Written by Logan (Janicki)
Ever since [the Illinois Central Railroad] was built, it has been known as having the most frienly relations with its employes [sic] of any corporation in existence.
The Facts About the Shopmen’s Strike, by W.L. Park, V.P. and general manager of the Illinois Central Railroad
Whearas, on September 30, 1911 the union shop employes[sic] of the Illinois Central and Harriman Lines were compelled to choose between their jobs and their rights as freemen… [t]he men chose to give up heir jobs rather tahn surrender the freeman’s right to organize…
Circular letter issued by the Railroad Employees Department of the American Federation of Labor dated May 8, 1914
Central Illinois is not exactly the first place that comes to mind when one thinks of the centers of American Socialism. This is not entirely the fault of nearby Chicago, the center of the American labor movement, overshadowing it; for most alive today, Central IL’s politics have always been identical to any other rural area in America, reactionary and conservative, even to their own detriment. Reminders of a different past have mostly been erased by dying towns redeveloping themselves to accommodate any project that might save them: in a town where once one could see a decaying Illinois Central Railroad (ICRR) depot, or the empty husk of a Revere Ware factory, now one only sees car dealerships, selling $50,000 trucks to cops and nuclear plant engineers cosplaying as hardscrabble country folk.
When my friend asked me if he could rehost these on his blog, he also asked I provide a preface on what drew me to this story in particular, and unfortunately, I don’t have a particularly useful answer. Perhaps there are important lessons to be learned from this strike about organizing principles, the place of trade unions in the labor movement, how to run strikes, and a million other things, but I simply don’t have the expertise to comment intelligently in that regard. Mundane an observation as it may be, what drew me to this story is the fact that it happened here, and that it happened simply because workers decided they would make it happen, damn the consequences.
However, this strike has largely been forgotten, even, it seems, to scholars, as all I could find written on it long enough after the fact to be called “history” was a master’s thesis written in the 1960’s (and which I couldn’t get my hands on anyway). So these blogs are all original research, and you should keep in mind that while I’ve done my best to give an accurate account of the strike, the sources on the strike produced as it was happening or shortly after are confusing, contradictory, and often not that interested in reporting on-the-ground facts of the strike. I leaned heavily on Carl Person’s account of the strike from his book The Lizard’s Trail to form the narrative of these blogs, as I generally agree with his argument as to why the strike failed, and the book is easily accessible, as compared to say, the minutes of union conventions and the internal communications of the railroads.
With all of that out of the way, the one fact that is clear in the history of the 1911 strike is what caused it: the formation of “federations” by the union workers present on the Illinois Central railroad (ICRR) and Harriman lines (The “Harriman lines” were railroads controlled by E.H. Harriman before his death in 1909, which included the ICRR itself, as well as several of the largest roads west of the Mississippi river, such as the Union Pacific). The federation movement was a response by US labor to increasingly effective strike-breaking tactics employed by corporations around the turn of the 20th century, which were reducing the collective bargaining and strike powers of individual trade unions. The federations operated on essentially the same logic as trade unions did- just as many individual people could increase their leverage against owners by forming a trade union, several trade unions could increase their leverage by banding together into a federation and collaborating on contract negotiations and strikes. However, the federations were radicals’ idea, a practical application of industrial unionism, a concept the IWW favored. They existed parallel to the trade unions, as most railroad federations were spontaneously organized by union workers of different crafts who all worked on the same railroad; the leadership of the trade unions federation members belonged did not subordinate themselves to the federations, and were generally hostile to federating the international trade unions they led with other unions in any meaningful way.
By 1911, several federations had already formed on smaller railroads and been either freely recognized by management or successfully struck for recognition. Meanwhile on the Harriman lines, even requests for contract renegotiations by the International Association of Machinists, one of the larger trade unions present on those lines, were being rejected by the owners, prompting the formation of the Illinois Central Federation in May 1911, and the Harriman Lines Federation a month later. However, the owners of the railroads still refused to meet with union workers, rejecting both the Federations’ requests for conferences to renegotiate contracts.
Unfortunately, already the exact timeline of events becomes hard to set straight. It seems that, following the refusal of the railroads to meet with the Federations, the leadership of the Federations petitioned the presidents of the individual international trade unions present on the railroads to intervene and put further pressure on the railroads to meet with the Federations. Some number of meetings came of this, but I cannot say for certain when they started, nor prove what was discussed.
What is clear, however, is that the ICRR and Harriman lines were actively preparing for a strike over the summer of 1911, and it seems likely to me that the railroads were not negotiating in good faith during these summer meetings with the trade union officials. The August 25th, 1911 edition of The Clinton Register reported that the Harriman lines spent the summer firing thousands of union workers and The Lizard’s Trail claims the railroads fortified some number of their maintenance shops with fencing to keep any future strikers away. In a pamphlet from the ICRR justifying its actions leading up to the strike, the ICRR made clear that it opposed the formation of a federation on principle– there was no possible settlement with the Illinois Central Federation that the ICRR would agree to, as any settlement which left the Federation intact would leave the workers in too strong a negotiating position. This exact sentiment was repeated by ICRR officials to the US Commission on Industrial Relations in 1915. When the international union presidents finally secured an official meeting between themselves, the Federations’ officials, and the Harriman lines’ leadership, according to The Lizard’s Trail, the meeting was short. The Harriman representative told the gathered union officials the Harriman lines would not, under any circumstances, meet with the Federation to negotiate contracts, and that he was well aware of what the consequences would be.
Meanwhile, the Federations made some preparations of their own by taking strike authorization votes. However, the unions were clearly a step behind the railroads. In the same Register article that reported the Harriman lines had fired thousands of union workers, it was reported that the Illinois Central Federation had still only received 80% of the ballots from their strike authorization vote.
Adding to the Federations’ troubles, already they were having trouble coordinating with the leadership of the international trade unions. After the votes were counted and it was confirmed the workers on the ICRR and Harriman lines were willing to strike, the International Association of Machinists, whose locals on the ICRR and Harriman lines were part of the Federations, announced their leadership would not sanction a strike and pay benefits to their members in the Illinois Central and Harriman Federations unless doing so was approved by the general membership during their convention the week of September 18th, 1911. This prompted the leadership of all the unions making up the Illinois Central and Harriman Federations to compel the Federations to take a second strike authorization vote, this one specifically noting that the Machinists, who made up a large portion of the Federations’ membership, may not strike alongside the other unions. According to The Lizard’s Trail, this vote enraged the Federations’ membership, who in many cases simply returned the ballots unopened and unmarked, or destroyed them.
The controversy surrounding the second vote was thankfully made mostly irrelevant by the fact that the Machinists’ convention did in fact vote to authorize a strike of the machinists belonging to the Illinois Central and Harriman Federations. Following this, it seems the leadership of the Federations and trade unions agreed to scrap the second vote and chose a date for the strike to begin if the railroads still had not backed down- September 30th, 1911. The railroads remained determined to force and break a strike, so on September 30th, over 30,000 maintenance workers of all stripes walked off the job at ICRR and Harriman shops, including somewhere between 200 and 400 from Clinton, IL.
Despite perhaps 85% of the ICRR’s maintenance shop staff walking off the job, their business did not grind to a halt. While the Federations had been organized to make strikes more disruptive and costly to the companies, the Illinois Central and Harriman Federations only included maintenance shop workers. Many unionized workers such as engineers and firemen, were not called on to strike and continued working for the railroads throughout its duration. This situation inspired Joe Hill’s parody of “The Ballad of Casey Jones,” “Casey Jones, Union Scab,” and added yet another hurdle the Federations would have to overcome to win the strike. And as the strike strained through its first few months, the cracks and tensions between the Federations and trade unions present at the start would threaten to collapse it, until a few radicals in Clinton decided they could not stand idly by.
Bibliography
“Clinton’s Share in the Strike.” Farmer City Journal (Farmer City, IL), Oct 6, 1911. https://vwarner.newspapers.com/image/643353964
Final Report and Testimony Submitted to Congress by the Commission on Industrial Relations, Created by the Act of August 23, 1912 vol. 10. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1916. https://books.google.com/books?id=pTULpzh12DgC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
Park, W. L. The Facts About the Shopmen’s Strike. Chicago: 1911. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiuo.ark:/13960/t6rz5k84c&view=1up&seq=1&skin=2021
Person, Carl E., The Lizard’s Trail. Chicago: The Lake Publishing Company, 1918. https://books.google.com/books?id=9lE3AAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
“Rail Crisis Near.” Clinton Register (Clinton, IL), Aug. 25, 1911. https://vwarner.newspapers.com/image/643321507/
“Strike Hits Clinton.” Clinton Register (Clinton, IL), Oct. 6, 1911. https://vwarner.newspapers.com/image/643321807
“13 Historic Photos of Railroads in Clinton.” Herald and Review (Decatur, IL), Jun 1, 2021. https://herald-review.com/gallery/history/13-historic-photos-of-railroads-in-clinton/collection_e902f500-5dba-57d2-bedb-225884113c45.html#1
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