Laying it all on the line: The configuration and causes of strike fatalities within the United States, 1877--1947

The intention of this study was to advance our socio-historical understanding of the causes of extreme labor-management conflict in the United States and to elevate the level of discourse concerning violence within and against the American labor movement above the rhetoric and conjecture that have characterized much of its past. Through an exhaustive literature review involving content-analysis and cross-referencing strategies, I compiled a list of more than 240 strikes within the United States that eventuated in at least one fatality, and generated industry-specific and national counts of 1,086 annualized strike fatalities for the years 1877–1947. With the aggregate count as an empirical base, I next subjected the prominent pre-existing theories as to the causes of U.S. strike violence to the rigors of time-series regression analysis.; The results of the data collection and statistical analysis yielded several key findings. First, more than a dozen industries were affected, although the raw data showed strike fatalities to have been concentrated within specific transportation and extraction industries. Second, strikers were the most frequent category of victim, constituting slightly more than half of all identifiable persons killed. Third, strike violence increased in association with tightening labor markets. Fourth, strike violence was manifest in association with the struggle for and against unionization. Fifth, state support for labor's right to organize tended to decrease the likelihood of strike violence and vice versa. Altogether, the results suggest the making of markets in the United States to have been a disjointed and oftentimes desperate, forceful, and remarkably bloody process. Violent strikes were not random irrational acts, but integral features of the broader development/imposition of capitalist social relations.