Great Railroad Strike of 1922
| Great Railroad Strike of 1922 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Workers leave their railroad duties to strike | |||
| Date | July 1, 1922 – September 1922 | ||
| Location | Nationwide | ||
| Caused by | A cut in wages paid to maintenance workers | ||
| Methods | Railway shopmen walked off the job on July 1, 1922 launching a nationwide railway strike. | ||
| Parties | |||
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| Number | |||
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| Casualties | |||
| Death(s) | 10 | ||
The Great Railroad Strike of 1922, or the Railway Shopmen's Strike, was a nationwide strike of railroad workers in the United States. Launched on July 1, 1922, by seven of the sixteen extant railroad labor organizations, the strike continued into August before collapsing. A sweeping judicial injunction by Judge James Herbert Wilkerson effectively ended the strike on September 1, 1922.
At least ten strikers or family members were killed during the work stoppage. The collective action of some 400,000 workers in the summer of 1922 was the largest railroad strike since the American Railway Union's Pullman Strike of 1894 and the biggest American strike of any kind since the Great Steel Strike of 1919.
The strikes were seen as a major failure for the Harding Administration; the administration's handling of the strikers led by Attorney General Harry Daugherty, were criticized for their heavy handed tactics, and the inability to resolve the dispute damaged their credibility further. The Republicans would suffer major losses in the 1922 United States elections as a consequence of the strike.