When there was trouble on the railroad

Even though McCook has always acknowledged that she was a railroad town, and the citizens have been grateful for the things that the railroad has done, that does not mean that McCook has been immune from trouble be-tween the railroad and the unions.

In 1888, the first severe labor trouble affecting railway employees in Southwest Nebraska reared its ugly head. On Feb. 27, 1888, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Locomotive Firemen went out on strike, and their strike brought traffic to a standstill on the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy system. 1,600 engineers and firemen, acting in obedience to orders from their respective organizations, officially walked off the job and abandoned their engines at the nearest terminal.

The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers was known as one of the strongest and most reputable of the trade unions and had a history of always settling differences by arbitration. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen had no formal affiliation with the Engineers, but they had similar grievances, and in 1888 they were working together. Four Nebraskans, including Stewart E. Hoge, of McCook, represented the Engineers, and four Nebraskans, including E.J. Ebersole, of McCook, represented the Firemen.

The strikers were demanding:

* Their pay should be governed by miles, instead of by the day.

* Their average pay should be increased. (This was the most important issue).

* The classification system should be abolished.

All together, 282 engineers and 288 firemen on the CB&Q in Nebraska took part in the strike, and brought rail transportation to a standstill.

The railroad immediately responded by sending an agent to Reading, Pa., to recruit trainmen who had been unemployed by a strike on the Philadelphia and Reading line. Urgent telegraph messages offered work to idle engineers and men in the shops who could manage an engine. The Reading strikers notified Manager Stone of the CB & Q that they would send 300 engineers the next day.

The first day of the strike found 200 Burlington engineers and firemen stationed in McCook, but all trains, both passenger and freight were left at division stations. The men were determined that they would strike until their grievances were settled, but they vowed that there would be no noise or display of violence. As trains pulled into the station, engineers and firemen left them on the track and the yard was filled with trains.

The afternoon of the first day the company attempted to start a train, east. It was reported that the strikers had offered the engineer $100 to leave his engine. When he refused, the train was stopped by strikers, the engineer and the fireman were forcibly removed from the cab, the engine was uncoupled, side-tracked and "killed" -- the engine, not the engineer and fireman.

The Culbertson paper reported that the Headquarters of the Engineers Brotherhood had telegraphed $1,000 to a McCook bank for use by the McCook Engineers, with more forthcoming should it be necessary to carry on the strike.

Reports repeatedly stated that members of the Engineers' Committee were assuring the postmaster that they stood ready to carry on Uncle Sam's postal business.

When the company called upon the sheriff to organize a group of citizens to act as deputies to protect men going out on trains, they could not recruit a single man, so the company gave up the idea of starting a train that day. A call by McCook's mayor to the governor requesting the state militia elicited a vigorous protest, signed by 40 business men---saying there was no rioting, no damage to property and no danger to life, so there was no need to call in the militia. The appeal was dropped.

Soon, however, the company called in 50 Pinkerton officials to McCook, and the company was able to get out three passenger trains, one west, two east. The Pinkerton officers virtually put the depot and rail yard under an armed guard. McCook Engineer McEnroy was seriously beaten by a Pinkerton operative for refusing to leave the platform, and for making treats against the detective. Several strikers were arrested on the charge of interfering with the United States mail. A mass meeting was held in McCook to denounce the RR Co. for using police and detectives to guard their property.

By April, crews brought in by the company were operating trains efficiently enough to maintain a near-regular schedule. Some of the strikers had taken other jobs, and many were anxious to have back their old jobs at their same pay.

CB & Q Gen. Manager Holdrege announced," The backbone of the strike is entirely broken, and our road is not feeling the effects of it…We have a full quota of engineers, firemen, and switchmen, and they are as efficient and in some instances a good deal more so, than the old men. It is a fact that we are running all our trains and that our present freight engineers are hauling more cars with the same engines and on the same grades than we were with the old engineers. We are paying them good wages, about the average paid by roads around us." When a reporter asked him to estimate what the strike had cost both sides, he replied, "I think we have lost nothing…We are in the right and I think the result has improved the general condition of railways throughout the country. It has taught men that they can not run companies upon which they are employed."

Still, when representatives of the unions, including McCook's Mr. Hoge, visited McCook in July they were assured that local union members were determined to continue the strike. The strikers were informed that they would continue to receive $40 per month as long as the strike lasted. (Nebraska strikers received $60,000 during the strike.)

After more than 10 months, the strike was settled on Jan. 4, 1889, with the CB&Q agreeing to employ what men they needed from the unions (though they dropped to the bottom of the seniority board) and to recommend the others to anyone who would give them employment.

The 1888 strike was just one incident in a great movement of unrest that was sweeping the nation, in the relationship between capital and labor.

The strikers had lost much, and on the surface at least, had gained nothing. The railroad company claimed victory, but it, too, had suffered substantial losses.

From an editorial in the Omaha Bee News: "A majority of the people…are favorable to the Engineers. The Engineers' opinion was that this unfortunate state of affairs could have been averted had the Burlington officials been willing to do what is being done in 90 percent of the railroads in the country."

And so ended the first crisis in McCook's railroad history. Because of the restraint shown by workers in McCook, the affair was spared much of the physical violence that was demonstrated at locations in the east.

Certainly, the strike imposed great hardship upon the workers, and this hardship was shared to an extent by all the citizens of McCook, but overall, this strike proved to be merely a painful bump on the road to prosperity for both the unions and for McCook.

-- Source: An Early History of McCook, by Marion McClelland. Photo, Gazette Centennial issue.