John T. Wilson, Founder and first President of the BMWE (1887-1908)

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This picture was taken in 1890 on Southern Pacific's line in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It shows one of the earliest types of rotary snow plows which revolutionized the task of snow fighting for the railroad. This type of plow supplanted the pioneer "push" and "cyclone" plows that always had to be augmented by a battery of locomotives and a small army of men with shovels.

The special train of Governor Stanford, President of the Central Pacific, met this train of immigrants bound for California at Monument Point, a few miles west of Promontory, Utah, where the last spike was driven in the first transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869. The railroad president was en route to the ceremony at Promontory when the picture was taken. (Southern Pacific Company.)

Photograph taken about 1891 of a railroad construction gang beside an 1876-vintage locomotive near Greenville, Pennsylvania. (Bessemer and Lake Erie Railroad.)

Photo taken in 1877 when the Secrettown trestle in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California was being filled in with dirt by the Central Pacific. Shows the meager tools with which the builders had to work in blasting a trail over and through the rugged mountains for the rails of the first transcontinental railroad.

Dormitory cars for the construction crews of the St. PM&M Railway in the 1880s. (Association of American Railroads.)

I can remember vividly hearing John T. Wilson tell in conversation with my father when I was a small boy of how the idea of forming an organization of railroad maintenance of way workers first germinated in his mind. In those days, the portion of the railroad on which Wilson worked was located in isolated country, and the sections were quite long. In walking track, the foreman of adjoining sections would each start from a designated point and walk toward each other. When they met, they would turn around and return to their headquarters.

On this particular day, the foreman of the adjoining section was not at the appointed meeting place, and Wilson continued walking until he reached the foreman's house, located in a desolate and inaccessible region. There he found the foreman's wife with her small children huddled about her. The foreman had died unexpectedly. His wife had wrapped the body in a sheet and waited for hours for someone to come along to help them.

Wilson built a crude coffin and buried the foreman. He gave the widow and her children what aid he could from his own meager funds. For weeks afterwards the pitiable plight of this destitute family continued to haunt Wilson, and it was then he decided to form a fraternal order that could assist maintenance of way families in similar circumstances. As time passed the idea grew. Wilson sought the aid of other foremen, and in the spring and summer of 1887 the plan reached fruition in the formation of the Order of Railroad Trackmen.

It was from this humble and inauspicious beginning that the Brotherhood has grown to its high place among labor organizations today.

T. C. Carroll
Eighth Grand Lodge President
1947 - 1958

BMWE ... The Beginning

Every event in history has a beginning, a time when it is first conceived in the mind of a man. But trying to trace that event through the tortuous channels of men's thoughts to its pristine source is much like attempting to seek out the myriad springs and underground streams that feed a broad river. Thus, a day set down in the pages of history to commemorate a particular happening is not always the beginning but often merely a focal point well along the way.

Such a day was a Sunday afternoon in the spring of 1887 when a small group of railroad section foremen gathered together on a river bank near Demopolis, Alabama. The day was warm and they stood in the shade of a huge oak tree. They had met to discuss mutual problems of low wages, the hazards of their work, and the insecurity of their families.

Their thoughts, however, were vague and exploratory. The idea of unionism had not as yet fully crystallized. The organization they decided to form, the Order of Railroad Trackmen, was to be established to assist fellow railroad workers in times of sickness and financial trouble. They had no way of knowing when this order was chartered in July, 1887, under the laws of the State of Alabama for benevolent and charitable societies, that eventually it would become one of the largest railroad Brotherhoods in America.

The leader of this group was a young foreman named John T. Wilson. In his mind a profound understanding, as yet ill-defined, was beginning to develop: a conviction that group action by maintenance of way workers was needed to promote their welfare. Even then he must have visualized in a vague way the growth of this new-born order into a powerful organization capable of becoming the collective voice of the thousands of workers who build and maintain the tracks, bridges, and structures of America's railroads.

This visionary young worker, however was not alone in his prophetic thinking. At almost the same time, other groups of maintenance of way workers in the United States and Canada were grappling with the same problem, and similar organizations were in the process of formation at several points.

A concerted movement of this kind does not grow overnight. It has its roots planted deeply in the soil of human needs long before the bud of action breaks through. To better understand why this organization was founded, it is necessary to know something of the background against which it was conceived--the fabulous rise of the railroad industry and the turbulent labor-management relations of the 1870s and the 80s--and the basic needs out of which it arose.

The remarkable growth of America's railroads during the nineteenth century is in itself a fascinating story. No nation has needed railroads more than the United States, and none has done such an outstanding job of meeting the need. Starting with 23 miles of track in 1830, the railroads in the United States had a total mileage of 193,346 by 1900. This amazing record grew out of the critical need of a new nation to develop its vast territories.

The American colonists had emerged from the Revolutionary War owning the entire country, except Florida, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes as far west as the Mississippi river. The blood of many a colonist must have surged at the thought of the rich new lands to the west, but all but the hardiest pioneers were held mired in the mud of primitive roads to a comparatively narrow strip of territory along the Atlantic Coast.

The primitive methods of transportation available to the colonists--the stagecoach, the pack horse, the pony express, the flat boat, the sailing ship--were wholly inadequate. If you lived in the middle west, for instance, and wanted to ship products to the east, you could send them down the Mississippi to New Orleans and thence by ship. The new country, straining to break its geographical bonds and exploit its rich possessions, needed a cheap and fast means of transportation if the seaboard states and the scattered settlements to the west were to be held together.

In 1802, the Federal government passed an act financing the building of a national highway to the west, which was constructed some years later through Cumberland, Maryland, to Wheeling, Virginia, and finally on through Ohio and Indiana to Illinois. To the north, the Erie Canal, running from Albany to Buffalo, New York, was completed in 1825. These palliative measures were not enough, however, and as men searched feverishly for new and better means of transportation and communication, the advent of the railroad became inevitable.

Actually, the steam railroad was not something entirely new, but a combination of old ideas. Wagon- or tramways had been used in England since as early as the sixteenth century to haul minerals from mines to rivers or ports. The earliest forms consisted of rails of wood or flat stones over which vehicles were drawn by horses. The steam engine had already been invented, and only man's ingenuity was needed to fit the component parts together. By the end of the eighteenth century, inventors in England were already experimenting with the steam locomotive.

On February 6, 1815, John Stevens, an American inventor called in the United States "the father of railroads," obtained the first American railroad charter from the State of New Jersey, although he did not complete the first railroad across the state until 1832. The Charleston and Hamburg, later to be known as the South Carolina Railroad, began formal operation of a steam railroad in January, 1831, over a few miles of track. It is considered to have been America's first railroad in the ordinarily accepted sense of the word. When its 135 miles of track had been laid in 1833 from Charleston to Hamburg, South Carolina, it was then the longest railroad in the world.

To the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, however, goes the distinction of building the first railroad in the United States for the specific purpose of carrying passengers and freight.

On May 24, 1830, the company began the operation of horse-drawn carriages over thirteen miles of track from Baltimore to Ellicott's Mills. It was not until sometime later, however, after the company had experimented with horse power by treadmill and with wind power, that it converted to the steam locomotive.

The first trains were crude affairs. Their inventors drew heavily on existing designs. Some of the earlier locomotives appear to have been little more than steam engines mounted on platforms. The coaches, some of them double-deckers, were replicas of stagecoaches with flanged wheels to fit the rails.

A ride on one of the early trains, although it must have been a unique experience, was not entirely a pleasure trip. The cars were coupled together with chains almost three feet long. The resulting jerks and jolts when the train started or stopped were likely to throw the unwary passenger from his seat. And when the train crew raised steam, the passengers would be showered with sparks and burning embers.

The rails of some of the earlier trains were laid on slabs of stone or over wood piling sunk in the ground. The stone proved to be too rigid and the piling soon rotted. It was not long until the familiar wooden crosstie had been adopted and put into general use.

The first rails had stone or wood sills with an iron strap for a surface. Sometimes the strap would become loose, curl up, and break through the floor of the coach. In 1830, Robert L. Stevens, son of John Stevens, while on a trip to England to inspect equipment in use there, decided that a rail made entirely of iron would be feasible. From a piece of wood he fashioned a model of the T-shaped iron rail which was eventually accepted and is still in use.

In spite of their many shortcomings, however, the railroads were rapidly revolutionizing transportation. Even on the earlier trains, a trip that would take all day in a stagecoach could be made in a few hours by rail. By 1850, 8,683 miles of track had been laid, most of it in the eastern states. The settlers in the middle western states, meantime, were clamoring for the construction of railroads, but sufficient money to build rail lines could not be raised in these sparsely-settled regions.

Stephen A. Douglas, United States Senator from Illinois, took up the cudgel for the people in these isolated regions. He proposed that the Federal government turn over public lands to the states, who would in turn give it to the railroads. By selling the land, the railroads could raise money to carry on construction. Congress passed a land-grant law on September 20, 1850. It is estimated that eventually the government gave more than 131 million acres of land to the railroads in land grants.

By 1860, the railroad mileage in the United States had soared to 30,283. Wherever the railroads laid their tracks, prosperity followed. New towns were built, new farming lands were opened to cultivation, the value of land increased, cities grew larger, and industry poured its products into the new territories. The development of the railroads completely changed the economic conditions of the nation.

Although lagging behind the United States in railroad construction in the first half of the nineteenth century, Canada began building its rail lines on an extensive scale after 1850. The first railway in Canada, a horse-traction line at St. Johns, Quebec, was converted to steam engines the year following its opening in 1836. Railway construction during the next few years proceeded slowly. In 1850, there were only 66 miles of railway in Canada.

The railway era in Canada actually began with the construction of the Grand Trunk Railway, the first large railway in Canada. In 1856, the company completed its line from Montreal to Toronto. By the 1880s, it had a line running from Portland, Maine, through Montreal, Toronto, and Sarnia to Chicago.

During the next ten years, the Grand Trunk added numerous smaller lines to its system. By 1890, the company had 3,122 miles of line in Canada and a considerable mileage in the United States. The Grand Trunk later became a part of the huge Canadian National system.

It was not until 1885, however, that a Canadian rail line reached the Pacific Coast. When British Columbia entered the Confederation in 1871, one of the conditions was that a railway would be constructed to connect the province with the rest of the Dominion. The Canadian government began construction of the line in 1874. In 1880, after a few hundred miles of track had been laid, the government turned the project over to the Canadian Pacific Railway syndicate.

The Canadian Pacific was to complete construction of the line from Montreal to Vancouver. In return, the Canadian government agreed to give the company certain assistance, including $25 million and 25 million acres of land. The railway was also granted protection from competing lines for 20 years. On the morning of November 7, 1885, the driving of a golden spike at Craigellachie, British Columbia, completed the rail line to the Pacific Coast. Other transcontinental lines soon followed.

Like the United States, Canada's growth and prosperity have been related to the development of its railways. Before the advent of the steam railway, practically all of Canada's population was concentrated along the seacoast and along rivers and lakes. After the construction of rail lines across the western provinces, settlers began to flock into the country. In the 30-year period between 1881 and 1911, the population of the prairie provinces increased from 118,000 to 1,328,000.

As the rail network in the United States penetrated further and further into the frontiers to the west, the idea of a continuous line of rail from the Atlantic to the Pacific became inevitable. On July 1, 1862, President Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad Act authorizing the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific Railroads to build a railroad between Sacramento, California and Omaha, Nebraska.

The United States government agreed to lend the two railroads $16,000 a mile for track laid on level ground, double that amount for track laid on more difficult terrain, and three times that amount for track laid in mountainous country. In addition, the two railroads were to receive 20 sections of land for each mile of railroad.

The difficulties in constructing the transcontinental railroad were tremendous. Materials and supplies had to be hauled long distances by roundabout routes--and labor was scarce. The able-bodied men who were not fighting in the Civil War were not to be lured from more lucrative employment in mines and factories and on farms. The central Pacific, starting eastward from California, could recruit only a few hundred men in its labor force. It solved the labor problem by importing coolies from China.

The Union Pacific, too, encountered trouble in starting its line westward from Omaha. Because of the labor shortage and the difficulty in raising money, its progress during the first two years was extremely low. Eventually it was able to recruit in its labor force ex-soldiers, Irish workers from the east, and nondescripts from wherever they could be found.

Crossing the Sierra Nevada range, the crews of the Central Pacific fought their way through rock and heavy snowdrifts. The Union Pacific, working through Indian territory, had to be constantly on the lookout for raiding parties.

The government had specified no point at which the two lines were to meet, and each of the roads worked feverishly to lay the most track and dig deeper into the government subsidy. By using speed-up methods, the Union Pacific was able to lay a record ten miles of track in a day. Even after they had met and passed each other, the two roads continued to lay parallel track, the Central Pacific eastward, and the Union Pacific westward. At this point the government stepped in and designated Promontory Point, Utah, as the meeting place. On May 10, 1869, the driving of the golden spike signalized the completion of the coast-to-coast line.

Building the grade of America's railroads was a back-breaking job. Except in clear and comparatively flat regions, trees and undergrowth had to be removed, hills cut away, tunnels bored, and low places filled in. This involved the moving of immense quantities of dirt from one place to another. Much of this work had to be done by hand. Such primitive devices as the pick, the shovel, the hoe, the scraper, the wheelbarrow, the wagon, and the mule cart were the only tools and "machinery" then available.

Labor was secured wherever it could be recruited. Slaves were pressed into service when they were available. The contractors who built America's railroads were, to say the least, aggressive men who drove themselves and their men unmercifully. Certain it is that life in the construction crews was not easy. Riots among the crews were no rarity, and occasional skirmishes with the populace took place as the shining rails crept slowly across the land.

The builders of the early railroads had not been overly concerned with the niceties and precisions of the engineering science. Many of the tracks were hastily laid. Little attention had been paid to the stress and strain on track and equipment as trains rounded curves. Trestles had been hurriedly erected. As the speed of trains increased and the number of accidents mounted, the railroads began putting their right of ways in better order. Roadbeds were improved, lines relocated, curves widened, makeshift bridges and trestles replaced with sturdier structures, and tunnels bored to run a train through a hill rather than over the top of it.

From the constant necessity to keep the tracks and bridges in safe condition, a new and more stable class of railroad workers evolved from the early construction crews. It became the duty of the employes of the maintenance of way department to build, rebuild, repair, and maintain the railroads' tracks, bridges, trestles, and the thousand and one other structures and buildings along the right of way.

With the close of the Civil War, a new and even more frantic era of railroad building began. By 1870, the railroad mileage in the United States had increased to 53,878, and in the ensuing thirty years, almost 140,000 miles of track were laid.

But as the railroads spread their web of rails and crossties throughout the nation, as business expanded and flourished, the problems of the worker increased. With growing industrialization came the inevitable clash between worker and employer. As workers attempted to band together for their mutual welfare, a bitter anti-union attitude crystallized among employers. Company agents were used to discourage union activity. Employers secretly circulated "white lists" of persons to be hired and "blacklists" of those to be rejected. Eventually, the "yellow dog" contract made its appearance and became a potent weapon against unionism. In signing such a contract, the employe agreed that so long as he was employed he would not join or support a labor union. Such a contract was entirely unilateral, the employer reserving the right to discharge an employe at will.

It was not unusual for union leaders and organizers to be beaten by company agents and even forced to leave the community. Public officials frequently refused to permit unions to hold outdoor meetings or parades. The distribution of union pamphlets or papers was often prohibited by ordinance. Business and professional people campaigned against unions, and employers sought the passage of laws to curb their activities.

By 1873, three railroad Brotherhoods had been organized: the engineers (1863), the conductors (1868), and the firemen and enginemen (1873). These organizations had been formed not as collective-bargaining agencies to improve the wages and working conditions of their constituents, but primarily to furnish insurance benefits to the families of injured or deceased workers. So hazardous was their work in those days that many railroad workers were unable to secure insurance protection from the standard companies. Railroad owners opposed these fraternal societies, fearful that they contained the seed of a union movement on the railroads. The transition of these organizations from purely fraternal and benevolent Brotherhoods to bona fide labor unions did not begin until 1877, after the first and biggest railroad strike.

The bloody strike resulted from wage cuts ordered by the railroads during the business depression which began in 1873. The high cost of the Civil War, excessive railroad building, inflated credit, and other related economic problems had brought on the 1873 panic. Times were bad and became worse as the panic continued. The ranks of the unemployed grew larger. In the early years of the depression, workers on the railroads and in other industries accepted wage cuts with little protest. In 1877, the railroads began to feel the severe pinch of reduced income. Their owners decided that in order to continue to pay dividends and maintain their credit standing, they must make further wage reductions. In June and July, 1877, the Pennsylvania, Erie, Michigan Southern, Lake Shore, New York Central, and other railroads, put wage cuts of 10 percent into effect. Effective July 16, the Baltimore and Ohio ordered a 10 percent wage cut in all wages of more than $1.00 a day.

This was the coup de grace that released the pent-up emotions that had simmered in the minds of the workers during the difficult years of the panic. They had already accepted several wage reductions, although many of the railroads had continued to pay substantial dividends to their stockholders. They could barely support their families on the meager wages being paid for dangerous and responsible work. When the company rejected their protest, Baltimore and Ohio firemen and brakemen at Martinsburg, West Virginia, walked off the job. The strike spread rapidly and sporadically across the county, from road to road, from point to point, to Chicago, to St. Louis, and finally to California.

Several states mustered their militia. Federal troops were called out to settle a strike for the first time in American history. Riots and bloodshed followed. The strike was broken, but it is estimated that in the process more than 100 men lost their lives and some 500 persons, including women and children, had been wounded. Untold damage had been done to railroad property.

Although railroad workers lost the strike, they had still gained a victory. For out of the bloody disaster came the realization that the strike had been lost through lack of unity. A new feeling of solidarity grew between the Brotherhoods and they emerged from the phase of pure fraternalism to turn resolutely toward the goals of collective bargaining.

The nation recovered slowly from the depression and business activity did not return to normalcy until 1879. Meanwhile, the fortunes of labor unions had waned. The hard years of the depression and the merciless determination of employers to smash the unions had combined to reduce union membership to a low level. But a new champion of labor had appeared on the scene and was rapidly gaining national prominence.

Started modestly by a few garment workers in Philadelphia in 1869, the Knights of Labor, as this incredible organization was called, had profited by defections from the ranks of the craft unions. On the principle of one great union for all workers, the sprawling, unwieldy giant rapidly gained strength, encompassing within its ranks workers in all crafts and industries, regardless of creed or color, and persons in many professions. Impetus had been given to its drive for members by its victories in a series of railroad strikes, particularly in its conflicts on one of the roads controlled by Jay Gould, then a powerful figure in railroad circles. By 1886, it had a membership of almost 700,000. But a process of disintegration had already begun. Organizational weaknesses, the dissimilar nature of its membership, its attempts to dabble in cooperative schemes, the inevitable conflict with craft unions, and unsuccessful strikes which drained its financial resources, all contributed to its downfall. By 1890, its membership had dwindled to an estimated 100,000 and the American Federation of Labor, formed in Pittsburgh in 1881, was rapidly usurping its place as the champion of labor in America.

In 1894, seventeen years after the great strike of 1877, another widespread railroad strike took place. The American Railway Union, a newly-formed railroad labor organization soliciting membership among workers of all classes, with Eugene V. Debs as president, called a strike against the Pullman Company to secure a living wage for the employes of that concern. Members of the American Railway Union not directly involved in the strike immediately began a boycott against the handling of Pullman cars.

The General Managers' Association, a group of railroad officials, retaliated by having strike breakers attach United States mail cars to trains made up of Pullman cars. Thus, if the strikers attempted to interfere with the passage of trains in any way, they could be accused of obstructing the mails. In a second move to break the strike, the Association called on the United States government for Federal troops. Thousands of federal troops, state militia, or special deputies were soon guarding the movement of trains. Riots and street fighting followed. Finally, the General Managers played their trump card by securing a sweeping injunction from the attorney general of the United States against the strike and the boycott.

Thus, for the second time in less than 20 years a major strike had been lost by railroad workers. But out of these unsuccessful battles emerged a stronger and more aggressive group of railroad Brotherhoods. Important, too, was the growing conviction, accentuated by experience, that the craft union was the better type for railroad workers and that the industrial type of union could not survive under existing conditions.

It was during this period of turmoil and in this atmosphere of bitter labor-management strife that John T. Wilson and the small group of his fellow foremen met in 1887 to form the Order of Railway Trackmen.

From History of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes, Its Birth and Growth, 1887-1955, by Denver W. Hertel, 1955.