On this day in 1877, the demand of train workers in East St. Louis, Illinois for higher wages was rejected, marking the beginning of a general strike in which workers seized and destroyed property, dismantling over forty factories.
The 1877 St. Louis General Strike was one of the first general strikes in the United States, growing out of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, a national period of strikes and rioting due to economic depression. The St. Louis strike was largely organized by the Knights of Labor and the Marxist-leaning Workingmen’s Party, the main radical political party of the era.
On this day in 1877, in East St. Louis, Illinois, train workers held a secret meeting, resolving to call for an increase in wages and to strike if their demands were not met. The demand was made and rejected that same night, and so, effective at midnight, the strike began.
Within hours, strikers virtually controlled the city. Although the strike was mostly bloodless, the protesters seized the city’s Union Depot, stopped freight and some passenger trains from passing through the city.
Workers attacked productive capital, including flour mills and sugar refineries, dismantling over forty factories in total. The strike ended when the National Guard and U.S. Marshals began to break up demonstrations by force five days later.
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