August 4, 1877 | Illustration
This August 4, 1877 image from Leslie's Illustrated depicts striking and armed railroad workers pulling firemen and engineers from a train in Martinsburg, West Virginia, to protest the pay cuts and the double-heading of trains.
August 1, 1877 | Illustration
This dramatic image appeared on two pages of the August 1, 1877 edition of PUCK Magazine and illustrates a skeleton-headed train running past apparently injured women, with dark images of laborers in the smoke.
August 1, 1877 | Illustration
This cover illustration from the August 1, 1877 issue of PUCK Magazine depicts a poor family's decision to go on strike.
August 1, 1877 | Illustration
This image from the August 1, 1877 edition of PUCK Magazine is a pun on Kars (a city in Turkey) that depicts a soldier being pulled behind a railroad car.
July 25, 1877 | Illustration
This image from the front page of the July 25, 1877 issue of PUCK Magazine mockingly depicts two strikers "digging their own graves."
1877 | Photograph
Part of a series of stereographs published in the wake of the 1877 Railroad Strike. The images show the destruction at Pittsburgh, which resulted from violent clashes July 21-22.
1877 | Photograph
Part of a series of stereographs published in the wake of the 1877 Railroad Strike. The images show the destruction at Pittsburgh, which resulted from violent clashes July 21-22.
1877 | Photograph
Part of a series of stereographs published in the wake of the 1877 Railroad Strike. The images show the destruction at Pittsburgh, which resulted from violent clashes July 21-22.
November 9, 1872 | Illustration
This image from the November 9, 1872 issue of Harper's Weekly depicts a workmen's train in the subway of London, England as a part of a fictional story entitled London: A Pilgrimage by Gustave Doré and Blanchard Jerrold.
1868 | Photograph
This is a photograph of a Union Pacific Railroad engineering camp in Weber Canyon, Utah in 1868.
1863 | Photograph
Dawes fought in the Battle of Shiloh, then protected the railroads in Tennessee with the 53rd Ohio. He was promoted to major of the regiment on January 26, 1863.
October 30, 1857 | Broadsides
In this October 30, 1857 circular, Ginery Twichell, Superintendent of the Boston and Worcester Railroad, describes the reasons for a ten percent pay cut for all employees. He cites the recent reduction in receipts from passengers and freight, as well as the "sudden and unexpected financial storm" as the basis for the change.
1850 | Photograph
Few original images remain of railroad workers in the 1850s, especially of construction crews, whether free labor or enslaved. Northern railroad companies employed thousands of men on their payrolls in a dizzying array of occupations.
N.D. | Photograph
This is a digital photograph of an image of the Union Pacific Railroad's Brigham Young Construction camp in Echo Canyon, Utah.
N.D. | Photograph
This is a photograph of the grading camp for the Union Pacific Railroad in the Rocky Mountains.