Deadly Picket-Lines in US Labour History

Abstract

20 | International Union Rights | 24/2 FOCUS | UNITED STATES Deadly Picket-Lines in US Labour History Dead men tell no tales; that is, until the living give them voice. From 1870 to 1970, a veritable victims’ chorus of no fewer than 1160 fatalities was amassed during labour dispute confrontations within the United States of America. Each was simultaneously an expression of and catalyst within the dialectical evolution of US labour-management relations. To thee they sing. Strike-Fatality Overview Violence on America’s picket lines was protracted, widespread and intense. Fatalities, the most extreme outcome of violence, were incurred in at least 244 separate strike events, more than a dozen industries, thirty-eight states, and seventy-two years. Many more resulted in various forms of intimidation, non-fatal injuries, and property damage. Strike event names such as the Battle of Homestead (1892), Battle of Blair Mountain (1921), and Colorado Mine War (1913-14) testify to the ferocity with which agents of capital and labour advanced and / or defended their perceived rights to property and labour over the course of an era widely recognised as the most violent and bloody of any Western industrialised nation. While likely true that the vast majority of strikes involved no violence, those that did (especially those involving fatalities which are more likely to be recorded, verified and / or compiled than lesser outcomes) afford traceable patterns and insights. First, the commonly used term ‘labour violence’ is belied by the fact that strikers, organisers, and / or their sympathisers comprised nearly two-thirds of the classifiable victims. Another ten percent were bystanders: leaving less than one-fourth of the victims to be divided among strike-breakers, company guards, and / or state agents. Second, deaths were concentrated within the extraction and transportation industries. Coal mining alone accounted for roughly one-third of the deaths with another 199 (18.1 percent) on the railroads. Third, the regional distribution changed over time. Initially, strike fatalities were most heavily concentrated in the Northeast and to a slightly lesser extent the Midwest. As industrialisation spread, the violence shifted to the West and ultimately South. Fourth, 97.3 percent of the fatalities occurred between eruption of the Great Railway Strike of 1877 and passage of the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947: an era over the course of which evolved a discomforting and incendiary blend of economic desperation, labour militancy, employer intransigence, political uncertainty, and fatal resolve sandwiched between spans of relative labour quiescence. Dialectics of Violence The Great Railway Strike of 1877 provided a watershed moment in American labour history. It began in protest of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad’s decision to uphold the company’s annual dividend while reducing wages during a period of severe economic depression; and quickly spread across railways, industries, and state lines, disrupting commerce on first the Eastern seaboard and ultimately nationwide. Before its end, the nation had witnessed its first general strike, the deployment of police, numerous state and municipal militias, and federal troops against groups of non-seditious citizens, the destruction and looting of numerous railway yards, and the deaths of more than one hundred individuals. Prior to the Great Strike, ‘labour violence’ had generally been considered sporadic and non-threatening. In its wake, the reigning elitist sense of insulation from leftist politics and class based struggles was shattered, ushering instead the rise of the ‘labour question’: a multi-sided and contentious discursive formation that posed concerns centring on either problems for the newly emerging industrial society for collective labour or the problem of collective labour for the new industrial society. Alerted to the disruptive potential of large-scale labour insurgency, the overarching response by America’s political and industrial elite was to hone the means of repression. Public and private arsenals were built and stocked with updated weaponry. Militia units were re-staffed with typically middle-class personnel and sometimes upper class elites. Army officials openly lobbied for strike duty and found themselves in competition with the rise of private police forces such as the Pinkertons. Reformist impulses only began to gain traction after the Pullman Railway Strike of 1894. Like the Great Strike, Pullman was a violent national affair centred mainly on the railways, this time...