NE North Dakota News

The streetcar drivers of the Twin City Rapid Transit Company (TCRTC) formed a union when the company's president, Horace Lowry, refused to meet their demands for better working conditions and a three-cents-per-hour raise. When the drivers threatened to strike, Lowry granted the raise but fired fifty-seven men identified as union organizers. So the streetcar workers, angered by Lowry's anti-union stance, walked off the job on October 6, 1917. Although rioting and attacks on abandoned streetcars happened in Saint Paul that night, and six hundred armed deputies of the Minneapolis Civilian Auxiliary were deployed to patrol the streets, the city itself experienced little damage.

The Minnesota Commissioner of Public Safety stepped in on October 9 to avoid other trade unions joining in and prevent a general strike. They ordered the streetcar men to return to work. The commission reviewed the employees that were fired for striking, and directed the company to reinstate them - forty-nine men returned to work.The St. Paul and Minneapolis Trades and Labor assemblies held a mass meeting in Rice Park on December 2, 1917, nearly two months after the walk-out. Although labor leaders urged peaceful demonstrations at this rally, an angry mob attacked St. Paul streetcars again. Windows were broken, fifty nonunion drivers were injured, and the Home Guard was called in to keep order.On December 13, with refusals to intervene from Gov. Burnquist, President Woodrow Wilson, and other government officials, a general strike was organized, one that lasted only four hours before negotiators were sent in to broker a settlement. Lowry and the TCRTC refused to comply with orders to reinstate union men in February and June of 1918. The strike continued until October 8, 1918, over a year since the first walk-out, when the company was ordered by the State Board of Arbitration to comply with the settlement, with state supervision. Thank you to Steve Trimble and MNopedia for information for this post. Image of the 1917 streetcar strike from MNopedia.

Original source can be found here.