THE PATERSON STRIKE PAGEANT OF 1913:
https://truthout.org/articles/eric-davins-strike-pageant-chronicles-the-paterson-silk-strike-of-1913/
Wednesday, July 8, 2020
Monday, July 6, 2020
The Great Uprising of 1877
THE GREAT UPRISING OF JULY, 1877:
On July 22nd, 1877, angry workers burned a large portion of Pittsburgh to the ground. The entire Strip District, from (and including) the Union Depot train station on Grant Street to Lawrenceville, was left a burning ruin.
The burning of Pittsburgh, however, was merely the epicenter of a larger uprising that hot summer month in 1877. Excluding the Civil War itself, the Great Strike of 1877 was the largest insurrection in American history. It was also the biggest instance of labor violence anywhere on earth for the hundred years between the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the beginning of the Great War in 1914.
For two weeks after the burning of Pittsburgh, warfare convulsed America. A general strike closed down St. Louis. The Workingmen’s Party, America’s first socialist party, briefly took charge of the city while the local sheriff made plans to raise a 5,000 man army to fight them. A huge private army of wealthy citizens led by two Civil War generals, one Union and one Confederate, eventually broke that city’s general strike.
In Chicago bloody street battles between the police and striking workers left 30 workers dead, many more wounded. The National Guard killed another ten striking workers in Reading, Pennsylvania. Fighting spread from small towns like Altoona, Johnstown, and Scranton, in Pennsylvania, to Buffalo, New York. In New York City police attacked and bloodily dispersed twenty thousand New Yorkers meeting to support the workers.
But wealthy vigilantes, police forces, and National Guard units could not suppress the workers’ rebellion everywhere. Panicked governors and local officials called upon President Rutherford B. Hayes to quell the rebellion with federal troops. In response, President Hayes issued a proclamation of emergency and insurrection, after which he ordered U. S. Army troops to occupy major cities. It was the first significant use of the Army to break a strike in American history.
Previously, the question of slave labor had torn America apart. Now class conflict and incessant small-scale labor wars would tear at the American fabric for decades to come. The Great Strike of 1877 was, therefore, a major turning point in American history. Americans left the Civil War and Reconstruction eras behind and thenceforth fought over the meaning of America in a new era of industrial and corporate capitalism.
On July 22nd, 1877, angry workers burned a large portion of Pittsburgh to the ground. The entire Strip District, from (and including) the Union Depot train station on Grant Street to Lawrenceville, was left a burning ruin.
The burning of Pittsburgh, however, was merely the epicenter of a larger uprising that hot summer month in 1877. Excluding the Civil War itself, the Great Strike of 1877 was the largest insurrection in American history. It was also the biggest instance of labor violence anywhere on earth for the hundred years between the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the beginning of the Great War in 1914.
For two weeks after the burning of Pittsburgh, warfare convulsed America. A general strike closed down St. Louis. The Workingmen’s Party, America’s first socialist party, briefly took charge of the city while the local sheriff made plans to raise a 5,000 man army to fight them. A huge private army of wealthy citizens led by two Civil War generals, one Union and one Confederate, eventually broke that city’s general strike.
In Chicago bloody street battles between the police and striking workers left 30 workers dead, many more wounded. The National Guard killed another ten striking workers in Reading, Pennsylvania. Fighting spread from small towns like Altoona, Johnstown, and Scranton, in Pennsylvania, to Buffalo, New York. In New York City police attacked and bloodily dispersed twenty thousand New Yorkers meeting to support the workers.
But wealthy vigilantes, police forces, and National Guard units could not suppress the workers’ rebellion everywhere. Panicked governors and local officials called upon President Rutherford B. Hayes to quell the rebellion with federal troops. In response, President Hayes issued a proclamation of emergency and insurrection, after which he ordered U. S. Army troops to occupy major cities. It was the first significant use of the Army to break a strike in American history.
Previously, the question of slave labor had torn America apart. Now class conflict and incessant small-scale labor wars would tear at the American fabric for decades to come. The Great Strike of 1877 was, therefore, a major turning point in American history. Americans left the Civil War and Reconstruction eras behind and thenceforth fought over the meaning of America in a new era of industrial and corporate capitalism.
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