page_title: Great Railroad Strike of 1922
section_title: Termination of strike
hierarchical_section_title: Great Railroad Strike of 1922 / Conflict and violence / Termination of strike
caption_attribution_description: Harry M. Daugherty, Attorney General of the United States.
context_page_description: The Great Railroad Strike of 1922, commonly known as the Railway Shopmen's Strike, was a nationwide strike of railroad workers in the United States. Launched on July 1, 1922, by seven of the sixteen railroad labor organizations in existence at the time, the strike continued into the month of August before collapsing.
  At least ten people, most of them strikers or family members, were killed in connection with the strike. The collective action of some 400,000 workers in the summer of 1922 was the largest railroad work stoppage since the American Railway Union's Pullman Strike of 1894 and the biggest American strike of any kind since the Great Steel Strike of 1919.
context_section_description: The opportunity for a mediated solution to the strike was brief. On July 11, 1922, President Harding issued a proclamation that attempted to split the difference between the two sides in the conflict, recognizing the merit of the workers' grievances and promising not to destroy organized labor but also recognizing the decision of the Railroad Labor Board that strikebreakers were to be regarded as permanent employees, with "the same indisputable right to work as others have to decline work."
  The Railroad Labor Board attempted to mediate an end to the dispute, bringing together union and railroad representatives on July 14 in a joint conference. While the railroad officials pledged to end the subcontracting of work to non-union shops, no retreat was to be made on the issue of restoring seniority to striking workers, and the impasse remained unsettled. Following the failure of this conference, the Railroad Labor Board declared that its efforts to resolve the stoppage had reached an end.
  While the US Army was not used to defend railroad company interests in the 1922 Shopmen's Strike, the US National Guard was called out, on a state-by-state basis, by various state governors. Troops bolstered armed company guards in their work protecting railroad property and aiding in the defense and transportation of strikebreakers, thereby working to undermine the strike effort.
  US Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty, an outspoken opponent of the organized labor movement, was instrumental in escalating the federal government's role in bringing about the defeat of striking railway workers and the restoration of order across the American railroad industry. Daugherty sensationally charged strikers with conducting "a conspiracy worthy of Lenin and Zinoviev" and sent US Marshals into the field to aid the railroads in their efforts to defend their property and defeat the strike. Deputy US Marshals were appointed freely, sometimes from pools of "thugs" that had been gathered by the railways themselves.
  Opposing Daugherty in the inner circle of the Harding administration were Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover and Secretary of Labor James John Davis, who sought a negotiated end to the strike. Harding was won over to that approach and professed the belief that the role of the federal government in the dispute should be one of an "honest broker" rather than as a violent authority figure.
caption: Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty sought an aggressive approach to end the 1922 Railroad Strike and made use of legal injunctions and US Marshals on the railway company's behalf.
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