From 1895 to 1929, streetcar strikes affected almost every major city in the United States. Sometimes lasting only a few days, these strikes were often "marked by almost continuous and often spectacular violent conflict," at times amounting to prolonged riots and weeks of civil insurrection.
Following the 1929 New Orleans streetcar strike, less violent strikes persisted for decades, such as the Atlanta transit strike of 1950. The rise of private automobile ownership limited its impact.
Tactics
Electrified streetcars posed an attractive target for striking unions like the Amalgamated Street Railway Employees of America. Unlike factory buildings, streetcar routes and cars were spread out and difficult to protect. The routes went through the working class neighborhoods of cities; riders tended to be sympathetic to union causes. Their overhead lines and physical tracks were vulnerable to sabotage. And their function as transportation for workers in other industries opened the possibility of leveraging a transit strike into a general strike, as in the Philadelphia trolley strike and riots of 1910.
Streetcar strikes rank among the deadliest armed conflicts in American labor union history. Samuel Gompers of the American Federation of Labor called the St. Louis Streetcar Strike of 1900 "the fiercest struggle ever waged by the organized toilers"Motorman and Conductor, June 1900 up to that point, with a total casualty count of 14 dead and about 200 wounded, more than the Pullman Strike of 1894. The casualty count for the San Francisco Streetcar Strike of 1907 saw 30 killed and about 1000 injured.
Despite the transit disruption, which sometimes lasted for months, and despite the fact that many of the casualties were passengers and innocent bystanders, "the strikers invariably enjoyed wide public support, which extended beyond the working class."
The owners' tactic was simply to keep the routes running. To counter hostile crowds, the line owners turned to strikebreakers. Foremost among them was James A. Farley (1874–1913), who specialized in streetcar strikes—he claimed to have broken 50—and was said to command an army of forty thousand strikebreakersLeslie's Monthly Magazine, Volume 60, May 1905, page 106 to be deployed anywhere in the country. Much of the violence of the 1907 San Francisco strike was attributable to Farley, who reportedly cleared $1 million there. He was doing more than $10 million in business by 1914.The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History by Aaron Brenner, Benjamin Day, Immanuel Ness, page 56
Examples
Examples of American streetcar strikes include: 1889, Twin Cities, Minnesota 1891, Detroit, Michigan, where strikers had the vocal support of Mayor Hazen S. Pingree, part of his administration's long successful struggle against local traction companies 1892 Indianapolis streetcar strike 1895, Brooklyn, New York City, the first in which Farley was involved 1896, MilwaukeeJohn Gurda, The Making of Milwaukee, 198 1899, Cleveland, Ohio 1900, St. Louis, where the dynamiting of streetcars was a "nightly occurrence" St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 21 June 1900 1903, Los Angeles 1907, San Francisco, California, with 31 killed and an estimated 1000 people injured 1908, Cleveland, Ohio 1908, Pensacola, Florida 1910, Columbus, Ohio 1913, Buffalo, where two regiments of the National Guard were called out to quell a full day of rioting and mob violence, with several wounded by gunfire, and widespread property damage
1913, Indianapolis 1916, Atlanta 1916, Portland, Maine 1916–17, Springfield, Missouri 1917, Twin Cities, Minnesota 1917, Bloomington, Illinois 1917, the San Francisco United Railroads strike 1917, Seattle and Tacoma streetcar employees 1919, Los Angeles 1919, Charlotte, North Carolina 1920, Denver, Colorado, which left 7 dead and 80 wounded 1929, New Orleans, Louisiana 1934, MilwaukeeJoseph Canfield, Bulletin 112 of the Central Electric Railfans Association (1972), 32–33 1944, Philadelphia 1974–75, New Orleans
Fiction Scenes of streetcar strikes, and the friction between owners and workers, appear in contemporary fiction such as Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie of 1900 (based on Dreiser's own experience in a Toledo, Ohio strike), and William Dean Howells' A Hazard of New Fortunes of 1890.
Notes
References
Archives Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 587 Records. 1941–2011. 15 cubic feet (17 boxes). Asahel Curtis photographs. 1881–1941. 5.46 cubic feet (13 boxes). 1,678 photographic prints.