a rise of prices and, consequently, industrial prosperity--not the
phantastic scheme of the National Labor Union. Yet in the Presidential
election of 1876 the Greenback party candidate, Peter Cooper, the well
known manufacturer and philanthropist, drew only a poor 100,000, which
came practically from the rural districts only. It was not until the
great strikes of 1877 had brought in their train a political labor
upheaval that the greenback movement assumed a formidable form.

The strikes of 1877, which on account of the wide area affected, the
degree of violence displayed, and the amount of life and property lost,
impressed contemporaries as being nothing short of social revolution,
were precipitated by a general ten percent reduction in wages on the
three trunk lines running West, the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore & Ohio,
and the New York Central, in June and July 1877. This reduction came on
top of an earlier ten percent reduction after the panic. The railway men
were practically unorganized so that the steadying influence of previous
organization was totally lacking in the critical situation of unrest
which the newly announced wage reduction created. One must take also
into account that in the four terrible years which elapsed since the
panic, America had developed a new type of a man--the tramp--who
naturally gravitated towards places where trouble was expected.

The first outbreak occurred at Martinsburg, West Virginia, on July 17,
the day after the ten percent reduction had gone into effect. The
strike spread like wildfire over the adjacent sections of the Baltimore
& Ohio road, the strikers assuming absolute control at many points. The
militia was either unwilling or powerless to cope with the violence. In
Baltimore, where in the interest of public safety all the freight trains
had stopped running, two companies of militia were beleaguered by a mob
to prevent their being dispatched to Cumberland, where the strikers were
in control. Order was restored only when Federal troops arrived.

But these occurrences fade into insignificance when compared with the
destructive effects of the strike on the Pennsylvania in and around
Pittsburgh. The situation there was aggravated by a hatred of the
Pennsylvania railway corporation shared by nearly all residents on the
ground of an alleged rate discrimination against the city. The
Pittsburgh militia fraternized with the strikers, and when 600 troops
which arrived from Philadelp