LABOR-STRIKES. The most grievous conflict between employers and the employed, and the most extensive if not the most disastrous riots which the country has witnessed, occurred during the months of July and August, 1877, in consequence of the dissatisfaction of the railroad employés on several of the lines with the reduction of 10 per cent. in their wages, which had been made generally throughout the country in June and July. The commencement of the troubles was the strike of the train-hands on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, begun on the 14th of July. It spread rapidly over almost all of the Northern roads between the Mississippi and New England. The strikers took forcible possession of the tracks at all the principal junctions and prevented the forwarding of any goods, and in many cases forbade the passing of passenger-trains. For several days the whole internal commerce of the country was interrupted. It was not until the last of the month that the transportation - lines could generally resume their business. To rescue the railways from the lawless usurpation of the striking hands, the militia forces were called out, and, in States where these were unable or unwilling to confront the law-breakers, United States troops were sent to their assistance. In the large cities and manufacturing towns of the West, riotous demonstrations and uprisings of the laboring classes occurred, and a number of unfortunate encounters took place between the mob and the militia, police, and armed bands of citizens, in which hundreds were injured or killed. In the height of the strike there were at least 100,000 men out, and six or seven thousands of miles of railroad were from first to last in the hands of the strikers, including the four great trunk lines, the New York Central and its connections, controlled by Mr. W. H. Vanderbilt, the Erie system, managed by Receiver Jewett, the Pennsylvania Railroad and continuations, managed by Mr. Thomas A. Scott, and the Baltimore & Ohio and connections, under the control of Mr. Garrett. The strike extended, first and last, over the Baltimore & Ohio road, branches and leased lines, which connects the ocean traffic of Baltimore with the two points, Wheeling and Parkersburg, on the Ohio River, with extensions from both termini to Chicago, and branches running. to Washington and to Staunton in Virginia; the Pennsylvania Central, whose tide-water termini are Philadelphia and New York, extending from New York to Philadelphia, thence via Harrisburg to Pittsburgh, with branches running to Water Gap, on the Delaware, Cape May, N. J., Canandaigua, N. Y., Erie, Pa., Frederick, Md., and Washington and its Western connections, the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne

& Chicago; the New York & Erie, running from Jersey City via Paterson, Port Jervis, Binghampton, Corning, and Hornellsville, to Buffalo, whose Western ally, the Atlantic & Great Western, joins it at Hornellsville; the New York Central & Hudson River road and connections-the New York Central, running from Albany to Buffalo, and the Hudson River road, running between Albany and New York, participated but feebly in the strike; but the Western subsidiary lines, the Lake Shore, running through Dunkirk, Erie, and Cleveland, to Toledo, and the Michigan Southern, running thence to Chicago, were seized by the strikers. The strike extended also over the coal-roads— the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western, connecting the northeastern Pennsylvania coalfields with Syracuse, and through the Central New Jersey with New York, and the Philadelphia & Reading road, with termini at Philadelphia and Harrisburg; also over the Canada Southern, in Canada, and the Michigan Central, running between Chicago and Detroit, and the Chicago and Canada roads; also over the Cleveland & Pittsburgh, and the Cincinnati, Sandusky & Cleveland; and in the West over the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati & St. Louis, and the Vandalia line, running via Terre Haute from St. Louis to Indianapolis, the Ohio & Mississippi, running between Cincinnati and St. Louis, via Vincennes, Ind.; over the Chicago & Alton, joining Chicago with St. Louis, via Springfield and Bloomington; over the lines running from St. Louis to Toledo and Detroit, through Decatur, Lafayette, and Fort Wayne, from Bloomington to Cincinnati, through Indianapolis, and from St. Louis to Indianapolis, through Mattoon; and from Bloomington to St. Louis, west of the Chicago & Alton; and beyond the Mississippi the roads involved were the Missouri Pacific, from St. Louis as far as Leavenworth, Kan., and the St. Louis, Kansas City & Northern, with a branch running up into Iowa. These Western roads are all feeders to the great trunk lines, and many of them directly subsidiary to one or another of the four great combinations. The railway strike was the occasion for laborers in many other industries to show their dissatisfaction with the present rates of wages by strikes, or public demonstrations of discontent. The coal-miners in particular united in a general strike, which was more determined and prolonged than the railway strike, and in which as great a number of laborers were involved.

This strike was undoubtedly a preconcerted action, which had been talked over among railroad operatives far and wide for some time before the outbreak. There was no organized combination, but yet an understanding as to the means and methods to be employed, and a

general determination to make it a test-strike, which should give a definite sanction to certain powers for the adjustment of wages to be won by the workmen, although the particular rights which they claimed were anything but definite. The particular grievances which they made their casus belli were, however, plainly drawn up by the committees on the different roads. While these differed on each of the lines, the main complaint and the common incentive to the strike was the last reduction of 10 per cent. in the wages, determined upon by the managements of nearly all the railroads in the country, which went in force on some of the roads in June, and on a greater number in July. On nearly all the roads, the restoration of this 10 per cent. was embraced in the demands of the strikers; but on some of them this was done more for the sake of unanimity than because that was the most obnoxious of their grievances; as, for instance, on the New York & Erie road, where the pay was higher than on most of the others, and where the reduction had been already acceded to by the employés. On one or two roads in the West the men struck without alleging any grievances, simply out of sympathy with the movement.

The origin of the rebellion, so general and determined, against the unrestricted control of employers in the matters of the hiring and wages of labor, goes much further back, and its consequences were intended to reach much further ahead than the adjustment of the present compensation of labor on the roads. The hostility of the managers of the corporations to labor unions and combinations, as such, had become more and more pronounced and effective; some of the managers had declared their determination to destroy these associations root and branch, and the practice of discharging the members of grievance and striking committees was common. The power of the strike had been felt upon the railroads, notably in the instances of the successful engineers' strike on the New Jersey Central, in 1876, when every engineer on the road stopped his train at the given hour of midnight on a fixed day, and left his engine where it was standing. A strike was conducted in the same way on the Grand Trunk Railway, in Canada, which extends from Montreal to Detroit, in which the strikers likewise gained their point. These strikes were organized by the great society of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. This association is the strongest ever formed among the railroad operatives. It numbers 50,000 or more members, and possesses a fund of millions of dollars, it is said. It dates from 1863; the headquarters are in Cleveland, Ohio. It is composed of train and track hands and conductors, as well as engineers, the higher grades of employés being represented the strongest. It first developed its strength after an unsuccessful engineers' strike on the Pan-Handle road the connection of the Pennsylvania Railroad running from Pittsburgh to Louisville-in 1874.

T. M. Arthur, who is still its head officer, was then elected chief, and is the depositary of great authority. He attends to all complaints, and hastens to the spot when any grievance, great or small, is heard of, to confer with the aggrieved parties and with the railroad superintendent. When he decides that the employés are wrong, the matter is dropped. Where he finds that the grievance is real, and where the railroad authorities do not make good the claim, he advises with his brother officers, and if a strike is determined upon, it may not take place immediately, but is consummated at some hour when the railroad has pressing need of all its hands and cannot momentarily replace the striking employés. The brotherhood has thus dictated terms to the railroad managers in many a difficulty, from the case of a discharged workman to the matter of raising wages on whole lines of railroad. Railroad managers have sworn to break this powerful association. A determined strike which took place under its auspices on the Boston & Maine road in February, 1877, led to the passage of a law by the Massachusetts Legislature, making it a penal offense for striking workmen to do any act which would endanger commercial interests; and similar acts were passed in the Legislatures of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, and Missouri. The Engineers' Brotherhood took no active part in the present strikes, although sympathizing entirely with the movement.

It was rumored that there was a concerted strike planned, which should take place in October upon all the railroads of the country, and that it was forestalled by this premature outbreak on the Baltimore & Ohio road, on which the last oppressive reduction had rendered the men desperate from poverty. The subject of the wages actually received by the railroad employés is a complicated one, on account of the varying conditions under which they have to perform their labor. The trainhands have often to lie idle three or four days in the week, and must spend a good part of their wages in board at distant stations, away from their families. In a conference between a committee of strikers and Mr. King, vicepresident of the Baltimore & Ohio road, on July 27th, the strikers demanded $3.50 and $3 per day for engineers, $2.50 for conductors, and $2 for firemen and brakemen. They declared that firemen and brakemen averaged but 4 days' work in the week, and asked that the time taken in going for engines on passenger-trains, and in reporting for work when called out, if no work was given them, should be counted as extra time, and that 50 per cent. extra should be paid for Sunday running. They stipulated, also, that no man should be discharged for having participated in the strike. On this road the strikers declared repeatedly and emphatically that all they wanted was living rates of wages. Mr. King, in his reply, presented a comparative scheme of the

wages then paid and those of the year 1861, in which it appeared that the rates demanded would exceed those of that year by 33 per cent., while the company was receiving only half the prices for freight which were then paid. He called their attention to the policy followed by the management, of keeping more men employed than the business of the road required, and distributing the wages among as great a number of men as possible, so as not to bring hardship on the families of a part of them by depriving them entirely of work. The comparative rates of wages he gave as follows:

some discharged committeemen. The leader, Donohue, gave an account of the origin of the action, to wit: He received letters from brakemen and firemen on the Eastern division of the road, complaining that committeemen who had presented grievances to Receiver Jewett had been discharged. He called a meeting of the brotherhoods of firemen, engineers, and brakemen, and they voted to make a formal demand for the restoration of the discharged, and to quit work in the event of a refusal. The grievances subsequently submitted by the strikers embraced the charge that firemen were promoted to engineers' places by favor, and not on account of merit and length of service. Their new demands for wages were for brakemen to receive $2 a day, the switchmen $2, the head switchman $2.25, truckmen in yard $1.50, truckmen on sections $1.40, and to pay no rentals on company's grounds except as by agreement; the firemen to have the same pay, or rates of pay, as they received prior to July 1, 1877, and monthly passes to be continued as before, and passes to be issued to brakemen and switchmen.

On the Pennsylvania road the men struck for a general restitution of the old rates-$1.90 and $2.10 per day, instead of $1.70 and $1.90. They complained that formerly they were paid by the month, and for the time in which they were kept idle they still received pay, whereas now every hour when there is no work to do is docked from their wages. On the New Jersey Central the brakemen demanded their old pay of $3.16 for a round trip, instead of $2.00, while the firemen asked for no increase. The following averages of monthly wages are from a schedule presented by Receiver Lathrop of this road Engineers, $104; firemen, $61; brakemen, $45.25 (on passenger-trains); and engineers, $110; firemen, $66; brakemen, $45.98 (on freight and coal trains). On the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad, the firemen struck for their old pay of about $50 a month on the average, instead of $45. On the New York Central, firemen's wages were $40 to $45 a month; brakemen's, $36.

The following schedule shows the wages actually paid at the time the strike broke out on some of the leading lines for daily runsusually about 100 miles-and the average of monthly pay made for full work:

This table does not take account of the continned high rates of rent, nor of the present high prices of many secondary articles which are important for the comfort of the family.

The railroad workmen were not all of them driven into the strike from actual want, although all of them had been obliged, during the successive reductions in wages which have recently been made, to give up many comforts and luxuries to which they had been accustomed.

There was a feeling of deep indignation against the companies on account of the manner in which the business had been conducted for several years past. The argument that many of the roads could not afford to pay the former wages, or any wages at all, and pay at the same time the usual interest on their debts and capital, only aroused the greater indignation of the strikers. The impression that there had been a sorry mismanagement of capital prevailed not only among them, but among the public at large, and explains the general sympathy which the strikers retained among the people in spite of their high-handed and unlawful proceedings. The popular feeling was that they ought not to be made to suffer for the gross mistakes and extravagances of the heads of the companies, whoever else should suffer. The following newspaper report of a conversation with an intelligent brakeman shows the prevailing sentiments of the striking railroaders:

"When we complain," said he, "that our wages are too small to support a comfortable life, they tell us that railroads do not exist primarily to support us in any sort of life-that the managers are trustees of other people's property, and they must conduct their business so as to protect the interest of the property-holders. Now, we can't help seeing that these managers, in spite of their conscientious devotion to the interests of the road-owners, have been wildly squandering this property, income and assets, in a crazy struggle to slaughter each other. Everybody knows that they have been sinking money sinking it needlessly and willfully; and when this ruinous rivalry flares out in such freaks of puerile and jealous extravagance as those senseless, danger

ous, and demoralizing races across the continent with fast trains, we lose some of our reverence for into its service. But it is still more irritating to see the superior sagacity which capital is said to attract the money, which is whittled from our wages by these magnates, spent with open-handed liberality to gratify their own love of display and sumptuous pleasure. Right here, into this Jersey City depot, there come at least a dozen private cars, each of which belongs to some grandee on one of the lines in this system.' Now, there is actual need of some private cars on some occasions, and if the gorgeousness of these vehicles could be subdued a trifle in the interest of economy and good taste, and if they were only made to facilitate the business of the roads, they would provoke no complaint or comment; but hardly a day passes without one or two of these palaces rolling in here. Empty Pullman coaches are running every hour, but the railroad pasha must have a car of his own. He may have his car all to himself, or he may have all his friends with him. The supplies which are furnished to these luxurious travelers are not such as the families of brakemen habitually enjoy, but they are luxurious meals in several artistic courses, with wines to suit, and all are charged to 'the company.' The occupants sometimes live in these coaches for days together, and they (the coaches) are always nuisances here. They are in everybody's way, and somebody about, until they are coupled to an outgoing train, is kept switching, and backing, and hauling them and on the way to another yard. The actual expenses of a round trip from Philadelphia for one of these cars is $20, at a moderate estimate; and when 40 or 50 such trips are made in a month, besides voyages to other places, a clean $1,000 is wiped out.

But there are still more expeditious methods than this of bringing about an alarming 'shrinkage of values' in railroad stocks. Private cars are not sufficiently distinguished to gratify the most luxeverything must clear the track for them. Mr. urious officials. They must have special trains, and thinks no more of ordering locomotive 1,001 hooked up to car 2,002, than he does of ordering his coachman to harness his bay mare to his road-wagon for phia to New York in this grand style, to attend the a drive. Last winter he used to roll from Philadelopera whenever the performance promised to be sufficiently attractive for his elegant taste, and then he would steam back after it was over. It costs about $180 to make the run, and five or six specials a month knock the bottom out of another $1,000. Now, $2,000 a month for private cars and specials is rather precipitous. It is 10 per cent. of $20,000, or the pay of 400 men at $50 per month. And this amounts to saying that the 10 per cent. saved by reducing the wages of 400 men on this division never gets as far as the stockholders, but is charged up in a couple of items to the vanity and ease' account.

Now, you can snow us under with arguments, and political economy, and social science, and it may be that all this has no bearing upon the question of wages as viewed by philosophers. Our men are not profound or subtile thinkers, perhaps, but they keep both eyes wide open, and these things are exasperating. If the men who are paring down our wages for the good of society at large, and railroadstock owners and bondholders in particular, would only pinch themselves a little in the general squeezing-up, we could listen with more patience to their professions. They say we have a common interest in the prosperity of the roads. Why don't they distress themselves just a little-say to the extent of riding in Pullman palace cars-so that we can luxuriate in some community of suffering for high principle?"

The following resolutions, passed by the strikers on the Fort Wayne road at Pittsburgh,

represent the spirit and intentions of the strikers on most of the railroads:

Resolved, By the train-men and employés of the Pennsylvania Company and leased lines, in convention assembled: That we will in no wise interfere with the passenger traffic or with the United States mail trains.

Resolved, That we agree to furnish a full crew of men, free of charge, to the railroad company, to promptly move to the city all freight now in the yard intended for Pittsburgh firms, to the Duquesne depot. Resolved, That under no circumstances will we move through freight until we are allowed sufficient wages for our labor to keep our families from actual

want.

Resolved, That we fully appreciate the sympathy so fully tendered us by the public at large.

The ruinous competition between the trunk lines for the freight transportation of the West, in which freight prices were reduced far below the normal rates, was the subject of general complaint.

Actual suffering was felt far more generally and pressingly among other classes of laborers who struck-notably among the workers in the coal industry-and among some who did not strike, than among the railroaders. The picture of the condition of the miners given in the following expression of one of the leading strikers is no doubt literally true: "We have for a year done men's work on two meals of mush per day, and a bit of dry bread for our dinners, and we have learned to endure a great deal. We will eat the grass in the field before we will go to work again for less than we demand." Some of the miners could not earn above $10 a month-few of them over $25. An obnoxious institution in the mining regions is the companies' stores, the men complaining that they dare not buy from other dealers, at lower prices, lest they lose their places. The coalheavers who struck at Bergen Point, in New Jersey, were not able to earn over 60 or 70 cents a day. These men, mostly Irish, preserved a quiet and peaceable temper. It was a noteworthy symptom of these strikes that, when they were ready to return to work at the old wages, they were shamed out of it by the pleadings and taunts of their wives. A set of new men were brought to New York to take their places, but left before evening, finding that they were earning at the rate of not more than 25 to 60 cents a day. The stone-quarrymen, who got out stone for the New York pavements, in New Jersey, complained of the prices at which they were obliged to sell to the contractors, the quarriers at Weehawken declaring that they could make but 50 cents per diem. A representative case of low wages in factories was that of the silk mills in Newark, Paterson, and New York. In the Newark mills the men-spinners were paid $1 a day. Some of these men have worked at their trade for 20 years, and have wives and children to support. Small boys were paid from $1.10 to $2.10 per week. The wages of the girls ranged from $3 to $5.50 a week. The highest wages

paid was $9 a week to the dyers. From these wages a reduction was made of 15 per cent. In a New York factory, the wages of the weavers were reduced from 9 to 6 cents a yard, making a reduction in the girls' average pay of from $4.50 to $3 per week, while formerly they were able to average $8 a week.

The elements in this labor-outbreak were: 1. The railroad strikers. 2. The miners, factory-hands, and other laborers in different parts of the country, whose wages were oppressively low, whom a breath could have excited in their desperate or uncomfortable circumstances, and who thought they read in the popular sentiments excited by the railroad strike a disposition to befriend and enforce the cause of their suffering families. 3. The trade-unionists, who, like the next following class, rejoiced in another instance of the power of labor-combination, and who expressed on every hand the liveliest sympathy and well-wishes for the railroad unions, and predicted in their success the advantage and strengthening of all their organizations. 4. The "communistic " element, which could hope for no immediate benefit from the strike, unless it should lead to a general social revolution and disruption of property tenures. 5. The "tramps," being, for the most part, mechanics of more or less idle and irregular habits, who had been for years deprived of employment in their regular trades, owing to the general contraction of the productive industries and the improvement of labor-saving machinery. 6. The dangerous classes-the unproductive, the untaught, and unprincipled multitude which congregates in all larger towns, thousands in number, from which come most of the thieves and paupers. The latter element, which is always ready to inflame and take part in a riot, partly from the hope of booty and partly from motives of envious destructiveness and misanthropy, was most conspicuous during the Sunday of robbery and arson in Pittsburgh, but was out in force also in the street-riots in Chicago and St. Louis. The "tramp" class and the unemployed were overready to take part in the closing of the shops and the chasing of willing mechanics from their work. That portion of the demonstrations may be supposed to have been conceived and carried out by this class. Both of the latter elements thought they sympathized in, if they did not understand, the motives of the third class, the "communists." There were many voluntary strikes, especially among the Western factory-hands, where no particular complaint could be alleged, except the universal inferior condition of the laboring-man. Men threw down their tools, under the excitement of the hour, to prate about the wrongs of their class. Meetings and knots of men gathered in all the large towns and industrial sections, to listen to harangues upon the oppression of capital, the social revolution, and the labor republic, and to pass resolutions calling upon