The Great Railroad strike:
Maryland National Guard Sixth Regiment fighting its way through Baltimore, Maryland, 20 July, 1877
The great railroad strike of 1877 started on July 14 in Martinsburg, West Virginia, in response to the cutting of wages for the second time in a year by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O). Striking workers would not allow any of the stock to roll until this second wage cut was revoked. The governor sent in state militia units to restore train service, but the soldiers refused to use force against the strikers and the governor called for federal troops. Meanwhile, the strike spread to Cumberland, Maryland, stopping freight and passenger traffic. When Governor Carroll of Maryland directed the 5th and 6th Regiments of the National Guard to put down the strike, citizens from Baltimore attacked the troops as they marched from their armories towards B&O's Camden Station for the train to Cumberland, causing violent street battles between the striking workers and the Maryland militia. When the outnumbered troops of the 6th Regiment fired on an attacking crowd, they killed 10 and wounded 25.[3] The rioters injured several members of the militia, damaged engines and train cars, and burned portions of the train station.[3] On July 21-22, the President sent federal troops and marines to Baltimore to restore order.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania became the site of the worst violence. Thomas Alexander Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad, often considered one of the first robber barons, suggested that the strikers should be given "a rifle diet for a few days and see how they like that kind of bread." However, local law enforcement officers refused to fire on the strikers. Nonetheless, his request came to pass on July 21, when militiamen bayoneted and fired on rock-throwing strikers, killing twenty people and wounding twenty-nine others.[4] Rather than quell the uprising however, this action merely infuriated the strikers who then forced the militiamen to take refuge in a railroad roundhouse, and then set fires that razed 39 buildings and destroyed 104 locomotives and 1,245 freight and passenger cars. On July 22, the militiamen mounted an assault on the strikers, shooting their way out of the roundhouse and killing 20 more people on their way out of the city. After over a month of constant rioting and bloodshed, President Rutherford B. Hayes sent in federal troops to end the strikes.
Three-hundred miles to the east, Philadelphia strikers battled local militia and set fire to much of Center City before federal troops intervened and put down the uprising.
Pennsylvania's third major industrial city at the time, Reading, was also hit by the Strike's fury. This city was home of the engine works and shops of its namesake Reading Railroad, against which engineers were already on strike since April 1877. Fresh work stoppage all classes of the railroad's local workforce; mass marches; blocking of rail traffic; trainyard arson; and the burning down of the bridge providing this railroad's only link to the west - to prevent local militia from being mustered to Harrisburg or Pittsburgh - were prelude to the Reading Railroad Massacre, in which ten citizens were shot by state militia mobilized by Reading Railroad management, not by local public officials.
The strike then spread to the American Midwest and Western, increasing in brutality and intensity. On July 21, disgruntled workers in East St. Louis, Illinois, halted all freight traffic, with the city remaining in the control of the strikers for almost a week. The strike was finally halted by a combination of military force, and an injunction that ordered workers not to interfere with railroad operations.
Burning of Pennsylvania Railroad and Union Depot, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 21-22 July 1877
On July 24, rail traffic in Chicago was paralyzed when angry mobs of groups of unemployed citizens wreaked havoc in the rail yards, shutting down both the Baltimore and Ohio and the Illinois Central Railroads. Soon, other railroads were brought to a standstill, with demonstrators shutting down railroad traffic in Bloomington, Aurora, Peoria, Decatur, Urbana and other rail centers throughout Illinois. In sympathy, coal miners in the pits at Braidwood, LaSalle, Springfield, and Carbondale went on strike as well.
In Chicago, the Workingmen’s Party organized demonstrations that drew crowds of twenty thousand people. The mayor of Chicago, Monroe Heath, asked for five-thousand vigilantes to help restore order (they were partially successful), and shortly thereafter the National Guard and federal troops arrived. On July 25, violence between police and the mob erupted with events reaching a peak the following day. These blood-soaked confrontations between police and enraged mobs occurred at the Halsted Street viaduct, at nearby 16th Street, at Halsted and 12th, and on Canal Street. The headline of the Chicago Times screamed, "Terrors Reign, The Streets of Chicago Given Over to Howling Mobs of Thieves and Cutthroats."[4] Order was finally restored, however, with the deaths of nearly 20 men and boys, the wounding of scores more, and the loss of property valued in the millions of dollars.
Burning of Union Depot, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 21-22 July 1877
The 1877 Shamokin Uprising occurred on July 25, when 1000 men and boys-many coal miners- marched to the Reading Railroad Depot in Shamokin, Pennsylvania. They looted the depot when the town announced it would only pay them $1/day for emergency public employment. The mayor, who owned coal mines, formed a vigilate group that killed 2 out of 14 civilian shooting casualties.
The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 began to lose momentum when President Hayes sent federal troops from city to city. These troops suppressed strike after strike, until at last, approximately 45 days after it had started, the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 was over.