Hard Times on the Iron Rails

In the mid-1870s, life for American railroad workers was harsh. The country was mired in a severe economic depression following the Panic of 1873, often called the Long Depression. Businesses were failing by the thousands, unemployment was high, and those who still had jobs saw their wages dropping. The big railroad companies took advantage of the hard times, slashing workers’ pay repeatedly even as the job remained grueling and dangerous. Many railroaders toiled long hours at hard labor for meager pay that barely fed their families. Railroad bosses had also smashed early unions, leaving workers with no organized voice to demand better conditions. By 1877, frustration among rail workers was boiling over.

The spark finally came in July 1877. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O)—one of the major rail lines—announced its second wage cut in less than a year. For many rail crews already living on the edge, this was the breaking point. After years of pay cuts, longer hours, and layoffs, the stage was set for an explosion of anger across the rail lines.

A Spark in Martinsburg

That explosion began in the small railroad hub of Martinsburg, West Virginia. On July 16, 1877, B&O railroad workers in Martinsburg decided they had had enough. When the new 10% pay cut hit in mid-July, workers in Martinsburg uncoupled locomotives and brought the rail yard to a standstill. No trains would leave, they vowed, until the pay cut was revoked. This bold action paralyzed a key B&O junction and caught management off guard.

Word of the stoppage spread quickly. In Martinsburg, local law enforcement tried to disperse the protesting workers, but sympathetic townspeople gathered to support the strikers. Unable to break up the crowd or get the trains moving, the West Virginia governor called in the state militia. But many militia members were local working men themselves. Some refused to take action, unwilling to fire on their neighbors. With the trains still blocked and the situation escalating, the governor made a fateful decision: he asked President Rutherford B. Hayes for federal troops to intervene.

By July 20, Federal troops arrived in Martinsburg. These were battle-tested soldiers with clear orders to restore order and get the trains running. Confronted with the U.S. Army’s bayonets and rifles, the Martinsburg strikers dispersed without a fight. The blocked locomotives were reattached and, after several tense days, trains began to roll out of Martinsburg again. The immediate crisis in West Virginia was over. But the fire of resistance had already leapt far beyond that one town.

Pittsburgh Erupts

Even as troops quelled the strike in Martinsburg, the unrest was spreading along the rails. News of the workers’ stand traveled by telegraph and by the mouths of travelers, igniting sympathy and similar actions in one railroad town after another. The most dramatic confrontation of all took place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a major industrial hub for the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) and a city about to witness the fiercest battle of the Great Railroad Strike.

Pittsburgh’s railroad workers were primed for revolt. The Pennsylvania Railroad had likewise cut wages and, around the same time, announced workers would have to run “double header” trains – two locomotives pulling twice the normal number of cars with no extra crew. Tensions in the Steel City were sky high. On July 19, as trains backed up along the yards, one crew led by a flagman refused to move their train, protesting the wage cuts and increased workload. Their defiance was the match that lit Pittsburgh’s flame.

Rail workers from other depots and shops across Pittsburgh soon joined the strike. They blockaded the tracks, parked locomotives to prevent any movement, and swarmed the rail yards. Before long, they were joined by an outpouring of support from the community. Pittsburgh was filled with ironworkers, miners, factory hands, and unemployed laborers suffering in the depression; many of them dropped everything to back the railroad strikers. Crowds of thousands of angry but determined people gathered around the Pennsylvania Railroad’s main yards, effectively seizing control of the area. Train service ground to a halt.

The local authorities in Pittsburgh were quickly overwhelmed. The city’s police were either too few or too hesitant to move against such a mass of their fellow citizens. Local units of the National Guard (state militia) were called out to disperse the crowd, but Pittsburgh’s own militia companies balked at the idea of firing on friends and neighbors. In some cases, militiamen simply stood aside or even chatted amicably with the strikers. With local forces unwilling to crack down, the rail company executives and the governor grew desperate. If Pittsburgh’s hometown soldiers wouldn’t clear the tracks, they would find some who would.

Governor John Hartranft of Pennsylvania, under intense pressure from PRR president Thomas A. Scott, decided to bring in outside forces. On July 21, several hundred National Guard troops from Philadelphia arrived in Pittsburgh by train. These Philadelphia guardsmen, unlike the locals, had no qualms about obeying orders to restore order. They found the rail yards packed with men, women, and even children protesting and jeering at them. Tensions reached a breaking point.

The Philadelphia troops tried to clear the tracks with a bayonet charge, and enraged protesters hurled rocks and bottles in return. Then shots rang out — nobody knows who fired first — and all hell broke loose. The militia fired volley after volley into the throng of Pittsburgh citizens. Panicked people scattered amid screams and flying bullets. When the shooting finally stopped, at least 20 people lay dead, including some innocent bystanders. Shocked and fearing the wrath of the mob, the militia troops retreated and took refuge in a railroad roundhouse (a large circular train shed) at the yard.

What followed in Pittsburgh was nothing short of urban warfare. As night fell on July 21 and turned into July 22, the city was in pandemonium. The sight of locals gunned down by outside troops had transformed the strike into a full-blown uprising. Infuriated workers and their allies surrounded the trapped militia in the roundhouse, effectively besieging them. Some protesters even grabbed a cannon and aimed it at the building. Determined to dislodge the militia, the crowd turned to fire. They set several railcars on fire and rolled them toward the roundhouse. Soon, flames were consuming the entire railroad yard.

Flames lit up the night sky of Pittsburgh as the Union Depot, warehouses, and dozens of other railroad buildings went up in smoke. The heat grew so intense that rails bent and locomotives melted into scrap. Explosions rocked the area as fuel and other cargo ignited. By dawn, the rail yard was a smoldering ruin. At daybreak on July 22, the besieged soldiers finally fled the burning roundhouse and retreated out of the city under gunfire from the furious crowd. Miraculously, most of the militia managed to escape, though many were injured in the gauntlet.

Pittsburgh awoke on July 22 to scenes that looked like a war zone. Over 100 locomotives and hundreds of railcars were reduced to charred husks, and the railroad’s facilities lay in ruins. Tragically, at least forty people lost their lives in the Pittsburgh clashes. With Pittsburgh’s rail center in ashes and the strike in full swing, the authorities scrambled to regain control. Governor Hartranft eventually arrived in Pittsburgh himself, accompanied by thousands of reinforcements – a combined force of National Guard from other regions and federal troops sent by President Hayes. By the end of July, this overwhelming show of force finally quelled the unrest in Pittsburgh. Soldiers with bayonets patrolled the streets and the soot-covered rail yards. The trains, which had been silent for about a week, slowly began to run again under armed guard.

Shockwaves Across the Country

The strike that started in one West Virginia town soon rippled across the nation. In an era when telegraph news traveled fast, the dramatic events in Martinsburg and Pittsburgh inspired railroad workers everywhere to take action. Before long, railroad strikes and protests flared in cities across America, making the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 the first truly nationwide labor uprising in U.S. history.

In Baltimore, Maryland, workers and sympathetic residents clashed with the militia on July 20, the same day Pittsburgh was erupting. Baltimore’s Camden Station became a battleground. When militia units tried to protect the B&O rail depot, a riot broke out. Protesters hurled rocks, and nervous troops opened fire into the crowd, killing at least ten people. Federal troops were called in to restore order in Baltimore as well.

The unrest spread west along the rail networks. In smaller Pennsylvania cities like Reading and others, workers rioted and briefly took over rail facilities. In Reading, strikers derailed trains and battled militia, resulting in several deaths and a burned railroad bridge.

Further west, Chicago – a major rail hub – saw mass demonstrations of its own. In Chicago, thousands of workers rallied in sympathy, prompting a tense standoff. However, police and the Illinois National Guard moved decisively to prevent another Pittsburgh-style conflagration. A few clashes occurred and some lives were lost, but Chicago avoided the large-scale destruction that Pittsburgh suffered.

The most extraordinary chapter of this national saga unfolded in St. Louis, Missouri. There, the railroad strike morphed into the first general strike in American history. Strikers in St. Louis even formed committees to run the city for a short time. For several days, no freight trains ran, factories and shops closed, and for a moment the workers were in charge. It was the only instance in 1877 where strikers actually took control of a major city. By early August, Missouri state militia and federal troops crushed the St. Louis strike, arresting its leaders and restoring business as usual.

All told, the Great Railroad Strike touched places from New York to Illinois to Missouri. More than 100,000 railroad workers took part across the country, joined by countless other supporters. At its height, the strike paralyzed rail traffic in much of the nation. Trains sat idle, stations were eerily quiet, and essential goods piled up unable to move. The American economy was brought to a crawl.

The response from railroad companies and government officials was swift and harsh. Railroad executives refused to negotiate or restore wages – instead, they demanded authorities protect their property and get the trains running at any cost. One rail baron snarled that the strikers should be given “a rifle diet for a few days and see how they like that bread.” In other words, he was suggesting that the workers be shot down if they didn’t go back to work. Local police, where they could, tried to shield depots, but in many cases they were outnumbered or unwilling to fire into crowds. State governors then turned to militias and private armed guards, and when those failed or sympathized with the strikers, they begged President Hayes for help. Hayes, convinced the unrest was an insurrection against the nation’s stability, deployed federal troops to multiple states: West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Missouri, and more. By early August 1877, this combined force of company hirelings, state militia, and U.S. Army soldiers had put down the strikes everywhere. The overwhelming firepower – along with mass arrests of strike leaders – finally convinced the remaining strikers to give up.

Beyond the Rail Yards: A People’s Uprising

The Great Railroad Strike was remarkable for how it drew in a broad swath of American society, not just railroad employees. In city after city, whole communities rallied behind the strikers. Local shopkeepers and family members brought food and offered support, viewing the railroads as greedy giants that had long mistreated ordinary people. Workers from other trades also walked off their jobs in solidarity, expanding some protests into full-blown general strikes that paralyzed entire cities. At the same time, the loyalty of the forces meant to quell the unrest was tested. Many militia soldiers were reluctant to fire on crowds that included their own neighbors, and some units outright refused to march or obey orders. (In one case, a Pennsylvania militia company mutinied rather than confront the strikers.) This forced governors to rely on troops brought in from elsewhere or on federal units who felt less sympathy for the local populace. Yet loyalties could be complicated: in a few instances, certain groups of workers chose to side with the companies and even took up arms to guard railroad property. Overall, the upheaval blurred the line between “us” and “them.” In 1877 it wasn’t always simply labor versus lawmen; it could be neighbor versus neighbor in the heat of the moment, as the entire community was swept up in the crisis.

Aftermath and Legacy

By August 1877, the Great Railroad Strike had been crushed by sheer force. For the workers, the immediate outcome was devastating. No concessions were won – the wage cuts remained in place, and many strikers were fired or blacklisted. All told, roughly 100 people lay dead nationwide from the turmoil, and a thousand more had been arrested. In the strike’s aftermath, many newspapers and public figures denounced the strikers as violent rabble. Public sympathy was muted due to the violence and destruction, and the railroad barons were unapologetic. It seemed the might of the companies and the government had prevailed decisively.

Yet, in the long run, 1877 proved to be a turning point. The scale of the upheaval and the depth of worker solidarity shocked the American establishment and also inspired workers around the country. Labor organizing actually gained momentum in the years after the strike. In the following years, labor organizations like the Knights of Labor swelled in size, drawing lessons from 1877 about the power of worker unity. By the 1880s, unions were growing stronger nationwide, setting the stage for future clashes between labor and capital. Many working people remembered 1877 as a wake-up call – it proved that without organization, their anger could boil over but would likely be crushed; with better organization, maybe next time they could win.

The government and business also learned lessons. Alarmed by how close things came to outright revolution in some places, officials moved to bolster their defenses against future unrest. Cities across the country soon built imposing armories to house militia units (the predecessors of today’s National Guard) in working-class districts – a not-so-subtle reminder that armed forces were on standby if workers rebelled again. Railroad companies also organized to prevent future strikes, including hiring private security agents to infiltrate or break up labor unrest. The memory of burning rail yards and halted commerce made them determined to never let such a strike get so out of hand again.

Public opinion slowly evolved as well. While many in middle and upper classes initially condemned the strikers as violent mobs, the sheer fact that tens of thousands of Americans had been desperate enough to take to the streets made some people take notice of underlying problems. A few politicians began to talk about labor reforms (like arbitration of disputes or limits on working hours), although meaningful change would take more years to materialize. In retrospect, the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 marked the first major national confrontation between capital and labor in the United States – a sign of the tensions that would continue through the Gilded Age.

In Pittsburgh, the summer of 1877 left an indelible mark. It was the city’s most violent labor conflict ever, earning nicknames like “the Great Upheaval” and “the Railroad War.” For decades afterwards, Pittsburghers would recall those fiery July days when their city’s skies glowed orange and the streets echoed with gunfire. Today, historical markers in Pittsburgh note the sites of the Union Depot and the locations of the clashes, commemorating those events. The railroads soon rebuilt their yards and business resumed, but something fundamental had changed in the national psyche.

The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 showed that American workers, even without formal unions or coordinated plans, could unite across cities and industries to challenge the powers of the day. It also showed the lengths to which railroad barons and government forces would go to maintain control. Though the strike did not immediately improve conditions for railroad workers, it lit a spark under the American labor movement that would carry forward into future struggles. The summer of 1877 remains a vivid chapter in Pittsburgh and America’s history – a time when ordinary people rose up and shook the foundations of an industrial nation.