St. Louis Commune Of 1877

Working people in the US weren’t always afraid to strike. In the 21st century, we see a variety of tactics used to organize unions, win contracts, and otherwise seek justice and power at the workplace.

Nearly 150 years ago, when plutocrats built gigantic mansions instead of rockets to display their wealth and power, the Great Upheaval showed the world what workers were capable of. In the summer of 1877, four years into a depression, some of the most exploited, yet most powerful workers in the country fought for a living wage (or perhaps just a something-above-starving wage). Some of them even thought that democracy required working class rule.

At the heart of this upheaval were the railroad workers of St. Louis, led by the socialist Workingmens Party. [a:Mark Kruger|3448704|Mark Kruger|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]’s [b:The St. Louis Commune of 1877: Communism in the Heartland|57527285|The St. Louis Commune of 1877 Communism in the Heartland|Mark Kruger|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1628129355l/57527285.SX50.jpg|90082574] brings this struggle to life.

The upheaval started on July 16, 1877 in Martinsburg, a town in rural West Virginia, when rail workers walked off the job to protest 10% wage cuts. It quickly spread through 11 states, including urban areas like Baltimore’s Camden Yards, Pittsburgh, Chicago and East St. Louis, Illinois, the country’s westward rail hub.

State militias dispatched to break the strikes were mostly composed of workers who sided with the strikers.

On July 21, rail workers in East St. Louis declared support for the strike, and elected a strike committee the following day. The strike committee issued General Order No. 1, ordering workers to stop all freight traffic. Strikers allowed passenger and mail trains to continue.

Over the next seven days, thousands turned out for nightly rallies addressed by railroad workers and socialists from the Workingmens Party (WPUSA), and daily visits to workplaces in St. Louis to call the workers to join the strike.

At the height of the strike, Kruger writes that “The WPUSA had taken control of events in St. Louis and established what would become known as the St. Louis Commune. It sought to operate the city in the interests of the working class while leading the strike against the railroad corporations.

"Subsequently the party would direct and coordinate all labor actions in St. Louis and, for a time, rule the city itself.” (235).

Roughly one in five WPUSA members lived in the St. Louis area at the time of the railroad strike.

St. Louis was home to two of the key ingredients required to radicalize the strike movement: German immigrants, many of them veterans of the 1848 revolutions in Europe and the US Civil War, and the American section of the First International, the Workingmens Party.

Kruger covers these elements and more in chapters that contextualize the strikes of 1877. For good measure, he throws in the story of the Paris Commune of 1871, the boogieman that terrified both the ruling class and newspaper editorial writers throughout the Upheaval.

The Paris Commune of 1871 arose in the wake of France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. When the French government surrendered territory to the Prussian army, the citizens of Paris seized power in the city and held it for several months, aiming to build a democratic system based on the interests of working people.

Three months after the Commune was organized and elections held, the French army put down the Commune in a very bloody crackdown, but its influence remained for a long time after.

Karl Marx described the Commune in The Civil War in France as the first example of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat.’ He also described the reaction from the capitalist class and media: “When the great conflagration took place in Chicago, the telegraph round the world announced it as the infernal deed of the International, and it is really wonderful that to its demoniacal agency has not been attributed the hurricane ravaging the West Indies.”

Kruger's accessible style and the wealth of context he brings to what is essentially a one-week battle offers a very good introduction to readers unfamiliar with working class history.

He concludes that “The railroad strike of 1877 reflected the frustration of American workers with 19th century industrial capitalism, but it did not have the leadership or focused revolutionary drive to overthrow the system it so overwhelmingly rejected.” (213).

One might quibble whether a “commune” was ever established in St. Louis, when the strike committee continued to negotiate with the same government in power the week before. Yet they pioneered many of the tactics used in the general strikes of the early 20th century in Seattle, Minneapolis and San Francisco.

Kruger offers inspiration and valuable lessons to workers and other 21st century social movements.