The great railroad strike of 1877 was a series of related, but unorganized railroad worker strikes. In the 1870s the United States was in a depressions, and conditions for railroad workers were made worse when the president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company issued a 10% pay cut across the board. This led to organic strikes in the towns of Baltimore, Chicago, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and San Francisco. In response to these strikes the federal government and various Governors responded by sending national guards to quell the strikes. This led the deaths of nearly 100 striking workers across the country, it was the most violent incident in the United States since the Civil War.
The strikes seems odd in that almost everyone seemed to be on the workers side, even local police authorities were unusually sympathetic with the plight of the striking workers. If I were part of the strike I would work with the railroad workers to try and achieve their demands. The Railroad workers were fighting for basic working conditions, and given that it was the gilded age of American industry, the workers likely had horrible working conditions. If I were part of the strikes, I would work to make the strike organized and cohesive instead of decentralized. If the strike were more organized it may have been successful. The strike was the right thing to do and I would have helped.
Bibliography
“The Great Railway Strike of 1877.” Digital History. July 8, 2015. http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3189.
”The Great Railway Strike of 1877 and Newspaper Coverage.” University of Nebraska-Lincoln. http://railroads.unl.edu/views/item/strike_77.
