THE GREAT RAILROAD STRIKE.
Harper's WeeklyApril 21, 1888
AFTER a six weeks' struggle, one of the most important railroad
strikes inaugurated since 1876 in this country has practically
ended. The engineers and firemen of the Chicago, Burlington, and
Quincy system (which reaches out through eight States, from Chicago
to the Rocky Mountains, over 5500 miles of track, and touches
1500 cities, towns, and villages) left their engines, at the command
of Chief ARTHUR of the Brotherhood of Locomotive
Engineers, and refused to return to work unless certain demands
were acceded to, among the most reasonable of which was an increase
of pay. The railroad officials were willing to pay larger salaries
on the main line than on the branches, but this did not satisfy
the strikers, and some 15,000 men put on their coats on the 25th
of February, and for six weeks did everything in their power to
cripple the corporations for which they had previously worked.
Chief ARTHUR and his staff of Brotherhood
officers and counsellors took up their headquarters in Chicago,
and from that base the battle was fought, and lost to them. Engineers
and firemen from Eastern roads, and notably from the Reading,
where a strike had just ended, in which the employees considered
themselves not well supported by the Brotherhood, began to pour
into Chicago, seeking employment, which was freely given, and
which of course had the effect to weaken the moral force of the
Brotherhood itself. Finding that the road was so well prepared
to resist the demands of the strikers, the latter resorted to
various measures to force them to terms, and through the sympathetic
action of their associates on other lines succeeded in instituting
a freight boycott, by reason of a threatening to go out in a body
if the several lines connecting with the Burlington system accepted
or forwarded any freight offered by the latter road at any connecting
point, no matter whether it was through or local business. Not
one of the roads connecting with the Burlington was left out.
Naturally the business public began to interest itself in the
conflict at this point, with the result that the aid of the United
States courts was invoked to stop this interference with the transit
of goods. The courts at Chicago and Omaha decided against the
strikers, and this, with the sudden termination of the Santa Fe
strike, inaugurated March 15th, and the refusal of the Chicago,
Milwaukee, and St. Paul engineers and firemen to go out, had a
depressing and weakening effect. As a last resort, however, the
engineers enlisted the switchmen, and began to practice the tactics
of malicious interference, which had hitherto been kept in the
background. As soon as new switchmen took the places of the retiring
Burlington employees, the latter, in organized bodies, set upon
and maltreated the former to that extent that special forces of
detectives were required to preserve the peace and to protect
the property of the railroad. Assaults were made in the Chicago
freight yards, and a number of switchmen severely injured.
The switchmen's strike then swept over the Western railroad
regions, following out the course of the original strike of the
engineers arid firemen, and first and last taking in the Santa
Fe system, the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul, and other connecting
lines; but it passed along like a wave, and the old order of things
was restored as soon as reason could be heard. By the 3d of April
the strikers, finding their tactics gradually losing force and
their stratagem weakening, determined to take one more step that
should bring their opponent to terms. They announced that the
boycott against the moving of Burlington cars by other roads was
removed, that other lines could do as they pleased, and their
employees be under no obligations to aid the strikers, save with
sympathy and spare cash, and the strike would be confined to the
Burlington road. This radical action was taken because the strikers
said the Burlington company had undertaken, in bad faith, to create
trouble between other companies and their employees, having no
motive in view except the injury of connecting lines or their
people. The Burlington officials were growing able, however, to
conduct their business without the assistance of the strikers.
New men had taken control of the affairs, new engineers and firemen
were running the trains as skillfully as did the old employees,
and the strike slowly but surely was becoming a thing of the past.
By the end of the first week of April the Brotherhood of Locomotive
Engineers were again pondering over the uncertainty of strikes,
and the inevitable had happened. The Burlington struggle had virtually
ended, with the same result as the Reading. Mr. POWDERLY
advised against the latter; Mr. ARTHUR
had no heart and no encouragement for the former. The strikers
may hold out for a while yet, and Mr. ARTHUR
may still direct the contest, but it must all end in failure.
It has been estimated that this great strike has caused a loss
to the engineers' and firemen's brotherhoods of $601,500 for the
forty-five days the strike has lasted; while to the Burlington
company the loss has been $2,100,000. Of course there are many
indirect losses scattered throughout the whole of the Burlington
system which it is difficult to compute.
The latest movement of the strikers was to endeavor to induce
the brakemen to join in the warfare on the Burlington system,
with the hope that the conductors would also give the strikers
their aid. The engineers and firemen have for some time been negotiating
for the support of the Knights of Labor, and it has been intimated
that this would be accorded them.
C. E. H.
Scenes and
Incidents of the Great Railroad Strike at Chicago
From sketches by Walter Burridge
WAS THERE NOTHING TO ARBITRATE?
WITH grief that I think must be shared by a good many other
holders of Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy stock, I saw that
stock go down from 129 to 112 under the effect of the private
war waged between the railroad and its engineers and switchmen.
I am told by the press that the loss was through the fault of
these employees of the road, and that its officers illustrated
a beneficent principle in standing firm against them and refusing
their demands. The principle was that the road had the right to
manage its private affairs in its own way.
But here, I think, is an error. A railroad has, strictly speaking,
no private affairs. It is a corporation which in return for certain
franchises has assumed certain obligations, and before all corporate
rights it has these public duties. It ought to consider these
always, and from the beginning; but it is said that when early
in the war the opposite faction offered to submit its claims to
arbitration, the officers of the C., B., & Q. replied that
there was nothing to arbitrate. If this was true, it was a great
pity, and I believe a great mistake. There is no question here
of the road's treatment of its employees, but if these thought
themselves underpaid, and the road thought them paid enough, it
was the very moment for arbitration.
That truly Christian device for averting public war has now
been successfully tried, and it seems to me it would have been
well to use it in the danger of the private war which has embarrassed
travel and commerce on the Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy,
and spread loss far arid wide. It is in quality of timid capitalist
that I write; and I wish to say that I have no particular affection
for the Brotherhood of Engineers; it has before now shown itself
short-sighted and selfish, and in its betrayal by the Knights
of Labor it is said to be paying the penalty of a treason of its
own. But however this may be, it is unquestionably a power, lawfully
organized for defence and offence, and it was the part of policy
for the opposing force to recognize its strength. It was also
a duty to do this in view of its obligations to the public, which
neither of the belligerents in the case has considered. The road
was bound to come to any tolerable accommodation with its employees,
so that the public might not suffer. The quarrel, as far as it
concerned the engineers, was between them and the road; but as
concerned the road, it did not end there: the community was an
immediate sufferer from its impolicythe community, which
had a sovereign claim upon its service.
When the strike began, I suppose that nearly every humane person
said to himself, "Well between men who want to make a better
living and a corporation that wants to make more money I can have
no choice." I said something like this myself, not remembering
my C., B., & Q. stock in my magnanimity. But of course when
the strike came, as strikes must, to involve violence, the general
sentiment changed, and many lectures have been read to the engineers
on their misbehavior, but to the road none. That is my reason
for attempting to read it a little one now, to remind it that
it is the creature of public favor, with duties to the public
which it had no right to fail in through any mistaken sense of
its corporate dignity or interest. I dare say that the engineers'
strike against it will end, as all strikes have hitherto ended,
in disaster to the strikers. But I am sure that strikes will not
always end so. It is only a question of time, and of a very little
time, till the union of labor shall be so perfect that nothing
can defeat it. We may say this will be a very good time or a very
bad time; all the same, it is coming. Then the question will come
with it: Shall the railroads fulfil their public obligations by
agreement with their employees, or shall the government take possession
of them and operate them? It is folly to talk of the withdrawal
of capital, and the consequent ruin of the country. The country
belongs to the people, and they are not going to let it be ruined.
Their possession of the railroads would involve much trouble and
anxiety, but the Railroad Receiver, who is an agent of theirs,
is not unknown, and his management of roads is good; so that the
public may take heart of hope if the worst ever comes to the worst.
But let us understand that it is not engineers or switchmen
or brakemen who can bring it to the worst; it is only directors
and managers and presidents who refuse to arbitrate, and who forget
their public duties so far as to talk of a railroad's affairs
as private affairs.
W. D. HOWELLS
Strike
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