The history of American labor-management disputes is the most violent in the world. Labor violence can best be understood when placed within the context of rights. Workers believed that by joining a union and conducting strikes, they were exercising their right to improve themselves and protect their families. Managers, on the other hand, regarded the demand that employees be granted some control over their working conditions as an invasion of their property rights.
Management employed different strategies to keep a union off its property: It could compel workers to sign a “yellow dog contract” stating they would never join a union as a condition of employment. Or, it could hire private detective agencies to spy on workers and identify labor agitators so they could be fired before organizing a union.
The Pinkerton Detective Agency was the best-known and most feared antilabor force in America during the last third of the 19th century. Founded in 1850 by Allen Pinkerton, the agency amassed the world’s largest collection of mug shots by 1870 and supplemented the pictures with a large database on criminals and their activities. Pinkerton agents infiltrated a company’s workforce with the goal of identifying discontents and sowing discord in established unions. These “Pinkertons” were involved as labor spies, agent provocateurs, or guards in the Anthracite Strike of 1875, the Iron Moulders Lockout of 1883, the Burlington Railroad Strike of 1888, the New York Longshoremen’s Strike of 1887, the Coeur d’Alene miners’ strike of 1892, the Homestead Strike of 1892, as well as in other strikes.
Local authorities not only quelled labor disturbances but also attacked peaceful demonstrations. On December 11, 1887, New York police attacked and brutally beat members of an unarmed crowd of 7,000 as they prepared
Illustration of strikers facing off against Pinkertons in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly, July 1892 (Library of Congress)
To parade through the city to demand jobs for the unemployed. In 1897 a sheriff’s posse shot into a crowd of more than 200 unarmed miners as they peacefully marched down a public highway in Lattimer, Pennsylvania, killing 19 people, most of whom were shot in the back as they ran away.
However, management could not always trust local authorities, who often were elected by workers. During the Great Strike Of 1877, officials of the Lackawanna Coal and Iron Company, fearful that the city police would sympathize with the strikers, had the mayor of Scranton deputize 40 of its trusted employees as a special police force. Armed by the company and instructed by its commander, the company superintendent, “to shoot low and shoot to kill,” the Special Police fired into a crowd, killing six and wounding 55. The creation of a special police force in Scranton actually was unnecessary, for in 1869 the Pennsylvania legislature gave railroad and coal companies the power to maintain their own police forces. The coal and iron police used deadly force, wounding nine, in a confrontation with strikers in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, in 1887.
Soldiers represented the last line of employer defense. Governors willingly dispatched their militia or National
Guard to strike scenes. Both the state militia and federal troops helped break the Pullman Strike of 1894. In 1896 mine operators in Leadville, Colorado, broke a strike by insisting that strikebreakers be enlisted in the Colorado National Guard and be issued weapons to defend themselves and company property.
In fact, strikers often vented their frustration against strikebreakers and company property. During the Lead-ville Strike, for example, a group of strikers attacked the Coronado mine and dynamited its oil storage tank. Strikers reserved most of their rage for strikebreakers, whom they denounced as scabs and blacklegs. Strikebreakers were stoned and beaten, and many were killed. Strikers justified this violence by arguing that strikebreakers were taking their jobs. The strikers believed that in going out on strike they were not quitting their jobs but, rather, they were temporarily withdrawing from work to better their pay or working conditions.
Racism also ignited labor violence. On September 2, 1885, a group of white coal miners attacked Chinese workers in Rock Springs, Wyoming, killing 28 and wounding 15 more. This massacre was rooted in racial prejudice, since it exacerbated the fear that the Chinese miners would keep wages low and sharpened the memory that 10 years earlier the Chinese had broken a strike.
Further reading: P. K. Edwards, Strikes in the United States, 1881-1974 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981); Ronald L. Filippelli, Labor Conflict in the United States: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland Publishing, 1990).
—Harold W. Aurand
World History
