When Did the Great Railroad Strike take place?
1877
West Virginia Gov. Henry M. Mathews dispatched the militia when?
police were unable to break up the supportive crowd that had gathered.
What was the significance of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877?
The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 was the country's first major rail strike and witnessed the first general strike in the nation's history.
Rail road work was Blank
poorly paid and dangerous.
When the militia then proved incapable of freeing the 600 or so trains stranded in Martinsburg (perhaps because many of the militiamen were themselves railroad workers sympathetic to the strike) Mathews requested
assistance from federal troops
What was the end result of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877?
Railroad workers walked off the job in other states and seriously disrupted commerce in the East and Midwest. The strikes were ended within a few weeks, but not before major incidents of vandalism and violence.
The Great Railroad Strike was?
A series of violent rail strikes across the United States in 1877
trains were able to begin leaving Martinsburg on?
July 20.
Why did the Great Railroad Strike matter?
The railroad companies had taken advantage of the economic troubles to?
largely break the nascent trade unions that had been formed by the workers before and after the American Civil War.
the strike had begun spreading along the mainline of the B&O all the way to?
Chicago, and on July 19 it grew to include Pittsburgh and the Pennsylvania Railroad.
Why did the federal government side with the railroad owners?
During the major strikes of the 1800s, the government viewed labor unions as impediments to the development of the economy and sided with the company owners.
On July 16, 1877, workers at the B&O station at Martinsburg, West Virginia, responded to the announcement of 10 percent wage cuts by?
uncoupling the locomotives in the station, confining them in the roundhouse
On July 19 flagman Gus Harris unilaterally refused to work on a?
double-header" (a train hauled by two engines, thus requiring fewer workers)
What did the great railroad strike and the Homestead strike have in common?
gave workers high paying jobs so that they had the money to buy manufactured products.