Chapter 3

1816-1817, Ebenezer Denny 1817-1825, John Darragh 1825-1828, John M. Snowden 1828-1830, Magnus M. Murray 1830-1831, Matthew B. Lowrie 1831-1832, Magnus M. Murray 1832-1836, Samuel Pettigrew 1836-1839, Jonas R. McClintock 1839-1840, William Little 1840-1841, William W. Irwin 1841-1842, James Thomson 1842-1845, Alexander Hay 1845-1846, William J. Howard 1846-1847, William Kerr 1847-1849, Gabriel Adams 1849-1850, John Herron 1850-1851, Joseph Barker 1851-1853, John B. Guthrie 1853-1854, Robert M. Riddle 1854-1856, Ferdinand E. Volz 1856-1857, William Bingham 1857-1860, Henry A. Weaver 1860-1862, George Wilson 1862-1864, B. C. Sawyer 1864-1866, James Lowry 1866-1868, W. S. McCarthy 1868-1869, James Blackmore 1869-1872, Jared M. Brush 1872-1875, James Blackmore 1875-1878, William C. McCarthy 1878-1881, Robert Liddell 1881-1884, Robert W. Lyon 1884-1887, Andrew Fulton 1887-1890, William McCallin 1890-1893, Henry I. Gourley 1893-1896, Bernard McKenna 1896-1899, Henry P. Ford 1899-1901, William J. Diehl 1901, A. M. Brown (Title changed to Recorder) 1901-1903, J. O. Brown (Recorder) 1903, W. B. Hays (Recorder; served about one week under that title) 1903-1906, W. B. Hays (Mayor again) 1906-1909, George W. Guthrie

A movement to consolidate the cities of Pittsburgh and Allegheny together with some adjacent boroughs, was begun in 1853-54. It failed entirely that year, but in 1867 Lawrenceville, Peebles, Collins, Liberty, Pitt, and Oakland, all lying between the two rivers, were annexed to Pittsburgh, and in 1872 there was a further annexation of a district embracing twenty-seven square miles south of the Monongahela River, while in 1906 Allegheny was also annexed; and, as there was litigation to test the validity of the consolidation, the Supreme Court of the United States on December 6, 1907, declared in favor of the constitutionality of the act.

XIV

The first national convention of the Republican party was held in Pittsburgh on February 22 and 23, 1856. While this gathering was an informal convention, it was made for the purpose of effecting a national organization of the groups of Republicans which had grown up in the States where slavery was prohibited. Pittsburgh was, therefore, in a broad sense, the place where the birth of the Republican party occurred. A digression on this subject, in order that the record may be made clear, will probably not be unwelcome.

In 1620, three months before the landing of the _Mayflower_ at Provincetown, a Dutch vessel carried African slaves up the James River, and on the soil of Virginia there was planted a system of servitude which at last extended throughout the Colonies and flourished with increasing vigor in the South, until, in the War of the Rebellion, Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation put an end forever to slavery in America. When the builders of our Government met in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, slavery was a problem which more than once threatened to wreck the scheme for an indissoluble union of the States. But it was compromised under a suggestion implied in the Constitution itself, that slavery should not be checked in the States in which it existed until 1808. In the meantime the entire labor system of the South was built upon African slavery, while at the North the horror of the public conscience grew against the degrading institution from year to year. By 1854 the men in the free States who were opposed to slavery had begun to unite themselves by political bonds, and in the spring and summer of that year, groups of such men met in more or less informal conferences in Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, Maine, Massachusetts, Iowa, Ohio, and other northern States. But it was at Jackson, Michigan, where the men who were uniting their political fortunes to accomplish the destruction of slavery first assembled in a formal convention on July 6, 1854, nominated a full State ticket, and adopted a platform containing these declarations:

Resolved: That, postponing and suspending all differences with regard to political economy or administrative policy, in view of the imminent danger that Kansas and Nebraska will be grasped by slavery, and a thousand miles of slave soil be thus interposed between the free States of the Atlantic and those of the Pacific, we will act cordially and faithfully in unison to avert and repeal this gigantic wrong and shame.

Resolved: That in view of the necessity of battling for the first principles of Republican government, and against the schemes of an aristocracy, the most revolting and oppressive with which the earth was ever cursed or man debased, we will coöperate and be known as "Republicans" until the contest be terminated.

On January 17, 1856, "the Republican Association of Washington, D. C.," referring to the extension of slavery into Kansas and Nebraska as "the deep dishonor inflicted upon the age in which we live," issued a call, in accordance with what appeared to be the general desire of the Republican party, inviting the Republicans of the Union to meet in informal convention at Pittsburgh on February 22, 1856, for the purpose of perfecting the national organization, and providing for a national delegate convention of the Republican party, at some subsequent day, to nominate candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency, to be supported at the election in November, 1856.

The Republican party met accordingly for the first time in a national convention in Pittsburgh on the date appointed, and was largely attended. Not only were all the free States represented, but there were also delegates from Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, Kentucky, and Missouri. John A. King was made temporary chairman, and Francis P. Blair permanent chairman. Speeches were made by Horace Greeley, Giddings and Gibson of Ohio, Codding and Lovejoy of Illinois, and others. Mr. Greeley sent a telegraphic report of the first day's proceedings to the New York "Tribune," stating that the convention had accomplished much to cement former political differences and distinctions, and that the meeting at Pittsburgh had marked the inauguration of a national party, based upon the principle of freedom. He said that the gathering was very large and the enthusiasm unbounded; that men were acting in the most perfect harmony and with a unity of feeling seldom known to political assemblages of such magnitude; that the body was eminently Republican in principle and tendency; and that it combined much of character and talent, with integrity of purpose and devotion to the great principles which underlie our Government. He prophesied that the moral and political effect of this convention upon the country would be felt for the next quarter of a century. In its deliberations, he said that everything had been conducted with marked propriety and dignity.

The platform adopted at Pittsburgh demanded the repeal of all laws allowing the introduction of slavery into free territories; promised support by all lawful measures to the Free-State men in Kansas in their resistance to the usurped authority of lawless invaders; and strongly urged the Republican party to resist and overthrow the existing national administration because it was identified with the progress of the slave power to national supremacy.

On the evening of the second day, a mass meeting was held in aid of the emigration to Kansas. The president of the meeting was George N. Jackson, and D. D. Eaton was made secretary. Horace Greeley and others made addresses, and with great enthusiasm promises of aid to the bleeding young sister in the West were made.

This record seems to show beyond question that the Republican party had its national birth at Pittsburgh on February 22, 1856, and that it came into being dedicated, as Horace Greeley described it at that moment, to the principle of human freedom. A later formal convention, as provided for at Pittsburgh, was held at Philadelphia on June 17, 1856, which nominated John C. Fremont, of California, for President, and William L. Dayton, of New Jersey, for Vice-President. This ticket polled a total popular vote of 1,341,264, but was beaten by the Democratic candidates,--James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania, for President, and John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, for Vice-President, who polled 1,838,169 votes. This defeat of a good cause was probably a fortunate piece of adversity, for the men who opposed slavery were not yet strong enough to grapple the monster to its death as they did when Lincoln was nominated four years later. It was the high mission of the party in 1856 and 1860 to stand against the extension of slavery, and in 1864 against all slavery as well as against the destruction of this Union; and in 1868, against those who wished to nullify the results of the war. Its later mission has been full of usefulness and honor.

XV

Among the eminent men who visited Pittsburgh in bygone days we find record of the following:

1817, President Monroe 1825, General Lafayette 1833, Daniel Webster 1842, Charles Dickens 1848, Henry Clay 1849, President Taylor and Governor Johnston 1852, Louis Kossuth 1860, Prince of Wales (now King Edward VII) 1861, President Lincoln 1866, President Johnson, Admiral Farragut, General Grant, and Secretaries Seward and Welles

In 1845 (April 10th), a great fire destroyed about one third of the total area of the city, including most of the large business houses and factories, the bridge over the Monongahela River, the large hotel known as the Monongahela House, and several churches, in all about eleven hundred buildings. The Legislature appropriated $50,000 for the relief of the sufferers.

In 1889, the great flood at Johnstown, accompanied by a frightful loss of life and destruction of property, touched the common heart of humanity all over the world. The closeness of Johnstown geographically made the sorrow at Pittsburgh most poignant and profound. In a few hours almost the whole population had brought its offerings for the stricken community, and besides clothing, provisions, and every conceivable thing necessary for relief and comfort, the people of Pittsburgh contributed $250,000 to restore so far as possible the material portion of the loss.

In the autumn of 1908 a series of imposing celebrations was held to commemorate the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Pittsburgh.

XVI

In 1877, the municipal government being, in its personnel, at the moment, incompetent to preserve the fundamental principles on which it was established, permitted a strike of railroad employees to grow without restriction as to the observance of law and order until it became an insurrection. Four million dollars' worth of property was destroyed by riot and incendiarism in a few hours. When at last outraged authority was properly shifted from the supine city chieftains to the indomitable State itself, it became necessary, before order could be restored, for troops to fire, with a sacrifice of human life.

For some months preceding the riots at Pittsburgh disturbances among the railroad employees, especially the engineers and brakemen of freight-trains, had been frequent on railroads west and east of this city. These disturbances arose mainly from resistance to reductions in the rates of wages, made or proposed by the executive officers of the various railroads, and also from objections of train crews to regulations governing the transportation system.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Company, some time after the panic of 1873, reduced the wages of its employees ten per cent., and, on account of the general decline in business, made another reduction of ten per cent. to take effect on June 1, 1877; these reductions to apply to all employees from the president of the company down. The reductions affected the roads known as the Pennsylvania Lines west of Pittsburgh, as well as the Pennsylvania Railroad, and similar alterations were also made on the New York Central and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroads. The changed conditions caused a great deal of dissatisfaction among the trainmen, but a committee was appointed by them, which held a conference with Mr. Thomas A. Scott, President of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and agreed to the reduction, reporting its conclusions to the trainmen.

On July 16th an order was issued by the railroad company that thirty-six freight-cars, instead of eighteen, as before, were to be made up as a train, without increase in the number of the crew, and with a locomotive at the end to act as a pusher, assisting the one at the front, making what is technically called "a double header." The train employees looked upon this order as doubling their work under the decreased pay of June 1st, and in its effect virtually tending to the discharge of many men then employed in the running of freight-trains. The strike which followed does not seem to have been seriously organized, but was rather a sudden conclusion arrived at on the impulse of the moment, and was probably strengthened by a wave of discontent which was sweeping over the roads to the east and west, as well as by an undercurrent of hostility toward the railroads exhibited by some of the newspapers. As far back as July 23, 1876, a Pittsburgh paper, in publishing an article headed "Railroad Vultures," had said: "Railroad officials are commencing to understand that the people of Pittsburgh will be patient no longer; that this community is being aroused into action, and that presently the torrent of indignation will give place to condign retribution"; and in another paragraph the same paper had said: "We desire to impress upon the minds of the community that these vultures are constantly preying upon the wealth and resources of the country; they are a class, as it were, of money jugglers intent only on practising their trickery for self aggrandizement, and that, consequently, their greed leads them into all known ways and byways of fraud, scheming, and speculating, to accomplish the amassing of princely fortunes." These intemperate utterances were the first seeds of popular sedition.

It was not until 8.30 o'clock on the morning of the 19th that the real trouble began. Two freight-trains were to start at 8.40, but ten minutes before that the crews sent word that they would not take the trains out. Two yard crews were then asked to take their places, but they refused to do so. The trains were not taken out, and the crews of all the trains that came in, as they arrived, joined the strikers. As the day wore on the men gradually congregated at the roundhouse of the road at Twenty-eighth Street, but did not attempt or threaten any violence. The news of the strike had spread through the two cities, and large numbers of the more turbulent class of the population, together with many workmen from the factories who sympathized with the strikers, hastened to Twenty-eighth Street, and there was soon gathered a formidable mob in which the few striking railroad employees were an insignificant quantity.

When the railroad officials found their tracks and roundhouse in the possession of a mob which defied them, they called upon the mayor of the city for protection, to which Mayor McCarthy promptly responded, going in person with a detail of officers to the scene of the trouble. When the police arrived on the ground they found an excited assemblage of people who refused to listen to their orders to disperse, and the mayor made no serious effort to enforce his authority effectually. There was no collision, however, until a man who had refused to join the strikers attempted to couple some cars, when he was assaulted. An officer of the road who undertook to turn a switch, was also assaulted by one of the mob, who was arrested by the police. His comrades began throwing stones, but the police maintained their hold of their prisoner, and conveyed him to the jail. A crowd then gathered in front of the police station and made threats of rescuing their comrade, but no overt act was committed. The mob, which had by this time become greatly enraged, was really not composed of railroad employees, who had contemplated no such result of their strike, and now generally deplored the unfortunate turn which the affair had taken. It was for the most part composed of the worst element of the population, who, without any grievance of their own, real or imagined, had gathered together from the very force of their vicious inclinations and the active hope of plunder.

The strikers held a meeting that evening, at which they demanded that the ten per cent. should be restored, and the running of double headers abolished. In the meantime, the railroad authorities, perceiving the inefficiency of the local police powers, and alarmed at the still-increasing mob and the vicious spirit which it displayed, invoked the aid of the sheriff of the county. At midnight Sheriff Fife came to Twenty-eighth Street with a hastily summoned _posse_, a part of which deserted him before he reached the scene of action, and ordered the rioters to disperse, which they, with hoots and jeers, defiantly refused to do. The sheriff then sought aid from the military, and General A. L. Pearson issued an order to the Eighteenth and Nineteenth regiments of the National Guards of Pennsylvania, with headquarters at Pittsburgh, to assemble at half past six the next morning, armed and equipped for duty. Sheriff Fife also telegraphed to the State authorities at Harrisburg, stating that he was unable to quell the riot, and asking that General Pearson be instructed to do this with his force; and Adjutant General Latta issued the orders accordingly. General Pearson marched his forces to the Union Depot and placed them in position in the yard and on the hillside above it. The mob was not, however, deterred by this action, as the troops were supposed to be more or less in sympathy with the strikers, and were expected to be disinclined to fire upon their fellow citizens if they should be ordered to do so. The employment of local troops at this moment constituted a grave mistake in the management of the riot.

The governor had, however, been telegraphed to, and had ordered General Brinton's division of troops to leave Philadelphia for Pittsburgh. This became known to the mob, which was still increasing in numbers and turbulence, and the calling of troops from the east drove them to fury. The feeling had spread to the workingmen in the factories on the South Side, where a public meeting was held, and demagogical speeches made, upholding the action of the strikers; and five hundred men came thence in a body and joined the crowd.

At this critical moment the mob received an endorsement that not only greatly encouraged it, but incited it to extreme violence. A local newspaper, on Friday, the 20th, in the course of an editorial headed "The Talk of the Desperate," which formulated what was assumed as the expression of a workingman, used this language:

This may be the great civil war in this country between labor and capital that is bound to come.... The workingmen everywhere are in fullest sympathy with the strikers, and only waiting to see whether they are in earnest enough to fight for their rights. They would all join and help them the moment an actual conflict took place.... The governor, with his proclamation, may call and call, but the laboring people, who mostly constitute the militia, won't take up arms to put down their brethren. Will capital then rely on the United States Army? Pshaw! Its ten to fifteen thousand available men would be swept from our path like leaves in a whirlwind. The workingmen of this country can capture and hold it, if they will only stick together, and it looks as though they were going to do so this time. Of course, you say that capital will have some supporters. Many of the unemployed will be glad to get work as soldiers, or extra policemen; the farmers, too, might turn out to preserve your law and order; but the working army would have the most men and the best men. The war might be bloody but the right would prevail. Men like Tom Scott, Frank Thomson--yes, and William Thaw--who have got rich swindling the stockholders of railroads, so that they cannot pay honest labor living rates, we would hang to the nearest tree.

Although the paper in a later edition suppressed that part of the editorial, and the other papers of the city refrained from any editorials that might increase the excitement, yet the mischief had been done, the unfortunate words had been widely read, and the more intelligently vicious of the rioters proceeded to make the most of them.

The eastern troops left Philadelphia on Friday night and arrived at the Union Depot on Saturday afternoon, tired and hungry. After a scant and hasty lunch they were placed out along the tracks to the roundhouse where the great bulk of the mob was assembled. In order to secure and protect the building and tracks it was necessary that the crowd should be forced back. When the troops undertook this movement some stones were thrown and a few soldiers were hit. Then one of the subordinate officers gave an order to fire, and about twenty persons were killed and thirty wounded, three of whom were children.

When the rioters beheld their associates attacked, their rage passed all control, and the troops were closed in upon and driven into the roundhouse. Encouraged by this retreat, the mob took steps to burn them out. Many cars loaded with whisky and petroleum were set on fire and sent down the track against the building, and fire was opened on it with a cannon which the crowd had seized from a local armory. General Brinton came personally to one of the windows of the roundhouse and appealed to the mob to desist, warning them that if they did not he must and would fire. The rioters paid no attention to his appeal, but continued their assaults, whereupon General Brinton gave orders to his men to fire at those who were handling the cannon, and several of them were killed and wounded. Incendiarism, having been inaugurated, went on through the night, whole trains being robbed and then burned. The troops held their position until Sunday morning, and then retreated out Penn Avenue to Sharpsburg, where they went into camp.