Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T09:08:15.715Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Blaming Martin Irons: Leadership and Popular Protest in the 1886 Southwest Strike1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2010

Theresa A. Case
Theresa A. Case
Affiliation:
University of Houston—Downtown
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The story of the Great Southwest strike, a textbook example of the upheavals of 1886, has long been told as an epic battle between railway millionaire Jay Gould, national Knights of Labor head Terence Powderly, and Martin Irons, with many historians and contemporaries casting strike leader Irons as the epitome of impatient, romantic, and even deluded labor activism. District Assembly 101's call to walk out on Gould's southwestern system of roads was, arguably, strategically ill-advised. It vastly overestimated the Knights' power in the wake of two victories against Gould in 1885 and certainly ignored the district's lack of funds, lax support among skilled trainmen, and the terms of an historic agreement between the national Knights and Gould. A closer look at Irons's life and leadership, however, reveals a more complicated explanation of the strike and takes into fuller account the experiences and perceptions of striking railroaders. This essay holds that events on the ground, combined with the heady context of the Great Upheaval, influenced Irons and his supporters' decisions to strike, to expand the effort, and to defend it with violence. The ensuing attacks on Irons stemmed partly from his unstable personal history but largely from the broader social anxieties that the conflict had exposed.

Type
Essays
Information
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , January 2009 , pp. 51 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

2 Gorn, Elliot J., Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America (New York, 2001), 167Google Scholar;Debs, Eugene, “Martin Irons, Martyr,” Dec. 9, 1900Google Scholar, in Debs: His Life, Writings, and Speeches (Girard, KS, 1908), 273–75Google Scholar;Allen, Ruth, The Great Southwest Strike (Austin, 1942), 9–10Google Scholar, 56–61, 137.

3 Investigation of Labor Troubles in Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, Texas, and Illinois, 49th Cong., 2nd sess., 1887Google Scholar, H. Rpt. 4174, l:xiii, xiv (1st quotation), 622–25; ibid., 2:476–77;Cassity, Michael J., “Modernization and Social Crisis: The Knights of Labor and a Midwest Community, 1885–1886,” Journal of American History 66 (June 1979): 54, 60CrossRefGoogle Scholar;Ware, Norman J., The Labor Movement in the United States, 1860–1895: A Study in Democracy (New York, 1964), 147Google Scholar(2nd quotation), 100, 181;Phelan, Craig, Grand Master Workman: Terence Powderly and the Knights of Labor (Westport, CT, 2000), 178–83 (3rd quotation, 180)Google Scholar.

4 , Phelan, Grand Master Workman, 184Google Scholar. A similar interpretation can be found in Ware, The Labor Movement in the United States, 145–54.

5 Green, James, Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement, and the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America (New York, 2006), 145Google Scholar;Taussig, F. W, “The Southwestern Strike of 1886,” Quarterly Journalof Economics 1 (Jan. 1887): 184–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Fink, Leon, Workingman's Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics (Urbana, 1983), 112Google Scholar;, Phelan, Grand Master Workman, 130Google Scholar, 161, 202, 228–30. For an analysis of the fate of the labor movement in the aftermath of the Haymarket bombing and trial, see , Green, Death in the Haymarket, 278, 286–87, 318–20Google Scholar.

7 Forbath, William E., Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Movement (Cambridge, MA 1989), 68, 73.Google Scholar

8 Dundee Old Parish Registers and Dundee Street Directories, 1818–61, Dundee Library and Information Services, Local History Centre, Dundee, UK.

9 Miskell, Louise, Whatley, Christopher A., and Harris, Bob, eds., Victorian Dundee: Image and Realities (East Lothian, Scotland, 2000), 3, 38–9, 49.Google Scholar

10 Investigation of Labor Troubles, 2:436.

11 No record of Irons's father-in-law has surfaced. The only information on his brotherin-law, with whom Martin also worked, is that his first name was John and that he and Martin had gone into the restaurant business in Cincinnati. One John Brown lived in the town of Richmond in Ray County, Missouri, in 1880. He hailed from Scotland and was old enough (fifty-seven) to have been Mary's brother, but there the trail on the Brown family ends. U.S. Department of the Interior, Census Office, Tenth Census of the United States, 1880, manuscripts via Heritage Quest Online, http://persi.heritagequestonline.com/hqoweb/library/do/census/search/basic. Mary Irons interview,New York Times, May 10, 1886Google Scholar. Investigation of Labor Troubles, 2:437.

12 The advertisements can be found in the 1875 and 1876 issues of the local Richmond newspaper in the Ray County Library, Richmond, MO. Mary Irons interview,New York Times, May 10, 1886Google Scholar; interview with Mrs.Brown, Amelia, Sedalia Bazoo, May 13, 1886Google Scholar, Box 2E302, folder 10, Labor Movement in Texas Collection, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin (hereafter cited as LMTQ; Tenth Census of the United States, 1880, in Heritage Quest Online, http://persi.heritagequestonline.com/hqoweb/library/do/census/search/basic;Ruggles, Steven, “The Rise of Divorce and Separation in the United States, 1880–1990,” Demography 34 (Nov. 1997): 456CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

13 James R. Irons to Ruth Allen, June 27 and Oct. 18, 1937, Box 2E302, folder 8, LMTC.

14 Behrens, E. T., “Dedication to Martin Irons,” Sept. 1907Google Scholar, Box 2E302, folder 13, LMTC.

15 Stromquist, Shelton, A Generation of Roomers: The Pattern of Railroad Labor Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America (Chicago, 1987), xiiiGoogle Scholar(quotation), 101, 193–97;Case, Theresa A., “Free Labor on the Southwestern Railroads: The 1885–1886 Gould System Strikes” (PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2002), 169–94Google Scholar.

16 , Stromquist, Generation of Boomers, 16–19Google Scholar, 144;Klein, Maury: The Life and Legend of Jay Gould (Baltimore, 1986), 261Google Scholar(1st quotation), 262, 265, 304, 308; Investigation of Labor Troubles, 1:299, 567 (2nd quotation);Painter, Nell Irvin, Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877–1919 (New York, 1987), 34Google Scholar;Dallas Morning News, Oct. 3, 1885Google Scholar;Marshall Tri-Weekly Herald, Feb. 3, 21, 1885Google Scholar.

18 Dallas Daily Herald, Mar. 14, 1885.Google Scholar

18 , Cassity, “Modernization and Social Crisis,” 45–46Google Scholar(quotation, 46); Investigation of Labor Troubles, 1:iii.

19 Missouri Republican, Mar. 16, 1885Google Scholar;Locomotive Engineers'Monthly Journal, May 1885, 275–76Google Scholar. Investigation of Labor Troubles, 2:437. The local was #3476.

21 , Allen, Great Southwest Strike, 25Google Scholar; Investigation of Labor Troubles, 1:481; Investigation of Labor Troubles, 1–2:202, 437, 457; Knights of Labor,By-Laws of District Assembly No. 101 (Sedalia, MO, 1886)Google Scholar.

22 Lippincott's Magazine, June 1886Google Scholar; Investigation of Labor Troubles, 2:435, 467.

23 Investigation of Labor Troubles, 2:440-41.

24 , Case, “Free Labor on the Southwestern Railroads,” 218–25.Google Scholar

25 Letter from Knights in Moberly, MO, to Terence Powderly, Sept. 23, 1885, and Jay Gould to Terence Powderly, Oct. 11, 1885, Incoming Correspondence, Reel 10, Terence Vincent Powderly Papers, American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives, Catholic University, Washington (cited hereafter as TVPP); Investigation of Labor Troubles, 1:378–79, 434–35, 448, 450–51, 466–67, 478–79, 485–86, 553–56.

26 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Mar. 11, 1886Google Scholar(1st quotation); Investigation of Labor Troubles, 2:449–50 (2nd quotation); Investigation of Labor Troubles, 1:482 (3rd quotation).

27 Investigation of Labor Troubles, 2:438, 440 (quotation); Cassity, “Modernization and Social Crisis,” 60.

28 Investigation of Labor Troubles, 2:205, 207, 210, 317 (quotation).McMurry, Donald L., The Great Burlington Strike of 1888: A Case History in Labor Relations (1956; New York, 1973), 30–33Google Scholar.

29 Investigation of Labor Troubles, 2:175–76, 180, 441.

30 Investigation of Labor Troubles, 1:337, 440; Investigation of Labor Troubles, 2:439–41 (quotation, 439). One participant, E. T. Behrens, confirmed this rendition of events in a letter to Ruth Allen, July 27, 1940, Box 2E302, folder 11, LMTC.

31 , Allen, Great Southwest Strike, 50; Investigation of Labor Troubles, 2:176, 441Google Scholar(quotation), 445; Behrens to Allen, July 27, 1940, Box 2E302, folder 11, LMTC.

32 Investigation of Labor Troubles, 1:332; Investigation of Labor Troubles, 2:441 (quotation);St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Mar. 5, 6, 8, 1886Google Scholar.

33 , Green, Death in the Hqymarket, 149–50.Google Scholar

34 , Phelan, Grand Master Workman, 179, 183 (quotations).Google Scholar

35 , Allen, Great Southwest Strike, 33Google Scholar;, Phelan, Grand Master Workman, 176–80Google Scholar.

36 Buchanan, Joseph, Story of a Labor Agitator (1903; Freeport, NY, 1971), 224–25.Google Scholar

37 Investigation of Labor Troubles, l:xx-xxiii, 370–78, 393–94, 560 (quotation);St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Mar. 8, 11, 1886Google Scholar.

38 Investigation of Labor Troubles, 1:392, 522–23;Missouri Republican, Mar. 5, 1886Google Scholar;St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Mar. 8, 11, 1886Google Scholar.

39 Missouri Republican, Mar. 4, 1886.Google Scholar

40 Chandler, Jerry Wayne, “The Knights of Labor and the Southwestern Strikes” (MA thesis, Florida State University, 1970), 30Google Scholar;St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Mar. 9, 1885Google Scholar;Missouri Republican, Mar. 7, 1885Google Scholar.

41 , Buchanan, Story of a Labor Agitator, 142.Google Scholar

42 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Mar. 12, 13 (quotation), 15, 1886.Google Scholar

43 Investigation of Labor Troubles, 1:424-25.

44 Investigation of Labor Troubles, 1:378, 553 (quotation).

45 Investigation of Labor Troubles, 1:342–43 (1st quotation), 378–79 (2nd quotation);St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Mar. 12, 1886Google Scholar.

46 Investigation of Labor Troubles, 1:316, 317 (quotation), 330, 372–73, 404.

41 Investigation of Labor Troubles, 1:372 (quotation); Investigation of Labor Troubles, 2:78;McMurray, Donald L., “The Legal Ancestry of the Pullman Strike Injunctions,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 14 (Jan. 1961): 237–39Google Scholar.

48 Cassity, Michael, Defending a Way of Life: An American Community in the Nineteenth Century (Albany, NY, 1989), 110–11Google Scholar(1st and 2nd quotations), 136–37 (3rd quotation).

49 See, for example, Investigation of Labor Troubles, 1:378–79. For an interpretation of race relations during the strike, see Case, Theresa A., “The Radical Potential of the Knights' Biracialism: The 1885–1886 Gould System Strikes,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas (Nov. 2007): 83–107Google Scholar.

50 The debate over the role of the frontier in inspiring western-based radicalism among workers has centered on the history of the Industrial Workers of the World. John R. Commons emphasizes the ways that the West shaped the labor movement in History of Labor in the United States, 2 vols. (New York, 1918)Google Scholar. For histories that look beyond region to other causal factors, see Dubofsky, Melvyn, We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World (1969; Urbana, 1988)Google Scholar;Jamison, Elizabeth, All That Glitters: Class, Conflict, and Community in Cripple Creek (Urbana, 1998)Google Scholar; and Brundage, David, The Making of Western Labor Radicalism: Denver's Organised Workers, 1878–1905 (Urbana, 1994)Google Scholar.

51 Powderly, Terence, The Path I Trod: The Autobiography of Terence V. Powderly, ed. Carman, Harry J., David, Henry, and Guthrie, Paul N. (New York, 1940), 120–23Google Scholar. Supporting evidence that Powderly did not concoct the story long after the fact can be found in a letter from Powderly to Irons, Mar. 25, 1886, typed copy in Box 2E302, folder 4, LMTC; Allen, The Great Southwest Strike, 56–61. Craig Phelan accepts Irons's gunslinger story. See , Phelan, Grand Master Workman, 178–83Google Scholar.

52 Investigation of Labor Troubles, 1:338–41, 370–78.

53 New Orleans Times-Democrat, Mar. 12, 1886Google Scholar;, Powderly, The Path I Trod, 120–23Google Scholar. The death of Irons's wife was confirmed in New York Times, May 10, 1886Google Scholar.

54 New York Times, Mar. 27, 1886Google Scholar;, Phelan, Grand Master Workman, 180Google Scholar. In earlier reports, the wording of Irons's warning was: “If the grievances of the Knights of Labor are not adjusted within the next three days, we will call out the Knights on every railroad in this country, and stop every wheel from moving.” See New Orleans Times-Democrat, Mar. 22, 1886Google Scholar, typed copy in Box 3E302, folder 9; and Sedalia Bazoo, Mar. 23, 1886Google Scholar, typed copy in Box 2E302, folder 10, LMTC.

5 Investigation of Labor Troubles, 1:316,318–19, 408, 422–23Official History of the Great Strike of 1886 on the Southwestern Railway System (Jefferson City, MO, 1887), 51–63Google Scholar;, Cassity, “Modernization and Social Crisis,” 56Google Scholar.

56 St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Mar. 26, 1886. References to the “manhood” of strikers and strikebreakers can be found in Investigation of Labor Troubles, 1:400, 415–18, 428. In the Gould-system conflict, I see litde evidence supporting Stephen H. Norwood's contention, in Strikebreaking and Intimidation: Mercenaries and Masculinity in Twentieth-Century America (Chapel Hill, 2002), 34Google Scholar, that strikebreakers represented to the press and public “a new soldier of fortune” who put on “conspicuous display…the more primitive and virile behavior that society increasingly valued in men because of its anxiety about ‘overcivilization’ and ‘overrefinement.’” Norwood's focus, however, is on the early twentieth century, when the professionalstrikebreaking business flourished, not on the Gilded Age.

57 St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Mar. 27, 1886Google Scholar, typed copy in Box 2E302, folder 10, LMTC;Gutman, Herbert G., Power and Culture: Essays on the American Working Class, ed. Berlin, Ira (New York, 1987), 346Google Scholar(1st quotation); Fink, , Workingmen's Democracy, 226 (2nd quotation).Google Scholar

58 Investigation of Labor Troubles, l:vi; Commons, History of Labour, 2:369.

59 Official History of the Great Strike, 74–75;, Klein, Life and Legend of Jay Gould, 361, 383Google Scholar.

60 Investigation of Labor Troubles, 1:361, Galveston Daily News, Apr. 2, 1886.

61 St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Mar. 27, 1886Google Scholar; Investigation of Labor Troubles, 1:494, 501 (2nd quotation), 503, 504, 511, 528-29, 538 (1st quotation), 549–50, 569–72, 575–84;St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Apr. 9–13, 1886Google Scholar.

62 Waco Daily Examiner, Apr. 4, 7, 1886Google Scholar;Fort Worth Gazette, Apr. 12, 1886Google Scholar; Investigation of Labor Troubles, 1:216.

63 Fort Worth Gazette, Apr. 7, 1886Google Scholar(1st quotation); Investigation of Labor Troubles, 1:429 (2nd quotation).

64 investigation of Labor Troubles, 1:514; R. N. Parmley to Ben L. Owens, Mar. 18, 1939, Box 2E301, folder 7, LMTC;St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Mar. 22, 23, Apr. 13, 1886Google Scholar.

65 Investigation of Labor Troubles, 2:259–60, 352, 406, 408–10;, Cassity, Defending a Way of Life, 142–43Google Scholar.

66 Investigation of Labor Troubles, 2:456–57.

67 Quoted in , Cassiry, Defending a Way of Life, 142.Google Scholar

68 Jeffreys-Jones, Rhodri, Violence and Reform in American History (New York, 1978), 45Google Scholar(1st quotation); Investigation of Labor Troubles, 1:536 (2nd quotation).

70 Investigation of Labor Troubles, 1:537–42 (quotation, 539). One St. Louis Knight claimed that Irons had told the crowd to “give them pills” but “only in a jocular way” and after urging that “no violence must be done.” Given Iron's prior pronouncement and a context in which strikebreakers faced intimidation and threats from strikers on a daily basis, however, it is hard to believe that his intended meaning was anything else but encouraging of the use of physical force. See Investigation of Labor Troubles, 2:430–31. Railway officials almost certainly welcomed the spy's report because labor movement violence promised to further alienate the press and public, which historically equated violent labor activists with unionists generally, thereby facilitating employers' use of state and private aid in repressing trade unionism and strikes. Two specific examples of this pattern can be found in Kenny, Kevin, Making Sense of the Molly Maguires (Oxford, 1998)Google Scholar, and Fine, Sidney, ‘Without Blare of Trumpets’: Walter Drew, the National Erectors' Association, and the Open Shop Movement, 1903–57 (Ann Arbor, 1995)Google Scholar.

70 Tosh, John, The Pursuit of History (London, 2002), 158–59Google Scholar, 276, 277. Psychologists have recently developed a typology of male batterers. A “family-only” batterer is more likely to use low levels of violence against family members, feel remorse, and be alcohol- and drug-free. They are “the least likely to engage in violence outside the home or to have related legal problems.” “Dysphoric/borderline” and “generally violent/antisocial” batterers are distinguished mainly by the severity of their abuse. They (the latter group more than the former) are more likely to use alcohol or drugs and to “engage in…extrafamilial aggression.” See Holtzworth-Munroe, Amy and Stuart, Gregory L., “Typologies of Male Batterers: Three Subtypes and the Differences among Them,” Psychological Bulletin 116 (1994): 476–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar. More recent research on batterer typologies confirms these findings and suggests that these subgroups tend to continue to differ over time. See Holtzworth-Munroe, Amy and Meehan, Jeffrey C., “Partner Violence and Men: A Focus on the Male Perpetrator” in Family Psychology: The Art of the Science, ed. Pinsof, William and Lebow, Jay (New York, 2005), 169–89Google Scholar; and “Do Subtypes of Maritally Violent Men Continue to Differ Over Time?” Journal of Counseling and Clinical Psychology 71 (Aug. 2003): 728–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 Gitelman, H. M., “Perspectives on American Industrial Violence,” Business History Review 47 (Spring 1973): 1–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar(quotation, 17).

72 Smith, Robert Michael, From Blackjacks to Briefcases: A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States (Athens, OH, 2003), 7–14Google Scholar;Morn, Frank, The Eye that Never Sleeps: A History of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency (Bloomington, IN, 1982), 95–101Google Scholar;Furlong, Thomas, Fifty Years a Detective (St. Louis, 1912)Google Scholar. The Furlong Secret Service Company went on to act as a major source of intelligence on revolutionary exiles (including Francisco Madero and the magonistas) for Porfirio Diaz's regime in Mexico; see Raat, William Dirk, “The Diplomacy of Suppression: Los Revoltosos, Mexico, and the United States, 1906–1911,” Hispanic American Historical'Review 56 (Nov. 1976): 544–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Both Raat and Smith note that the term “Pinkerton” was often used generically to describe any company-paid guard or detective.

73 , Green, Death in the Haymarhet, 149–50.Google Scholar

74 Investigation of Labor Troubles, 1:493, 494, 503, 505 (1st, 2nd quotations), 539 (3rd quotation). Because no explanation of the meaning of “boss striker” appears to exist, I assume the official meant that these men were strike leaders. His use of the term “boss” conveys Gould-system managers' view of the 1886 strike, which held that an aggressive minority had initiated the strike and, using intimidation and violence, had imposed it on the working-class majority.

75 Texarkana Independent, Apr. 19 (1st quotation), 21, 1886Google Scholar;Louisville Commercial, Apr. 21, 1886Google Scholar(2nd quotation);Galveston Daily News, Apr. 6, 1886 (3rd quotation)Google Scholar.

1 investigation of Labor Troubles, l:xiv, xxv;St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 10, 1886Google Scholar;New York Times, May 10, 1886Google Scholar;Sedalia Bazoo, Mar. 27, May 21, 22, 1886Google Scholar, Box 2E302, folder 10, LMTC.

77 , Allen, Great Southwest Strike, 101Google Scholar;Leach, Eugene E., “Chaining the Tiger: The Mob Stigma and the Working Class, 1863–1894,” Labor History 35 (Spring 1994): 208–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar;St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 6 (quotation), 11, 1886Google Scholar.

78 Sedalia Bazoo, Apr. 21, 1886Google Scholar, in Box 2E302, folder 5, LMTC.

79 Jefferson City Daily Tribune, Dec. 17, 1891Google Scholar, in Box 2E302, folder 9, LMTC.

80 Fort Worth Gazette, Oct. 1, 1894Google Scholar, Aug. 9, 1895, typed copies in Box 2E302, folder 5, LMTC.

81 Allen's notes on interview of T. F. Mayfield in Bruceville, Texas, June 1938, in Box 2E302, folder 9;Jefferson City State Tribune, Dec 6, 1900Google Scholar, in Box 2E302, folder 8, LMTC.

82 , Gorn, Mother Jones, 34–41Google Scholar;Salvatore, Nick, “Eugene V. Debs: From Trade Unionist to Socialist” in Labor Leaders in America, ed. Dubofsky, Melvyn and Tine, Warren Van (Urbana, 1987), 89–110Google Scholar.

83 Frazier, Ian, “Invaders: Destroying Baghdad,” The New Yorker, Apr. 25, 2005.Google Scholar