nsportation system.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company, some time after the panic of 1873,
reduced the wages of its employees ten per cent., and, on account of the
general decline in business, made another reduction of ten per cent. to
take effect on June 1, 1877; these reductions to apply to all employees
from the president of the company down. The reductions affected the
roads known as the Pennsylvania Lines west of Pittsburgh, as well as the
Pennsylvania Railroad, and similar alterations were also made on the New
York Central and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroads. The changed conditions
caused a great deal of dissatisfaction among the trainmen, but a
committee was appointed by them, which held a conference with Mr. Thomas
A. Scott, President of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and agreed to
the reduction, reporting its conclusions to the trainmen.

On July 16th an order was issued by the railroad company that thirty-six
freight-cars, instead of eighteen, as before, were to be made up as a
train, without increase in the number of the crew, and with a locomotive
at the end to act as a pusher, assisting the one at the front, making
what is technically called "a double header." The train employees looked
upon this order as doubling their work under the decreased pay of June
1st, and in its effect virtually tending to the discharge of many men
then employed in the running of freight-trains. The strike which
followed does not seem to have been seriously organized, but was rather
a sudden conclusion arrived at on the impulse of the moment, and was
probably strengthened by a wave of discontent which was sweeping over
the roads to the east and west, as well as by an undercurrent of
hostility toward the railroads exhibited by some of the newspapers. As
far back as July 23, 1876, a Pittsburgh paper, in publishing an article
headed "Railroad Vultures," had said: "Railroad officials are commencing
to understand that the people of Pittsburgh will be patient no longer;
that this community is being aroused into action, and that presently the
torrent of indignation will give place to condign retribution"; and in
another paragraph the same paper had said: "We desire to impress upon
the minds of the community that these vultures are constantly preying
upon the wealth and resources of the country; they are a class, as it
were, of money jugglers intent only on practising their trickery for
self aggrandizement, and that, consequently, thei