Illinois Central shopmen's strike of 1911

The Illinois Central shopmen's strike of 1911 was a labor action of a number of railroad worker's unions against the Illinois Central Railroad, beginning on September 30, 1911. The strike was marked by its violence. At least 12 were killed across the country. It was also judged a failure within months, long before its formal ending on June 28, 1915.

The Illinois Central and the eight affiliated Harriman lines had recognized and successfully negotiated with individual shopcraft unions for some time. But in June 1911, these unions sought additional leverage by negotiating together as the "System Federation".

The railroad simply refused and replaced the strikers. The first day of the strike was relatively peaceful, with a reported 30,000 strikers walking out at 10:00 a.m. in at least 24 cities, most in the south and midwest but as far west as Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Because of its geography, the state of Mississippi was dependent on Illinois Central lines. Violence flared there first, on October 3. A train carrying strikebreakers pulling in to McComb, Mississippi was met by an armed and waiting crowd of 100 strikers. The crowd and passengers exchanged gunfire and thrown bricks, then the badly shot-up train fled. Reports of high casualties were not accurate. One striker named Hugh Montgomery, supposedly killed by a brick, later testified for an investigating committee, and nobody on the train was killed. But with many injured by the hundreds of shots exchanged in the space of 20 minutes, the incident was serious enough for Governor Edmond Noel to call out the state guard. Also on October 3, a striking switchman named Robert Mitchell was killed by a strikebreaker in Cairo, Illinois, and 35 strikebreakers were chased out of Denison, Texas by an angry mob.

The same day, a "special guard" named J.J. Pipes was killed at the Southern Pacific yards in Houston, perhaps from the friendly fire of other strikebreakers, and others wounded. At one o'clock the following morning on the shop grounds in Houston, a strikebreaker named Frank Tullis was shot and killed, most likely by a striker or sympathizer. Also on the 4th, back in McComb, a striker named Lem Haley was fatally shot by other strikers, even as the governor ordered four more companies of state militia to counter "hundreds of heavily armed men" pouring into the town.

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