Denver streetcar strike of 1920

The Denver streetcar strike of 1920 was a labor action and series of urban riots in downtown Denver, Colorado, beginning on August 1, 1920 and lasting six days. Seven were killed [1] and 50 seriously injured in clashes among striking streetcar workers, strike-breakers, local police, federal troops and the public. This was the "largest and most violent labor dispute involving transportation workers and federal troops".[2]

Background

Denver Tramway Company building, newly built as its headquarters in 1912

Denver streetcar workers had organized in July 1918 as local 746 of the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees of America. Within a year, that union had successfully brought new rulings from the War Labor Board that eliminated war-time restrictions, giving them an eight-hour day and a wage hike.[2] The employer, Denver Tramway Company, violated the board's orders, underpaid the workers, and was the target of a four-day strike in July 1919.

Positions hardened through the next year. In July 1920, the company again threatened to cut wages unless the city allowed fare increases. The city wouldn't allow that. 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.[3]

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".[3] 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.[4] 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 Denver Post building and the Tramway Building, another overran Union Station in search of Jerome, others fought with police in the downtown district. Two were killed that evening and 33 wounded, including the chief of police, who was hit in the face with a brickbat.

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.[3]

Resolution

Later on Friday, Bailey and Governor 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".[3]

The Denver Tramway Company filed for bankruptcy. The strike destroyed the union local, which would not reform until 1933. All seven of the fatal casualties had been bystanders.

References

  1. ↑ "DENVERCARMEN WILLING TO RETURN" (Number 41, pg 3). Sacramento Union. 10 August 1920. Retrieved 23 March 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."
  2. 1 2 Laurie, Clayton D. (Jul 15, 1997). The role of federal military forces in domestic disorders, 1877-1945. Government Printing Office. p. 273.
  3. 1 2 3 4 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.
  4. ↑ 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.
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