Denver streetcar strike of 1920
Denver streetcar strike | |||
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Part of rioting, street fighting | |||
Parties | |||
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Casualties | |||
Death(s) | 7 | ||
Injuries | 50 |
The Denver streetcar strike of 1920 was a labor action and series of urban riots in downtown
Background
While generous for the company the 1906 franchise specified a fixed rate fare, set at 5 cents, and the requirement that Denver Tramway pay 50% maintenance on any roadway on which it had a two-way line. As automobile traffic increased in the early twentieth century, maintenance on the roads became much more costly. Though the company was seeing record ridership levels - by 1917 it was making 62 million trips a year - it was not able to increase its fares to cover its increased expenses. The Tramway company petitioned the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, who authorized a 2-cent fare increase. The city of Denver sued and in 1919 Dewey C. Bailey was elected mayor on a promise to reinstate the 5-cent fare. The Denver Tramway Company responded with layoffs and pay cuts.[4]
Denver streetcar workers had organized in July 1918 as local 746 of the
Positions hardened through the next year. In July 1920, the company again threatened to cut wages unless the city allowed fare increases. The public opposed a fare increase and the city wouldn't allow it. Workers voted to strike, and the union delivered an ultimatum with a deadline of August 1. The company responded by hiring the California strike-breaker John "Black Jack" Jerome.[5]
Strike
The strike brought the city to a standstill. On August 3 Jerome arrived by train with his first 37 men, a mix of college students, guards, detectives, and men "of a minor criminal class familiar to police departments east and west".[5] Jerome's men were obviously armed, not only with their own weapons, but armed by the city as deputized special officers.
On August 4 Jerome himself is said to have piloted the first car to defy the strikers, from a barn at Fourteenth and Arapahoe. That car was overturned by a mob, and triggered a physical confrontation between Jerome's men and union sympathizers.[6]
Three cars made a circuit of the city. The first serious violence happened on the afternoon of Thursday the 5th, as parading union demonstrators encountered two streetcars headed back to the barn. Then into the evening three or four separate violent mobs formed in the city. One crowd of 2000 led an attack on the anti-union
At 1 a.m. on Friday August 6, Mayor Dewey C. Bailey announced that the scope of violence was more than the city's police could handle. Almost one third of the police force had sustained significant injuries. Bailey called for 2,000 citizen volunteers to be armed as a militia. The violence continued. That evening, five more people were shot to death, and 25 wounded, at the East Division car barns when strikebreakers fired into a crowd.[5]
Resolution
Later on Friday, Bailey and Governor Oliver Shroup appealed for federal assistance. Colonel C.C. Ballou arrived in the early hours of Saturday the 7th with 250 troops from Fort Logan and put Denver under martial law.
This quelled the violence almost immediately. Ballou's commander Maj. Gen. Leonard Wood arrived to inspect the scene on the 9th, and would later say that arming the strikebreakers had been "a colossal blunder". In the aftermath of the strike, the Denver Tramway Company filed for bankruptcy.[5]
The strike destroyed the union local, which would not reform until 1933. All seven of the fatal casualties had been bystanders.
References
- ^ "DENVERCARMEN WILLING TO RETURN". No. 41, 3. Sacramento Union. August 10, 1920. Retrieved March 23, 2016.
Leonard A. Temmer, 18, died in a hospital today as a result of being shot during rioting Thursday night. His death brought the total death list of the riots to seven.
- ^ a b Laurie, Clayton D. (July 15, 1997). The role of federal military forces in domestic disorders, 1877-1945. Government Printing Office. p. 273.
- ^ King, Clyde Lyndon (1911). The history of the government of Denver with special reference to its relations with public service corporations. Denver, Colorado: The Fisher Book Company.
- ISBN 9780195141412.
- ^ a b c d Devine, Edward T. (1921). The Denver tramway strike of 1920 : report of an investigation made under the auspices of the Denver Commission of Religious Forces. New York: The Denver Commission of Religious Forces. p. 24.
- ^ Enyeart, John Paul (2009). The Quest for "just and Pure Law": Rocky Mountain Workers and American Social Democracy, 1870-1924. Stanford University Press. p. 235.