The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 was a landmark event for the labor movement, its impact still felt by every worker in America today. Touched off by a big wage cut for railroad workers in West Virginia, it quickly spread and became a general strike, leading to violence in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Illinois and elsewhere, as strikers and militia clashed. In Buffalo it was much less violent---only one striker was killed by militia---but ultimately here, too, the strike failed in its immediate goals. In the long run, however, it succeeded, as railroads realized that whatever they saved by slashing wages would be more than offset by the massive losses in revenue caused by strikers, not to mention the expense of paying for militias and strikebreakers. It proved key in a long line of events that eventually led to the eight-hour workday.
The thing about the Great Strike of 1877, however, was that it turned into a general strike supported by many sectors of society. In Buffalo and elsewhere, railroad workers were joined by housewives, merchants and residents of the Lower East and West sides in blockading trains. Fed up with the constant laying of new track through city streets, where speeding locomotives created an omnipresent hazard, they hated the railroads… and the strike gave them the chance to act on their grievances.
Trains killed 50 to 60 pedestrians in the streets of Buffalo every year in the 1870s and ‘80s, a time when every train crossing was at grade level, untended… and long before tracks were elevated above the street. Newspapers carried gruesome items about Buffalonians being run over by trains, horses spooked by locomotives and throwing riders or running away with wagons, or tipsy tavern patrons stumbling as they stepped out into the street, only to be struck down by a passing train. Look at a map of the city in that era, and you will be astonished at the sets of tracks hurtling through largely residential streets like Perry, Scott, Elk, Chicago, etc. on the Lower East Side, and the Upper and Lower Terrace on the Lower West Side.
David O. Stowell, in his excellent account of the strike in Buffalo, Syracuse and Albany titled “Streets, Railroads, and the Great Strike of 1877”, describes what it was like to live along the tracks in the working-class neighborhoods of Buffalo:
In Buffalo, for example, many women who were unemployed needleworkers continued their work at home on an individual basis and peddled their goods from door to door---an economic activity requiring frequent travel in the streets. Children hunted for pieces of wood or coal to use as fuel (particularly in the winter), or scraps and bits of just about anything that could be of use in the household or could be sold to generate money for household expenses. Railroad tracks were commonly scoured for bits of wood and coal left by passing locomotives. “Street scavenging“ by children was of vital importance to the existence of the poor household, and there was no better place to scavenge than in or around streets. Routine errands also took children out into the streets, whether a trip to a nearby grocer for food or a neighboring tenement in order to borrow an item from a friend or relative.
The consequences of railroad use of city streets were frequently disastrous and grew worse as industrialization, population growth and the increasing density of urban life magnified the impact of having railroads run through streets and neighborhoods. The most appalling result of this was the many people killed or injured by trains. As Stowell notes:
Examples of such dangerous mishaps bound. In Buffalo, two married women “were driving across the Genesee Street crossing” of the New York Central Railroad when their “horse became frightened” at the approaching train “and ran away“. Worse, the animal “dashed down the railroad track, throwing out both ladies”. As one of the women “was arising from the ground she was struck“ by the passenger train “about the head and right shoulder and side”. …
Many pedestrians were killed and injured because they misjudged the speed of an approaching train or failed to see it and ended up being “caught on the track”. A momentary lapse in attention could cost a life or limb. In Buffalo, a boy simply crossing on Perry Street “was struck by an approaching train and knocked down… one of the wheels passed over his left arm, badly crushing it.”
Yet despite the strike, and subsequent protests and even lawsuits brought by the merchants and working-class residents of Buffalo, nothing could budge city officials from their subservience to the all-powerful railroads. Despite wide recognition that Buffalo was plagued by a profusion of lethal grade-level crossings, locomotives still rumbled through city streets until well into the 20th century.
It was only with the proliferation of the automobile that municipalities finally began to act. In 1926, a New York State program started an extremely gradual, 50-year process of replacing street-level crossings with overpasses and underpasses. It took 100 years to make Buffalo streets safe from trains, way too late to be of any help to the ordinary men and women who took part in the Great Strike of 1877.
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Cast (in order of appearance):
Male striker (American): Karl-Eric Reif
Male striker (German): Steven Brachmann
Female striker (Irish): Margo Davis
Female striker (American): Joy Scime
Narrator: Susan Banks
Sound recording: Brandon Nightingale
Sound editing: Micheal Peters
Piano theme: Excerpt from “Buffalo City Guards Parade March,” by Francis Johnson (1839)
Performed by Aaron Dai
Produced by the Niagara Frontier Heritage Project
Associate producer: Karl-Eric Reif
Webpage written by Jeff Z. Klein (Niagara Frontier Heritage Project)
Special thanks to:
Kathryn Larsen, vice president, content distribution, Buffalo Toronto Public Media
S.J. Velasquez, director of audio strategy, Buffalo Toronto Public Media
Jerry Urban, senior radio broadcast engineer