What was the famous American railroad strike?

The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 was the country's first major rail strike and witnessed the first general strike in the nation's history. The strikes and the violence it spawned briefly paralyzed the country's commerce and led governors in ten states to mobilize 60,000 militia members to reopen rail traffic.



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The size and scale of the 1877 strike rattled company executives and elected officials. Nearly two decades later, the American Railway Union—considered the first major railroad union—played a pivotal role in the 1894 Pullman Strike and marked a turning point in national labor organizing.

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In June of 1922, this nationwide labor conflict saw over 400,000 railroad shopmen and maintenance workers locked in a bitter struggle against deep wage cuts sanctioned by the Railroad Labor Board. These railroad workers faced the grim possibility of losing their jobs to new hires willing to accept lower wages.

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With the end of the wartime no-strike pledge, workers across America expressed their frustration with wages and working conditions through a series of strikes that involved over 5 million people from the end of 1945 and into 1946.

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A federal judge's injunction against the Union boycott turned the strike's tide in favor of the Pullman Company. President Cleveland effectively finished the strikers off when he dispatched federal troops to Chicago, where they protected strikebreakers operating trains.

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The railroad brotherhoods suffered a crushing defeat. Strikers went back to work, on management's terms, and others were blacklisted. During the Great Depression, the union movement would just begin to unite skilled and unskilled workers, something not done during the 1922 strike.

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Last fall, many union railroad workers in the United States did not have paid sick days. Now, more than sixty percent of them do, Reuters reports. It has been a process of slow, piecemeal wins over many months—and a testament to the continued push of high-profile politicians like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont).

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The exercise of state police power on behalf of the railways led union members to retaliate. As the violence spread, public opinion turned against the workers. The physical attacks by the Pinkerton agents scared thousands of workers into returning to work. The strike was officially called off on May 4.

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In 1873, the United States was in the midst of an economic depression, a period of low production and sales and high rates of unemployment and business failures. The root cause of the 1873 depression was the collapse of the mighty railroad, which had overextended itself.

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