Background. G.W.W. Hanger, R.M. Barton, and Chairman Ben W. Hooper of the Railroad Labor Board, which approved the wage cut for train maintenance workers that prompted the 1922 Railroad Shopmen's Strike.
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The decision by the Railroad Labor Board permitting companies to slash wages became the spark that ignited a firestorm of protest. Workers and shopmen, grappling with the economic aftermath of World War I, were left infuriated and financially strained.
The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 began on July 17, 1877, in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Workers for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad went on strike, because the company had reduced workers' wages twice over the previous year.
Labor activism and the railways are inextricably linked in US history. In 1877, railroad workers were fighting for labor justice too. Years of pay cuts, weak labor protections, and ruthless exploitation by their employers led them to walk off their jobs in a series of strikes across the country.
A prolonged rail strike could create all types of shortages, from gasoline to food to automobiles, and cause a spike in the prices of all types of consumer goods. It can screw up the commutes of tens of thousands of workers who take the train to work, slow the delivery of parts and force factories to shut down.
What is the main reason that the US government wanted to avoid large-scale railroad strikes after the Great Railroad Strike of 1877? Railroad strikes were a threat to economic prosperity and national security.
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.
The Big Four unions included the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen and the Order of Railway Conductors.
Eugene V.Debs was the president of the American Railway Union (ARU), which represented about one-third of the Pullman workers and which had concluded a successful strike against the Great Northern Railway Company in April 1894.