The longshoremen now
resolved to go out and refused to work on ships which received scab
coal, and finally they decided to stop work altogether on all kinds of
craft in the harbor until the trouble should be settled. The strike
spirit spread to a large number of freight handlers working for
railroads along the river front, so that in the last week of January the
number of strikers in New York, Brooklyn, and New Jersey, reached
approximately 28,000; 13,000 longshoremen, 1000 boatmen, 6000 grain
handlers, 7500 coal-handlers, and 400 bag-sewers.
On February 11, August Corbin, president and receiver of the
Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company, fearing a strike by the miners
working in the coal mines operated by that road, settled the strike by
restoring to the eighty-five coal-handlers, the original strikers, their
former rate of wages. The Knights of Labor felt impelled to accept such
a trivial settlement for two reasons. The coal-handlers' strike, which
drove up the price of coal to the consumer, was very unpopular, and the
strike itself had begun to weaken when the brewers and stationary
engineers, who for some obscure reason had been ordered to strike in
sympathy, refused to come out.
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