Report of the Committee Appointed to Investigate the Railroad Riots in July, 1877: Read in the Senate and House of Representatives May 23, 1878Pennsylvania. General Assembly. Committee Appointed to Investigate the Railroad Riots in July, 1877
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Report of the Committee Appointed to Investigate the Railroad Riots in July, 1877: Read in the Senate and House of Representatives May 23, 1878
Pennsylvania. General Assembly. Committee Appointed to Investigate the Railroad Riots in July, 1877
The immediate cause of the strike at Pittsburgh was not similar to any
other that has come to the knowledge of this committee, it being the
order to run double-headers. No such cause existed anywhere else, and,
therefore, the troubles there could not be considered as a part of any
general understanding between trainmen. At Reading, the railroad men
were not engaged in any strike, nor did they take any part in the riots
there. The troubles there were caused solely by idle men, who had some
time previously been discharged from the employ of the Philadelphia and
Reading Railroad Company, and for the purpose of venting their spite on
the company. At Scranton, although there had been a strike of the
railroad men, this had been adjusted, and the men were at work again,
when the riots occurred, the riots being engaged in by the idle men and
striking miners and mill men. If a riot, growing out of any of these
isolated movements, is to be called an insurrection, or if these
movements, altogether, are to rise to the dignity of an insurrection,
then the word must be given a new definition, for as it now stands,
there must have been some pre-concerted arrangement between the men at
the different points, to resist the laws of the country, or the move at
some point must have been for the purpose of resisting constituted
authority, and not the mere purpose of forcing railroad companies, or
any other corporations, to come to terms with the strikers, by
obstructing the business of the railroad or other corporation. No
pre-concerted arrangement of any kind has been proved before your
committee, although such persons as might be supposed to know the fact,
if it existed at all, were subpoenaed and testified before us, and
all of them positively deny that there was any concert of action
whatever, among the trainmen, for a strike after the 27th of June, and
a local cause for the different strikes in Pennsylvania is given by
them all. It has been asserted by many that no rioting or destruction
of property would have taken place at Pittsburgh, if the troops had not
been called out, and had not fired on the mob. The trifling with the
mob, at this place, by the civil authorities, and the sympathy shown by
the citizens, with the original strikers, had emboldened and encouraged
it to such an extent, that when the Philadelphia troops arrived on the
ground, it had, no doubt, got beyond the control of the civil power, as
then constituted, and there can be no doubt of the necessity for the
presence of those troops. Such mobs as that at the Twenty-eighth street
crossing, on Saturday evening, July 21st, at the time the Philadelphia
troops were marched out there, would never have dispersed without
making serious trouble, troops or no troops.
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