The early 20th century was known for a variety of social unrest in the United States not least of which came from the labor movement. Streetcar strikes were happening in about every major city, and Indianapolis was no exception with a strike that turned deadly Halloween night, 1913 and ran unchecked for four days.
It’s the better known strike in Indianapolis. It was messy. It was volatile. But there is another one mentioned in the Indianapolis Times in 1926 that has been completely forgotten and doesn’t show up in history books or online at all. To better cover both of these, this blog will be in two parts.
What stood out about the 1913 strike was how the police who were called upon to protect the streetcars, often turned their backs or even resigned. Many officers had once been streetcar operators themselves, or had close friends who still were. When ordered to protect the streetcars — or even operate them — loyalty won out. It was the biggest police mutiny in the history of the city.
Frequently, the streetcar companies would bring “scabs” from other cities, usually Chicago, hardened men brought in to operate the streetcars and willing to enter a kerfuffle with strikers should the need arise.
Streetcar operators made shocking low wages even for the time before inflation, often only fifteen cents an hour and they worked six to seven days a week. Appeals for shorter working hours – sometimes of up to fourteen hours a day – and increased pay was met with resistance by the street car companies. For their part, the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees of America began to unionize workers who were fired when their membership was discovered. It was a powder keg: long hours, starvation wages, and a company determined to break the union at any cost.
Furthermore, even then Mayor Lew Shank seemed to take the side of the rioters, and Governor Ralston was reticent about intervening but as the situation continued to grow steadily more volatile, even he saw the need for calling out the National Guard.
The unions for their part, brought in their own men, frequently recruited from underground fighting rings to fight the scabs. Is it any wonder there was general pandemonium in the streets? This atmosphere of desperation and violence is reflected in a flashback from Whiskey Covenant::
The warehouse smelled of sweat, iron, and something older—desperation. Rusted iron beams arced overhead, making the warehouse feel like a cage—a place that swallows men whole and spits them out as fighters, pawns, or corpses.
Mick sat on an overturned crate, his body a landscape of bruises, unwrapping the bandages on his hands that he had so carefully wrapped before the fight. His knuckles were split, dried blood creating intricate maps across his hands, sticking to the fabric, as the blood dried. Each breath came with a quiet wince. The fights hadn’t been clean. They never were. Fatigue settled in on him like a cloak.
Two men watched him. One was lean, sharp-eyed. He reminded Mick of a snake. There was the reptilian about him. The other man broader, with hands that looked like they’d done their own share of fighting. His face was pockmarked in a landscape of scars and old traumas. They weren’t here to sympathize. They were here to assess.
“How many fights you won this week?” The lean one asked. No introduction. No softening.
Mick didn’t smile. Didn’t need to. “Enough.”
Pockmark stepped closer, studying Mick like he was horseflesh. Checking the muscle, the potential. “You fight for money. Not for a cause.”
“Money’s the only cause t’at matters,” Mick responded.
Snakey’s mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. More like recognition.
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen,” Mick replied.
“Been fightin’ long?”
“In t’ ring? Couple o’ years.”
“Indianapolis Terminal’s bringing in strikebreakers,” Pockmark said. “We need men who can handle themselves, can hold the line against the strikebreakers.”
Mick knew what that meant. Muscle. Intimidation. Breaking more than just strikes.
The lean man pulled an envelope from his jacket. Thick. Folded once, crisp edges. He didn’t immediately offer it. Just let Mick see it. A promise. A threat. A possibility.
This was only the beginning. Money was offered to these men to hold the strike. Both the streetcar companies and the labor organizations were willing to do whatever it took to hold their own lines. Six trolly cars were destroyed and overhead lines were cut by strikers.
Only twenty arrests were made the first day though six people were killed and over one hundred injured, some seriously. Over the weekend, crowds of up to ten thousand turned out in the street, overturning a streetcar, injuring thirty including two police officers.
1913 streetcar strikers gathered on Washington Street – Indianapolis Historical Society
I write about this vividly as a flashback chapter in Whiskey covenant as it influenced the eighteen year old Mick in the later labor movement of the 1920s:
Mick dodged a bottle thrown his direction and it shattered on the pavement around him. Men and women were elbow to elbow on Washington Street. Even on a crisp November day, the heat of humanity and the tang of fear and blood was ripe in the streets. He jostled his way through the crowds to the lone trolley in the middle of the street, lilting dangerously. That it had made it this far from the terminal said something for the intrepidness of its novice driver, some strikebreaker brought in from out of town. Now, however, it was not going anywhere. The mass of humanity around it had swelled and surged in raw numbers.
Mick continued to fight his way through the crowd. He had come armed with a heavy iron pipe. Most of the crowd were sympathetic with the strikers. But Mick found himself exchanging – and dodging – the occasional punch. On top of the streetcar, a lone, lanky figure was balanced as the streetcar lurched from side to side. The figure emitted a wild whoop and then one long, drawn out wolf howl. As Mick got closer, he recognized him. Stanszek, if he recalled his name correctly, had given the arresting officer quite a turn by talking to invisible entities. He was always a little different.
As Mick approached the trolley, Stanszek swung himself from the conveyance. He landed lightly near Mick and grinned. The scab who had been hired to operate the streetcar was surrounded and fighting off rioters. The car wasn’t going to go anywhere soon in any case. The cables had been cut and they sparked wildly.
On November 6th, Governor Ralston met with angry crowds at the statehouse and his skillful diplomacy defused what could have gone on as a very dangerous situation. In the end, the companies agreed to a paltry five percent increase in wages and to recognize the unions. Those strikers who had not been involved in violence were invited to return to their jobs.
The 1913 streetcar riots shaped the political landscape of the city as it pertained to worker complaints and the minimum wage was increased to 28 cents an hour and workers were guaranteed one Sunday off a month and basic workplace safety requirements. Really puts things in perspective for what we complain about now!
But the 1913 strike wasn’t the end of Indianapolis labor unrest — only the end of the part the city chose to remember
We’ll continue this thread into another blog post next week which will take us into the much less talked about 1926 strike that was much less violent but no less politically nuanced.
All photos courtesy of the Indianapolis Historical Society