Great Railroad Strike Of 1877: Martinsburg, Pittsburgh, Chicago & St. Louis

Last revised: September 6, 2026

The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 was an uprising against pay cuts the country’s largest railroads stacked on after the Panic of 1873. The cut that finally broke it was another 10 percent, coming on top of several others in four years. In an industry with almost no job protection, firing and a blacklist were the usual answer to a walkout. This time the walkout ran the length of the map.

On Monday, July 16, 1877—the day the Baltimore & Ohio’s latest 10 percent took effect—the fireman of engine No. 32 left his freight at Camden Junction, just west of Baltimore. That evening firemen at Martinsburg, West Virginia, a B&O division point about 90 miles out, uncoupled engines and said no freight would move until the cut was restored. Passenger and mail trains, as a rule, they let through. Freight was the railroad’s money. Within two weeks the stoppage had jumped the B&O onto the Pennsylvania, the Reading, the Erie, the New York Central, the Lake Shore, and yards from Buffalo to Chicago and St. Louis. Militia fired into crowds. Federal regulars followed. About 100 people were killed, many of them not strikers. The strike won almost no immediate concessions. It showed, for the first time, that a railroad walkout could become a national industrial strike.

Period illustration of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877

The Great Railroad Strike of 1877. Period illustration. American-Rails.com collection.

On this page: At a glance · Panic and the cuts · B&O: Camden Junction and Martinsburg · Baltimore, July 20 · Pennsylvania Railroad and Pittsburgh · Reading and Scranton · Erie, Central, Lake Shore · Chicago · St. Louis · Elsewhere · What it did and did not do

At a glance

Item	Detail
Dates	July 16 (Camden Junction / Martinsburg) through early August 1877. Hayes diary, August 5: the strikes “have been put down by force”
Spark	B&O 10% cut effective July 16 (John W. Garrett), on top of earlier cuts. PRR Pittsburgh “double-headers” announced the same week
First walkouts	Camden Junction, Md. (noon, July 16); Martinsburg, W.Va. (evening, July 16)
Roads in the thick of it	Baltimore & Ohio; Pennsylvania; Philadelphia & Reading; Erie; New York Central & Hudson River; Lake Shore & Michigan Southern; DL&W; Delaware & Hudson; plus terminals at Chicago, St. Louis, Buffalo, Columbus, Indianapolis
Dead	On the order of 100 nationwide. Baltimore ~10–11 (July 20); Pittsburgh ~20 in the first militia volley (July 21), more in the roundhouse fight; Reading 10–16 (July 23); Chicago ~14–30 (July 25–26); Scranton 4 (August 1)
Property	Worst at Pittsburgh: PRR listed 39 buildings, 104 locomotives, 46 passenger cars, ~1,200 freight cars; about $4.1 million (period dollars), much of it insured
Federal troops	Hayes proclamations from July 18 (West Virginia) onward. Regulars to Martinsburg, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Chicago, St. Louis, and other points. Reconstruction troops had just come out of the South
Immediate result	Strike broken. Almost no wage restoration. Brotherhood chiefs had not called it
Not a 1877 statute	ICC February 4, 1887; Safety Appliance Act March 2, 1893. Those are later. See 1870s

City death counts vary among newspapers, coroners, and later syntheses (Foner, Stowell, Bruce). The order-of-magnitude national figure of about 100 is the one to keep. Information compiled September 6, 2026.

The Panic, the unions, the 10 percent

Life as a railroader in the 1870s meant long hours, link-and-pin, hand brakes, and almost no safety law. The Panic of 1873 made it worse. David O. Stowell, in The Great Strikes of 1877, puts about 30 national and international trade unions in the United States just before the crash, and about nine still functioning when July 1877 opened. John Stover’s atlas, the same series used on the history hub, has the country adding more than 40,000 miles between 1870 and 1880—but the hot years were the boom. Roughly 34,000 miles were spiked from 1865 through 1873; only about 6,000 followed in 1873–77. Railroads were already the country’s second-largest employer after farming. A lot of that new track had been built on easy money.

Jay Cooke & Company failed on September 18, 1873, trying to sell Northern Pacific bonds. That is the Panic. The Northern Pacific itself did not vanish that afternoon; construction stalled and the road later went into receivership. The Coinage Act of 1873 (ending silver as a monetary standard for new coin) sat in the same season; it is context, not the whole cause. What the men felt was simpler. Philip S. Foner, in The Great Labor Uprising of 1877, put average railroad wage cuts at about 21–37 percent while food prices had fallen only about 5 percent. Dividends, on more than one road, kept being paid. The B&O was among the hardest: Foner has cuts approaching 50 percent on some jobs, then Garrett’s July circular taking another 10 percent from anyone making more than a dollar a day. Firemen who had been at $1.75 were looking at $1.58, and fewer trips.

Between November 1873 and July 1874, men struck on eighteen roads over the first round of cuts. The walkouts lasted a week or two. The companies fired and blacklisted. That usually worked. A B&O construction-labor stoppage in June 1831 is often called the first American railroad strike; it was not the first strike in the country. The brotherhoods of 1877 were still craft societies, not industrial unions: the Machinists’ and Blacksmiths’ International Union, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen (1873), the Order of Railway Conductors, and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. Only the engineers, about 10,000 members, had real weight. Grand Chief Engineer Charles Wilson would not strike and would not stand with men outside the BLE. When July came, the chiefs of the major railway fraternities were as frightened of a general uprising as the governors were. They did not call this strike. Shopmen, firemen, and brakemen did.

Away from home, men still paid railroad hotels, return tickets, and meals out of the reduced check. That bill sat on top of the percentage.

Camden Junction and Martinsburg

Garrett’s cut went into effect Monday, July 16. Shortly before noon the fireman on B&O freight engine No. 32 walked off at Camden Junction, the throat west of Baltimore through which Washington and western trains had to pass. Other firemen followed. Mayor Ferdinand C. Latrobe—his family had long been tied to the B&O—sent police. A show of force usually ended it. It did not. By the next day engineers were out, and so were Baltimore boxmakers, sawyers, and tin-can makers who had their own cuts. The strikers, Foner stresses, kept hands off passenger and mail trains. Stopping the mails would have been a federal offense. They wanted the freight.

That evening, at Martinsburg, twenty-five or thirty firemen left their trains, ran engines into the roundhouse, and told officers nothing would leave until the 10 percent came back. Most of the local men were in a Trainmen’s Union. Newspapers reached for “rioter” and, in some sheets, “communist.” The Paris Commune was six years old; that word did a lot of work in 1877 that the Martinsburg firemen had not asked it to do.

West Virginia governor Henry M. Mathews called the militia. On July 17 a strikebreaker tried to take a freight out under guard. Striker William P. Vandergriff exchanged fire with militiamen, was hit three times, and later died. The militia did not restore the road. Mathews asked President Rutherford B. Hayes for regulars. Hayes’s proclamation of July 18 ordered the combinations to disperse by noon the 19th. Army troops reached Martinsburg on the morning of July 19 and found, as the live account here has long said, almost nothing out of place: no general wrecking, no burning shops. Replacements and arrests, with the Army behind them, broke Martinsburg. The B&O’s problem had already left town.

Period illustration from the Great Railroad Strike of 1877

Great Railroad Strike of 1877. Period illustration. American-Rails.com collection.

Baltimore, July 20

The quiet in Baltimore did not last. On the night of July 20 the state tried to move militia to Cumberland, where strikers had blocked the B&O. The Sixth Maryland Regiment had to fight its way from the armory toward Camden Station. Stones, then rifle fire. About 10 or 11 people died—among them a newsboy and a sixteen-year-old student in the Baltimore accounting—and about 40 were wounded. Contemporary papers reached for “Second Battle of Bunker Hill.” The crowd, swelling toward 15,000, drove the soldiers into the Camden train sheds and tried to burn the station. They did not take it. Over the weekend, 1,200 to 2,000 federal troops, some from Fort McHenry, restored the city. That was the last large B&O bloodletting. The strike was no longer a B&O story.

The Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, and the double-header

On the same July 16 the Pennsylvania Railroad told Western Division men that as of July 19 eastbound trains to Altoona would be double-headed: two locomotives, longer consists, not two full crews. More work, same pay, after the cuts. The PRR had heard complaints before. It had not installed Janney knuckles or Westinghouse air as a system standard; link-and-pin and hand brakes were still the freight railroad. With Martinsburg in the papers, two brakemen and a flagman on an eastbound Pittsburgh freight due out at 8:40 a.m. on July 19 refused to go. Pittsburgh, a major PRR terminal, stopped.

Governor John F. Hartranft was in Wyoming Territory. Adjutant General James W. Latta called the militia. The local Sixth Division was too close to the men. Philadelphia’s First Division came instead—about 600 soldiers, picking up Gatling guns and ammunition at Harrisburg. On the afternoon of July 21 they charged with fixed bayonets, then opened fire. About 20 people died in that first collision, including a woman and three children; about 29 were injured. The soldiers retreated into the roundhouse. The crowd burned what the PRR owned from there toward 28th Street (period inventories run from the roundhouse to 23rd or 28th depending on the clerk). The railroad’s own count, the one Foner and later writers repeat, is 39 buildings, 104 locomotives, 46 passenger cars, and about 1,200 freight cars, some $4.1 million, with insurance covering about $3 million. Militiamen held the roundhouse with a water hose and shot their way out the next morning. More people died in that fighting. Pittsburgh, not Martinsburg, is why 1877 is remembered as a burning.

Tom Scott ran the Pennsylvania. He wanted troops, and he got them. Across the river in Allegheny City, a Fort Wayne brakeman named Robert M. Ammon organized a disciplined halt on the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago, the Allegheny Valley, and the Panhandle, with the B&O’s Connellsville line in reach. For a few days he ran a strike that actually stopped long-distance freight. When he tried to hand operations back on July 24, his own people overruled him and he resigned. After that the PRR walkouts came apart even where the public was still with the men.

Period engraving of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877

Great Railroad Strike of 1877. Period engraving. American-Rails.com collection.

Reading, July 23, and Scranton

Franklin B. Gowen’s Philadelphia & Reading was the anthracite road. Reading men struck on July 22 after Pittsburgh. Gowen refused arbitration and took Pennsylvania’s 4th Regiment / Second Division. On the evening of July 23, in the Seventh Street Cut, militia fired into a crowd that had been throwing stones. The Reading Railroad Massacre killed 10 to 16 people—period sheets print both ends of that range—and wounded several dozen, including policemen. It was not a pitched battle between two armed camps. It was a volley into a street.

On July 24 about 1,500 men at the Lackawanna Iron & Coal Company, with DL&W and Delaware & Hudson firemen and brakemen, went out in Scranton. By the 29th some 35,000 people in that coal-and-iron basin were idle. Mayor Robert H. McKune leaned on a hastily armed Scranton Citizens’ Corps, stiffened by company men under W. W. Scranton. Railroaders were already going back when, on August 1, a crowd met the Corps. The mayor was knocked down. The Corps fired. Four men were killed (some period counts print six) and scores wounded. State and federal troops followed. Miners stayed out, in places, into October. The railroad strike in Scranton was already over.

Hornellsville, Buffalo, and Vanderbilt

The Erie Railway had been in bankruptcy since the Panic. Hugh Jewett cut 10 percent as of July 1. The men waited. After Pittsburgh they did not. Hornellsville, New York—junction of Erie’s Buffalo, Susquehanna, and Allegheny divisions—went out about 1:00 p.m. on July 20 (some accounts the 21st). The stoppage spread to other Erie points. Governor Lucius Robinson called militia. In Hornellsville the first troops did little. Brooklyn’s 23rd Regiment later broke the halt. Erie’s nerve center reopened about July 26, and the rest of the road followed.

Buffalo was a different machine: Erie, Lackawanna, Lehigh Valley, New York Central & Hudson River, Lake Shore & Michigan Southern. After Erie went out, Central and Lake Shore men followed their own 10 percent. William H. Vanderbilt—the Commodore had died January 4, 1877—did not play Garrett or Scott. He stopped the trains and waited. Robinson’s force plus that refusal to bargain ended it. The Central called it over by July 30; Lake Shore men quit the same day. No concession.

Period print of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877

Great Railroad Strike of 1877. Period print. American-Rails.com collection.

Chicago: the viaduct

The live copy on this page once filed Chicago with cities that “never enjoyed national coverage.” That was the hole. Chicago was on every front page that last week of July. The Workingmen’s Party and men such as Albert Parsons gave the crowds more structure than Martinsburg had had. On July 24–25 strikers and sympathizers shut roundhouses, including Burlington. Police fired into gatherings at the yards.

The worst day was July 25–26 at the Halsted Street viaduct—the Battle of the Viaduct. A crowd of thousands met police and militia. Stones, pistol shots, then volleys. Death counts run from about 14 to 30; many of the dead were boys. A hundred or more were wounded. Order returned that evening. Chicago did not burn like Pittsburgh. It did kill like Baltimore, and then some.

St. Louis: a general strike

St. Louis, with East St. Louis across the river, is the other theater this page underplayed. Beginning July 22, railroaders stopped freight. The Workingmen’s Party of the United States’ executive committee then pulled in other trades. For several days almost all industry in the city halted. Historians call it the first true general strike in the United States. Demands ran past railroad wages to an eight-hour day and a ban on child labor. City fathers reached for the Paris Commune; the press said “St. Louis Commune.” Inside the city the halt was largely bloodless compared with Pittsburgh. East St. Louis and the approaches were not. Federal soldiers and thousands of deputized special police broke the committee by July 28. Period tallies around the two cities run up toward 18 dead. The general strike ended without the wage restoration the railroaders had started for.

Columbus to San Francisco

The same ten days hit Columbus and Newark, Ohio; Indianapolis; Louisville; Albany and the West Albany yards; Kansas City; and smaller B&O towns from Cumberland and Keyser to Grafton. Some were quiet blockades. Some shot people. San Francisco’s street fighting mixed labor anger with anti-Chinese attacks—a different, uglier strain, and not a railroad operating story. Add it all up and more than 100,000 workers were idle at the peak, across industries, and more than half the country’s freight sat still. About 1,000 people went to jail. About 100 were dead.

Virtually every walkout began as a wage protest. The shootings, in Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Reading, Chicago, and Scranton, were militia, police, or a citizens’ corps firing into crowds. Calling the whole two weeks a “riot” was the newspapers’ word. It was not the firemen’s at Camden Junction.

Period illustration related to the Great Railroad Strike of 1877

Great Railroad Strike of 1877. Period illustration. American-Rails.com collection.

August 5, and what 1877 actually changed

On August 5, 1877, Hayes wrote in his diary: “The strikes have been put down by force; but now for the real remedy.” He thought the railroaders, as a rule, were “good men, sober, intelligent, and industrious,” and that the mischief was stopping other men from working and holding the companies’ property. That is the president who had just used the Army. It is also the president who, months earlier, had pulled the last Reconstruction troops out of the South. Ulysses S. Grant noticed the contrast: newspapers that had howled about soldiers protecting Black citizens in the South did not howl when the same government put regulars on a railroad platform.

The strike failed on its own terms. Wages stayed cut. The BLE had not led it. Blacklists thickened. Companies built or expanded private militias and looked harder at the Pinkertons. Cities that had watched militia melt into the crowd built armories and reorganized the National Guard so the next call-up would not be the neighbors. That is a real consequence, and it is not a labor victory.

The other consequence is memory. Working people had seen a national stoppage. The Workingmen’s Party and, later, the Knights of Labor grew in that shadow. Greenback-Labor politics took the eight-hour day and an end to company scrip into elections. The Washington Capital, reprinted in the Martinsburg Statesman on September 4, 1877, called it “not the work of a mob nor the working of a riot, but a revolution that is making itself felt throughout the land.” America was not the same. That does not mean Congress answered with the ICC.

The Interstate Commerce Act of February 4, 1887, and the Elkins, Hepburn, and Mann-Elkins acts after it, are the Granger-and-rebate story: state rate laws, Munn (1877, grain elevators), Wabash (1886), then a federal commission on interstate charges. Railroad labor is not why those statutes exist. The Safety Appliance Act of March 2, 1893, with a delayed effective date, put Westinghouse automatic brakes (straight-air patent 1869, automatic 1872) and Janney knuckles (patent 1868, not 1873) on cars by force of law. Angola (1867) and Ashtabula (1876) belong on that chain. So do the dead switchmen of the 1880s. 1877 belongs on the labor chain: the first national industrial strike, broken by militia and regulars, remembered by everyone who later tried to organize a railroad.

Railroads in the 1870s — Panic, mileage, air brake, Granger; this strike as a pointer
Railroad history hub
Baltimore & Ohio · Pennsylvania Railroad · Erie · New York Central
Ashtabula · Angola Horror · Westinghouse air brake
Railroad jobs · Tycoons

Sources

Foner, Philip S. The Great Labor Uprising of 1877. New York: Monad / Pathfinder, 1977. Camden Junction engine 32; wage-cut percentages; Martinsburg, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Ammon; national frame.
Stowell, David O. The Great Strikes of 1877. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008 (and Stowell’s related essays). Union counts before and after the Panic; urban crowd actions.
Bruce, Robert V. 1877: Year of Violence. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959. Still the standard narrative synthesis for city-by-city violence.
B&O 10% circular effective July 16, 1877 (Garrett); firemen $1.75 to $1.58 as reported in Dacus and the Baltimore press. Mayor Ferdinand C. Latrobe.
Baltimore American / Sun, July 16–17, 1877: Camden Junction day; Martinsburg evening of the 16th. Vandergriff shooting July 17.
Hayes proclamation, July 18, 1877 (West Virginia). Diary, August 5, 1877, “The strikes have been put down by force; but now for the real remedy” (Charles Richard Williams edition).
Pittsburgh, July 19–22: PRR double-headers; Latta and the Philadelphia militia; roundhouse; PRR property inventory (39 buildings, 104 locomotives, 46 passenger cars, ~1,200 freight cars).
Reading Railroad Massacre, July 23, 1877. Scranton Citizens’ Corps shooting, August 1, 1877 (4 killed in the modern count; some period reports 6).
Chicago, Battle of the Viaduct, July 25–26, 1877. St. Louis general strike / Workingmen’s Party executive committee, July 22–28, 1877.
Stover, John F. The Routledge Historical Atlas of the American Railroads. Mileage 1870–80 and the 1865–73 vs 1873–77 construction contrast.
Jay Cooke & Co., September 18, 1873. NP receivership is later; see /1870s.html and /np.html.
Janney coupler patent 1868; Westinghouse straight-air 1869, automatic March 5, 1872; Safety Appliance Act March 2, 1893. ICC February 4, 1887, is not a 1877 labor statute.
Washington Capital, as reprinted in the Martinsburg Statesman, September 4, 1877.
American-Rails.com: 1870s decade leaf; B&O; Pennsylvania; Erie; New York Central; jobs; Westinghouse; Ashtabula; Angola.