were on a strike. ”

“ A. If the strike had not taken place that morning, there would have been twelve engineers to go off, about ten firemen, and forty trainmen, conductors, brakemen, and flagmen—that would have been fifty or sixty men. It would have been only a week or so until they would have run everything to Altoona, and that would have thrown out the east end of the division, and then there would be nothing left for the strikers at all, only when freight was a little heavy they would not have made anything. ”

“ That is in regard to firemen or brakemen; of course engineers, with their big wages, they can make money.
Q. Was it your object, as strikers, to compel the railroad company to employ more men than they really needed?
A. The object of the strike was to do away with double-headers and get their ten per cent. back, if they could. If Mr. Watt would have come up there that morning and said, all right, let them run single trains, the thing would have been over in half a minute. No; they wouldn't do that. They didn't think about their ten per cent. ”

“ On the side of labor, it is the cherished right to strike.' Whether the source of this right be found in a particular provision of the Railway Labor Act [20] or in the scheme as a whole, it is integral to the Act. State courts may not enjoin a peaceful strike b covered railway employees, no matter how economically harmful the consequences may be. ”

“ Every time they have had a strike they have been defeated.
The railroad corporations are shrewd enough to recognize the fact that if they can keep certain departments in their employ in a time of emergency they can defeat all of the rest. 438A manager of a railroad who can keep control of 15 per cent of the old men can allow 85 per cent to go out on strike and defeat them every time. That is why they have made some concessions to the engineers and conductors and brakemen, and now and then to the switchmen, the most militant labor union of them all. ”

“ The railroaders there are organized in one great industrial union, one card, taking into membership the stenographers, train dispatchers, freight handlers, train crews and section crews. Everyone who works on the railroad is a member of the organization; not like it is in this country, split up into as many divisions as they can possibly get them into. There they are all one. There was a great general strike. It resulted in the country taking over the railroads. But the government made the mistake of placing politicians in control, giving politicians the management of the railroads. ”

“ Previous to that time there was nothing among the engineers and firemen; but, the day passed over, and there was no strike; and, of this strike on Thursday, the 19th, I heard nothing of it—I knew nothing of it, and our crew knew nothing of it—at least they said nothing to me, and it appeared to be a surprise to them when we came in. Railroad men sometimes are very communicative; they generally let one know, directly or indirectly, what is in the wind. They generally know one among the other. ”

“ Watt, and the question came up as to what was to be done in reference to it, and on inquiry of some parties, we learned that the railroad company did not suppose it was going to be a very serious strike, or would be very difficult for them to run their trains, as they had a large number of loyal men that would run trains as soon as they issued the order, and the rest would be taken care of. ”

“ First as a civil engineer; next as a mechanical engineer; and had made acquaintance of many railroad men—pretty extended—a great many were of the men who are railroading at the present day, and were railroading previous to this strike and during the strike, and for a length of time previous to the strike were men I was acquainted with, and I, perhaps, knew as much about their grievances as they did themselves, or what they considered their grievances. ”

“ They said nothing; only we are not going out on double-headers.
Q. How did they come and take possession of the switches, and stop trains from running?
A. They didn't stop any; they didn't have any men to go out with them. A good many men deny that they had anything to do with the strike, but they had at that time. They wanted their ten per cent. as much as anybody.
Q. Had the order cut their wages down below what they could have lived on, or could the men make fair wages enough to live on? ”

“ Coming in on the road, about East Liberty or Torrens, we usually met the trains going out—the eight-forty's. We did not meet them. We should have passed them between those points. We did not know what was the matter, but thought there was some delay or no freight; but when we came to Torrens, some of the men about the stock-yards, by signs in this manner, [indicating,] showed there was a strike, as we understood; but we knew nothing definite until we got to Lawrenceville, and there ascertained there was a strike. We usually cut the engine loose on running by the upper round-house. ”

“ On Friday, July 20th, the freight conductors and brakemen on the Pennsylvania railroad, at Philadelphia, began to be uneasy, and on Saturday, the 21st, a strike was in full operation among them. They gathered in crowds at the yards of the company where the freight trains were made up to start out, and they, as in other places, were joined by a large crowd of idle men, tramps, and vagabonds, such as are found around a large city, and who scent out a chance for trouble or a riot, as a crow scents carrion. ”

“ There was a man came into the round-house and said the brakemen were on a strike. So a couple of us went down to the yard, and the brakemen said down there that they were not going out on any double-headers. There was a fellow tried to make a coupling, and a man hit him with a link, and a little while after that they took out the same train with a yard engine. They couldn't get any long road engines out—nobody would go. ”

“ Such interference would be compounded if the disputants were-as they frequently would be subjected to various and divergent state laws. Railway (and airline [16] ) labor disputes typically present problems of national magnitude. A strike in one State often paralyzes transportation in an entire section of the United States, and transportation labor disputes frequently result in simultaneous work stoppages in many States.
The Railway Labor Act's entire scheme for the resolution of major disputes would become meaningless if the States could prohibit the parties from engaging in any self-help. ”

“ You will speedily discover that the strike of a few of our railway employés is simply being used by the mob violence, which some of your people are permitting or encouraging, to effect other purposes, which, if successful, will destroy many of your leading local interests. The strike on our road at Pittsburgh was inaugurated without any notice to or conference with the officers of our company as to the existence of a grievance. ”

“ I knew that the railroad authorities were more perfectly aware of the extent of this trouble than the community generally, and when the strike was made, on Thursday, July 19—when the day for putting the order for double-headers into effect. That when an officer of the railroad was assaulted, and the police were asked to arrest that man, which was done, and immediately communication was made with the State authorities to provide for a military force. ”

“ The contest on the Great Northern system has no parallel in the history of railroad trouble. From the hour the strike commenced the men were united; they stood shoulder to shoulder—engineers, firemen, brakemen, conductors, switchmen, and even the trackmen and freight handlers, who are generally first to suffer, stood up as one man and asserted their manhood. ”

“ A. Shortly after the reduction took effect or after it was announced—a couple of weeks before the strike. We never had any communication from any brakemen or firemen or any one respecting that. This running of double-headers, to which they objected, had been practiced on the Pittsburgh division for a number of years, but not to the same extent. Many of the coal trains were running with two engines, and, as a matter of economy, it was decided to run all through trains with two engines. ”

“ In July, 1877, the railroad strikes, supported by the railroad brotherhoods, notably the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, waged with intense severity and resulting in widespread rioting, bloodshed and destruction of property, spread over a vast area of the country and threatened the direst consequences if the grievances of the strikers were not adjusted. ”

“ It was in no case an uprising against the law as such, but a combination of men to assert an illegal right as between them and the railroad company. There was no organized movement throughout the country, no pre-arranged plan of the trainmen to prevent the running of freight trains by violence or combination, understanding or agreement between the men on any one railroad and the men on another. Each strike was independent of those on other roads, each having a local cause particularly its own. ”

“ It was not a body of railroad men alone, and I don't think that the larger part of them were railroad men—the iron workers, the people who work in rolling mills, and the people who work in the various branches of industry, were all in sympathy with them, so far as I observed, and so far as my knowledge, derived from others, extends, and it was a sort of massing of the striking element here. The strike of the Pennsylvania railroad men being simply the occasion that brought them together. ”