Burlington Railroad Strike of 1888

The Burlington railroad strike of 1888 was a seminal labor stoppage which pitted members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (B of LE), the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen (B of LF), and the Switchmen's Mutual Aid Association (SMAA) against the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (CB&Q). The strike began in February of 1888 and continued through the end of that year, with the railway ultimately winning the test of strength with its employees. Virtually all striking employees were ultimately terminated from employment.

The Burlington system of railroads was one of the great transportation networks of the 19th Century, operating about 6,000 miles of line in 1888, the year of the great strike. The system consisted of seven individual railroads, of which the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (CB&Q) was the core unit, headed by company President Charles Elliott Perkins from 1881 and young General Manager Henry B. Stone. The line was conservatively managed and profitable, paying its largely Boston-based investors healthy annual dividends of 8 percent throughout the decade of the 1880s.

The profitability of the Burlington line rested on the twin pillars of maintenance of high shipping rates through pricing agreements with competitive lines and the suppression of wage rates, with President Perkins taking the view that wages were set by the simple market principle of supply and demand, leaving no room for misguided external intervention practices such as arbitration.

Perkins was hostile to the notion of unionization and to the strike movement, approving a local decision to terminate striking Chicago freight handlers in 1886 and seeking to "go for" the Knights of Labor (KOL) in the wake of that union's strikes upon other rail lines in that year. The company formally served notice on its workers that membership in the KOL and continued employment by the Burlington line was incompatible, forcing many members to quit the union to keep their jobs.

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