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• 1 2020-08-03T12:38:59-07:00 Organized labor and the railroads 4 labor plain text plain 2020-08-03T13:47:02-07:00 Throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries, the railroads largely had their own unions and labor organizations. Although some larger trade unions, especially the Industrial Workers of the World, tried to incorporate railroad worker into their networks, those efforts were largely unsuccessful. Instead, railroad workers formed organizations such as the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen. They wielded considerable power, but being separate from other unions made it difficult to build solidarity with other professions. Attempts at collective action across unions and industries often ended with the unions spending more energy fighting with  each other than against the companies or bosses.
  
  Unions played a large part in the reputation railroad jobs had for stability and high pay. However, the unions also had a major hand in keeping railroad jobs racially segregated. Railroad unions, like many other unions in the late 19th and early to mid 20th century, were often white-only. Unions led initiatives to keep certain positions, such as conductor and engineer, white only. In 1896, in Butte, railroad unions banded together with other trade unions to boycott Chinese-owned businesses in an attempt to drive all the Chinese out of town. Although Montana’s black population was small, they too were discriminated against and forced to work only the lowest paying  and most menial jobs.

  The strike of 1867

  Crossing the Sierra Nevada was backbreaking work.  Workers on the Central Pacific Railroad had to carve through the granite mountains by hand, or by blasting the rocks apart using dynamite or, when progress was too slow to satisfy the company owners and overseers, with nitroglycerin. Chinese workers did most of the labor, working long, dangerous days and getting paid at a lower rate than their white coworkers. Finally, on June 25th, 1867, a group of Chinese workers went on strike. Demanding higher pay and shorter working days, they quickly got other camps of Chinese workers to join them. In total, almost 2000 workers joined the strike.
  
  The striking workers stayed in their camps, sending an emissary to their white foremen with their demands. They circulated documents written in Chinese amongst themselves, detailing their rights and demands so that all the workers knew what they were striking for. Although the strike was nonviolent, railroad authorities reacted brutally. They cut off all food supplies to the striking camps and threatened to fine all striking workers for the money they were costing the company by not working. Facing starvation and bankruptcy, the striking workers returned to work after a week, having failed to secure anything but a modest raise that still gave them less than the white workers. Despite this defeat, the episode was an important milestone for Chinese workers: it forced railroad companies to take them seriously as workers with agency of their own, who could not be exploited without consequences

  The Great Railroad Strike

  
  In 1877, railroad workers across the United States took part in the country’s first ever major strike. The strike began in Martinsburg, West Virginia and quickly spread to dozens of other cities. Striking workers were protesting the decision by multiple companies to drop pay rates by 10% in response to the ongoing economic crisis. Although the strike did not succeed in reversing the pay cut, it lasted for three weeks and did not end until President Hayes deployed federal troops to crush the strikers and their supporters. The event became known as the Great Railroad Strike, and it fundamentally altered the relationship between railroads and their workers. The strike also set the precedent of deploying federal troops on striking workers and protesters, a practice which continues to this day.

  Hogan's Heist

  
  In 1893, the American economy crashed. One response to the sudden surge in unemployment came from Ohio politician Jacob Coxey, who organized thousands of unemployed workers and proposed a march on Washington DC to demand that the federal government do something to alleviate the depression. The idea spread wildly, and eventually coalesced into a plan for unemployed workers from across the country to all meet in Washington on May 1st, 1894. His followers came to be known as Coxeyites, or Coxey’s Army.
  
  William Hogan, a teamster, was the leader of the Butte group of Coxey’s army. When the Northern Pacific refused to transport the group to Washington, they snuck into the railyard and stole a train, loaded it with 300 men and their luggage, and set off for Washington DC on their own.
  
  Hogan’s men were met with supportive crowds each time they stopped, with townspeople in Bozeman, Livingston, and Billings offering support, protection, and food. When law enforcement tried to arrest the men in Billings, townspeople banded together to protect the Coxeyites and delayed the sheriff until the commandeered train could sneak out of the city. Not until the US Marshals were summoned and managed to surprise Hogan’s men in Forsythe was their progress halted for good.
  
  Public opinion continued on the side of Hogan and his men, with the crowd forcing the Marshals to transport the protestors to Helena for trial and the people of Butte paying the $5000 in bond money for both Hogan and his first lieutenant. In the end, most of the 300 men were let off, with the rest being sentenced to short prison sentences for theft of property. Hogan himself was sentenced to six months in prison, of which he served three. The episode was a dramatic demonstration of the unpopularity of the railroad companies in Montana at the time.
  
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