The Labor Uprising of 1877 Part 1

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
My name is Aric Gaskell, and you're listening to the
Distorted History podcast, and probly I can't give you many names,
and joy a blunder And look, I'm reading a long

(00:27):
struggle for freedom, It thenly is a revolution. The years
eighteen seventy seven, when year removed from the country's triumphant
centennial celebration and the United States is rocked by what
some declared to be an insurrection. As headlines of major

(00:49):
newspapers read quote the movement rapidly extending in all directions
end quote, the people excited and agitated from ocean to ocean, headlines, which,
while incredibly vague and unhelpful overall, do at least show
the scope of these events. Yet, as much as some
wanted to label these events in insurrection, what was taking
place in eighteen seventy seven were little resemblance to the

(01:12):
Civil War that had torn the country apart in defense
of slavery over a dozen years earlier. Instead, what was
happening was a mass strike of primarily railroad workers. The
Great Strike would begin on the eighteenth of July and
last for nineteen days, during which time some one hundred
thousand railroad workers would go on strike, and in doing so,

(01:32):
they would impact every major railroad line in the country,
making the strike even more notable. Whilst the fact that
in general these striking railroad workers had the support of
other working class laborers, and in several of the cities
where these strikes were centered, other workers actually joined them
by going on strike as well. Indeed, in a couple
of cities like Chicago, Saint Louis and Kansas City, virtually

(01:54):
all industry was shut down. Some that have characterized this
as the first trew general strike in the nation's history,
as events which started in West Virginia and Maryland, spread
progressively outward to Pennsylvania, New York, and beyond to the Midwest,
with strikes even happening as far as we as Galveston,
Texas and San Francisco. This strike, though, would be labeled

(02:14):
in insurrection as it terrified the authorities in upper classes
because to them it looked like a rebellion by labor. Indeed,
John Hey, who would soon become the Assistant Secretary of State,
when write as wealthy father in law, quote any hourly
mob chooses, it can destroy any city in the country.
That is the simple truth. The thing was for all

(02:36):
their fears. Since this strike was a truly spontaneous and
organic moment, it was not organized in any real way.
There simply was no leadership guiding and uniting all the
strikes across the various cities and states. Had there been,
or had those involved anticipated these events in any way,
these strike potentially could have been focused into a more
revolutionary moment and direction. As it was, though, these strike

(02:59):
was enough to shape certain quarters of the country to
their very core, leading to brutal reprisals and bloodshed. However,
before I even get into what motivated this strike, much
less its events and its fallout, first, like always, I
want to give credit to my sources for this series,
which include Philip S. Phonner's The Great Labor Uprising of
eighteen seventy seven, David O. Stollwells The Great Strike of

(03:22):
eighteen seventy seven, and Robert V. Bruce's eighteen seventy seven
Year of Violence. And like always, these and any additional
sources like websites that I used, will be available on
this podcast, Blue Sky and COOLVI pages. Plus for anyone
who doesn't want to be bothered skipping through commercials, there
is always an ad free feed available to subscribers at
patreon dot com slash distorted history. And with all that

(03:45):
being said, let's begin one year prior to the Great
Strike of eighteen seventy seven, the United States was celebrating
its centennial, as it had been one hundred years since
the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the document that
essentially founded the nation. The Centennial Exhibition, then, which was
held in Philadelphia, was not only meant to celebrate the
country's one hundredth birthday, but also the wondrous new age

(04:08):
they were supposedly entering. As you see, the exhibition would
feature new and exciting technology like soda fountains, the telephone,
and the Corliss steam engine that could be used to
power equipment in factories and mills or to generate electricity. Now,
the celebration was partially spoiled by the news of events
at the Little Bighorn and the Feet of George Armstrong

(04:28):
Custer and the Seventh Cavalry. Yet even without such an
event marring the celebration, for America's working class, there really
did not appear to be much to celebrate at the time. Indeed,
Pittsburgh's National Labor Tribune would overly wonder if this moment
held any meaning at all for America's workers, As they
wrote that, quote, capital has now the same control over

(04:48):
us that the aristocracy of England had at the time
of the revolution. We have the greatest work to do
ever given to men, as our forefather said, the regal power,
and it's a proud aristocracy to control and limit. So
have we now the combined power of capital, protected by monopolies,
defended by government and press, to women and control. Things
you see were particularly bad for America's working class, as

(05:10):
the country was in the fourth year of a major
economic depression. Indeed, it was the worst economic depression in
the nation's history, as anywhere from three to five million
were unemployed, and those who still had jobs were often
trying to get bio on starvation wages, many of which
were about to be reduced even further. In New York City,
for example, a quarter of the workforce was unemployed, a

(05:32):
situation that led to meetings being held to quote consider
how we are to get work, food, clothing, and shelter.
Those who attended such meetings, however, were liable to be
attacked by the cops. One such unprovoked assault, which saw
men women and children being beaten by the forces of
so called law and order, led John Swynen, the editor
of The New York Son, to write, quote, the power

(05:53):
of money has become supreme over everything. It has secured
for the class who control it, all the special privileges
in special legislation which it needs to secure its complete
and absolute domination. It was then crucial in Swin's opinion
that quote, this power must be captain Czech. It must
be broken or it will utterly crush the people, a
sentiment that would be echoed by the Chicago's Working Men's

(06:16):
Advocate as they called for quote another revolution as essential
today as that inaugurated in seventeen seventy six. Now, the
greatest concentration of wealth, power and influence in those days
were the railroads, as not only did they represent the
largest industry in the country and ownership of about a
tenth of the nation's property, but they also managed to
make themselves critical to the nation's economy. Trains, you see,

(06:40):
carried not just passengers, but also mail and something like
two thirst three fourths of the nation's freight. Indeed, they
would replace canals and natural wood waste as a primary
means of transporting freight, thereby making themselves final to the
nation's economy. It was for this reason that they should conquer.
Tribune in July eighteen seventy seven, would feature an editorial
that stated that the nation system of railroads was at

(07:02):
the quote very heart and life of the modern system
of commercial existence. Owning, operating, and profiting off these massive
and powerful corporations were millionaires like j Gold and Jim Fisk,
men who had demonstrated for all to see that their
pursuit of wealth knew no restraint. Jim Fisk, for example,
had been a bit of a war profiteer, as he
made quite a bit of money off of government contracts

(07:24):
during the Civil War. His real infamy, though, would come
when he partner with Jay Gold. For example, one of
their earliest partnerships involved taking over the Eerie Railroad from
Cornelius Vanderbilt by issuing fraudulent stock. The damage from that scheme,
though was limited. The same, however, could not be set
for their actions in eighteen sixty nine, and as he
would shape the country's economy badly and in particular hurt

(07:47):
the nation's farmers when grain prices plummeted due to their
scheme to corner the gold market. You see, the US,
in an effort to fund the Civil War, had gone
off the gold standard as he began issuing greenback's paper currency.
International trade though was stone done in gold, and so
to facilitate this, wall Street set up a gold room
where gold and green backs could be traded, a situation

(08:08):
which gave Gold an idea, as he figured someone with
enough money could buy up so much gold they could
effectively cord the market and then drive up the price
of gold before selling it off in a massive profit.
There was, however, one potential hang up in this plan,
the fact that the federal government could control the price
of gold by selling off some of its reserves whenever
the price started getting too high, which meant that President

(08:31):
Grant could potentially cut their plans off at the knees
by ordering these sales some of the country's gold reserves
whenever they started trying to manipulate the market, which is
where Abel Corbyn, Grant's brother in law, came in, as
Gold would be friend Corbyn and bring him in on
their plan, even going so far as a deposit one
point five million dollars in gold in an account under
Corbyn's name sufficiently motivated, Corbyn then helped to get General

(08:56):
Daniel Butterfield named the U S sub Treasurer in New York.
With Butterfield install, Corbyn hoped to ensure that their plan
would go off without a hitch, as a new subtreasurer
would be in position to warn the potters of any
government gold sale ahead of time, thereby allowing them to
sell off their holdings before the price plummeted, ensuring Butterfield's
loyalty with a one point five million dollar gold investment

(09:17):
in his name and a ten thousand dollars loan on
top of that. Meanwhile, Corbyn was also at work trying
to convince his brother in law, the President, that he
should not concern himself with rising gold prices, as such
a scenario would be good for farmers who, when they
saw their crops overseas, were paid in gold. Additionally, Corbyn
would also ensure that his partner's Golden Fisk just happened

(09:38):
to meet up with Granted multiple social functions where they
echoed similar sentiments. Now, Grant would make no pronouncements of
support to either Gold or Fisk, but he would apparently
indicate to his brother in law Corbyn in September eighteen
sixty nine that he had decided not to sell any
of the gold reserves for the next month. For Gold
and the other conspirators, this was assigned to buy up

(09:59):
as much gold as they could. To be clear, they
had been quietly putting their planet to motion over the
course of the previous month, buying up gold here and there,
but now with an apparent assurance that the government would
not cause the press of gold to drop for a month,
they moved swiftly on the twentieth of September to corner
the market. As a planned Fisk, for example, would quickly
buy up seven million dollars worth of gold, and before

(10:21):
too long Fisk and Gold would own a combined sixty
million dollars in gold. Meanwhile, they and their fellow conspirators
began manipulating the market, artificially driving up the price, which
they were successful in doing, as in August, a one
hundred dollars gold piece could be sold for one hundred
and thirty two green backs after their market manipulation began,
though that same gold piece cost one hundred and forty

(10:42):
two dollars in green backs. Grant, meanwhile, would be tipped
off that something was up when his brother in law, Corbin,
sent a letter to his wife that was clearly designed
to suss out whether the President intended to intervene in
the gold market or not. The suddenly suspicious Grant then
had his wife frit a response, chastising his brother in
law and warning him that he would not hesitate to
do his duty to the country. Alarmed, Corbon informed Gold

(11:05):
of Grant's message, and Gold would begin selling off his
gold investments on the twenty third of September. In doing so,
though Gould did not inform any of his fellow conspirators
of the impending government intervention. Indeed, Fisk, apparently unaware of
events in Washington, continued to bomb gold on the twenty third,
as the price jumped from one hundred and forty four
dollars to one hundred and sixty. He would even at

(11:27):
one point go so far as to boast that the
price would soon top two hundred dollars. In this, however,
he was wrong, because at noon on the twenty fourth,
Grant would order his Treasury secretary to fund the market
with gold from the reserves, news which, as soon as
they reached New York sent Wall Street into a panic.
The price of gold quickly began to plummet, which in
turn severely damaged several major Wall Street firms which had

(11:50):
heavily invested in the sky rocketing price of gold. Meanwhile,
thousands of speculators were also ruined, and farmers were left
to watch on in dismay as grand prices dropped by
some fifty percent. Both fiskan Gold, though, would manage to
evade much in the way of personal consequences from this
destructive scheme. Now, while not all railroad men were as
openly dastardly as the pair of Fiskin Gold, they were

(12:12):
still seen as fairly representative. You see, the typical railroad
tycoon of the age profited off of government land grants
and having monopolies and served regions as they often established
their rail lines in areas where there was no competition,
which meant they could charge whatever they wanted. Railroads were
so powerful, in fact, they could control the fate of
entire communities because keep in mind, these weren't just railroads.

(12:35):
These were massive corporations that also tended to own the
coal fields and iron minds that supplied the raw materials
through railroads. Needed. Sometimes they even owned politicians. This included
having a cozy relationship with a number of major federal
officials who could grease the proverbial rails for these corporations,
as these railroads are given charters and land grants and

(12:56):
were just in general subsidized by the government. This governmental support, though,
did not come with any kind of oversight, as the
railroads costly fought against any kind of regulations, investigations, and taxes.
They were aided in these efforts by a veritable army
of lawyers, who, even when they stopped arguing their cases,
often continued to further aid the railroads as they went

(13:17):
on to become legislators, governors, cabinet members, and judges. Their
reach then was massive, as they pervaded all levels of
the government and the legal system. In fact, Rutherford B.
Hayes would basically owe his presidency to the railroads, as
you see the contestant election of eighteen seventy six between
him and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden would be decided when

(13:37):
the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Thomas A. Scott, used
his influence to convince several Southern congressmen to shift their
support to Hayes after they would be president, made promises
to support Scott's planned Texas Pacific Railroad, a deal which
was just the latest example of the corruptions seemingly present
throughout the nation's government. After all, the previous years had

(13:58):
seen the Grand Administration, which from one controversy to the next.
For example, in addition to his brother in law being
involved in Golden Fist gold scheme, Grant's friend in private
secretary had been involved in the whiskey ring that had
the funded the treasury of millions of dollars. Then there
was Grant's Secretary at War, William Belknapp, who headed up
a scheme selling the rights to service margins on military posts,

(14:20):
a scheme based upon military regulations that prevented soldiers from
purchasing goods from any place other than the approved merchants
on their bases, a rule that created a situation much
like a company store in a company town, where the
merchant could charge whatever they wanted, so in exchange for
receiving one of these prime appointments, Belknap and his allies
would receive generous kickbacks from the merchants in question. This

(14:44):
was the scheme that brought George Armstrong Custer back east
to testify before his ill fated campaign that added along
the banks of the Little Bighorn River. Thanks at least
in part the Custer's testimony, then Belknap would be very
nearly impeached. However, before the House could vote on this matter,
resigned his position as Secretary of War. Congress, though still
voted to carry on with the impeachment, but Belknap was

(15:07):
ultimately acquitted due simply to the fact that they fell
one vote shortly two thirds majority required to impeach him.
And notably, that was not the extent of the corruption
president in the Grand administration, and nor was Belknap the
highest official potentially involved in such corruption, as even Grant's
Vice President, Schuler Colfax would reside amidst accusations of bribery

(15:27):
when he allegedly received money in stock from the Union
Pacific in return for aiding them during the construction of
the Transcontinental Railroad in the Credit Mobilier scandal. Corruption, then,
it seemed, had become the rule rather than the exception,
from the office of the President on down through the
state governments, where legislators tended to work more for corporations
than they did their own constituents. As a crafted lass,

(15:50):
it heavily favored the corporations, while many a judge who
rolled upon those laws just happened to be a former
corporate lawyer. People, to various degrees they were takes noted
the growing power of the railroads and the growing corruption
within the government. Farmers and small town merchants, for example,
generally oppose the railroads, as they feared their ability to
wreck their local economies on a whim by raising their

(16:12):
rates to transport goods to and from their isolated communities,
where the railroad was their only real lifeline with the
outside world. Meanwhile, the growth of corporations in general, and
not just railroads, had a profoundly degrading effect on America's workers.
As you see, when businesses were smaller and bosses actually
had to deal with their workers and see them as people,
it was harder to simply ignore them and their struggles.

(16:34):
It was harder to mistreat them and slash their wages
in the name of greater profit. Now I'm not saying
that never happened, but in those situations, the workers had
been seen as more important and thus were able to
generally bargain with their employers. With industrialization and the growth
of corporations, however, bosses came to see their workers as
replaceable parts, so if a worker had a problem with

(16:56):
their wages, they thought nothing of replacing them, as there
were plenty of others who could fill that same role.
Economic emergencies then were especially great for keeping wages low,
because the more desperate workers were, the more agreeable they
had to be, because if not, they were even more
replaceable than ever, because they more and more desperate people
out there who were willing to take whatever scraps they

(17:17):
could get. At the same time, the working conditions created
in part by industrialization often tended to shorten a worker's life,
if not outrightly to their death. Understand, the average worker
at this time were twelve to fourteen hour days, during
which time they were often cooped up and confined spaces
with limited light and poor air, as the air was
typically filled with the dust or whatever it was they

(17:39):
were working on. Tobacco for cigar makers, sawdust for woodworkers,
stone for men working in a quarry, land for textile workers,
and mental filings for men who work with metal, none
of which could have been good for their lungs. Additionally,
those working in factories and mills were often expected to
work with dangerous machinery that could easily cripple and or
kill workers, as there was no such thing as safety

(18:02):
precautions as keep in mind the Triangle shirtwaist fire did
not happen until nineteen eleven, so there are still decades
before anything starts to be done about workplace safety. Indeed,
workers named or killed on the job often had no
recourse against their employers, as the court system, which again
was packed with former corporate lawyers, took the position that

(18:22):
by taking a job, the worker was accepting the risk
at game with the job, and thus their employers had
no responsibility for their safety. So whether one worked in
a factory with dangerous or even potentially deadly machinery, or
if one worked any mind which were potential death traps
in their own right, if they were injured or died
on the job, the company didn't own them or their

(18:43):
families anything. Plus, this was also the era of the
company town, where workers were forced to purchase the goods
they needed to survive from stores that were owned and
operated by their employers, stores that typically offered substandard goods.
It presses, some ten to twenty percent higher than charged
at non companies stores. The problem for workers in companies
Townsend was the fact that there were no independent stores,

(19:05):
and since most workers could not afford to make the
journey to Stumplice and had such establishments, they had no
choice but the shop at the company store. Making things
worse was the fact that some places didn't even pay
their workers in actual money. This range from the company's
script that could only be used to buy goods in
company owned stores, to some cigar makers in Cincinnati who

(19:26):
paid their workers in boxes of cigars. The workers were
then expected to take these cigars, which were typically the
worst the company had, and then go around to saloons
and they like to try and sell them to get
some actual money to live off of. Now keep in
mind all this was already the norm before the economic
depression struck in eighteen seventy three, a depression which by

(19:47):
the way, was at least partially the result of the
railroads and the obscenely rich bankers who ostensibly ran the country.
As you see, the economy tumble thanks largely to the
actions of Jay Cook, the leading banker of the era.
Book you see had been looking to fund a second
transcontinental railroad in the form of the Northern Pacific Railroad
by selling one hundred million dollars worth of bonds. Investors, though,

(20:09):
were starting to get worried about the project, so Cook
borrowed heavily, believing that investors would eventually get over their
fears in time for him to pay off his debts
before they came due. This, however, proved to be a
poor bet, and both Cook and his company were forced
to declare bankruptcy. This then had a domino effect, as
Wall Street was shaken by the downfall of one as

(20:30):
wealthy as Cook, which would eventually lead to a full
on economic depression that would be so serious it earned
the title the Great Depression, before eventually being renamed the
Long Depression following the Depression of the nineteen thirties, which
laid claim to that name. As you might expect given
its names, this depression would stretch on for years and
have terrible consequences for the working class, in particular, as

(20:53):
an estimated one million of the three point five million
non farm workers in the country were put out of
work during this period. This also had the effect of
wrecking the nations craft unions because employers had nothing to
fear when it came to strikes. They didn't care if
workers walked off the job because there were plenty of
other desperate people just waiting to take their place. Indeed,
if anything, a strike simply read employers on the amount

(21:16):
contents in their midst Indeed, even if they didn't go
on strike, union members were regularly fired and blacklisted by
employers who had no fear of any sort of backlash.
And to be clear, the blacklist was a very real thing.
It was a list of names of suspected labor agitators
that was circulated among railroad officials so as to ensure

(21:37):
that anyone whose name appeared on that list would never
be employed in the railroad industry. Again, then, to further
protect themselves from the thud of their workers organizing, railroads
also frequently employed so called yellow dog contracts, in which
the worker would agree to not join a union. These
contracts would be derisively termed yellow dogs because those who
signed such terms were being submissive to their employers by

(22:00):
giving up their rights. Plus, if that wasn't enough, railroads
also frequently employed private detective agencies like the Pikertans and others,
as illustrated in my episode on the Pinkertons and in
stuff like the West Virginia mine weres. These private detective
agencies were extra legal groups that were used to break
strike through force and to spy on their workers when
not on strike, doing so to alert the bosses ahead

(22:22):
of time of anyone talking about dangerous topics like, you know,
organizing and working together. Such individuals, once identified, were typically
fired and blackballed. As a result of such tactics and
the ongoing depression, by eighteen seventy six, on average, only
one worker out of every hundred was still any union
of any sort. For example, in New York City, union

(22:43):
membership went from forty five thousand to just five thousand,
a situation that was far from unusual, as there had
been thirty national unions before the panic become eighteen seventy seven,
only nine remained, and for the most part, the unions
that survived mainly did so by laying low and biding
their time. They effectively went underground and adopted the use

(23:05):
of things like passwords and secret handshakes to try and
keep themselves safe from the corporate agents who were looking
to destroy the last messiges of organized labor. In doing so,
though these organizations unintentionally gave themselves a seemingly sinister error.
To outsiders, then they were two secret and thus it
was easy to cast them as being not only subversive,
but also wicked and lawless, which typically only made them

(23:28):
more unpopular, and thus it was easier to justify the
state unleashing their National Guard forces upon these striking workers.
Which is all to say that workers were essentially defenseless
as the cost of living rose and their pay was cut.
As you see, during the depression, wages for the most
part dropped by at least twenty five percent, with some
plumbing as much as fifty to sixty percent, while in contrast,

(23:50):
the cost of food only fell by five percent. As
a result, even those who had managed to hold onto
their jobs were barely better off than those who went not.
For example, in Cincinnati, as Agar maker, who had a
wife and three children, was asked at one point how
we lived on just as five dollars a week earnings,
to which he replied, quote, I don't live. I am

(24:11):
literally starving. We get meat once a week. The rest
of the week we have dry bread and black coffee.
A diet that wasn't doing his children's health any favors,
as he further asserted that all three were ill cities
across the nation that were beset by a multitude of
people who had nothing to eat and nowhere to sleep with.
The only aid that could rely upon coming from soup

(24:31):
kitchens that provided a woodery stew, while the basements of
police stations sometimes provided something that resembled shelter. However, such
shelter was fleeting, as in New York City, for example,
individuals were only allowed to stay in nine or two
in the station house. Such individuals then were forced to
make a circuit around the city's various police stations, earning
these unfortunate saulcy nickname of revolvers, some of whom would

(24:54):
eventually grow so desperate that they actually took to begging
cops to arrest them so they could be sent to
prison on black Field Island as a vagrant, an approach
that was reportedly adopted by some men who ad turned tramp,
meaning they had taken to traveling around the country looking
for work. Some of these men, you see, according to
a Connecticut report, would come fall make a point of
committing very obvious and visible penny larceny, so they would

(25:16):
be rested in jail during the harsh winter, with their
sentences coming to an income spring, at which point they
would be released. The thing was, as more and more
people were forced to become tramps, the media became less
tolerant of them, at which point, rather than presenting tramps
as people who were down on their luck, people who
had been forced out of their jobs and homes by
a corrupting, unjust system, papers instead total labeling tramps as criminals.

(25:41):
Tramps then were blamed for any increase in crime by
the media. As a result, any way to get rid
of them was seen as a positive good. This man
paying for their train fair to send them someplace anyplace
else was treating with the same positive messaging as say,
five tramps dying with the abandoned structure they were sleeping
and collapsed, which, to be clear, is not an exaggeration

(26:02):
on my part, as that story involving the death of
five human beings was reported with the celebratory headline of
quote a few tramps less. Meanwhile, the situation wasn't much
better for those who still had jobs, as they tendant
to live in overcrowded felth thread and sums where they
might live out their entire lives without ever glimpsing any
kind of natural greenery. Every city had its sums, areas

(26:25):
that earned names like Hell's kitchen, kerosene row, poverty Gap, bandits, roost,
and bone alley. Places that didn't get names like that
because there were nice locations to live. Such sums were
packed full and tenement buildings structures where, out of desperation,
multiple families would cram themselves into a single apartment where
they had to share everything. For example, one hundred and

(26:46):
ninety two people, including ninety one children, would all be
crammed into a single tenement house on Crosby Street in
New York. Speaking of children, it should be noted that
few of those living in such places received much of
any education. For example, tenty six hundred children living in
New York's five point area in eighteen seventy, only nine
had attended any kind of schooling. Meanwhile, these apartments weren't

(27:08):
just cramped, they were also dank, as the sun rarely
if ever reached their windows, as the buildings themselves were
packed so tightly against one another plust. These sums and
tenement buildings were also filthy and often swarming with fermin
and rats, which doesn't even get into the fact that
these sellers on these buildings were not infrequently polluted with sewage. Indeed,
the issue of sewage was especially a problem for towns

(27:30):
and long rivers as they relied upon said rivers for water,
allthough while also using those same rivers to dump their
sewage sums. Then, as you might expect, where a breeding
ground for cholera outbreaks, as cholera is often spread through
water contaminated by human feces. Cholera, though, was far from
the only disease that was prevalent in the palms, as
was often joined by typhus, yellow fever, scarlet fever, and smallpox.

(27:53):
Death then murderly stalked the palms, whether it was brought
on by the aforementioned diseases, malnutrition, your garden, variety of violence,
or even suicide, death was common. These night marish and
virons then only grew worse come the summer, as the
thought that resulted from so many humans living in such
close quarters, especially in an era before indoor plumbing, was
only made worse by the summer heat. Cleveland streets, for example,

(28:17):
during the summer were said to wreak from quote poisonous
in miismatic, vegetable and animal matter. As a result, those
with enough money to do so would flee from the
cities during the summer. That, however, was not an option
for the poor, who would love to suffer and toil
and the heat and terrible stench with no relief to
be found. Such conditions, though, didn't just make life miserable,

(28:38):
it was also deadly for the vulnerable. For example, the
New York Times would right in July eighteen seventy seven, quote,
already the cry of the dying children begins to be heard.
To be clear, this was no random morbid statement either,
as the paper explained, quote soon to judge for the past,
there will be one thousand deaths of infants per week
in the city. Infanted sex teams regularly died come the

(29:01):
summer in the city, and everyone just knew that was
a reality of life in the sums. The thing was
such homes of human misery were allowed to exist in
no small part because they were immensely profitable for the
people who owned them. As you see, slum lords regularly
made profits of fifty to seventy five percent on their
original investment per year. Indeed, this mass suffering of the
poor being cast against those who grew rich off the

(29:23):
tenements and from industries like the railroads is the reason
why this time period or the name the Gilded Age,
a name coined by Mark Twain, although at this point
it might be better to call this period the First
Gilded Age, considering current conditions. Regardless, New York City provided
a perfect example of this dichonomy, as you had millionaires
whose mansions were within eyesight of the shanty towns. Basically,

(29:47):
you had a situation where you had this massive poor
people living in squalor and slums or otherwise forced to
roam about the country looking for work. At the same time,
you had men like Cornelius Vanderbilt, who had a personal
fortune of one hundred and five million dollars, which is
roughly three point two billion dollars to day. It's not
happenstance then, that this was the error that perpetuated the
myth of characters like Horatio Alder and others who pulled

(30:09):
themselves up by their bootstraps to become wealthy through nothing
but hard work, a myth that attempted to mollify the
poor messes by suggesting that anyone could become rich if
they worked hard enough, regardless of circumstances, while also suggesting
that if you were poor, it was your own fault.
This divide between the rich and the poor, and how
dismissively their plate was treated, was perfectly illustrated by the

(30:32):
statement given by Reverend Henry Ward Beetri at the start
of the strike when he was addressing his wealthy Brooklyn congregation.
As you see, while the good Reverend would admit that
the working class was oppressed, he also declared that this
was the way things were meant to be. As he proclaimed, quote,
God has intended the great to be great and the
little to be little. And in contrast to the great,

(30:53):
like himself and his congregants, trade unions were the destroyers
of liberty. Indeed, the reverend, who made at least thirty
thousand und dollars a year, which is apparently nearly nine
hundred thousand dollars to day, would say of workers who
had to survive on wages of a dollar a day, quote,
the man who cannot live on bredon water is not
fit to live. It is then, in this environment that

(31:14):
the strike of eighteen seventy seven would take place. Now.

(31:35):
Since they are effectively our main characters in this tale
and the driving force behind this massive strike, you have
to understand that while railroad workers had been involved in
multiple small scale strikes over the years, they had never
managed to form an effective union to stain up through
their powerful bosses. Indeed, in eighteen seventy three, there really
were no unions for railway men period. At most, you

(31:56):
had some machinists working in some repair shops who were
members of the Machine and Blacksmith's International Union, but it
wasn't all the workers in these repair shops, and this
union wasn't really focused on the railroads. Meanwhile, you had
some of these skill and workers forming quote unquote brotherhoods,
like the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen,
and the Brotherhood of Railway Conductors. These brotherhoods, though, weren't

(32:19):
really unions. The Fireman's Brotherhood, for example, was more than
anything else, focused on promoting proper moral conduct by its
members as a way to improve conditions. Really, the closest
any of these brotherhoods came to an actual union was
he Brotherhood of locomotive engineers, which boasted ten thousand members
who worked on nearly every major rail line. However, they
were led by Charles Wilson, a conservative trade unionist who

(32:42):
not only deeply opposed the idea of union engineers cooperating
with non railroad workers for economic or political actions, but
also the general concept of strikes. Indeed, he would warn
members of the Brotherhood that any local lodgist had struck
without his permission would be kicked out of the Brotherhood,
as in his employers and workers had a common interest,

(33:02):
so there really was no need to strike a stance
that would ultimately lead to his removal from his leadership
position when he went so far as to assist in
strike breaking efforts during strikes in eighteen seventy three and
seventy four. It was then under the leadership of the
new head of the Brotherhood, Peter m Arthur, that only
twenty ninth of December eighteen seventy six, every train that
was currently operating on Canada's Grand Trunk Railway west of

(33:25):
Montreal came to a stop wherever they were as their
engineers put out their fires. These trains stopped as they
were in between destinations effectively blocked every track that was
a part of the Grand Trunk Railway. This was clearly
a calculated and coordinated act that had been done in
response to the Grand Trunk violating agreements it had with
the Brotherhood. In fact, the railway had even gone so

(33:47):
far as to fire some of the Brotherhood's leaders. Over
the next several days, then the engineers, along with some sympathizers,
would turn back strike breakers as they held onto the
railroads roundhouses. This was something the railways at never had
to deal with before. This was an actual organized strike
and contrast to the more pop up, isolated, wildcatch strikes

(34:07):
they were used to dealing with. Unable to deal with
a strike on this scale, Then the Grand Trunk Railway
finally gave in, meeting the demands of the Brotherhood, which
included paying for the travel expenses they knew head of
the Brotherhood had accumulated during the course of the strike. Now,
it does have to be said that the railroads weren't
going through a bit of a rough patch themselves, although

(34:27):
a fair amount of this was self inflicted, as railroads
all across the country had participated in a series of
self destructive rate wars with one another. Basically, they were
looking to drive their rivals out of business by offering
lower rates so that once there was no longer any competition,
they could charge whatever they wanted to make up for
whatever they had lost. The problem was, it seems that

(34:48):
all the railroads were using the same playbook, so they
just kept cutting their rates lower and lower, hurting both
their competition and themselves in the process. In fact, these
rate wars would leave multiple railroads across the country bankrupt,
which then put them in receivership, which, as far as
I can tell, meant the government appointed individuals to run
the railroads so they could pay off their investors. Meanwhile,

(35:11):
on top of that situation, in January and February eighteen
seventy seven, Western railroads made half a million dollars less
than they had during the same span a year earlier.
This was due to a combination of a harsh winter, spring, floods,
and crop failures. In response to this situation, the head
of the Kansas Specific Railroad ordered all expenses cut to
their coat very lowest point, which meant reducing trains, laying

(35:34):
off construction gangs, and lower wages. It also wasn't just
the Western railroads, ever, feeling the pinch either, as their
stoss continued to fall across the country. For example, stock
in the Baltimore and Ohio fell from one ninety one
to seventy nine. Now, the answer to this situation was,
of course, cutting the wages of other workers. This was

(35:55):
of course a common practice, as railroads and businesses throughout
the years of the depression and repeatedly slashed their workers' wages.
For example, the Boston and Main Line in eighteen seventy
six had cut their workers' wages by ten percent. Cam
the end of the year, though they found themselves running
at a profit, money which they then used to raise
the salaries of their president and superintendent. Now the Brotherhood

(36:17):
of Locomotive Engineers had taken notice of the situation. If
the railroad had enough profit to raise the salaries of
its president and superintendent, then surely it could afford to
return their pay to where it had been before their CODs,
which is exactly what the sixty seven members of the
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers employed by the railroad demanded. However,
the railroad's president, who was surely enjoying his pay raise,

(36:41):
refused their demands, so on the twelfth of February, after
they had given the railroad four hours to reconsider their stance,
the Boston and Maine engineers stopped their trains wherever they
were on the tracks, just like their Canadian fellows had done. Now,
this was a tactic that had first been employed during
strucks in eighteen seventy three and seventy four, strikes which,
while they had ultimately failed, had offered them a glimpse

(37:03):
into the future, as he illustrated how effectively disrupting rail
traffic could be. The railroad, however, had been anticipating such
a action and had non union men stationed aboard every
train on its lines just waiting for such a disruption.
As a result, they were able to have all their
trains up and running again within the hour. They were
able to respond so swiftly because, thanks to the Depression,

(37:24):
strike breakers were easy to find. Plus, it also did
not help that there was no real sense of solidarity
among the railroad workers as a whole. Even the brotherhoods
only concerned themselves of their own specialized, specific trade, so
that basically, when engineers went on strike, they weren't necessarily
joined by the other railroad employees. Indeed, often times the

(37:45):
other trades just kept working and in some cases even
filmed in for those on strike. Still, the apparently pro
management publication Railway World would frame the engineers bringing the
trains to a halt, albeit briefly, as a conspiracy quote
against railway companies and the traveling public. The public, though,
is generally behind the engineers. Indeed, many a commuter would

(38:07):
state that they would rather walk than support the railroad
grinding down its workers. In fact, one prominent stockholder and
the railroad even vocalized his support for the engineers by
stating that he did not care if he missed his
dibdends that year because he believed it important that the
engineers should be paid well. Unfortunately, the railroad did not
share the stockholder's opinion. Indeed, as you will see tom

(38:29):
and again in this episode, the railroad would choose to
slash their workers pay rather than have their investors make
not quite as much money as they could have. Meanwhile,
even though the public in general was behind the engineers,
the Boston police were predictably on the other side of things,
as it would be dispatched to clear the Boston and
Main station of the quote crowd. Of loafers, which has

(38:51):
infested it since the beginning of the strike. The company
then stood firm refusing the budge, while the Brotherhood was
gradually running out of money. So the strike, unlike the
one in Canada the previous year, would ultimately end in failure,
as the engineers were replaced and those who had gone
on strike were effectively blacklisted as it would remain out
of work. Not satisfied with this victory, the head of

(39:13):
the State Board of Railroad Commissioners, Charles Francis Adams, the
second and the wig of the strike, proposed a law
threatening a heavy fine or a year plus in jail
for any railroad worker who refused to work, who abandoned
a train in between stations, or who attempted to intimidate
strike breakers. In fact, even a peaceful confrontation with a
strike breaker on company of property, according to this law,

(39:35):
could come with a three hundred dollars fine or three
months in prison. Basically, then, this was a law against striking,
period a law which the Railroad Gazette thought was a
step too far, as they asserted it was wrong to
infringe on the rights of one class to quote secure
to another complete amidity from Mos, basically saying it was
wrong to take away workers' rights just so the rich

(39:56):
could always get to enjoy profits no matter what. Meanwhile,
the Engineer's Journal warned that unless this plan was abandoned,
we were likely to hear quote the dread crime or
land of bread or blood. Massachusetts legislators apparently also saw
the potential dangers inherent in such a law and did
not pursue it. However, states like Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Michigan,

(40:18):
and Illinois would all publish ordered down versions of this
fall that were explicitly aimed at preventing the tactic of
abandoning trains and transit during a strike. Also, in eighteen
seventy seven, before the events of the Great Strike, proper
engineers and firemen working for the Philadelphian Reading Railroad who
had had their way to slash multiple times during the
course of this depression, which sent a petition to management

(40:38):
in which they requested a twenty percent raise. Now, this
petition included no threat of a strike and made no
mention of the engineer's brotherhood. However, the Philadelphian Reading Railroads management,
under the leadership of their president of Franklin B. Gwen
would respond to this petition by telling their engineers in particular,
to either quit their brotherhood or the railroad. Now one
of the core benefits of the brotherhood, but it was

(41:00):
an insurance fund that they could rely upon in case
of injury. So Gowen offered to replace this brotherhood insurance
with one that was run by the company. The thing
was this insurance and all the money the workers paid
into it would be forfeit if they quit or went
on strike, meaning that any who accepted this insurance was
effectively giving up their right to ever go on strike.
Now such a response wasn't really all that surprising, given

(41:22):
that Gowen was famous for being a union buster, or,
as he put it, a defender of the quote right
to the individual laboring men against the tyranny of trade unions. Indeed,
just two years prior to this, Gowan had destroyed one
of the first notable industrial unions in the country, the
Workingmen's Benevolent Association, which had consisted primarily of anthracite coal miners.

(41:43):
Gowan was also the man who had orchestrated the takedown
of the Molly mcguires, whom may or may not have
even existed for a quick summary of events, a series
of violent acts which may or may not have been
connected or penned on a group called the molly mcguires
in what might have simply been an attempt to deemnize
the striking coal miners. It was Gowan then who had
spearheaded the hiring of Pinkerton detective James McParland, whose spying

(42:05):
and subsequent testimony led to the convictions of twenty supposed
molly McGuire's and their executions, an exceedingly unusual and suspicious situation,
especially when you realized that the only role that the
state played in this drama was to provide a courtroom
and the hangman, as the investigation and the arrest of
all the alleged molly mcguires had all been done by
a private police force that had been hired by the

(42:26):
Philadelphian Reading Coal and Iron Company that Gowen was also
the president of. As for the engineer's request for a
pay raise and the railroads response to demand that they
quit their brotherhood, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers requested arbitration
so as to settle their dispute, but this was rejected
by the railroad so a strike was called, at which
point half the engineers, after bringing their trains to their

(42:47):
destinations to avoid running a foul of Pennsylvania's new laws,
just up and quit. Gowen responded to this situation by
giving raises to those who had stayed on the job,
while hiring new men to replace those who had quit,
Though believing that all his workers were easily replaceable, hired
men with little to know experience. As we all sure
there were plenty of unemployed men, few of them actually

(43:08):
knew how to operate locomotives. Gowen, however, did not seem
to think that this mattered, which of course led to accidents,
including burned out locomotives and wrecked train cars, events which
were wholly the result of putting untrained men on the job,
a fact which the engineer's brotherhood was more than happy
to point out, even though Gowan would attempt to claim
that these incidents were the result of sabotage. Still, though,

(43:29):
the factor remained that the Philadelphian reading railroads trans were
sort of running, and so Gwen declared victory. Azu proclaimed
that none of the railroads workers from that point on
would have to be quote obliged to submit to the
degradation of asking his fellows leave to earn his daily bread. Instead,
they would be locked at the whim of Gowan to
decide whether they were worthy of being paid enough to

(43:49):
live off of, regardless the fact that the matter was
After their success in Canada, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers
had now suffered back to back defeats and were now
on the back foot, something which led the New York Times,
who are always on the right side of history, to
happily declare, quote, the Brotherhood is destroyed as a dictatorial body.
Neither a railroad nor engineer will fear it. Henceforward. Meanwhile,

(44:13):
I look that the railroad's luck was turning around, as
instead of warring against one another, they were now forging
new deals and alliances in which they would be more
focused on working together than on competing. Indeed, this new
spirit of cooperation had manifested during the recent labor disruptions,
as other railways had come together to support the ones
being threatened by union activity, because, like always, it's okay

(44:35):
for businesses to work together against labor, but it's never
okay for labors to work together against businesses. Additionally, the
resolution of the presidential election, with a deal that saw
Rutherford B. Hayes assuming office and reconstruction efforts in the
South effectively coming to an end. Led to a spike
and investor confidence. Plus, with the increase in grain prices

(44:55):
resulting from the outbreak of war between Russia and Turkey,
the railroads were anticipat making significantly more money than he
had recently. All this influx of new money, however, was
not enough to satisfy them, as they also wanted to
slash cost so as to maximize their profits, and the
easiest way to do that was slashing their workers' wages,
something which they anticipated being easier than ever thanks to

(45:17):
the recent defeat of the Engineer's Brotherhood. In making these plans,
it's also suspected that the railroads also girded themselves through
a secret agreement where one railway at a time would
make their cuts so that the others would be able
to support them. These cuts started being put into effect
on the fifteenth of May, when the Missouri Pacific Railway
cut their engineers pay by twelve percent, a nact that

(45:39):
was met by no resistance, likely no small part due
to the recent crushing the feats of the Engineer's Brotherhood.
With this successful wedge cut implemented, the Pennsylvania Railroad on
the twenty fourth of May announced that on the first
of June, adds employees who earned more than a dollar
a day would take a ten percent pay reduction. Now,
this was notably the second time the railroad had cut

(45:59):
way since the Panic of eighteen seventy three. This cut,
though unlike the Missouri in pacifics, was wide ranging, as
it would affect everyone from station agents to switchmen, to
baggage men and signalmen. Of most concern though, were the
men who worked the trains, the conductors, the engineers, the fireman,
and the brakemen, as they, more than anyone else, had
the ability to bring the railway itself to a halt.

(46:21):
Among these trainmen, the lowest paid were the brakemen, as
they made on average eight dollars seventy five per twelve
hour workday, which was scarcely more than the men who
carried bricks for bricklayers made, despite having a far more
dangerous job. As you see, the brakemen were responsible for
stopping the train, a job which typically involved running along
the roofs of the various train cars to spin the

(46:42):
wheels that control the bricks on each car, something which
is just as dangerous as it sounds. But what's more,
just to get up to the roofs they had to
use brackets or basically never inspected, meaning that there was
always a chance that the brackets could feel as the
brakeman were sending or descending from the roof, caused the
fall potentially off the train altogether, or if they were

(47:03):
particularly unlucky, fall underneath the train's wheels. Then, as if
that wasn't bad enough, even the process of assemble in
the trains was dangerous for the brakemen, as they were
the ones responsible for linking the cars together, a job
which with some regularity saw them losing fingers and even
whole hands. Plus, the weather could always make every aspect

(47:24):
of their job worse and more dangerous by creating second
icy conditions that they would have to navigate while the
train was moving. Which is all to say that this
was a job where injury, maiming, and even death was
not uncommon, none of which the railroads were reliable for.
By the way. Indeed, according to the Pennsylvania Railroads Official
Regulations quote, if an employee is disabled by sickness or

(47:47):
any other cause, the right to claim compensation is not recognized. Allowances,
when made in such cases, will be as a gratuity,
justified by circumstances of the case and previous good conduct. Basically,
then it was up to the railroad whether they would
compensate the brakemen or their families in case of injury
or death. Speaking of death, it's possible that not all

(48:11):
though suffered by the brakemen were accidental. Instead, some might
have been self inflicted, as according to one Baltimore reporter
who had spoken with several breakmen, it was widely believed
that some end quote, after loss of rest and under
the depression of reduced wages, et cetera, have purposely thrown
themselves under the wheels. Indeed, according to this reporter, quote

(48:32):
nearly all men talked was said at one time and
another when melancholy, they had meditated a bounce, tepping over
the bumpers and meeting instant death. Meanwhile, the firemen were
slightly better off, as he averaged about a dollar ninety
per twelve hour workday. The firemen also weren't risking their
lives in quite the same way as the brakemen were,
although their primary responsibility was still a shovel coal onto

(48:55):
the locomotives boiler that could get quote hot enough to
melt glass. In addition to this task, the firemen were
also essentially the co pilot for the engineers, as they
kept the lookout for any kind of obstruction and were
also responsible in aiding the engineers in the general upkeep
of the engine. Speaking of the engineers, as he once
actually in charge of running the locomotives that drove the train,

(49:16):
they made three dollars and twenty five cents a day,
which was roughly about what plumbers made. Meanwhile, the conductors,
who oversaw the duties of the other railroad workers and
who were in charge of the passengers as well as
overall trained safety and upkeep, tended to average somewhere around
three and a half dollars a day, meaning they made
about as much as bricklayers did. However, on the Pennsylvania

(49:38):
Line in particular, they only averaged two dollars and seventy
eight cents, which is all to say that the railroad
men were as poorly paid as the average American laborer,
a fact that stands in stark contrast to what some
would claim after the strike in an attempt to delegitimize it.
The thing was, while the railroad workers paying wasn't totally
out of line with that of other American workers who

(49:58):
were also clearly on paid. Given the state of the
sums is covered in the previous section, the trainmen had
a whole series of additional issues to contend with that
were unique to their jobs. As you see, in addition
to the aforementioned dangers they had to contend with, the
trainmen also had to deal with layovers. You see, when
a train completed its journey from point A to B,

(50:20):
unless it was immediately scheduled to turn around and head
back to A, the train's crew had to find some
place to stay until it was time to make the
return trip. This meant they would be away from their
homes for at least multiple days. But worse still was
the fact that not only was the railroad not covering
their expenses during this time, but it also wasn't paying
them either because they technically weren't working. In addition to

(50:42):
these layovers, when the train crews were back home, they
were expected to be on caud Any in all times,
even though again they weren't being paid in any way
to keep themselves available. Worse still, though, was the fact
that the days of waiting around in between runs, days
where they weren't being paid, had become increasingly common in
recent years. This led to a situation where, unlike the

(51:04):
other occupations named, their pay was anything but regular. Plus's
one fireman would point out, quote, a man never makes
much money unless freights are very good, and he's running
around all the time and is half dead. Basically, then
the reality was an exceptionally poor feast or famine, and
the so called feast period meant that while you were
actually getting paid, you were also getting run ragged. Plus,

(51:27):
on top of that, the railroad men were often not
paid regularly. Instead, in some cases they had to wait
up to three months to actually get paid. Which is
all to say that even before the ten percent cuts,
times were incredibly tough for the men working on the railroads.
As one might expect then, even though the head of
the engineer's brotherhood was quiet in the face of these cuts,

(51:48):
the local lodges when they met, found significant support for
a strike, and the same was true among the fireman's brotherhood.
So the men who operated the trains for the Pennsylvania
Railroad issued this response of the nuntment of the ten
percent wage cut quote or wages have been from time
to time reduced so that many of us do not
earn an average of seventy five cents per day. We

(52:09):
have fully sympathized with your directors in all their past
efforts to further the interest of your company, and accepted
the situation so long as it guaranteed us a bear living,
But in the last move was guaranteed to many of
us a pauper's grave, a statement that may clear the
fact that the workers were anything but unreasonable. They had
been understanding and willing to accept justifications for wadge cuts

(52:31):
in the past. However, the railroad was simply asking too
much of them this time. So the workers formed a
thirty to forty man grievance committee that would meet with
the President of the Pennsylvania Railway, Thomas A. Scott, on
the fourth of June. Basically, their demands were a cancelation
of the pay cuts and more regular runs to both
stabilize their pay and their working days. As this whole

(52:53):
maybe you'll work and get paid or maybe you won't
was not good for them or their families, seeing as
how they were either left without working funds for long
stretches were alternatively left without any time to rest and
see their families. Plus also wanted to address the issue
of long layovers by granting the crews and such situations
passes to ride on a different train back home. Scott

(53:14):
replied to these complaints slash demands by crying poor himself,
after all, the poor shareholders dividends had recently fallen from
ten to six percent. This, then, was not his fault.
It was the depression. The railroad simply wasn't making enough
money and so they had to cut wages. The thing was,
Scott was lying. After all, the Pennsylvania Railroads serviced one

(53:36):
of the richest industrial regions in the world, which men
had raked in some twenty five million dollars a year,
which was an astronomical amount in those days. So while yes,
dividends had been reduced from ten to six percent, the
fact of the matter was the railway could have easily
paid out an eight percent dividend the previous year and
still had a million and a half dollars left over

(53:57):
in pure profit pluster profits so far in eighteen seventy
seven had been even higher than they had been the
previous year, and this was notably without the boost they
had seen in eighteen seventy six with the centennial celebration
taking place in Philadelphia. Which is all to say, despite
Scott's claims otherwise, there was actually no reason to slash
the worker's wages except for pure greed. That being said,

(54:20):
Scott was able to weave enough of a tale of
woe that the Grievance Committee agreed to accept the wage cut. So,
with the Pennsylvania Railroad avoiding a strike, the Lehigh Valley
Railroad also announced a ten percent wage cut across the
border of their own that would go into effect on
the first of June, while the Lakomano Railway did the same,
just with their is going to effect on the fifteenth

(54:40):
of June. In response to these cuts, both the conductors
and Firemen's Brotherhoods, which weren't merely unions, predictably refused to
go on strike as was their style. Meanwhile, the Engineer's Brotherhood,
which had recently demonstrated a willingness to defend themselves against
such cuts, was seemingly broken by their two recent defeats.
Z own with no resistance at all coming from labor.

(55:02):
More and more railroads across the country hopped on as
they two also announced they were slashing their workers' wages
by ten percent, as the Michigan Central, the Lakeshire, the
Bee Line, the Vandalia, the Union Pacific, and the Indianapolis
and Saint Louis Railways all announced ten percent wage cuts.
Even the New York Central slashed their workers paid despite

(55:22):
the fact that there was even less of a reason
for them to do so, considering the dividends they paid
to their stockholders were amongst the highest in the country,
while their wages were already fairly low. Then there was
the Northern Pacific Railroad, which already paid the lowest wages
of any road in the region. Yet, after seeing how
successful the railroads were and slashing their workers' wages, the

(55:43):
Northern Pacific decided that they two would join in by
slashing the pay of its Minnesota and Dakota divisions. The
same was true of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Line,
which seemingly decided to follow the exemple of these other
rail lines. It has to be said, though, that not
all the executives of this Railroad were on border with
this plan, and nor were they blinded the consequences, as

(56:03):
while the railroads General manager William B. Strong was looking
forward to making even more cuts at the start of
the following year, the railroad's president Robert Harris saw the
danger in heron in such a move, as he would
pass along an editorial from the Chicago Journal which read quote,
had there been no solace and inexorable monopoly, there would
have been no remorseless and undaunted Molly Maguire's by which

(56:26):
this editorial clearly meant had the coal miners employers not
cruelly ground them into the dirt, then their workers would
not have responded with the violence and murder they were
alleged to have committed. General Manager Strong, however, chose to
ignore this warning as he responded to President Harris that
the editorial in questioned quote applies more to the great
coal combination, who I fancy have unduly pressed on their

(56:48):
employees than two us. The experiment of reducing these salaries
has been successfully carried out by all the roads that
have tried it of late, and I have no fear
of any trouble with our employees if it is done.
With a proper show of firm us on our part,
and they see they must accept it cheerfully or leave.
And yes, you heard that right. Slashing people's wages and
making it even more difficult for them to survive was

(57:09):
a quote unquote experiment. And to be clear, it does
not seem like these men were wholly ignorant to the
harm that their decisions caused, because one railroad president would
actually write to another that quote, your first duty and
mine also is to the property with which we are
respectively connected, and we have no duty or right even
to sacrifice that for anything or anybody, by which he

(57:31):
meant the railroad and its profits were more important than
the lives and livelihood of its workers. This was the
attitude of the men who ran the railroads and other
major corporations, and the reason why the phrased soulless corporation
became a cliche. Around this time. We are now at

(58:09):
the custom of the Great Strike of eighteen seventy seven,
and it would have its start because of and in
response to John W. Garrett, the president of the Baltimore
and Ohio or B and O Railroad, who very much
hated unions. Indeed, he had a history of flat out
refusing to recognize or negotiate with any labor organizations whatsoever.
Plosi also had a habit of sending out private detectives

(58:31):
like the Pickertons to figure out who was behind any
worker demonstrations so he could fire them. Now, it has
to be said that, unlike some of the other railroads
that I previously covered, the b and O actually had
been experienced some tough times financially recently. The thing was
just like all the rest. Instead of cutting their dividends,
Garrett and the B and O opted to instead slash

(58:52):
their workers pay, doing so despite already slashing their wages
by ten percent just eight months earlier. Meanwhile, even why
their paid already been cut once and plans were being
made to cut it again, the workers themselves were being
worked harder than ever, as at the same time they
were adding more cars of the trains, the crews working
the trains were reduced. Plus during the same time frame,

(59:14):
the railroad also ended the pose of paying overtime for
Sunday work, which led to a feeling among the b
ANDO workers that they were being quote treated just as
the rolling stock or locomotives, meaning they were being treated
more like machines and property than actual people. In d
between the pay cut they'd already suffered and the way
their schedules were working out, some brakemen and firemen were

(59:35):
making about thirty dollars a month, with twenty of those
dollars having to be used to pay for room and
board as they were stuck away from home on long layovers,
which meant they were left with just ten bucks a
month to provide for their families. Given this situation, you
can understand why the BNO workers were not what you
would call happy when on the eleventh of July, the
railroad announced yet another ten percent wage reduction that would

(59:58):
go into effect only six teeth for all all employees
making more than a dollar a day. In doing so, Garrett,
much like Thomas Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad had done,
would cry poor, claiming that the railroad had to do this,
while also claiming that all the executives, since they were
by definition making more than a dollar a day, would
be taking the same cut, something that patently wasn't true,

(01:00:20):
as at the very least garrett salary would not be
touched at all, which doesn't even get into the fact
that it was far more impactful on a worker at
the bottom who was trying to scrape by to loose
ten percent of his pay than it was for an
executive living high on the hog to experience the same cut.
Garrett and the other members of the B and O board, though,
were so covenant that everyone would quote cheerfully recognize the

(01:00:41):
necessity of the reduction. They in the railroad's monthly board
meeting would, after having passed this measure, canceled the following
month's meeting, as they all plan to go on vacation. Now,
perhaps the B and O workers, despite the previous cuts
and the more demanding working conditions, would have accepted this
latest cut, like so many employees of the Avermage and
other railroads had, if following this announcement, the Baltimore Son

(01:01:04):
had not published further details of the board meeting, like,
for example, how in contrast to the dire conditions that
necessitated these costs, the paper would describe the general mood
among the directors as congratulatory, as business was quote entirely satisfactory. Indeed,
things were apparently so good that during the same meeting,
the directors voted to pay the usual ten percent dividends

(01:01:26):
to their stockholders, news that did not make these suffering
workers any happier, as it did not make any sense
that their wages had to be cut again if business
was quote unquote entirely satisfactory. The first hints of unrest
among the Beno workers came on the sixteenth of July,
when about mid morning in Baltimore, some firemen began abandoning

(01:01:46):
their trains. This demonstration, however, was limited to a handful
of firemen, some brakemen, and a couple of engineers. Meanwhile,
the response from the railroad was swift, as they had
strike breakers waiting in the proverbial wings for just such
an incident. Forty Baltimore policemen would also be sent in
around noon, who then quickly dispersed a few demonstrating workers
without any kind of violence or serious resistance. However, this

(01:02:09):
did not stop them from arresting three strikers for a
quote inciting a riot and obviously trumped up charge, as
the police wouldn't even bother bringing the case to trial.
As a result, by mid afternoon, the B and O
trains out of Baltimore were once again running as usual. Indeed,
one of the railroads Vice Presidents John King, who also
happened to be John Garrett's son in law, would inform

(01:02:31):
the press of those who had gone on strike had
all been fired and subsequently replaced. It seemed at this
point then that things were already over, when in reality
they had not yet even begun. Indeed, if anything, it
seems like the workers, having tried peaceful while binding methods,
were not going to be so nice next time. The

(01:02:51):
next flareup, though, and the true started. The Great Strike
of eighteen seventy seven wouldn't happen in Baltimore, but in Martinsburg,
West Virginia, where around evening a dispature for the railroad
was alerted that a cannel train had been abandoned by
its entire crew, and there was no one to take
their place. The thing was, though, this was far bigger
than just one crew abandoning a train, as basically what

(01:03:12):
happened was more than twenty firemen had a ride at
the rail depot and seized control of several of the engines.
They then detached these engines from their trains and parked
them in the roundhouse as to declare that no more
freight trains would be departing from Martinsburg until the wage
cuts were repealed. Now, while these firemen seemed to have
been once to kick things off, it would soon become

(01:03:32):
apparent that they had the support of their fellows regardless
of one occupation they had on the trains, something which
really was not typical, as historically the fireman, the engineer
see brakeman, and the conductors did not support one another
in labor disputes. That being said, the warning signs for
such a development could be seen a month earlier, when
only second of June, a group of trainmen from the Pittsburgh,

(01:03:54):
Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad met in Dietrix Hall. As
in this meeting in Pittsburgh, engineers, conduct doctor's, firemen, brakeman, switchmen,
and just about every other type of railroad worker were
in attendance, all coming together to form a secret organization
called the Trainmen's Union because they felt it necessary to
create an organization that would stand up for all the

(01:04:14):
railroad workers, since the only brotherhood that had anything resembling
a spine was the engineer's brotherhood and they tended to
only look out for themselves. Basically, the feeling was since
the railroads were clearly working together against their workers, what
with this seemingly coordinated series of wage cuts, then the
workers should respond in kind. Basically, then, their plan was

(01:04:34):
to unionize at least three fourths of the trainmen on
the main trunk lines in the US. In doing so,
they agreed to not take each other's jobs that they
went on strike, and even if they worked on a
railroad that didn't go on strike, they would still not
handle any transfer roads that were on strike. Such unity
across railroad workers was not something that had ever been
talked about, much less seen prior to this moment, a

(01:04:55):
clear indication that times were changing. This was a time
for new ideas, new voices to be heard. Indeed, one
of the individuals who unexpectedly found himself serving as one
of the primary speakers in this meeting, and who would
become the first person that take the trainman Union's oath,
was a twenty four year old brakeman named Robert Adams Aman.
Now Aman wasn't your normal brackman. Indeed, he had grown

(01:05:18):
up the son of a prosperous insurance company executive. However,
upon being expelled at age sixteen from Capital University in Columbus, Ohio,
he joined the US Cavalry as a bugler. His time
in the army, though, would come to an end when
he was discharged after being wounded in a fight against
Blackfeet Indians. From there, Aman apparently headed further west, ultimately

(01:05:38):
finding work as a purser on a Pacific mail steamer,
traveling from San Francisco to China and back. Then, upon
his return to the States, Aman led a group of
men into the Mounds of Arizona in a search for
a fraudulent diamond mine. Having seemingly gotten a venturing out
of his system, a man then settled down and became
an insurance agent, likely working for his father before also
taking a job as a brickman. Was and possibly because

(01:06:01):
he was a bit more secure than Aman, then took
up the responsibility of organizing other railroad men and convincing
them to join the union. As following this, meaning he
would spend three weeks traveling around to the Fort Wayne Railroad,
the Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad, the Lake Shore Railroad, and
the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, organizing their workers and swearing
them in as new members of the Trainmen's Union. There was, however,

(01:06:24):
one major fa on their plan of accepting new members
and mass, and that was, of course. By doing things
that way, it was exceedingly easy for private detectives employed
by the railroad to join with the others. Once embedded,
these private detectives would then report back everything that was
being done and said by the union, and most importantly,
report back who was involved. It was a long then

(01:06:45):
before the various railroads responded by firing the members of
this newly formed union, including Ammon himself. Despite this, only
twenty fourth of June forty, representatives from the newly formed
union traveled to the various railroads they had attempted to
organize to inform their me and unless their employers agreed
to their demands, they intended to conduct a general railroad
strike the following week. Yet, as determined as they were,

(01:07:08):
the representatives from the Trainmen's Union couldn't even get a
meeting with the railroad bosses, who soon responded to this
further agitation by firing even more members of the fledgling union.
In the wake of these struggles, another meeting would be
held in Dietrich's Hall and Pittsburgh. Unlike the previous meeting, however,
this one almost erupted in violence as factions formed among

(01:07:28):
the union as some wanted to carry on with the
strike while authers flatly refused to take part, with a
number of this latter group likely being planned from the
private detective agencies who were working for the railroads. Some
of these individuals then even went so far as to
start spreading the word that the strike had been called off,
which was not at all true. However, when union members

(01:07:49):
from the various railroads telegraphed DeMont to confirm or deny
these rumors, he was prevented from responding as the railroad
officials controlled the telegraphs and would not send his messages.
So the threatened general railroad strike just kind of petered
out as the few who actually participated in it as
planned weren't sure if they were alone in their efforts
or not. The thing was, even though the specific effort

(01:08:10):
had been unsuccessful, the Trainmen's Union was still quietly growing
and adding new members because there was a strong undercurrent
of unrest among the railroad workers and they were actively
looking for something to harness and guide their anger and dissatisfaction.
After all, the workers, as we've already covered, had every
reason to be militant. Indeed, these wage cuts were just
the latest and a long line of offenses against them.

(01:08:33):
It was and through these repeated blows that the awn
ideas of loyalty to employers and negotiations without strikes rapidly
began to fade away. Indeed, even the idea of specific
jobs and trades operating independently from other workers in the
industry was going by the wayside in favor of a
more unified front and unified response to worker grievances against
their employers. That all being said, the activities in Martinsburg

(01:08:56):
were not being done on the orders of the Trainmen's union.
This was just another indication of just how upset the
railroad workers were and how they had simply been pushed
too far. Indeed, the closest thing the workers in Martinsburg
had to a leader may have been Brigman Richard M. Zepp,
who had grown up in the community of train workers
and who had came from a family of train men. Really,

(01:09:17):
the thing that made the strike in Martinsburg so notable
was the fact that the town was almost an ideal
site to start things off. As you see, Martinsburg was
a key railroad junction, which meant by stopping the freight
trains there, the workers were creating a chook point, effectively
bringing freight traffic in the region to a halt. Plus,
Martinsburg was a community that not only strongly supported the

(01:09:37):
railroad workers, but was also one that resented the fact
that their town was so dependent upon the large as
of the B and O. Indeed, it seems that they
did not like the B and O in general. They
didn't like how they mistreated their workers. All the while,
there was quote too much pain, speculation among the headmen,
big salaries, wine suppers, free passes, and presidents to congressmen

(01:09:58):
for their votes. Strong local support for the railroad workers
and the general lack of anything else to do resulted
in a number of people from town heading out to
worthy trains are being abandoned so they could watch the
workers on couple of the engines and the cars. This
was something that people wanted to see because it was different.
It was a show of defiance that had never been
seen before in their little community. It was then, due

(01:10:20):
to the support from the crowd and the fact that
Martinsburg had an exceedingly small police force, that when the mayor,
who had closed eyes with the B and O order
the arrest of the strike leaders. The cops displayed no
real interest in carrying outset orders. Plus, even if they
did start making arrest it wouldn't have changed things as
they couldn't find anyone who was willing to take the
place of these striking workers. As a result, the rail

(01:10:43):
yard in Martinsburg was effectively abandoned to the workers, while
a group of workers for the B and O Railroad

(01:11:05):
had effectively taken over the rail yard in Martinsburg, bringing
all freight train traffic to a stop. Things were far
from over, as when the head of the B and O,
John Garrett, was alerted to this situation, he immediately reached
out to the Governor West Virginia, Henry and Matthews, to
request military protection for the railroad's property from these striking workers,
who he insisted were riding, which was not at all true.

(01:11:28):
There was no violence or destruction of property being carried
out as a part of the strike. Plus they were
only obstructing freight trains, leaving passenger trains and trains carrying
the mail to go on as normal, none of which
apparently mattered though, as the B and O wheeled a
tremendous power within the state, and so the governor agreed
to order the National Guardsmen in Martinsburg to mobilize an
if necessary quote prevent any interference buyer riders with the

(01:11:51):
men at work, and also prevent the obstruction of trains,
basically ordering an end to the disruptions caused by the strike.
Before the guardsmen arrived. However, early on the morning of
the seventeenth of July, likely hoping to catch the striking
workers sleeping, a pair of strike breakers and engineer and
a fireman boarded a cattle train and got it underway.
The thing is, trains aren't exactly known for their stealth,

(01:12:14):
so as soon as this cattle train started moving, one
of these striking workers shut it at the engineer on
the train that he better stop what he was doing
or they were going to kill him. Sufficiently intimidated, the
engineer stopped and went to inform his bosses in Baltimore
of this situation. As it turns out, though, the engineer's
bosses were less concerned about his safety than he was,
and they ordered him to keep attempting to get the

(01:12:35):
train underway. So the engineer did as he was told,
Yet when he tried again, a crowd was already forming
in the yard, and so this time he didn't even
get the train moving before it was boarded, uncoupled, and
driven back into the roundhouse. It was then after this
back and forth that nine guardsmen came watching up to
the rail yard, a site that was actually cheered by
the crowd because these militiamen were also railroad workers and

(01:12:59):
their com was well liked in town. Indeed, as they arrived,
the commander would address the crowd, making a point to
tell them that he sympathized with these striking workers. However,
he had his orders, which were to protect anyone who
was intending the work, and with that he ordered his
men to load their rifles. With such visible and armed support,
these trake breaking engineer and firemen again got to work

(01:13:22):
as they prepared the candle train to set off, with
the guardsmen also boarding the train alongside them. It was
then one of these guardsmen, who was also a railroad worker,
who noticed, as they got under way that the switch
the train was heading for was set in such a
way that the train was guaranteed to derail. This guardsman
then hopped off the train and started rushing for the switch,

(01:13:42):
only to find twenty eight year old William P. Vandergriff
waiting there with a pistol in hand. Vandergriff, you see,
was the one who had put the switch in the
position it was in, and he had no intention of
letting anyone change it. Indeed, as he watched the guardsman,
who he knew had a loaded rifle, run directly at him,
Vandergraff responded by firing his pistol. Now, vander Griff's first

(01:14:03):
shot would miss the guardsman. However, his second shot would
strike a glancing blow as it somehow glanced off the
guardsman's temple before ultimately getting launched underneath the skin of
his forehead. As I'm guessing this wasn't a particularly powerful
pistol regardless, the guardsman responded by firing his rifle at
vander Griff at point blank range, and was then joined
in this action by several of his fellow guardsmen. Vander

(01:14:26):
Griff was struck three times by the sail of bullets,
once in his thigh, while another took off his right thumb,
as the third shattered the bones in his left arm,
an injury that ultimately resulted in its amputation and Vandergriff's
eventual death nine days later. For this reason, the Martinsburg
Statesman would declare that the railroad worker had quote died
a martyr to what he believed to be a compulsory duty.

(01:14:48):
He was shot down inside of the lowly home, whose
inmates he was trying to shield from starvation, essentially saying
he had been killed for trying to prevent his family
from starving due to these cruel cuts by the railroad
the time being. Though, this sudden outbreak of violence was
apparently enough for those involved, as he strike breaking engineer
environment immediately stopped the train and left, not wanting to

(01:15:09):
be responsible for any more bluntshead. Meanwhile, the guardsmen also
had no interest in pressing things any further. Indeed, their commander,
who had never given any kind of order to fire
after a prefrontory request to see if there was anyone
else who wanted to run the train, would promptly dismiss
his men. This turn of events did not please Governor Matthews,
and to be clear, I'm not talking about the firefight

(01:15:31):
between the guardsmen and the striking worker. He was apparently
fine with that as what the Governor had a problem
with was to complete lack of follow through by the
local National Guardsmen. Matthews then promised to send in another
company of guardsmen who would actually be willing to quote
so press the riots and execute the law. Now, again,
there was no evidence of any quote unquote riot taking place.

(01:15:53):
The demonstration was organized, there was no destruction of railroad property,
and the only violence had been the result of the
National Guardsmen involvement. But as you know, such details rarely matter. Indeed,
the real problem for Governor Matthews was the fact that
West Virginia didn't exactly have a sizeable militia force at
that time. Indeed, they only had four companies of guardsmen,

(01:16:16):
and two of them were from Martinsburg and thus were
considered to be unreliable in this situation. Meanwhile, the third
company's membership was fairly scattered and thus would take time
to assemble. This then only left the sixty man company
from Wheeling, who would be dispatched to Martinsburg at noon
that day. Yet, as good as they might have looked
in their new gray uniforms, one reporter could not help

(01:16:38):
but note how the guardsmen did not look particularly enthusiastic
about their orders. After all Wheeling was a working class
town where sympathy is strongly laid with these striking workers. Now,
while the Great Strike of eighteen seventy seven was still
very much in its infancy, the events in Martinsburg were
already beginning to draw the attention of the press. So
in joining the guardsmen on the train to Martinsburg were

(01:17:00):
several reporters. Even more notable, however, was the fact that
also on this train was none other than Governor Matthews.
As you see, John W. Garrett, the president of the
being O Railroad, had also been incredibly disappointed in the
performance of the guardsmen in Martinsburg, and thus had immediately
contacted the Governor to make his displeasure known. Indeed, he
was so disappointed in the efforts of the West Virginia

(01:17:22):
Guardsmen that he demanded Matthews call on federal troops to
handle this situation. This but Matthews in a bind. He
did want to appear weak by calling upon the federal
government to intervene, but he also did not want to
displease Garrett. So he not only insisted that the state
could handle this issue, but he would also accompany this
group of guardsmen to make sure that things went the

(01:17:42):
way that Garrett wanted. In the meantime, Governor Matthews would
continue playing political games. When they trained to Martinsburg, stopped
in the city of Grafton for the night, as he
would tell reporters there that he had no idea what
grievances the workers even had, despite the fact that the
whole ten percent wagecut thing seems to have been fairly
widely publicized. Indeed, according to the governor, the guardsmen weren't

(01:18:04):
even there to necessarily break the strike. He simply wanted
to ensure that anyone who wanted to work would not
be forcibly stopped from doing so. The thing was, the
governor's statement did not seem to mollify the masses all
that much. Proof of their dissatisfaction would then come in
the form of a small boulder that came crashing into
the governor's hotel room that night. The boulder, which apparently

(01:18:25):
had been sent rolling down a nearby hill by unknown individuals,
only happened to miss the bed with the governor was sleeping,
because the bolder happened to strike the window sash on
its way in deflecting it. That being said, though Governor
Matthews might not have even been the actual target for
this attack, as this was a room that was typically
occupied by one of the being Knows Vice presidents, William Kaiser,

(01:18:46):
who was also along for the ride with the Governor
and the guardsman, a fact which was known as he
had also given his own statement to the press upon
arriving earlier in the day, much like Matthews had, a
statement in which Kaiser tried to justify the Witge cuts
the governor apparently had no idea about, and in which
he also promised to fire anyone who went on strike. Indeed,
he would back up this statement by firing some conductors

(01:19:08):
and engineers after they refused his request to take up
the jobs of the striking firemen in Martinsburg. Which is
all to say that Kaiser had made himself even less
fans than the governor had, and so it wouldn't be
as surprise if he had been the real target all along. Meanwhile,
even as the railroad of the estate and the press
were focusing on the events in Martinsburg, the strike was
beginning to spread to other parts of the B and O,

(01:19:31):
as workers in Piedmont, Grafton and Wheeling West Virginia all
went on strike as well, while notably in keys Or,
West Virginia, white and black railroad workers men and voted
together to join these strike efforts. As a strike against
the B and O Railroad spread. The Wheeling Intelligencer would
describe these striking workers as a quote respectable body of
men who had the support of their towns, a sentiment

(01:19:54):
that would be echoed in the Baltimore Sun, which wrote, quote,
there is no disguise in the fact that these strikers
and o their lawful acts have the fullest sympathy of
the community. This was a situation then, that went beyond
just the men who were on strike. Indeed, it seems
that the most remarkable part of the support, as far
as the Sun was concerned, was the quote very active

(01:20:14):
part taken by the women who are the wives or
mothers of the firemen. They looked famished and mild, and
declare for starvation rather than have their people work for
reduced wages. Better to starve outright, they say, than to
die by slow starvation. The paper then couldn't help but
conclude that quote the ten percent reduction after two previous
reductions was ill advised. This was especially true, the paper noted,

(01:20:38):
since all the while the company was cutting its workers' wages,
it had also quote boasted of its great earnings and
paid enormous dimonends. Now, such support among the press for
the workers and their motivations, as we will see time
and again, was more the exception than the rule. For example,
the New York Times would call the strike in Martinsburg
a quote rash and spiteful demonstration of resentment by men

(01:21:01):
too ignorant or too reckless to understand their own interest. Yet,
regardless of the effect their little demonstration was having on
the rest of the country, things in Martinsburg after that
brief flash of violence had become fairly quiet, as while
no freight trains were permitted to move, all passenger and
mail trains were allowed to pass through, unmolested or delayed.

(01:21:22):
That being said, the results of their strike were apparent,
as some six hundred freight cars were at this point
crammed into the Martinsburg yard, where the striking workers intended
to keep them until the wage cuts were repealed. The Railroad,
of course, had no intention of doing any such thing,
which is where the National guardsmen come in speaking of
they would finally arrive in Martinsburg at eight in the morning,

(01:21:44):
was several apparently drunk after having embodied some liquid courage
during the trip. Now, apparently they weren't alone in being
in the state, as reportedly, several of the local strikers
were not what you would call sober. As a result,
the mayor and his council proceeded to order the enclosure
of all the town's saloons for at least that morning,
as it was probably best not to add any more
accelerant to this situation. However, these potentially highly combustible materials.

(01:22:08):
These strikers and the guardsmen never actually came to contact
with one another on that day, as the commander of
the guardsmen, along with both local and railroad officials, all
decided that it would be best not to agitate these
striking workers too much, so they opted to leave the
guardsmen on the train until two in the afternoon, where
they swaltered in the heat before finally disembarking and heading

(01:22:29):
straight for the local courthouse where they were to be quartered.
Now throughout this period, these strikers were an idol. Indeed,
some attempted to explain their situation to the captain of
the guardsmen as they tried to get him to understand
that their low pay in the high food prices were
making it impossible for them to survive. The captain, however,
did not want to hear it, as he angrily declared
that he had nothing to do with the price of flower,

(01:22:51):
while insisting that he would carry out whatever orders he
was given. Meanwhile, one Colonel Robert Duplaine, who was both
the Governor's aid and the deputy in command of the Guard,
was getting the lay of the land in Martinsburg. As
he did, he could not help but come to the
conclusion of what a bad idea all of this was,
as he noted that quote the dissatisfaction has become so
general that no employee can now be found to run

(01:23:13):
an engine, even under certain protection, basically saying that the
entire town was so in support of the workers and
so pissed off at the railroad that even with the
protection of the National Guard, they wouldn't be able to
find enough men to crew a train. Furthermore, in the
plane concluded that should they push their luck by attempted
to run trains out of the depot, it would likely
result in bluntsheed and that their small command would likely

(01:23:36):
come out on the short end of the stack. That
last bit, though, might have been calculated, as it was
that statement that Governor Matthews would use to justifying calling
for federal support, just like John Garrett, the president of
the B and O Railroad wanted, as he would write
to President Rutherford B. Hayes quote owing to a lawful
combinations and domestic violence now existing at Martinsburg and at

(01:23:57):
other points along the line of the Baltimore and No High Railroad,
it is impossible with any force in my command to
execute the laws of the state, a statement which is
just one falsehood after another, as he's striking workers were
not actively breaking any laws in their activities, and nor
was there any violence outside of the one aforementioned incident
where the worker in question died. Meanwhile, Matthews hadn't even

(01:24:20):
bothered declaring a state of emergency or martial law, and
nor did he make any further attempts to handle the
situation through any normal means that his in the state's command.
Matthew's requests for federal assistance, though, would be echoed by
none other than being no President John Garrett, who also
wrote directly to the President, as he called the ongoing
strike against his business a quote unquote insurrection. As you see,

(01:24:43):
according to Garrett, this was more than just a strike
against a business because the railroad was what he called
the Great National Highway. As such, even though the government
didn't own the railroad, it still held the responsibility to
intervene to make sure the Great National Highway was operational.
President Hayes, though before ordering in federal troops one in

(01:25:03):
more information. After all, in his inaugural dress he'd more
or less worn to not interfere in state affairs, which
was of course a reference to ending the policy of
reconstruction in the South. Indeed, he had even written in
his diary, quote, my policy is trust, peace and to
put aside the bayonet. Sending in federal troops then threatened
to bring back memories of reconstruction and the civil war

(01:25:25):
that preceded In Ploster was also the fact that with
the war over, many saw no need for a large
standing army, and so there were cauts for the military
to be reduced. Although Commanding General William T. Sherman, who
was desperately trying to hang on to power and to
keep his army intact, would warn that if the army
were reduced, quote unquote, mob violence was sure to result. Additionally,

(01:25:46):
these were tough times for Hayes due to the way
he had quote unquote won the presidency through back room knealings.
On one hand, he likely needed to look strong, but
on the other hand, there was to fear that he
could alienate the working class by deploying the military against them.
That being said, Hayes had in the past shown his
willingness to use force against striking workers in the name
of law and order, as when he was the governor

(01:26:09):
of Ohio, Hayes had sent the state militia in during
a coal minor strike, a move which he Democrats actually
attempted to use against him during the presidential election, but
the Republicans had responded that the Democratic nominee Tilden would
not have been brave or principled enough to call out
the troops for fear of losing votes. So basically, on
one hand, Hayes likely wanted to intervene on behalf of

(01:26:30):
the railroad because he had done as much as governor,
a move that would likely be supported by leaders in
the military like Sherman, who surely saw the events in
Martinsburg as exactly the kind of mob of violence he
had warned about. At the same time, though, there were rules,
or at least the semblance of roles and forms, that
he was expected to follow when deploying the military. When
these concerns were expressed to Governor Matthews, and he was

(01:26:53):
in particular questioned why exactly he and the forces he
had at his command could not handle this situation, the
Governor w Vingineer would respond that, while sure he could
likely muster enough men to suppress the quote unquote riot,
which again was not a riot, just workers striking in
protest of a wage that they couldnt afford. Matthews insisted
that by the time it would be able to muster

(01:27:13):
together a large enough force quote much property may be
destroyed and, what is more important, valuable lives lost. Yet again, though,
as I've stated several times now, there'd only been one
moment of violence up until this point, and the striking
worker had come out on the far worse end of
the exchange. Matthews claims, though, were apparently enough for Hayes,
who was notably surrounded by men who had deep tied

(01:27:36):
to corporations and railroads in particular. For example, his Secretary
of State, William Everards, had been a corporate and railroad
lawyer in New York. And it wasn't just Hayes Secretary
of State either, as his Attorney in General, his Secretary
of the Navy, and the Secretary of War all had
ties to the railroads as well, which is all to
say the Hayes White House was deeply in bed with

(01:27:57):
the railroads and their concerns. So one of July, the
officers in charge of both the Washington Arsenal and Fort
McHenry and Baltimore were ordered to send every available man
at their command to Martinsburg, a move which represented the
first time since the Andrew Jackson administration that federal troops
would be used to suppress a strike. Three hundred riflemen
led by one Colonel William H. French, a veteran with

(01:28:19):
experience fighting in the Seminole, Mexican and Civil Wars, would
then arrive in Martinsburg on the morning of the nineteenth,
where they found only a small and peaceful crowd at
the rail yard, which was a far cry from the
insurrection they had been toalmed about. Upon arrival, the federal
troops began heading out the President's proclamation which ordered the
people Martinsburg to return to their homes by noon, which

(01:28:41):
many seemed to have done, as by that afternoon the
state militia and federal troops had controlled the train yard.
With that accomplished a free train department from Martinsburg for
the first time since the strike began, doing so even
after the engineer that had been the sign of the
task had quit at the behest of his wife and stepdaughter,
who had actually followed him to the train, pleading with
tears in her eyes for him not to do this. Unfortunately, though,

(01:29:04):
while this engineer had listened to their pleas another strike
breaker would be found to take his place. As a result,
the train got under way, although doing so cautiously with
a force of soldiers on board just in case they
met any resistance on their way to Baltimore. Nothing would
happen to that train, though, and so they next looked
to send yet another freight train out. However, this time,

(01:29:24):
just as it was about to leave town, the train
was met by one hundred striking workers, at which point
the firemen on board chose to abandon his post. So
again the workers had proven their might but the sheriff
and state militia quickly responded to this disruption by resting
Dick Zepp, the supposed ringleader of this banded strikers. Meanwhile,
even as Dick was being hauled off to jail, his

(01:29:45):
older brother George, who disapproved of the strike, was marching
down to the abandoned locomotive, where, over his mother's protest,
he hopped on board, and using a revolver to hold
the striker's back, George Zepp ensured that this train also departed. These, however,
would be the only two freight trains that departed from
Martinsburg that day, as the authorities could not find anyone

(01:30:06):
else willing to pilot them. Still, it seemed like the
strike might have been broken, as the workers in Martinsburg
had no interest in taking on federal troops. Indeed, the
following morning, more strike breakers would be brought in from
Baltimore to get even more freight trains under way. The
thing was, though, the people on Martinsburg had unwittingly started
something that was far and larger than their little railroad community.

(01:30:29):
The Great Strike of eighteen seventy seven then was only
just beginning, and soon a one just involved a scruntled
railroad men either. However, the tale of how the strike
spread and grew across the country and the violent measures
deployed by the railroads and their government allies and response
will have to for now remain a story for another time.

(01:30:52):
Thank you for listening to Distorted History. If you would
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(01:31:13):
long as it uses an RSS feed. I will continue
to post sources on koffee and Twitter, though, as it's
just a convenient place to go to access that information. Regardless,
once again, thank you for listening and until next time.

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