The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1900-12-29
ORDERED A STRIKE
JUST FOR A JOKE
CCbicago Inter Ocean.)

(Cbicago Inter OCEAN,
This strike of the operators on the
Santa Fee said an old telegrapher,
reminds me Of the strike which took
place in 1891. l had been down in Tex
as and by easy stages was working
back toward this city, and was in St.
Louis when 1 met Ramsey. / forget
RamSey'S first name. He was q good
fellow. / knew him when he used 10
work on the J. & N. and then heard
| he had quit to study law. At that
| time he was practicing law in East
St Louis, city on the map and
across the river from ST Louis Ram
sey was the head of the o. r. T.
He was a little fellow, fun of grit
and good talker. The boys put him in
at the head because he was a lawyer
| and it was thought best to do things
| according to HOyle in the organization.
/ Like everybody else that comes out of
/ Texas, after a siege of it ] was anxious
| to get back to Gods country and spend
/ the balance Of my ill-gotten gains
among the people of my birth. When !
/ met Ramsey ne asked me if I was an
| o. r. T. man, and l told him / was.
| He told me there was liable to be n
! strike on the Santa F'e and asked me
/ to stay about for q few days. You can
! always use a strange face in a strike,
/ and / was d soda card in new deck.
| SO far as St Louis or Chicago was con-
| cerned.
We were about St. Louis for a few
days shaping things, and Ramsey was
| having conferences with persons in the
| offices of the company. A cipher had
| been arranged so that when the time
came and 1T went cut oyer the line eV-
| erybody could quit. Every man in the
! order knew the signal and was wait
/ ing either for it or some announce
ment that the matter had been fixed
/ up.
After harmony conference one day
| at noon everything on the Santa Fe
quit working. The signal went out
| and there was not an operator from
/ Chicago to Gainesville, Tex. that cared
/ to work 1t was "A complete tie-up. The
railroad people blamed Ramsey and
! said ne had acted in bad faith. He
/ denied having given any order to quit.
He called the men back to the keys.
/ but the damage had been done. The
| story was a couple of days getting out.
| In Wichita there was a fat oDer-
| ator named Williamson, who refused
/ TO consider life anything more than a
| joke. 1t made no difference to him
/ whether his name was Williamson or
| Smith or Jones. He could change name
with every job, and jobs after every
( payday. He conceived the happy idea
] that the thing to do was to tie up the
! Santa Fe. The more he thought of it
! the funnier he thought it was. and fin
/ ally he opened up and sent out the
! cipher order to strike. The result was
/ that, believing the strike was on, many
/ of the boys decided the thing to do
| was to become a, grievance committee
/ Of one in the barrOOms, and in two
| hours there was a string of operators
from Illinois to Texas declaring their
/ intentions of never sending another
( word for the Santa Fe till the strike
/ was won.
Ramsey sent out a circular over
! the wire, and some of them returned to
/ work. 1t took a couple of days to get
/ them all to understand that some one
had played joke on the order and the
! road The man in Wichita was black
! listed by the roads and the order. and
/ from that time on until today he has
! been kept busy changing his name
/ The last / heard of HIM he was on a
/ branch of the Santa Fe. satisfied that
! he would be discharged as soon as the
! pay-car came along and he was recog-
! niZed as the man who ordered the fake
] strike"