When the Twin City Rapid Transit Company (TCRTC) refused to recognize the newly formed streetcar men's union, employees took to the streets of St. Paul and Minneapolis in the fall of 1917 to fight for their civil liberties. The labor dispute challenged state jurisdiction and reached the White House before finding settlement the following year.
The streetcar drivers of TCRTC formed a union when the company's president, Horace Lowry, refused to meet their demand for better working conditions and a three-cents-per-hour raise for all employees. When the drivers threatened to strike, Lowry granted the raise but fired fifty-seven men identified as union agitators.
The streetcar men, angered by Lowry's anti-union stance, walked off the job at 1:00 a.m. on October 6. Rioting erupted in St. Paul that night with attacks on abandoned streetcars. Bracing for trouble, police in Minneapolis quickly deployed six hundred armed deputies of the Minneapolis Civilian Auxiliary to patrol the streets. Little damage occurred in that city.
The Minnesota Commission of Public Safety (MCPS) stepped in on October 9 to prevent a general strike across trade unions and ordered the streetcar men to return to work. The commission reviewed the cases of the employees discharged for participating in the strike. It directed the company to reinstate them, and eventually forty-nine men returned to work.
In defiance, Lowry organized the Trainmen's Cooperative and Protective Association for loyal employees. Members received special buttons. The union countered by increasing recruitment efforts and issuing its own buttons. The buttons heightened the hostility between factions.
The MCPS appointed a panel to review the union's complaints. The panel recommended a ban on the wearing of both union and nonunion buttons and that all union activity on company property should cease. TCRTC posted the recommendations on November 21 and threatened to fire all who failed to comply. An estimated eight hundred men saw this action as a lockout and sought mediation. When Lowry and Governor J.A.A. Burnquist refused to negotiate, the union appealed to the federal government.
On December 2, the St. Paul and Minneapolis Trades and Labor assemblies held a mass meeting in Rice Park. Labor leaders urged peaceful demonstrations, but an angry mob again attacked St. Paul streetcars. Windows were broken and fifty nonunion drivers were injured. City officials called in the Home Guard to keep order.
Two days later, G. W. Ames of the MCPS met with Secretary of War Newton D. Baker, acting Secretary of Labor Louis F. Post, and Samuel Gompers of the American Federation of Labor in Washington to review the situation. They urged Governor Burnquist to suspend the MCPS order and reopen the case. There was growing concern that a wide-spread strike would impede the country's ability to meet wartime demands. Burnquist held firm, insisting that reopening the case would weaken the state's authority.
On December 5, as many as fifteen thousand people assembled for a protest meeting in Minneapolis. They postponed the vote for a general strike until December 11 while labor leaders traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with Gompers. Gompers brought the case to the attention of President Woodrow Wilson. The president, the secretary of labor, and the secretary of war refused to intervene, however, unless the situation spiraled out of the state's control.
E. G. Hall, President of the State Federation of Labor, was disappointed at the failure of the bid for federal intervention. He called for a general strike to begin at 10:00 a.m. on December 13. The strike lasted less than four hours. It was called off with the announcement that President Wilson's Mediation Commission was coming to Minnesota to conduct hearings. Union leaders agreed to retract the order for a general strike.
On February 14, the President's commission recommended that TCRTC reinstate all union men at their pre-strike status and wages. It tasked the MCPS with enforcement, but both Lowry and the MCPS refused to comply.
On June 12, the State Board of Arbitration (SBA) ordered TCRTC to follow the federal commission's recommendations. Lowry again refused, and the streetcar men appealed to the newly created National War Labor Board. The strike ended on October 8 when the national board ruled that settlement of the streetcar dispute should remain under state authority, upholding the SBA's order.