A short history of Pittsburgh : 1758-1908

by Samuel Harden Church

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company, some time after the panic of 1873, reduced the wages of its employees ten per cent., and, on account of the general decline in business, made another reduction of ten per cent. to take effect on June 1, 1877; these reductions to apply to all employees from the president of the company down. The reductions affected the roads known as the Pennsylvania Lines west of Pittsburgh, as well as the Pennsylvania Railroad, and similar alterations were also made on the New York Central and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroads. The changed conditions caused a great deal of dissatisfaction among the trainmen, but a committee was appointed by them, which held a conference with Mr. Thomas A. Scott, President of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and agreed to the reduction, reporting its conclusions to the trainmen.

On July 16th an order was issued by the railroad company that thirty-six freight-cars, instead of eighteen, as before, were to be made up as a train, without increase in the number of the crew, and with a locomotive at the end to act as a pusher, assisting the one at the front, making what is technically called "a double header." The train employees looked upon this order as doubling their work under the decreased pay of June 1st, and in its effect virtually tending to the discharge of many men then employed in the running of freight-trains. The strike which followed does not seem to have been seriously organized, but was rather a sudden conclusion arrived at on the impulse of the moment, and was probably strengthened by a wave of discontent which was sweeping over the roads to the east and west, as well as by an undercurrent of hostility toward the railroads exhibited by some of the newspapers. As far back as July 23, 1876, a Pittsburgh paper, in publishing an article headed "Railroad Vultures," had said: "Railroad officials are commencing to understand that the people of Pittsburgh will be patient no longer; that this community is being aroused into action, and that presently the torrent of indignation will give place to condign retribution"; and in another paragraph the same paper had said: "We desire to impress upon the minds of the community that these vultures are constantly preying upon the wealth and resources of the country; they are a class, as it were, of money jugglers intent only on practising their trickery for self aggrandizement, and that, consequently, their greed leads them into all known ways and byways of fraud, scheming, and speculating, to accomplish the amassing of princely fortunes." These intemperate utterances were the first seeds of popular sedition.

It was not until 8.30 o'clock on the morning of the 19th that the real trouble began. Two freight-trains were to start at 8.40, but ten minutes before that the crews sent word that they would not take the trains out. Two yard crews were then asked to take their places, but they refused to do so. The trains were not taken out, and the crews of all the trains that came in, as they arrived, joined the strikers. As the day wore on the men gradually congregated at the roundhouse of the road at Twenty-eighth Street, but did not attempt or threaten any violence. The news of the strike had spread through the two cities, and large numbers of the more turbulent class of the population, together with many workmen from the factories who sympathized with the strikers, hastened to Twenty-eighth Street, and there was soon gathered a formidable mob in which the few striking railroad employees were an insignificant quantity.

When the railroad officials found their tracks and roundhouse in the possession of a mob which defied them, they called upon the mayor of the city for protection, to which Mayor McCarthy promptly responded, going in person with a detail of officers to the scene of the trouble. When the police arrived on the ground they found an excited assemblage of people who refused to listen to their orders to disperse, and the mayor made no serious effort to enforce his authority effectually. There was no collision, however, until a man who had refused to join the strikers attempted to couple some cars, when he was assaulted. An officer of the road who undertook to turn a switch, was also assaulted by one of the mob, who was arrested by the police. His comrades began throwing stones, but the police maintained their hold of their prisoner, and conveyed him to the jail. A crowd then gathered in front of the police station and made threats of rescuing their comrade, but no overt act was committed. The mob, which had by this time become greatly enraged, was really not composed of railroad employees, who had contemplated no such result of their strike, and now generally deplored the unfortunate turn which the affair had taken. It was for the most part composed of the worst element of the population, who, without any grievance of their own, real or imagined, had gathered together from the very force of their vicious inclinations and the active hope of plunder.

The strikers held a meeting that evening, at which they demanded that the ten per cent. should be restored, and the running of double headers abolished. In the meantime, the railroad authorities, perceiving the inefficiency of the local police powers, and alarmed at the still-increasing mob and the vicious spirit which it displayed, invoked the aid of the sheriff of the county. At midnight Sheriff Fife came to Twenty-eighth Street with a hastily summoned posse, a part of which deserted him before he reached the scene of action, and ordered the rioters to disperse, which they, with hoots and jeers, defiantly refused to do. The sheriff then sought aid from the military, and General A. L. Pearson issued an order to the Eighteenth and Nineteenth regiments of the National Guards of Pennsylvania, with headquarters at Pittsburgh, to assemble at half past six the next morning, armed and equipped for duty. Sheriff Fife also telegraphed to the State authorities at Harrisburg, stating that he was unable to quell the riot, and asking that General Pearson be instructed to do this with his force; and Adjutant General Latta issued the orders accordingly. General Pearson marched his forces to the Union Depot and placed them in position in the yard and on the hillside above it. The mob was not, however, deterred by this action, as the troops were supposed to be more or less in sympathy with the strikers, and were expected to be disinclined to fire upon their fellow citizens if they should be ordered to do so. The employment of local troops at this moment constituted a grave mistake in the management of the riot.

The governor had, however, been telegraphed to, and had ordered General Brinton's division of troops to leave Philadelphia for Pittsburgh. This became known to the mob, which was still increasing in numbers and turbulence, and the calling of troops from the east drove them to fury. The feeling had spread to the workingmen in the factories on the South Side, where a public meeting was held, and demagogical speeches made, upholding the action of the strikers; and five hundred men came thence in a body and joined the crowd.

At this critical moment the mob received an endorsement that not only greatly encouraged it, but incited it to extreme violence. A local newspaper, on Friday, the 20th, in the course of an editorial headed "The Talk of the Desperate," which formulated what was assumed as the expression of a workingman, used this language:

This may be the great civil war in this country between labor and capital that is bound to come.... The workingmen everywhere are in fullest sympathy with the strikers, and only waiting to see whether they are in earnest enough to fight for their rights. They would all join and help them the moment an actual conflict took place.... The governor, with his proclamation, may call and call, but the laboring people, who mostly constitute the militia, won't take up arms to put down their brethren. Will capital then rely on the United States Army? Pshaw! Its ten to fifteen thousand available men would be swept from our path like leaves in a whirlwind. The workingmen of this country can capture and hold it, if they will only stick together, and it looks as though they were going to do so this time. Of course, you say that capital will have some supporters. Many of the unemployed will be glad to get work as soldiers, or extra policemen; the farmers, too, might turn out to preserve your law and order; but the working army would have the most men and the best men. The war might be bloody but the right would prevail. Men like Tom Scott, Frank Thomson—yes, and William Thaw—who have got rich swindling the stockholders of railroads, so that they cannot pay honest labor living rates, we would hang to the nearest tree.

Although the paper in a later edition suppressed that part of the editorial, and the other papers of the city refrained from any editorials that might increase the excitement, yet the mischief had been done, the unfortunate words had been widely read, and the more intelligently vicious of the rioters proceeded to make the most of them.

The eastern troops left Philadelphia on Friday night and arrived at the Union Depot on Saturday afternoon, tired and hungry. After a scant and hasty lunch they were placed out along the tracks to the roundhouse where the great bulk of the mob was assembled. In order to secure and protect the building and tracks it was necessary that the crowd should be forced back. When the troops undertook this movement some stones were thrown and a few soldiers were hit. Then one of the subordinate officers gave an order to fire, and about twenty persons were killed and thirty wounded, three of whom were children.