The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1894-07-14
GREAT RIOTS OF 1877
LABOR WENT MAD AT THIS SEASON
JUST SEVENTEEN TEARS AGO
Ended i'm the Most Dreadful Scenes
in American Labor History.

New York Press.
At this time seventeen years ago the
mutterings that preceded the most danger
Gus strike in the history OF the country
were just beginning TO be heard. and labor
was girding up its loins for the most des-
perate and far-reaching, though not the
most powerful. struggle ii has ever made.
TIL strikers fought madly, and passion
and violence took the place of brains and
craft. The chief cause of the conflict was
a quite general reduction of 10 per cent.
in the pay of railroad employees. Before
July and August of that year were ended
100000 men had been engaged in the strug-
gle. and two thousand miles of railroad
from the Atlantic TO the Mississippi, as
far south as Baltimore. had been tied up.
There is food for reflection in a COMPARE
son of the conflict of that memorable
year TO the labor troubles of the present.
The great contest of 1877 began i~nsignii-
cantly enough with the strike of forty
brakemen and fremen on the Baltimore
& Ohio road at Baltimore on July Ii. In
five days the strike had stopped every
wheel on the Baltimore & Ohio and had
extended to the Pennsylvania road, and
on the Goth Baltimore found itself stained
with blood. The Sixth Maryland Regi-
ment of militia had been stoned by a mob
of strikers and their sympathizers. and
without waiting for orders had fired on
their assailants. A pitched battle followed,
in which nine men were killed and forty
more or less wounded.
THE PITTSBURG RIOTS.
The passions of the Pennsylvania railroad
strikers at Pittsburg took fire from the
fighting in Baltimore, and the events that
followed in Pittsburg were what served 10
keep red the memory of the strike of "a.
The Pittsburg strikers had proved them
selves too powerful for the police to cope
with, and on the 2lst the First Division of
the Pennsylvania State Guard from Phila-
delphia reached the city. the greater proper
ton of them being boys from twenty to
twenty-five, years. At 8 o'clock in the after
noon they had their first taste of grim war,
for at that hour they undertook TO clear a
mob Of roughs and strikers that. had gath
cred at Twenty-eighth street. They were
stoned mercilessly, and finally fired on their
assailants. Sixteen of the mob were killed
formed into demons. burning with a fever
of destructiveness and lost 10 all sense of
of them came back TO the battle
strongly armed. Those who had no
shotguns or rifles had clubs and stones BY
midnight there were twenty thousand OF
them. They attacked a roundhouse in which
the young guardsmen, to the number of
eight hundred, had intrenched themselves.
Three or four pieces of ordnance were
trained on the hesieged. The inexperienced
other. with still others always to take
their places. Exasperated by the failure
of the cannon to dislodge the g~uardsmen,
the strikers undertook to roast alive the
men in the roundhouse. Oil cars were set
on fire and pushed toward the building, but
fell short of their destination; buildings in
the vicinity were fired; the torch was ap-
piled n"discriminately to freight cars and
to private property, and the firemen were
| driven off when they attempted to quench
the flames. The night was lit up all about
| the roundhouse with a sea of flames, and
the position Of the besieged became desper-
ate. The heat was unbearable, sparks were
| flying everywhere and it began to look as
If the strikers would have their way and
the guardsmen would be roasted out. y car
| loaded with coke was drenched with kero-
sene and sent flying down the track as far
as the men dared go within range from the
guardsmen's muskets. That, too; fell short
| of it's destination, and. while the strikers
withdrew to study new methods, the mill
tary, at Z in the morning. took advantage
of the lull. left the building and retreated'
where they disbanded.
BLOOD AND DESTRUCTION.
The success of the strikers only whetted
their appetite, and the scenes that fol-
lowed all that Sunday would fit the de-
scriptions Dickens wrote in "Barnaby
Rudge'' of the No Popery riots. The mob
devoted itself first to burning railroad
4 property, dlu turing IL udN SOUnc Two
thousand freight cars were destroyed, to-
gether with nearly every railroad building
In Pittsburg, including the Union Depot,
in the neighborhood of 10000, 900. Ali day
men. women and children carried booty
from the plundered freight cars through
the streets of the city.
At night the madmen who had been car
rying on their work of destruction for
twenty-four hours without rest renewed
their strength with liquor. Drug stores and
saloons were broken open and looted, and
other private property for the sake of rob-
berry and the joy Of destruction. This
aIogsed no 'n EFFORT Sltiz t5 sto Mho the nd iawle essnerso
and by Monday morning private companies
were organized for protection, and with
spent with their two nights and one day
of lawlessness.. were dispersed. In all
were killed during the riots.
Lesser riots followed in Hornellsville.
Buffalo, Columbus, o.; Reading. Pa; Fort
ledo and many other cities, especially in
the West. a riot which took place in
the killing of twenty men in a battle be-
tween the strikers and a force OF two
hundred police officers; Even the San Fran;
brought about a bloody fight on the 18th.
Fears of a riot in this city aroused by a
mass meeting held in Tompkins square on
the 18th and at Cooper Union on the 26th
to express sympathy. with the strikers
were not realized. The condition of the
III NpblNt u ~ u Is Oh hAt -Jl
of July, but the strikers had reached the
height of their powers and endurance,
public feeling was turning against them.
and suddenly they wavered and gave way.
BY the 9th of July the country was safe
from the gravest danger through which
1t had passed since the battle OF Gettys-
burg was fought. Nearly all of the strik-
ers returned to work at their former
wages.
The miners strikes and riots in the coal
regions followed at once, however, and by
the LIST of august Scranton, Pa, had be-
On a Ctnrp1 0anfar orOrpH which tHAro
were nearly fifty thousand striking miners,
desperate because their wages had been re-
duced till it was scarcely possible to live.
Many OF them made not more than SIS a
month, and the average for laborers was,
perhaps. somewhat lower than that. Riot
ers seized Nanticoke, Plymouth and Kings
ton. and a riot took place i'm Scranton i'm
which the Mayor of the town was wounded
and four or five men were killed. Unlike
the railroad strikes. the miners revolt was
generally successful. an average advance of
10 per cent. in wages being gained.