Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 July 1902 — BIG CHICAGO STRIKE. [ARTICLE]

BIG CHICAGO STRIKE.

NINE THOUSAND FREIGHT HANDLERS GO OUT. Great Fight Threatens Loss of Vast Sums in Commercial World Merchandise Worth Fortunes Held on Wagons Because of Railroad Tie-Un. With every freight line entering Chicago practically tied up, 9.000 out of a total of 12,000 freight handlers on strike, wholesale business at a standstill and hundreds of special policemen gnarding freight sheds, Chicago Monday felt a condition strongly in keeping with the great railroad strike of 1894. Pursuant to their decision of Sunday the officers of tfie Interior Freight Handlers’ and Warehousemen’s Union, finding their demands for higher wages and happier hours ignored by the managers of the twenty-six roads centering in Chicago, declared a strike effective Monday morning and at 9 a. ui. every union member quit work. The men demanded increased wages for different classes of workers in the union and recognition of their organization. The general manager of the railroads made a counter proposition embracing non-recog-nition of the union and a scale of wages lower than that proposed by the workers. The reply of the men to this was the order to strike. The railroads decline to submit the differences to arbitration and refuse to deal as a unit with the union. Each road insists upon dealing in its own way with its own men, The strikers say they are willing to waive recognition of the union and are willing tlyft each road shall deal with its Own employes, but they insist that each road shall pay its men the union scale of wages. As soon as a road agrees to pay the union scale the strike will be declared off on that particular line. As soon as the strike was declared the railroad managers began bringing in hundreds of outside men, all of whom are housed and fed in cars which are guarded by special and city policemen. Strike Causes Widespread Losses. The sudden suspension of customary operations by the freight handlers occasioned widespread trouble in and about the various railroad warehouses and depots. By noon the shipping interests of the city were practically paralyzed, and the wholesale houses were bombarding the railroad agents with questions. Police were massed about the various freight houses, and the big doors o t the long railroad sheds were dropped down, while the striking workingmen gathered on the corners or hurried over to union headquarters to await developments. Hundreds of heavily loaded trucks from wholesale houses all over the city were dragged up the inclines to the freight house doors, and there was a blockade before it came to be generally known that the war of the freight handlers for increased wages and union recognition had been inaugurated. The pickets and their sympathizers surrounded each new arrival in the long lines of wagons end urged the drivers not to deliver goods to non-union workers in the freight house#. They received assurances from practically everyone they approached that their wishes would be respected, but their work was almost unnecessary, since there was not one of the houses in that tier of railroad shipping quarters that was making any effort to take in anything in the way of freight. One thousand men from the Illinois Central and the Michigan Central railroads joined forces with the workers who filed out of the Wisconsin Central buildings. and they marched through the downtown streets. A halt was called on the lake front and several speakers mounted to the platform of a wagon and harangued the big gathering, urging them to keep cool and do nothing to precipitate a clash with the police.