Annals of the great strikes in the United States

Circular to Employes—Ten per cent. Reduction in Wages Announced—How the News was Received—A Delegation of Employes—The Officers of the Road will not Reconsider—Commencement of the Strike—Trains Stopped at Martinsburg—Trouble at Baltimore.

In the beginning of July, 1877, a circular emanating from the offices of the superintendents of the Baltimore and Ohio Railway, was sent to all the employes of the Company, announcing a reduction of 10 per cent. from the wages which the Company was then paying. This curtailment of the income of the employes on the road, was to take effect on Monday, July 16th, 1877. This schedule of wages, according to the circular, reduced the pay of firemen from $1.75 and $1.50 per day, to $1.58 and $1.35 per day, according to the efficiency of the men. The pay of brakemen was fixed at a little less. One hundred miles was made to constitute a days’ run. No allowance of time was permitted for delays at way stations.

The reception of this circular created no little ill-feeling among the railroad men. Groups of them met, and discussed their situation. The men asserted that they could not sustain themselves on the amount of wages the company proposed to pay them for their services. Meetings of employes were held at various points along the line of the road, and finally a plan of action was agreed upon. A committee was appointed and instructed to confer with the officers of the company. Mr. Vice President King was appealed to, but declined to hear the complaints of the employes. Various efforts were made to procure the rescission of the order of reduction. These proved abortive. Meanwhile as the time fixed for the order of the Company to go into effect approached, the discontent of the men increased. At many localities along the road, small bodies of men expressed themselves in favor of striking. But it does not appear that up to the morning of the 16th, any concerted movement had been agreed upon by the firemen and brakemen of the Baltimore and Ohio Railway.

The morning of the 16th of July, 1877, at length dawned. Along the line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, everything presented the usual appearance. Trains were moving; foundery men, machinists, engine drivers, firemen, brakemen, trackmen, switchmen and agents were at their posts of duty. The commerce of a large section of country was moving over the iron trackways. The officers of the road, too, were at their respective offices, little anticipating that within the space of twelve hours, a strike, such as was never before known in the history of America, would be inaugurated along the line of that great highway. Intimations of coming trouble the managers of the road had had, but they trusted that the “hard times,” would deter the men from carrying into execution any purpose they might have formed of deserting their posts of duty on the road.

The day wore on. The click of the telegraphic instruments in the office of the superintendents of the respective divisions, announced the arrival and departure of trains to and from a thousand stations situated along a line of more than fourteen hundred miles of railway. There was no trouble as yet; and the lengthening shadows announced the day’s decline. The afternoon was far advanced, and the officers of the great railway line had already begun to congratulate themselves, because the danger of a general strike appeared to have passed way.

But their self-gratulations were doomed to a sudden arrest. It was after five o’clock in the afternoon, when the announcement was made in the general offices of the Company at Baltimore, that a strike of the employes on the road was in progress at Camden Junction, near that city. About forty firemen at that point quit their engines, and persuaded twenty or thirty brakemen to join them in deserting their trains. As yet no intelligence had reached the managers of the road of disturbances elsewhere. Another force of firemen and brakemen were engaged to take out the waiting trains. But the trains were not taken out. The freight business of the road had been already completely embargoed. The trouble at Camden Junction appeared to have been easily disposed of, and for a time the officers anticipated nothing worse.

But it soon became manifest that the officers had misapprehended the nature and character of the movement among their employes. Reports came in rapid succession from the West, announcing that the railroad men at Cumberland, Martinsburg and other stations along the line were restless, discontented and insubordinate, and that the canal-boatmen had quit work and abandoned their boats. Under these circumstances, all movements of freight over the road practically ceased.

Meanwhile, the situation at Baltimore was every hour becoming more critical. Before six o’clock the box-makers, sawyers, and can-makers, engaged in the shops and factories of that city, had struck for an advance of ten per cent. on their wages, had abandoned their places and swarmed into the streets. The demonstrations of these workingmen only stimulated the railroad men to commit bolder acts. It became evident before the evening had far advanced that a general strike of railroad men all along the line of the Baltimore and Ohio line was inevitable.

At Martinsburg the excitement became very great, and the situation was alarming. Late in the evening a general strike was set on foot. All freight trains were stopped, and brakemen and firemen who manifested an intention to continue at their posts, were forcibly taken from their engines and trains by the strikers, and compelled to join in demonstrations against the Company they had ceased to serve. At Cumberland the situation was anything but reassuring. A considerable number of striking trainmen had assembled at that place and prohibited any movement whatever of trains, other than mail and passenger coaches. At Keyser and Grafton, the trainmen had obtained complete possession, and no freight trains were permitted to move.

Before midnight of the 16th, the control of the immense property of the Baltimore and Ohio Railway Company, had passed out of the hands of the officers, and was held by the strikers. The disposition manifested by the recalcitrants at Martinsburg, had become so threatening, that Vice President King, of the Baltimore and Ohio road, sent a dispatch to Governor Matthews of West Virginia, calling upon him to furnish troops to protect the interests of the Company.

Late the same evening, Governor Matthews sent a dispatch from Wheeling to Captain Charles James Faulkner, Jr., in command of certain companies of State militia at Martinsburg, to afford the officers of the road all the aid and protection in his power. No collisions as yet had occurred.

The first act of the strikers involving injury to persons, was committed at South Baltimore, at about two o’clock, the morning of the 17th. A freight train from the West, bound for Locust Point, was thrown from the track while passing the gas house switch in that suburb, and almost demolished. The cab of the engine took fire and some destruction of property ensued before the flames were subdued. The engineer and fireman were both severely wounded. No other incident worth recording occurred during this the first night of the reign of the strikers.

But it was already evident that a formidable movement of the workingmen throughout the country was imminent. Indeed, the greatest labor strikes ever known was now fairly inaugurated. Less than ten hours had passed since the canal-boatmen, the box-makers, the sawyers, the can-makers, and the trainmen had definitely resolved on quitting their employments, and already more than four thousand persons had joined in the strike, refusing to labor themselves, and determined to prevent others from taking their places. But even with the evidences of the fitness of public sentiment to foster and encourage a strike, no one at the close of the first day after the strike began could have anticipated the tremendous uprising to which the events about Baltimore and Martinsburg were but the prelude.

But, if the developments during the first ten hours of the strike, while the movement was yet in its incipient stage, were sufficient to engender feelings of uneasiness in the public mind, the events of the following day justified the sensation of intense alarm.

Martinsburg, a city of no great extent, occupying a romantic site in a valley among the mountains of West Virginia, was destined to be the scene of the first real conflict between the representative forces of the State and the strikers. At an early hour on the morning of the 17th, Captain Charles James Faulkner, Jr., Aid-de-Camp to Governor Matthews, arrived at the post of duty at Martinsburg, in command of seventy-five men of the Berkeley Light Guard Infantry. He had been ordered to protect that point by the Governor, who had been applied to for aid by Vice President King of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company.

Captain Faulkner at once proceeded to the railway track and deployed his men as a guard for a West bound freight train, which the Railway Company determined to dispatch in spite of the orders of the strikers. The train started, and had proceeded nearly to the switch at the Company’s yards, when suddenly one of the strikers, named Wm. Vandergriff, ran forward and seized the switch-ball for the purpose of opening it to “side track” the train. At this time the train was moving slowly. A guard of militia was on the engine. The movement of Vandergriff was observed by John Poisal, a member of Captain Faulkner’s command, who immediately sprang from the pilot of the engine where he had been stationed, and attempted to replace the switch in order to allow the train to proceed. Vandergriff resented this action, drew a pistol and fired two shots at the militia-man, one of which took effect in the side of his head. Poisal returned the fire, shooting Vandergriff through the hip. This firing led to a regular fusilade. A number of shots were fired at Vandergriff and he was shot in the head and arm. The report of firearms, speedily attracted to the spot a great multitude of railroad men and citizens. The excitement was intense. The engineer and fireman who had engaged with the Company to run the train, fled when the firing commenced. Captain Faulkner ordered the mass of strikers to keep back, and commanded them to disperse. This order was received by them with jeers and threats. Finding that the engineer and fireman had deserted the train, Captain Faulkner declared that he had fully discharged his duty, marched his command to their armory, where they were disbanded, leaving the strikers in full possession of the field. The road was now completely blocked up with standing trains. The cars were all uncoupled, and the links and pins were either hidden or broken.

During the day the force of strikers at Martinsburg, was greatly augmented. The citizens of the town, the disbanded militia, and the rural population of the surrounding country fraternized with them, and encouraged them in the determination to persist in their demands.

Railroad men from the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway also arrived in considerable numbers at Martinsburg during the day. At three o’clock in the afternoon it was estimated that the strikers and their allies at Martinsburg numbered not less than one thousand men. The State authorities were powerless. Telegraphic messages passed between the Governor and the officers of the road. The Governor himself, with the Matthews Guards, left Wheeling for Martinsburg, and proceeded as far as Cumberland. But he hastily returned from that point to the Capital on receiving intelligence that the strike had reached that city, and that all freight trains were being stopped. The police and constabulary force of the municipality could afford no protection to trainmen who were willing to continue in the service of the Company. The two military companies at Martinsburg, openly affiliated with the strikers. Another company of volunteer militia was thirty-eight miles from any railroad. The Matthews Guards at Wheeling, numbered but forty-eight men, and even the loyalty of these was not to be depended on in this emergency.

At night the situation at Martinsburg, Cumberland, Grafton, Keyser, Wheeling, and indeed all along the line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, was critical in the extreme. The canal-boatmen were with the railroad men at Martinsburg, and the citizens all along the line were apparently sympathizers. Meanwhile, rumors of an alarming character concerning movements among railroad, and other classes of workingmen all over the country, were circulated in all directions. In the portion of country most affected, a sort of dread of impending disasters had taken possession of the friends of law and order. Lawlessness reigned supreme from the Patapsco to the Kanawha. The second day of the great strikes closed. The movement had become formidable. Men experienced a feeling of intense alarm at the prospects before them.