Talk:Great Railroad Strike of 1877

Peer review?
Is this ready for WP:PR yet do you think? KillerChihuahua?!? 00:03, 10 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Almost (maybe). Give me until tonight to complete tweaking it.  I made a few more edits to the labor section as I realized that a few things could be worded better.  I don't want to start over-tweaking though, because then my perfectionist streak takes hold and it might be 2077 before the article is done.  :)


 * Thanks for adding the Haymarket link -- I meant to do that and then I got side-tracked (pun?). Jim62sch 10:27, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Economic downturn
The "economic downturn" in Economic Conditions in the 1870's is clearly referencing the Long Depression, but that article needs work. I feel it should be a piped link, but hesitate to do so until the target article is improved. Thoughts? KillerChihuahua?!? 01:37, 10 January 2006 (UTC)


 * That article needs serious help. It should really be tagged as an article in need of improvement/cleanup.  I could note the reference to Long Depression itself (not the article) without piping it, or, if the article is tagged, I could pipe it.  I'm open for suggestions.  Jim62sch 10:33, 10 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Tagged. You could alwasy fixityourself. :D KillerChihuahua?!? 13:57, 10 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I think I will (I have to dredge up an old (1940) world history book I have, and one of my poli-sci text books). Next I'm doing a disambig on "Glaucon", then the stubs (with one eventually being a real article).  But, I have a long weekend coming up, so why not.  Jim62sch 17:50, 10 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I forgot about Mangasarian. Jim62sch 00:36, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Next step - references
It looks pretty good, but there are no direct references connecting assertions with sources. Guettarda 14:16, 10 January 2006 (UTC)


 * True, I'll have to run through my research stuff to put in footnotes.


 * BTW, since I had neglected this part, I need an extension. :)  Jim62sch 00:37, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Railroad overbuilding was a consequence of land grants and subsudies by government, not laissez-faire. The article has been changed to reflect this.

Also, is a socialist website an unbiased place to gain wage information? Is there not a better unbiased historical source?


 * Why is July 14 linked in the opening paragraph, but no one has included in that article that the Great Strike began on that day? Shimjung1 01:38, 23 July 2007 (UTC) The Strike began on Monday, July 16, the day the B&amp;O's 10 per cent wage cut was scheduled to take effect. Shimjung1 02:09, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Coal Region
Should have a brief mention about the riots in the Coal Region (notably in Shamokin). Also Reading; cf. Franklin B. Gowen (but nothing there, either). Billbrock 07:22, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I've added a little, with more to come, on the Franklin B. Gowen page re Reading, PA events (have also set up beginnings of the corresponding Reading Railroad Massacre page). In addition to Shamokin, PA events, Harrisburg should get at least a mention. Also Scranton cannot be left out -- big goings-on there, including shooting deaths, lawsuit actions against the locally organized militia who did the shooting, and state militia encampment from August into October (well beyond the 45 days indicated in current article). Shimjung1 20:03, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Franklin B. Gowen is substantial now, including regarding the Great Strike. Nice to see the Shamokin material added, but lack of content on Scranton is still a big hole -- federal troops were stationed there to prevent recurrence of uprising until almost November 1877, later than elsewhere. Shimjung1 (talk) 01:34, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

More biased than a high school textbook...
The article gives very vague descriptions of the workers' reasons for striking. Moreover, it...well just have a look at the causes and strike sections; judge for yourself. It makes the workers sound like unorganized mobs, and with questionable motives. If this is so, DISCUSS THIS! Don't just weaslingly imply it.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.68.236.67 (talk) 14:29, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Correct. The "Laying Blame" section puts the onus on the workers! "Agitators" are to blame. "Communists" at work! "Idle hands" with little to do except revolt! This whole article is a joke. Missaeagle (talk) 16:58, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Brotherhood of Engineers and Firemen link question
I'm not sure about one part of this recent edit:



Is there some known reason to link the Brotherhood of Engineers and Firemen to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen (which later became the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen), other than they have similar names and organized the same occupations? I think this link may be misleading. At the very least, if they're not the same organization (and i don't think they are), the reason for the link should be briefly explained. Richard Myers (talk) 20:27, 25 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't have time to research this right now, but a quick online exploration reveals a few things. A Brotherhood of Engineers and Firemen certainly existed, but i'm not sure it existed in 1877. There was a Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers that participated in the 1877 strike:, also referred to here as the Brotherhood of Engineers. There was also, apparently, a Brotherhood of Engineers, Conductors and Firemen  . This link  identifies the Order of Railway Conductors, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, and the Brotherhood of Engineers.


 * I'm wondering if the reference to the Brotherhood of Engineers and Firemen shouldn't originally have referred to the Brotherhoods, as in Brotherhood of Engineers and the Brotherhood of Firemen, as two separate union brotherhoods. This reference to the railroad brotherhoods definitely needs fact checking. Richard Myers (talk) 21:51, 25 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I reversed the original edit and am doing some Google Books research too... Thanks! -Colfer2 (talk) 21:52, 25 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I put it back in after some research. See my revision of Brotherhood_of_Locomotive_Engineers, where I outlined the major "brotherhoods" of the era. -Colfer2 (talk) 00:25, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Accurate data
Is important to know the number of wounded and killed workers during the strike —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.164.52.89 (talk) 14:33, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Just seconding this - the infobox says "Deaths: 20" but more people than that died if you add up the deaths listed in each city. Quite unclear. I'm going to remove the unsourced data from the infobox for now. Sweet kate (talk) 16:39, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Also, the strike, according to contemporary accounts (Harpers from 8/11/1877 http://www.catskillarchive.com/rrextra/sk7711.Html) clearly began in Baltimore, not in Martinsburg. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.246.71.61 (talk) 15:07, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

Cincinnati, Ohio?
I came across this while trying to edit the very problematic entry for Archbishop Purcell of Cincinnati, who died under a cloud six years after this strike and five years after his brother was accused of mismanaging monies of a quasi-bank supposedly established after the Civil War or Panic of 1873 because parishioners feared the risks taken by local banks. Since Cincinnati has railroads, and a history of unrest relating to its large German population (many of them Catholic and vigorously defended by this same bishop before the Civil War), I wondered exactly what the link between the financial events could be. However, I don't have time (given my other responsibilities) to visit a library to find out.13:28, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Great Railroad Strike of 1877. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20151022102337/http://socialistappeal.org/uslaborhistory/great_railroad_strike_of_1877.htm to http://www.socialistappeal.org/uslaborhistory/great_railroad_strike_of_1877.htm

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Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 08:18, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Naming convention for sub articles
I'm going ahead and starting this conversation in case there's not much interest and it takes a while, or an RfC to reach any sort of consensus. Currently I count six articles that that are really sub-articles of this one:


 * Baltimore railroad strike of 1877
 * Pittsburgh Railway Riots
 * Reading Railroad massacre
 * 1877 Saint Louis general strike
 * Scranton General Strike
 * 1877 Shamokin uprising

So there's a wide variety of naming used, and it seems to make sense to see if they can be standardized at all. We have riots, strikes, massacres, and general strikes. The Baltimore and Pittsburgh articles were created by me, and the names were chosen with no purpose other than to create a space to write the articles. The Scranton article actually had an RfC about the name, and I was probably the single largest opponent of the change. Even so, it was a fairly weak argument either way.

My main opposition to the Scranton name change was that it was a distraction and otherwise relatively unimportant. However, since, I've created the last two articles, and fully intend to create the next half dozen or so more as needed, there is a risk that any naming convention I choose more-or-less at random, might become an argument for adopting that standard for no real reason.

My inclination, on articles that don't have a clear WP:COMMONNAME rationale, is simply to adopt an adaptation of the main article name: CITY railroad strike of 1877. This is what I've done with the Baltimore article. Consensus would have to be reached in cases where there is a moderate or strong COMMONNAME argument to be made. Thoughts and suggestions welcome. Timothy Joseph Wood 21:37, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Laying blame
Moving this content to talk since it is almost entirely referenced and likely contains significant OR. Timothy Joseph Wood 13:48, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

{{talkquote|

Laying blame
The strike and its repercussions were attributed to a number of factors by contemporaries:


 * Xenophobia: Authorities often blamed immigrants for the labor unrest, expressing fear and suspicion of the waves of new ethnic groups from southern and eastern Europe, many of whom were Catholic, in contrast with the majority-Protestant culture of the US at the time. German and Bohemian agitators were blamed most often, but in some cities other immigrant ethnic groups, such as Irish and Italians, were blamed as well.
 * Idle hands: Illinois governor Shelby Cullom stated that "the vagrant, the willfully idle, was the chief element in all these disturbances," suggesting that men were unemployed by choice, rather than the paucity of jobs.
 * Communism: Others asserted that the Great Railroad Strike was due to Communist and/or socialist influences.  The New York World blamed "the hands of men dominated by the devilish spirit of Communism." In his 1878 book Strikers, Communists, Tramps and Detectives, Allan Pinkerton blamed the unrest on a combination of Paris Commune proponents and the high degree of transience among the American working class at the time.
 * Lack of trade unions: While there was some union activity, especially from the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, many of the strikers had yet to organize. The Trainsman's Union, led by Robert Ammon, was one of the more effective labor groups.
 * The 1876 Election Deal: Thomas Scott, of the Pennsylvania Railroad, was said to agree to deliver the disputed congressional votes to Hayes in the Compromise of 1877, in exchange for a promise of federal investment in his proposed Texas and Pacific railroad, but the federal government never committed to that southern route.

Page protection
Hello and any other interested editors -- I've just requested page protection to counter the persistent minor vandalism here -- Green, thank you for keeping after this. --Lockley. (talk) 18:15, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
 * No problem at all Lockley. Thanks for your help. The more the merrier. Obviously the long term solution here is to get this article to FA, so it'll be on like 500 people's watchlist :P.  G M G  talk  18:22, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
 * well, protection was declined (shrug) but I'll keep an eye here. best  --Lockley (talk) 18:54, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Where is consensus for the page move?
The page was moved unilaterally yesterday. I came here to read discussion on the consensus for the move and found none. I advocate that it be moved back. The historic reference is “Great Railroad Strike of 1877.” Jeff in CA (talk) 17:38, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
 * There was none. And it was sloppy besides, without changing any of the content in the article or infobox to match the move. For better or worse, this is how the sources refer to it. I have moved it back to it's longstanding title.  G M G  talk  23:34, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
 * , the rationale for the move was per the guideline WP:NCE (as indicated in the edit summary).  I've been moving through organized labour articles doing this for awhile. No doubt more sources use "...of 1877", but there are sources which use "1877 ...". (eg p.120)  I could understand retaining the title if there was an implied difference in meaning.  Personally, I prefer the "1877..." purely from the point of view of consistency and keeping titles shorter and free of unnecessary words.  Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 07:28, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I've got a few GAs and an FA related to the summer of 1877, so I'm pretty familiar with the reading. The "of 1877" formulation pretty clearly seems to be used by the preponderance of sources, and by most of the most prominent ones, not that that means you can't find some sources that use other formulations. But it's probably easily used widely enough that it is both the WP:COMMONNAME and for all practical purposes, also the WP:OFFICIALNAME. You'd probably find more variation in whether it's called a strike or a riot, and as far as dates go, probably the biggest variation you'd find is in contemporary sources using no date qualifier at all, as people would refer simply to "the great war" in the period before WWII.  G M G  talk  11:06, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
 * FWIW Google Ngram shows about a 30:1 ratio is usage (with capitalisation) between "of 1877" and "1877..." . However, I don't see an application of COMMONNAME in this case with reference to the use a preposition the absence of which has no impact whatsoever on the meaning. Also, OFFICALNAME would imply that there is some codified usage (or body that has conferred an official name). If there was some technical reason, eg it had impact on searches, I could understand, but I see no possibility of that either. FWIW the title policy reads: "Article titles should be recognizable to readers, unambiguous, and consistent with usage in reliable English-language sources", the point I would stress is that allows us some flexibility since it is not policy that a title must be rendered in exact form. Nevertheless, I've added enough here, I simply wanted to emphasise that there are policy grounds for the move (and I accept your view is that policy points elsewhere) and the reason was flagged (and linked) in the edit summary. Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 23:31, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Page bias?
I'm noting there's language in the article that might reflect bias. EG, "The local population feared workers would . . ." The local population is comprised of workers so the statement doesn't make sense. More specificity would fix this. EG, what population? Was it newspaper editors? Was it business owners? A source would also help on this, as there is presently none for the claim.

"Defensive buildings still stand" Why are we describing buildings that would have been utilized to violently suppress strikes and other forms of domestic resistance as defensive? Wouldn't it make more sense to describe them as oppressive as the goal was not to defend against something external but to oppress resistance? More neutral language would be to remove the word defensive as it implies bias against the workers. SocialCM (talk) 11:43, 19 September 2022 (UTC)


 * The sources or more neutral terminology would be extremely important since things like this aren't taught in school. 2804:D59:8724:2E00:D119:D6D2:FE5C:438A (talk) 12:02, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: HIST 121 - U.S. History since 1877
— Assignment last updated by Public-historian-90 (talk) 19:17, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Outline for contributions for this article.
We added a sentence to the lead. We redid the introduction to the strike paragraph. Added to the strike ends paragraph. We also added a general effects paragraph. JSL22 (talk) 17:18, 5 May 2023 (UTC)