America’s Most Notorious Labor Wars: The History and Legacy of the Bloodiest Battles for Better Worker Conditions

“The Eagle has never been called upon to chronicle a more horrible slaughter of its peace and law-abiding citizens as is its duty to-day…The pavements, sidewalks and streets in the vicinity of 7th and Penn streets, were literally baptized in blood.” – Reading Eagle, July 24, 1877

Initially, the nation’s railway system was a fragmented, often chaotic system, but Cornelius Vanderbilt went about creating an interregional system, integrating a network of smaller railroads that ran according to their own policies, procedures, and even timetables. It was not only more customer-friendly, but it helped lower shipping costs and created a more efficient system of transporting goods and people. This led to the creation of one of the nation’s first corporations, the New York Central and Hudson Railroad. Under the leadership of Vanderbilt’s son Billy, the New York Central & Hudson became one of the most profitable businesses in America, and by 1869, Cornelius Vanderbilt owned all of the railroads that brought traffic to and from New York City.

Vanderbilt’s power did not come without controversy. The New York Times coined the term “robber baron” to describe Vanderbilt’s ruthless business tactics, a name that came to exemplify the corporate leaders of the Gilded Age. This was an era when there were no rules, so it was not always a simple matter of claiming that Vanderbilt and those that followed such as John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, J.P. Morgan, and Andrew Carnegie broke the rules on their way to building enormous wealth. Corporations were a new development in America and their birth, largely led by Vanderbilt, came before the rules that govern them today, but the corporations and their moguls were not popular with the general public. One particularly unkind article around that time complained, “Each new million that he seized was an additional resource by which he could bribe and manipulate; progressively his power advanced; and it became ridiculously easier to get possession of more and more property… the mere threat of pitting his enormous wealth against competitors whom he sought to destroy was generally a sufficient warrant for their surrender.”

While companies competed with each other, the employees themselves were often squeezed, not only working long hours in hazardous conditions, but making pitiful pay. Put simply, in an age before widespread labor regulations were enacted and unions organized, the employers exercised nearly absolute power over employees.

Public views of strikers varied, from locals who supported strikes and strikers to those who saw strikers as dangerous radicals. Either way, however, the issue of labor had come to the forefront in America, and over the next several decades, in fits and starts, new labor laws and regulations would be enacted, unions would be formed, anti-trust legislation would be passed, and workers’ lives would be permanently altered.