Five years before anyone imagined a holiday, the Great Strike of July 1877 was the largest of its kind before or since, closer to pitched battle with dozens dead on both sides. President Hayes, however, charted a moderate course, establishing views about worker’s rights and the role of the federal government that continue to this day.
Believe it or not, the origins of Labor Day are shrouded in mystery. The idea of honoring workers and the labor movement in general dates back to the late 19th century, but no one can agree exactly how it started. Some say the idea of commemorating workers originated with a General Assembly of the Knights of Labor convention in New York City in September 1882, when the clandestine meeting was capped with a public parade featuring the Central Labor Union. This view gives credit to the union’s Matthew Maguire, who proposed a regular holiday after the event’s success. Others claim it was actually Peter J. McGuire, a vice president of the American Federation of Labor who observed a similar event in Toronto the previous spring. He put forward a proposal on May 8, 1882 for a “general holiday for the laboring classes” featuring a parade. Supposedly, he chose the first weekend in September because of the fine weather and it being about equidistant from the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving. Whatever the case, the idea rapidly spread across the country with Oregon being the first state to proclaim an official public holiday in 1887 followed by 29 other states in the next seven years. President Grover Cleveland took it national, declaring a holiday for federal workers on June 28, 1894, but many private sector workers remained on the job and as late as the Great Depression, unions were encouraging workers to strike to get the day off. Whichever version you believe, there is no doubt that the concept of worker’s rights in general exploded into mainstream consciousness, literally and figuratively, as is often the case when it comes to major historical shifts, with the Great Strike of July 1877. Five years before anyone imagined a holiday, the strike was the largest of its kind both at the time and ever since, but the origins date back to a depression four years earlier that reduced both ridership and freight across the United States’ fledgling railroad industry, causing the major lines to find ways to earn more and spend less at the same time while facing bankruptcy. Not surprisingly, their solution was to double rates, cut wages, and ultimately cut workers. While other industries have certainly tried to do the same, the conditions under which railroad workers operated was perhaps outstripped only by coal miners, causing tensions to gradually build until they burst. In addition to working twelve hour shifts without any committed schedule from their employers, they performed incredibly dangerous jobs in an era when safety wasn’t a chief concern and they were frequently stuck “laying over” between routes, paying their own room and board while they waited for the next gig.
Regardless of these and other concerns, the Pennsylvania Railroad announced a ten percent pay cut on June 1 almost immediately after a previous twenty percent reduction, making it almost impossible for the workers to survive. By July 1, the New York Central, Eerie, and other major carriers followed suit, cutting wages for almost everyone employed in the industry. The news was met with protests at first, but no formal strikes until the B & O went one step further on July 16, cutting wages while maintaining a lucrative 10% stock dividend against the advice of Banker Junius S. Morgan, father of the legendary J.P. Morgan. This was on top of a previous cut eight months earlier and a reduction in an already slim workforce. Adding the proverbial insult to injury, workers hadn’t been paid since May anyway, and the idea of a further cut in non-existent wages proved too much to bear. A peaceful strike in Baltimore immediately followed, but rather than acknowledge the worker’s predicament in any way, shape, or form, the management at B & O summarily fired everyone that participated, prompting retaliatory strikes across the country. In Martinsburg, West Virginia, workers succeeded in stopping all freight trains coming in and out, causing a ripple effect on shipping across a large swath of the country. Even that this point, John W. Garrett, president of B & O, wouldn’t yield an inch on the pay or the firings, calling on Governor Henry M. Mathews to use federal troops to forcibly break up “the rioters” even though they were only protestors at this point. “The loss of an hour,” Garrett reported to the governor, “would most seriously affect us and imperil vast interests.” The governor himself wanted to take immediate action, but the head of the militia insisted they didn’t have the number of troops required and urged them to request some two hundred marines from the President, Rutherford B. Hayes. Garrett urged Hayes on as well, claiming that the troops were necessary to protect “law abiding people” and maintain “supremacy of the law.” They had reason to believe Hayes would be sympathetic at the time. A year earlier, he bragged about deploying the militia to break up a coal strike in Ohio, telling future President James Garfield that “we shall crush out all the law breakers if the courts and juries do not fail.” He was President now and had a new set of concerns and sympathies, however, somewhat archaic by modern standards but progressive for the period in question. To begin with, Hayes sympathies lied mainly with the workers, believing that the shifts were too long, “eight hours should never be exceeded,” and the oligarchs and plutocrats that ran the railroads couldn’t be trusted, “colossal fortunes…threaten alike threaten our government and our liberties.” Tough personal experience with the railroads in particular, as they created and destroyed towns in his beloved Ohio based on their seemingly arbitrary routes, paid off politicians, corrupt land deals, and more had led him to believe they should be regulated.
At the same time, he was generally cautious by nature and concerned about the use of federal power. He supported protests in principle, but in practice wouldn’t tolerate the destruction of private property and also believed that strikebreakers, what we now call scab labor, had a “right to work” without intimidation. As such, he demurred at first, asking for a full statement of facts before ordering every available man at the Washington Arsenal and Fort McHenry to travel to West Virginia using B & O trains at 3.50 PM on July 18, 1877. Ironically, the federal government was charged for the troops as passengers, but the move served to keep the peace in Martinsburg. What would come to be known as the Great Strike spread quickly elsewhere, however, backed by augmented numbers including those from other industries, teenagers, and the unemployed in addition to the affected workers themselves, growing and changing as it moved from city to city. Two days later, while federal troops were still in Martinsburg, a riot erupted in Baltimore, just a short distance from Washington, DC. The rioters attacked the local militia, pelting them with stones, while another group stopped all rail traffic into and out of the city. The militia responded by opening fire on the crowd without caring who they shot, resulting in the deaths of ten men and boys. The protesters would not be cowed even with the bloodshed, however, gathering 15,000 strong outside a depot that housed the Governor of Maryland himself, John Lee Carroll. They didn’t officially breach the depot, but managed to burn part of it, torch passenger cars, and fire shots at firefighters and the local police. Carroll wired Hayes for help, and he immediately dispatched troops under the command of General Winfield Scott Hancock, but by the time they arrived on Sunday morning, the mob had dispersed. Like a virus, however, it had already infected Pittsburg, which was described as in flames. The previous Thursday, the Pennsylvania Railroad had responded rather poorly to the spreading protest by insisting all freight trains carry double the load, enabling them to reduce the number of workers at the expense of worker safety. The protestors literally and figuratively rejected the idea by blocking freight traffic entirely, such that only one train made it out over the course of several days despite the help of police. The state militia were called out, and as they had in Baltimore, took a heavy hand, killing between ten and twenty people, causing the situation to grow dangerously close to a war. The dispersed crowd regrouped and attacked the building where the militia was boarding, burning it down, and killing five. They also vented their ire on the trains and surrounding buildings, destroying some 104 locomotives, 2,152 railroad cars, and most of the property in the vicinity on July 22. Fortunately or unfortunately, they were too drunk to continue the rampage, and police were able to peacefully disperse them later that Sunday afternoon.
At this point, Hayes and the country found themselves in the midst of an unprecedented “social storm” as historian Robert V. Bruce described it. After meeting with his cabinet for two days, the President finally settled on a clear policy to guide his Administration’s response, one that balanced his own concerns and preference with the need to preserve law, order, and commerce. He decided that he could preemptively send troops to potential trouble spots under the auspices of protecting federal property, provided they didn’t intervene directly, much less fire on the crowds as the local militias had, believing their presence alone would “promote peace and order.” They couldn’t, however, enforce any state or local laws, or deal directly with the protests without a specific request from local authorities and approval from command. He also steadfastly refused to allow the federal government to be used to assist in the operation of the railroads, believing it was not their responsibility to intervene on behalf of a specific company. Strikers, understanding that Hayes was offering them an opportunity to have their voices heard rather than crush them as many wanted, responded by being more strategic in their tactics. They continued blocking freight, but didn’t interfere with passenger cars that carried US mail because it was federal property. The railroads, realizing Hayes wasn’t fully backing their desire to crush the workers completely, started blocking mail cars on their own, hoping he would blame the protestors and intercede based on his desire to protect federal property. The ruse failed, however, when the workers themselves contacted Hayes to make sure he understood what was happening, informing him that “The Lake Shore Company has refused to let US mail east of here,” and actually asking him to intercede based on his policy, “We would be pleased if you would…direct them to proceed with the mails and also the passengers.” The Hayes policy didn’t stop the strikes from spreading, but did appear to reduce the level of violence. Over the next few days, there were strikes in upstate New York, Ohio, throughout the Midwest, and even across the Mississippi into Missouri and Iowa. Only Buffalo, however, featured a battle between rioters and the militia. The remaining demonstrations were peaceful, but still much of the press wasn’t pleased, insisting that Hayes was allowing naked socialism to spread unchecked. The National Republican said exactly that, insisting the strikes were “nothing less than communism in its worst form.”
Hayes, no socialist himself, personally objected to this description, telling an interviewer that the situation was strictly between “the railroads with which the strikers had had difficulties,” but others were as panicked as the press, demanding that Hayes issue a call for volunteers to defend the railroads as Abraham Lincoln had done at the start of the Civil War, especially as violence continued to break out from time to time over the next week. For example, St. Louis held peaceful demonstrations and was able to rally 5,000 workers to shut down local factories without incident, while Chicago was victim to three days of terror in the streets from July 24 to 26, when police and the militia forcibly attacked rioters, killing at least 18 people including children. Hayes was not without vocal supporters of his own, however, with some believing the call for volunteers might actually start another Civil War rather than end the violence. “Tell the President,” a person wrote John Sherman, brother of the famous General William Tecumseh Sherman, a former Senator and future Secretary of both State and the Treasury, “a call for volunteers will precipitate a revolution.” Even some Democrats backed the Republican Hayes, refusing requests from their supporters to urge him “to call out by proclamation a further force.” Hayes’ himself held firm and by July 25, the railroad operators were already signaling that they were willing to negotiate with workers, rapidly easing tensions. The trains were running again across the country within five days, topping a tumultuous two week period. Unfortunately, this didn’t prevent anti-labor judges, and there were many in those days who always sided with business over workers, from coming up with a novel legal theory to hold even non-violent strikers legally accountable, ruling that they could be held in contempt of court because some of the railroads in question were bankrupt. Hayes, being an institutionalist at heart, demurred to the court and inadvertently backed a terrible precedent, even deploying troops in one instance to help keep a bankrupt railroad open. In the aftermath, there were plenty of opinions on both sides. His predecessor, President Ulysses S. Grant, felt Hayes had been too soft, and the rioters “should have been put down with a strong hand and so summarily as to prevent a like occurrence for a generation.” A New York preacher, Henry Ward Beecher, even went so far as to claim the workers deserved their poor lot in life, insisting God wanted “the great to be great and the little to be little,” the downtrodden are simply “reap[ing] the misfortune of their inferiority.” This was a minority view, thankfully, one which the New York World called “suicidal” and “lunatic,” and many, such Harper’s Monthly believed it was the role of the government to remove “the discontent which is its cause.”
Today, Rutherford B. Hayes is a largely forgotten President, known more for abandoning Reconstruction than anything else, but here his views prevailed for a century and a half, setting the stage for hard fought worker’s rights and how the federal government should respond when demonstrations break out into riots, not an easy feat for a Chief Executive confronting a first-of-its-kind crisis. Labor Day would become a holiday within two decades, though the fight for an eight hour workday and better working conditions in general would take much longer. It would be 1912 before a Presidential candidate included it in their platform, when Teddy Roosevelt ran with the Progressive “Bull Moose” party. Four years later, the Adamson Act of 1916 enshrined the shorter day for railroad workers, but it wouldn’t be until 1937 when that was extended throughout the private sector regardless of industry. (Interestingly, Henry Ford, a Republican ally of Roosevelts along with Thomas Edison, both doubled pay and reduced hours to eight in 1914). The federal government’s role in quelling riots continues to be as Hayes proscribed it with the National Guard only taking part upon the request of local officials, and almost never to enforce local laws. For the most part, we also embrace his balance between respect for freedom of expression, protest, and peaceful gathering while protecting private property and abhorring violence of any kind. The legal system is also far more amenable to worker’s rights, though of course some continue to insist otherwise. Whatever the case, there is no doubt that labor has much to celebrate and owes much to the unheralded Rutherford B. Hayes to this day.
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