Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 December 1900 — STRIKE OF TELEGRAPHERS. [ARTICLE]

STRIKE OF TELEGRAPHERS.

fits Hundred Operator* in the West Join the Battle. Six hundred telegraph operators on tha lines of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad struck Saturday in sympathy with the operators on the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Rallfbad, a branch of the Atchison system, who went out Thursday. The entire number of operators on the system is 1,200, of whom 900 are said to be union men. Of the 900 members it the union 300, it is stated, refused to strike, leaving the system with about one-half of its men at work. The officials of the road declare that under no circumstances will they yield to the strikers and that none of them will ever again be allowed to work for the company in any capacity. The operators on the main line of the Atchison system demanded some weeks ago an increase in pay and some changes in rules. The negotiations with the company had reached an acute state when the company conceded the demands of the men and the trouble was averted. The new order of things did not prevail on the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe and the operators there demanded an increase of pay and alterations in the rules, whereby men were compelled to attt as telegraph operators and station agents also. The demand was refused and the men went out. Saturday night the men on the main system went out in sympathy.