"The Cruel Striker War" - NIU Digital Projects

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to a reporter for the Republican Register that unionists "had been favored too much" in the paper and sarcastically wondered if it would print that the young strikebreaker had "jumped on four big men and attempted to kill them." Authorities took no action against the gunman who had opened fire, but arrested two strikers charged with assault. 32 Despite warnings, the Register continued to chronicle incidents of fisticuffs and gunfire, often sparked by chance encounters and frequently numbering several in a week. Empowered as a local police, the CB&Q special force taunted, threatened, and brawled with striking citizens. The local courts, in contrast, prosecuted about a dozen cases against workers for carrying concealed weapons, assault with a deadly weapon, or even assault with intent to kill. 33 Angry strikers responded to the new role of the city authorities by reasserting their own prerogatives as citizens. In the first month of the strike, they documented harassment by the special police in formal complaints to the city council. Its inaction led to trade unionist intervention in the city elections of April 3. While the Republican party remained locally unbeatable in national and state elections, a proposal to establish "dry" districts in the city had polarized Galesburg politics for several years between the Citizens and the "wet" Liberals. This issue expressed deeply rooted social and ethnic conflicts, but, even in this small community, the division was quite complex. The Citizens rallied not only the older, middle class American Protestants but pietistic Swedes and even saloonkeepers eager to remove competitors. The pro-Citizen Register cited signs "posted in one of the saloons, notifying the colored people not to loaf around there," turning "so large a proportion of the colored voters" against the Liberals that defeat seemed likely." Eager to make the city's relationship to the CB&Q the central issue, the strikers intervened in the election. Railroad workers entered the ward meetings of the weakest side, usually the Liberals, and secured the nomination of their own candidates in all but one ward. "The strikers having the time to put in at the polls, 96
were there in full force," wrote one reporter. "So many workers of this and other kinds were out at the Fifth ward that the walks were thronged and the yard crowded. It looked as if a big picnic was going on. There was also a big force of strikers in the Fourth ward precincts." The results left the Register to take solace in the 1110 "dry" votes and the total defeat of the nonlabor "wets," assuring readers that "but for the unexpected element of the strike entering into the contest, they [the Liberals] would have been licked out of their boots." Workers elected two striking engineers to the city council. Both Peter Erickson, who carried the Fourth Ward 288 to 281, and Lewis E. Hinckley, who won the Fifth by 210 to 179, remain obscure figures. Heavily represented among employees of the CB&Q for years, the Erickson surname had been prominent earlier in the Bishop Hill community, and there a Peter Erickson had served in a Union regiment raised in northwestern Illinois. The Hinckley surname belonged to an old American family long immersed in the third party agitation of the local farmers. 35 While possibly less successful in addressing "colored" voters, labor politics in Galesburg seems to have fused the local legacy of Swedish communism with an indigenous antimonopolism. Labor's victory, however, failed to change the city government's new subservience to the CB&Q. In Galesburg, as elsewhere, workers' deep mistrust of governmental authority, usually directed against themselves, tempered their own exercise of power. The presence of two labor councilmen did expose and somewhat moderate the behavior of the special police. More importantly, as the dynamics of economic concentration began to centralize American political life, local representative institutions found that often vital decisions affecting their area would be made by corporate and governmental bodies in Chicago, Springfield, and Washington. 36 Neither working-class residents nor officeholders could prevent the arming of strikebreakers and the escalation of violence, as the strike grew longer and more desperate. Within days of his 97
Page 1 and 2: "The Cruel Striker War" Rail Labor
Page 3 and 4: prairie. With money "little known a
Page 5 and 6: Traveling lecturers like Ralph Wald
Page 7 and 8: at 3500. Swedes in Galesburg oversh
Page 9 and 10: made little more than common labore
Page 11 and 12: planned "excursion party" by rail t
Page 13 and 14: community and its officers. Steeped
Page 15: CB&Q stood for "Come, Boys & Quit R
Page 19 and 20: Similar methods uncovered and docum
Page 21 and 22: entered a nolle prosequi in Novembe
Page 23 and 24: Knights of Labor, represented a wor
Page 25 and 26: discussed in this paper. It is the
Page 27 and 28: County, 11-12, 13-14, 17-21, 35. Th
Page 29 and 30: 23, 1886. Returns are also given in
Page 31 and 32: 40. Salmon, The Burlington Strike,

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