On this day in Labor History the year was 1877.
Workers organized the first general strike in American history.
The strike was an outgrowth of the railroad strike which you may know, if you are a regular listener of Labor History in 2:00, that started ten days earlier in Martinsburg, West Virginia.
The drastic wage cuts demanded by competing railroad magnates brought about a work stoppage in East St. Louis on July 22nd.
Railroad workers voted to go on strike, shutting down all freight traffic.
The strike quickly spread across the river to St. Louis, which at the time was the nation’s third-largest manufacturing city.
The St. Louis strike was led by the socialist Workingman’s Party.
The Workingman’s Party called for a mass meeting at Lucas Market that gathered an enormous crowd of thousands of workers to declare their strike.
The St. Louis strikers set out clear goals of ending child labor and establishing an eight-hour workday.
By the next day, the strike had almost completely shut the city down.
The strike lasted nearly a week.
However, divisions between rank and file and the strike leadership emerged over issues of race.
The demonstrations that emerged in the afternoon of the 25th were led by a group of black river workers.
In an interview following the strike, an executive committee member said, “We did all we could to get the crowd to disperse.”
He wanted to keep white strikers from following the lead of the black workers.
The city’s upper classes, startled by the events, began organizing a militia to quell the strike.
Finally, federal troops arrived in St. Louis to crush the uprising.
Special “deputized police” joined their forces.
They arrested the strike leaders, injured hundreds and killed at least eighteen people.
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