The Great Railroad Strike of 1922
The Great Railroad Strike of 1922 holds an infamous place in history as one of the largest nationwide work stoppages, and one of America’s most violent labor strikes.
The tumultuous events of the 1922 railroad strike stand in stark contrast to the 2022 railroad strike, but both were ultimately settled by a government edict.
In summer 1922, railroad shopmen, and maintenance-of-way workers, were the target of wage cuts, that lowered their wages by an average of 12%. The wage cuts were particularly upsetting to the workers because the economy was on an upswing after the difficult years around World War I.
Tension was high in the days leading to the strike, and the shopmen in the Santa Fe Railroad’s massive San Bernardino maintenance shops became determined to refuse the wage cuts.
On June 20, the San Bernardino Sun announced that 95% of the 2,000 San Bernardino workers were voting in favor of a strike.
After numerous lastminute attempts to avert a strike, union leaders for seven of the 16 existing railroad labor organizations issued orders for the shopmen to stop work at 10 a.m. Saturday, July 1.
On that hot Saturday morning in July, some 400,000 railway workers, including almost 100,000 in the Chicago metropolitan area, put down their tools, and walked off the job.
Many of the railroad unions including the “Big
Four” were not affected by the wage cuts, and they opted not to strike. The Big Four unions included the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen and the Order of Railway Conductors.
Reports later in July said 25,000 of the 40,000 Maintenance-of-Way workers had joined the striking shopmen, without authority of the union.
Picket lines formed at the rail facilities, and tempers grew hotter as negotiations failed to produce results. Some of the striking union members crossed the picket lines and kept working, and bitter feelings were brought to a boiling point on both sides.
The railroads were determined to keep trains running, and they quickly hired replacements and set up temporary housing for them on railroad property. In San Bernardino, about
150 men were housed in a small tent community hastily set up within the fences of the shop facilities.
On July 3, the Los Angeles Times reported the Santa Fe and Union Pacific Railroads had lost about 80% of their shopmen, but several workers had returned to work in the Los Angeles shops. In San Bernardino about 1,700 men were striking. The article stated that despite the loss of manpower, the “trains continued to run on time, except for slight delays.”
The railroads quickly retaliated against the striking unions by declaring they had lost all standing before the United States Railroad Labor board, and some individual railroads were threatening to strip strikers of all seniority in their jobs.
During the walkout, the railroads had some success in hiring replacements for the striking workers. In Santa Fe’s Topeka, Kansas shops, 1,401 men reported for duty on July 6, an increase of 234 men since the strike was called. The following day, 300 men were reported working for the Santa Fe shops in San Bernardino, an increase of 40 in one day.
Violence between strikers, strikebreakers, and lawmen was breaking out all around the country.
On July 8, there were several reports of violence; two strikebreakers were dragged from cars and beaten in Sacramento, and the superintendent of the Illinois Central Railroad was beaten as he stepped out of a train car in New Orleans.
On July 13, the San Bernardino Sun reported two men had been shot in the Santa Fe shops in Needles and one was seriously wounded. In San Bernardino, a crowd of 250 strikers beat two replacement workers after pulling them from a streetcar.
Reports of sabotage against trains and rail facilities began pouring in from across the country, and the railroads were forced to place additional guards at their facilities.
In early August, National Guard troops were dispatched to Joliet, Illinois, to control groups of rioting protesters. On Aug. 8, the Joliet chief of police and a striker were shot and killed during a violent skirmish, and a local sheriff was badly wounded. Several more days of violent protests and gunfire exchanges ensued, but no others were killed.
The strike and violence dragged on through August, and President Warren G. Harding and congress felt compelled to step in to move the negotiations forward.
Bombs became the weapon of choice to damage railroad facilities, and a large cache of dynamite was found in possession of two strikers on a train near Albuquerque.
On Aug. 22, 12 timed bombs were hurled at the homes of Santa Fe workers in San Bernardino, breaking out windows and terrifying residents. No injuries were reported. A bomb was also set off in a railroad roundhouse in east St. Louis, wrecking the facility.
U.S. Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty, an outspoken opponent of the labor movement, inserted himself into the strike, and pushed for government intervention to end it.
The strike ended Sept. 1, after a sweeping federal court injunction was imposed that prohibited striking, assembling, picketing, and several other common union activities.
The “Daugherty Injunction” was viewed as extreme, but the mandate ultimately ended the strike. The injunction was widely believed to have violated a number of constitutional protections, including free speech and freedom of assembly.
Several days after the strike ended, Santa Fe Railroad employees found a bridge in the Cajon Pass that had been badly damaged by a dynamite blast. On Sept. 28, workmen at the San Bernardino shop found 16 sticks of dynamite hidden in the toolbox of a locomotive, with an acid timing device to ignite a bomb.
In the end, at least 10 people died in the violence and many others were injured around the country. The nation suffered millions in monetary losses and bitter feelings over the dramatic episode lingered long after the strike was forced to end.