"The Cruel Striker War" - NIU Digital Projects

local cigarmakers and pipefitters had organized, rail labor provided
the mainstay of the local labor movement, particularly after the
Sante Fe Railroad extended a line through the town. During the
1877 strike, the BLE had organized participants "into different
parties, representing the different classes of railroad employees,"
probably sowing the seeds for the new locals of firemen,
conductors and brakemen. 27
By 1885, the formation in Galesburg of the Knox and
Bennet Assemblies of the Knights of Labor most concerned the
CB&Q. Although these "mixed" assemblies recruited "producers"
of various occupations, the order's recent strikes on the railroads
made it particularly attractive for workers in that industry
unprotected by the craft brotherhoods. The CB&Q management
blacklisted the Knights, but its informers reported that "young men
barely out of their apprenticeship have been decoyed into it, as well
as some of our apprentices." Railroad officials consoled
themselves that few skilled workers in their industry participated,
and that railroaders in general supplied only 150 of the estimated
Galesburg membership of about 400 Knights. 28
Galesburg had reacted to the strike of 1877 and its aftermath
as a self-governing small town rather than as a locally-managing
component of a much larger and expanding corporate order. By the
standards of the railroad, however, the town had failed to defend
the prerogatives of corporate power. 1888 brought the community
another, definitive challenge.
III
The CB&Q strike of 1888 revealed the new status of
working class citizenship. Workers long resented the railroad's
method of computing wages for work over the road, believing that
it cheapened both their identity in the community and the stability
of their families. The BLE and Brotherhood of Locomotive
Firemen responded to management's refusal to negotiate with a
strike call on February 27, 1888. Members now told each other that
94