Caption: A drawing by a St. Louis Post-Dispatch staff artist that ran on May 8, 1900, the day that members of the Railway Employees Union voted to strike the St. Louis Transit Co., the largest streetcar company in St. Louis. Business leaders had consolidated most of the city's network of independent streetcar and cable-car lines during the late 1890s, and St. Louis Transit -- by far the biggest -- had lengthened work days, fired union organizers and threatened wage cuts. The union demanded recognition, but Transit's president, banker Edwards Whitaker, refused. The drawing is of a motorman at 13th Street and Washington Avenue abandoning his streetcar at the urging of the crowd assembled around him. Also that morning, women members of the Garment Workers Union to mass across the tracks at 15th and Washington, refusing to let streetcars through. Other strikers and sympathizers threw rocks at streetcars and cut overhead lines downtown. (Post-Dispatch)
Album ID: 999086
Photo ID: 29368268
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