American prosperity for 250 years since the founding of the Republic has been built upon an entrepreneurial spirit and by the sweat of the brow of working men and women. Sadly, for many years enslaved and child labor also contributed to this economic success. Natural tensions between employers and free labor over wages and working conditions led workers to form unions and disputes often were resolved only after militant work stoppages — strikes. In Indianapolis artisans formed the Mechanics Mutual Protection in 1850 and two years later a Typographical Union was organized by journeymen printers that became Local No. 1.
The first documented strike in Indianapolis began on Saturday, April 11, 1863, when members of the local Typographical Union Local No. 1 walked off the job at The Indianapolis Daily Journal and The Indianapolis Daily Sentinel after failing to receive a 20 per cent wage increase. To replace the striking printers, the papers hired workers from out of town who were “dogged along the streets, cursed, abused, and threatened,” by the strikers. The following Wednesday, the union called off the strike and “allowed any member to go to work at the old prices if he wanted to, or if the proprietors would take him.” However, the papers were “full of good, sober, steady workmen, who are glad to get employment at the profitable wages the [union] threw away so contemptuously.”
While the printers failed to achieve their wage goals, the blacksmiths and machinists went on strike the following year “with regard to hours and to wages.” The Machinists’ and Blacksmiths’ Union had a fund of $25,000 (2025: $524,086) “to pay the wages of needy brethren who may be thrown out of employment by the strike.” Other workers — journeymen boot and shoemakers, plasterers, and bricklayers — also went on strike for better wages during the Civil War era.
In March 1866, Indianapolis workers were confronted with their first strike related lock-out when local owners shut the foundry doors to members of the Iron Moulder’s and Stove Moulder’s Unions. This was part of a national action by foundry owners in response to strikes in Albany and Troy, New York. The strike lasted two months, ending with “the employers having compromised with the men.” Locally in the fall of 1870, 140 workers of Sinker & Davis at the Western Machine Works walked off the job when their wages were cut by ten percent. The Machinists’ and Blacksmiths’ Union supported the workers and the strike ended after a couple of days when the employers “discovered that they were paying but a trifle, if any, more than other proprietors.”
By the 1870s, railroad interests were so important to Indianapolis that any national rail event could severely affect the city’s business. When the financial Panic of 1873 occurred, the Pan Handle Road — Pittsburg, Cincinnati & St. Louis Railroad — (Pennsylvania Railroad) responded quickly with an abrupt announcement of a ten percent wage reduction. This violated a previous agreement with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers “that no reduction of wages should be made, and in case the company felt constrained to reduce pay, due notice should be given the Brotherhood, that the matter might be amply discussed and the conflicting interests, if possible, adjusted by negotiation” thereby precipitating, what the newspapers called the Great Strike, which began at noon on Christmas Day, 1873 when engineers on the railroad and its seventeen related lines walked off the job. Passenger and freight trains came to a standstill and in Indianapolis an attempt by a conductor to move an engine from the yards was met by a large number of strikers who gathered at a crossing and “jeered to such an extent, although no violence was offered, that he…ran the engine back to the round house.” By early January, most of the railroads were back operating with “scab engineers” — “unskilled and unreliable men” — running the engines; “the railroad companies…for the time being, are the victors.” While railroad companies continued to reduce the wages of laborers by ten percent, further attempts to reduce the pay of engineers remained unsettled. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers resolved to resist any additional wage cuts “by all means in their power.”
As the economy continued to struggle with the effects of the Panic, the corporate officers of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O) devised a scheme to cut worker wages by ten percent so dividends to its shareholders could be increased by the same percentage. B&O workers at Martinsburg, West Virginia refused to accept the wage cut and, on July 14, 1877, initiated what would be known as The Great Railroad Strike of 1877. Five days later, Pennsylvania Railroad workers in Pittsburg refused to go out with their trains and demanded restoring a prior wage schedule and the reinstatement of every worker dismissed for participating in the strike. Additional strikes stopped traffic on the Erie Railroad and the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne, & Chicago Railroad. By July 23, in Indianapolis “the strike is the all-absorbing theme of conversation” and by evening 500 local workers of the Vandalia Railroad, the Indianapolis & St. Louis Railroad, the Bee Line (Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati & Indianapolis Railroad), and the Pan Handle, had joined the strike over wages. Later yardmen of the Jeffersonville, Madison & Indianapolis Railroad, the Indianapolis, Cincinnati. & Lafayette Railroad, the Indianapolis, Bloomington & Western Railroad, the Indianapolis & Vincennes Railroad, the Indianapolis, Peru & Chicago Railroad, and the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Indianapolis Railroad stopped work along with 125 switchmen and baggage men. Only mail cars were permitted to leave the depot as nearly 100 travelers were stranded in the waiting rooms.
Two thousand workingmen gathered on the state house grounds to show solidarity with the railroad strikers and to urge them to refrain from violence. The Indianapolis strike caused a suspension of business on all Indiana railroads and combined with strikes in Ohio and Illinois 2,100 miles of track was affected. Declaring, “It is now or never with us. We can never have a stronger organization, and the country was never so ripe for a movement of this description,” locomotive engineers, firemen, conductors, and brakemen from the several railroads formed a committee to discuss the situation with the management of the different lines and at a citizens meeting a committee of arbitration was established. Mayor John Caven issued a call for the formation of a committee of safety in each city ward to protect property if mob violence should break out. Federal troops from the South arrived and together with the Indiana Legion of citizen soldiers were available if needed.
After a week of unrest in Indianapolis, the city’s role in The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 was over with the strikers resuming work after accepting the report of the committee on arbitration which called “for the sake of the workmen and for the ultimate good of the companies” a speedy redress of “the lowness of wages and…irregularities in the payment thereof.”
