page_title: Scranton general strike
section_title: Interpretation
hierarchical_section_title: Scranton general strike / Interpretation
caption_attribution_description: English: The armory of the Scranton City Guard in 1878, later headquarters of the National Guard's 109th Infantry Regiment and home to units of the 55th Brigade.
context_page_description: The Scranton general strike was a widespread work stoppage in 1877 by workers in Scranton, Pennsylvania, which took place as part of the Great Railroad Strike, and was the last in a number of violent outbreaks across Pennsylvania. The strike began on July 23 when railroad workers walked off the job in protest of recent wage cuts, and within three days it grew to include perhaps thousands of workers from a variety of industries.
  Many had returned to work when violence erupted on August 1 after a mob attacked the town's mayor, and then clashed with local militia, leaving four dead and many more wounded. State and federal troops were called to the town, and imposed martial law. Minor acts of violence continued until the last of the strikers returned to work on October 17, having won no concessions. More than a score of those involved in the shooting were arrested for murder, and later tried and found not-guilty of the crime of manslaughter. Two were tried and one convicted in libel suits related to published criticism of the militia. The militia would go on to be reformed into a battalion of the Pennsylvania National Guard.
context_section_description: Opinions differ on the root cause of the strike and ensuing violence, and what persons or groups should shoulder the blame.
  Historians Hitchcock and Downs emphasized the far-reaching effects of the ongoing depression, inflation, rapidly increasing commodity prices, and mass unemployment, as well as the failure of the strikers to appreciate that these conditions affected the employer as well as the employee.
  Evidently the great mass of laboring men failed to comprehend the situation. Too much then, as now, capital was their enemy, not their friend. Too much then, as now, in their way of thinking, there was no limit to the ability of capital. They did not see that capital could not pay wages, buy raw material and manufacture goods unless it could sell its products and get returns. And if a few more intelligent did see these things the pressure of hungry wives and children obscured all reason and they were ready to go along on anything that offered a shadow of relief.
  They go on to suggest that some unknown number of those participating in the ensuing riot may have traveled to Scranton expressly for that purpose, and not in support of the strikers or their objectives.
  Historian Michael A. Bellesiles suggested that violence became a type of corporate tool rather than a civic last resort: "management consistently refused to negotiate in any way with their workers and relied entirely on military force to settle the contest."  He notes a letter in which W.W. Scranton wrote to a friend, "I trust when the troops come,--if they ever get here,--that we may have a conflict, in which the mob shall be completely worsted. In no other way will the thing end with any security for property in the future."
  Stepenoff writes of organized labor's "triumph" in the 1878 Scranton mayoral election, and the efforts of then Mayor Terrence Powderly, national leader of the Knights of Labor, to reorganize the police force, "that had disgraced itself in 1877 during a strike of anthracite miners in the Scranton area." In contrast, Logan, who was present as events unfolded, dedicates his book on the topic to the "patriotic young men, who had wisdom to discern the city's danger, and the patient courage to provide for its defense."
caption: Armory of the Scranton City Guard in 1878
exif: {}