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The St. Louis Commune of 1877: Communism in the Heartland
Following the Civil War, large corporations emerged in the United States and became intent on maximizing their power and profits at all costs. Political corruption permeated American society as those corporate entities grew and spread across the country, leaving bribery and exploitation in their wake. This alliance between corporate America and the political class came to a screeching halt during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, when the U.S. workers in the railroad, mining, canal, and manufacturing industries called a general strike against monopoly capitalism and brought the country to an economic standstill.
In The St. Louis Commune of 1877 Mark Kruger tells the riveting story of how workers assumed political control in St. Louis, Missouri. Kruger examines the roots of the St. Louis Commune—focusing on the 1848 German revolution, the Paris Commune, and the First International. Not only was 1877 the first instance of a general strike in U.S. history; it was also the first time workers took control of a major American city and the first time a city was ruled by a communist party.
In The St. Louis Commune of 1877 Mark Kruger tells the riveting story of how workers assumed political control in St. Louis, Missouri. Kruger examines the roots of the St. Louis Commune—focusing on the 1848 German revolution, the Paris Commune, and the First International. Not only was 1877 the first instance of a general strike in U.S. history; it was also the first time workers took control of a major American city and the first time a city was ruled by a communist party.
330 pages, Paperback
Published October 1, 2021
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September 4, 2021
Working people in the US weren’t always afraid to strike. In the 21st century, we see a variety of tactics used to organize unions, win contracts, and otherwise seek justice and power at the workplace.
Nearly 150 years ago, when plutocrats built gigantic mansions instead of rockets to display their wealth and power, the Great Upheaval showed the world what workers were capable of. In the summer of 1877, four years into a depression, some of the most exploited, yet most powerful workers in the country fought for a living wage (or perhaps just a something-above-starving wage). Some of them even thought that democracy required working class rule.
At the heart of this upheaval were the railroad workers of St. Louis, led by the socialist Workingmens Party. Mark Kruger’s The St. Louis Commune of 1877: Communism in the Heartland brings this struggle to life.
The upheaval started on July 16, 1877 in Martinsburg, a town in rural West Virginia, when rail workers walked off the job to protest 10% wage cuts. It quickly spread through 11 states, including urban areas like Baltimore’s Camden Yards, Pittsburgh, Chicago and East St. Louis, Illinois, the country’s westward rail hub.
State militias dispatched to break the strikes were mostly composed of workers who sided with the strikers.
On July 21, rail workers in East St. Louis declared support for the strike, and elected a strike committee the following day. The strike committee issued General Order No. 1, ordering workers to stop all freight traffic. Strikers allowed passenger and mail trains to continue.
Over the next seven days, thousands turned out for nightly rallies addressed by railroad workers and socialists from the Workingmens Party (WPUSA), and daily visits to workplaces in St. Louis to call the workers to join the strike.
At the height of the strike, Kruger writes that “The WPUSA had taken control of events in St. Louis and established what would become known as the St. Louis Commune. It sought to operate the city in the interests of the working class while leading the strike against the railroad corporations.
"Subsequently the party would direct and coordinate all labor actions in St. Louis and, for a time, rule the city itself.” (235).
Roughly one in five WPUSA members lived in the St. Louis area at the time of the railroad strike.
St. Louis was home to two of the key ingredients required to radicalize the strike movement: German immigrants, many of them veterans of the 1848 revolutions in Europe and the US Civil War, and the American section of the First International, the Workingmens Party.
Kruger covers these elements and more in chapters that contextualize the strikes of 1877. For good measure, he throws in the story of the Paris Commune of 1871, the boogieman that terrified both the ruling class and newspaper editorial writers throughout the Upheaval.
The Paris Commune of 1871 arose in the wake of France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. When the French government surrendered territory to the Prussian army, the citizens of Paris seized power in the city and held it for several months, aiming to build a democratic system based on the interests of working people.
Three months after the Commune was organized and elections held, the French army put down the Commune in a very bloody crackdown, but its influence remained for a long time after.
Karl Marx described the Commune in The Civil War in France as the first example of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat.’ He also described the reaction from the capitalist class and media: “When the great conflagration took place in Chicago, the telegraph round the world announced it as the infernal deed of the International, and it is really wonderful that to its demoniacal agency has not been attributed the hurricane ravaging the West Indies.”
Kruger's accessible style and the wealth of context he brings to what is essentially a one-week battle offers a very good introduction to readers unfamiliar with working class history.
He concludes that “The railroad strike of 1877 reflected the frustration of American workers with 19th century industrial capitalism, but it did not have the leadership or focused revolutionary drive to overthrow the system it so overwhelmingly rejected.” (213).
One might quibble whether a “commune” was ever established in St. Louis, when the strike committee continued to negotiate with the same government in power the week before. Yet they pioneered many of the tactics used in the general strikes of the early 20th century in Seattle, Minneapolis and San Francisco.
Kruger offers inspiration and valuable lessons to workers and other 21st century social movements.
Nearly 150 years ago, when plutocrats built gigantic mansions instead of rockets to display their wealth and power, the Great Upheaval showed the world what workers were capable of. In the summer of 1877, four years into a depression, some of the most exploited, yet most powerful workers in the country fought for a living wage (or perhaps just a something-above-starving wage). Some of them even thought that democracy required working class rule.
At the heart of this upheaval were the railroad workers of St. Louis, led by the socialist Workingmens Party. Mark Kruger’s The St. Louis Commune of 1877: Communism in the Heartland brings this struggle to life.
The upheaval started on July 16, 1877 in Martinsburg, a town in rural West Virginia, when rail workers walked off the job to protest 10% wage cuts. It quickly spread through 11 states, including urban areas like Baltimore’s Camden Yards, Pittsburgh, Chicago and East St. Louis, Illinois, the country’s westward rail hub.
State militias dispatched to break the strikes were mostly composed of workers who sided with the strikers.
On July 21, rail workers in East St. Louis declared support for the strike, and elected a strike committee the following day. The strike committee issued General Order No. 1, ordering workers to stop all freight traffic. Strikers allowed passenger and mail trains to continue.
Over the next seven days, thousands turned out for nightly rallies addressed by railroad workers and socialists from the Workingmens Party (WPUSA), and daily visits to workplaces in St. Louis to call the workers to join the strike.
At the height of the strike, Kruger writes that “The WPUSA had taken control of events in St. Louis and established what would become known as the St. Louis Commune. It sought to operate the city in the interests of the working class while leading the strike against the railroad corporations.
"Subsequently the party would direct and coordinate all labor actions in St. Louis and, for a time, rule the city itself.” (235).
Roughly one in five WPUSA members lived in the St. Louis area at the time of the railroad strike.
St. Louis was home to two of the key ingredients required to radicalize the strike movement: German immigrants, many of them veterans of the 1848 revolutions in Europe and the US Civil War, and the American section of the First International, the Workingmens Party.
Kruger covers these elements and more in chapters that contextualize the strikes of 1877. For good measure, he throws in the story of the Paris Commune of 1871, the boogieman that terrified both the ruling class and newspaper editorial writers throughout the Upheaval.
The Paris Commune of 1871 arose in the wake of France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. When the French government surrendered territory to the Prussian army, the citizens of Paris seized power in the city and held it for several months, aiming to build a democratic system based on the interests of working people.
Three months after the Commune was organized and elections held, the French army put down the Commune in a very bloody crackdown, but its influence remained for a long time after.
Karl Marx described the Commune in The Civil War in France as the first example of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat.’ He also described the reaction from the capitalist class and media: “When the great conflagration took place in Chicago, the telegraph round the world announced it as the infernal deed of the International, and it is really wonderful that to its demoniacal agency has not been attributed the hurricane ravaging the West Indies.”
Kruger's accessible style and the wealth of context he brings to what is essentially a one-week battle offers a very good introduction to readers unfamiliar with working class history.
He concludes that “The railroad strike of 1877 reflected the frustration of American workers with 19th century industrial capitalism, but it did not have the leadership or focused revolutionary drive to overthrow the system it so overwhelmingly rejected.” (213).
One might quibble whether a “commune” was ever established in St. Louis, when the strike committee continued to negotiate with the same government in power the week before. Yet they pioneered many of the tactics used in the general strikes of the early 20th century in Seattle, Minneapolis and San Francisco.
Kruger offers inspiration and valuable lessons to workers and other 21st century social movements.
December 17, 2022
For six days in 1877, the workers of America flexed their might in a way never before seen. The working class took over an entire city.
In 1877, railroads had come to represent everything wrong with America. Small towns were infiltrated with the soot, smoke, and noise of modernity. Large cities were full of immiserated working class who risked their lives around heavy machinery for starvation wages. All the while, the owners of the railroads got obscenely rich and bought political influence.
Four years earlier, over speculation in western railroads let to a recession that would last into 1877. Banks failed, businesses shuttered. As a result, railroads would cut staff, running longer trains which would make more dangerous some of the most dangerous jobs in the country at the time. The companies would continually cut the wages of their workers, knowing that with millions of unemployed waiting to earn a pittance, and with Governors and statehouses on their side, they held all the cards. Or so they thought.
On July 16, 1877, Martinsburg, West Virginia rail workers striked after a third pay cut in only a few months. It was completely spontaneous, and word of the strike would travel up and down the rail lines with towns along the way joining. Relations between labor and capital at the time were a powder keg, and here was the spark. Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Terre Haute, Chicago, and more. Workers in these towns would halt freight traffic but continue to let mail and passenger trains pass through to limit public backlash and federal involvement.
This book provides excellent context leading up to the railroad strike for someone like me who had little knowledge on this area of history. Really most of the book is context. This includes the 1848 revolution in Europe, the Paris Commune, the First International, and a general overview of the state of the American working class in the 1870s. But the most interesting chapter and cause of the labor unrest is without a doubt German Immigration.
After the failed revolution of 1848, many German intellectuals and labor leaders would leave Europe and come to America. Previous waves of German immigrants had landed in the Mississippi River valley - finding it to be similar to home - and so for the most part this wave of immigrants would join them. By 1850 one third of St Louis citizens were German born. These newcomers admired American republicanism, its Bill of Rights, and the lack of artificial class lines and monarchy; these were after all the things they had just been fighting for. This is not to say, though, that these Germans became complacent and accepted their new country as it was. Anything but.
Germans were radically abolitionist, would become key members of the Republican Party, and were the main factor keeping St Louis considered an antislavery city. The Turners would be a major factor in defeating Confederate sympathizers in state politics. During the war, two hundred thousand Germans would join the Union military - disproportionately high - to crush slavery. Many of the Union's generals in the War were German-born and gained experience fighting in 1848. Robert E Lee supposedly remarked that if it were not for the Germans, the Confederacy would have won the Civil War. Karl Marx said, "Without the considerable mass of military experience that emigrated to America in consequence of the European revolutionary commotions of 1848-1849, the organization of the Union Army would have required a much longer time." In fact, several of these Union generals had been friends with Marx when in Germany, something that certainly was never mentioned by your history teacher! This same cohort of immigrants that would fight for the liberation of blacks in their new homeland would be critical to the labor movement in postbellum America. They provided the movement new ideas from across the Atlantic and a new energy.
Back to the strike.
July 22, 1877, the Great Railroad Strike would turn to a general strike in St Louis. Workers of all type would strike and a committee oversaw the distribution of resources and city services. The overtaking of the city was remarkably nonviolent; in fact, the movement would shun violence, arguably to its demise.
The workers would organize daily public meetings. The solidarity was strong. The group supported the emancipation of women and equal treatment of African Americans. When crowds were asked if white workers would stand with black workers, they shouted back, "we will!" The wealthy elite of the city were terrified, and "on the evening of July 25, 1877, public officials throughout the United States felt more genuine alarm at the possibility of imminent social revolution than on any occasion before or since."
The book also documents some of the strategic blunders of the Commune. Striking rail workers who were given their demands by their employer refused to go back to work out of solidarity with those other rail workers whose lines had not acceded to the demands. This solidarity, albeit noble, created no incentive for a specific rail line to give in to demands until all did, and would effectively bring all the capitalists together instead of keeping them fractured. Much like the Paris Commune, the workers did not seek violent insurrection, but instead peaceful transition of power to the workers. Given the opportunity to seize weapons and prepare to defend themselves, they didn't. The last few days, the Commune leaders stopped organizing speeches in the public squares. The problem was that these rallies were the St Louis Commune. Without momentum and public communication it began to fall apart. It is hard to be critical of these mistakes, after all the uprising was completely spontaneous.
Finally, the Commune was defeated by federal troops and Illinois militiamen. The elite of the city would parade through town, asserting their dominance over all. The parade became an annual tradition known as the Veiled Prophet Parade and Ball. The Veiled Prophet was a figure dressed in white robe and hood, and on his parade float were stacks of guns. The person's identity was kept a secret, but it is known that the first Prophet was the city's police chief. A clear message to the working classes that the wealthy were back in charge and happy to use the violence of the state to keep it that way.
While the Commune was defeated, its legacy lived on. Reading a book about the Commune is what inspired Eugene Debs to become a socialist. What's past is prologue, and "the tradition of all the dead generations weights like a nightmare on the brain of the living." May that nightmare haunt all those who have partaken in the Veiled Prophet Parade and Ball.
In 1877, railroads had come to represent everything wrong with America. Small towns were infiltrated with the soot, smoke, and noise of modernity. Large cities were full of immiserated working class who risked their lives around heavy machinery for starvation wages. All the while, the owners of the railroads got obscenely rich and bought political influence.
Four years earlier, over speculation in western railroads let to a recession that would last into 1877. Banks failed, businesses shuttered. As a result, railroads would cut staff, running longer trains which would make more dangerous some of the most dangerous jobs in the country at the time. The companies would continually cut the wages of their workers, knowing that with millions of unemployed waiting to earn a pittance, and with Governors and statehouses on their side, they held all the cards. Or so they thought.
On July 16, 1877, Martinsburg, West Virginia rail workers striked after a third pay cut in only a few months. It was completely spontaneous, and word of the strike would travel up and down the rail lines with towns along the way joining. Relations between labor and capital at the time were a powder keg, and here was the spark. Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Terre Haute, Chicago, and more. Workers in these towns would halt freight traffic but continue to let mail and passenger trains pass through to limit public backlash and federal involvement.
This book provides excellent context leading up to the railroad strike for someone like me who had little knowledge on this area of history. Really most of the book is context. This includes the 1848 revolution in Europe, the Paris Commune, the First International, and a general overview of the state of the American working class in the 1870s. But the most interesting chapter and cause of the labor unrest is without a doubt German Immigration.
After the failed revolution of 1848, many German intellectuals and labor leaders would leave Europe and come to America. Previous waves of German immigrants had landed in the Mississippi River valley - finding it to be similar to home - and so for the most part this wave of immigrants would join them. By 1850 one third of St Louis citizens were German born. These newcomers admired American republicanism, its Bill of Rights, and the lack of artificial class lines and monarchy; these were after all the things they had just been fighting for. This is not to say, though, that these Germans became complacent and accepted their new country as it was. Anything but.
Germans were radically abolitionist, would become key members of the Republican Party, and were the main factor keeping St Louis considered an antislavery city. The Turners would be a major factor in defeating Confederate sympathizers in state politics. During the war, two hundred thousand Germans would join the Union military - disproportionately high - to crush slavery. Many of the Union's generals in the War were German-born and gained experience fighting in 1848. Robert E Lee supposedly remarked that if it were not for the Germans, the Confederacy would have won the Civil War. Karl Marx said, "Without the considerable mass of military experience that emigrated to America in consequence of the European revolutionary commotions of 1848-1849, the organization of the Union Army would have required a much longer time." In fact, several of these Union generals had been friends with Marx when in Germany, something that certainly was never mentioned by your history teacher! This same cohort of immigrants that would fight for the liberation of blacks in their new homeland would be critical to the labor movement in postbellum America. They provided the movement new ideas from across the Atlantic and a new energy.
Back to the strike.
July 22, 1877, the Great Railroad Strike would turn to a general strike in St Louis. Workers of all type would strike and a committee oversaw the distribution of resources and city services. The overtaking of the city was remarkably nonviolent; in fact, the movement would shun violence, arguably to its demise.
The workers would organize daily public meetings. The solidarity was strong. The group supported the emancipation of women and equal treatment of African Americans. When crowds were asked if white workers would stand with black workers, they shouted back, "we will!" The wealthy elite of the city were terrified, and "on the evening of July 25, 1877, public officials throughout the United States felt more genuine alarm at the possibility of imminent social revolution than on any occasion before or since."
The book also documents some of the strategic blunders of the Commune. Striking rail workers who were given their demands by their employer refused to go back to work out of solidarity with those other rail workers whose lines had not acceded to the demands. This solidarity, albeit noble, created no incentive for a specific rail line to give in to demands until all did, and would effectively bring all the capitalists together instead of keeping them fractured. Much like the Paris Commune, the workers did not seek violent insurrection, but instead peaceful transition of power to the workers. Given the opportunity to seize weapons and prepare to defend themselves, they didn't. The last few days, the Commune leaders stopped organizing speeches in the public squares. The problem was that these rallies were the St Louis Commune. Without momentum and public communication it began to fall apart. It is hard to be critical of these mistakes, after all the uprising was completely spontaneous.
Finally, the Commune was defeated by federal troops and Illinois militiamen. The elite of the city would parade through town, asserting their dominance over all. The parade became an annual tradition known as the Veiled Prophet Parade and Ball. The Veiled Prophet was a figure dressed in white robe and hood, and on his parade float were stacks of guns. The person's identity was kept a secret, but it is known that the first Prophet was the city's police chief. A clear message to the working classes that the wealthy were back in charge and happy to use the violence of the state to keep it that way.
While the Commune was defeated, its legacy lived on. Reading a book about the Commune is what inspired Eugene Debs to become a socialist. What's past is prologue, and "the tradition of all the dead generations weights like a nightmare on the brain of the living." May that nightmare haunt all those who have partaken in the Veiled Prophet Parade and Ball.
July 25, 2022
Wonderful read, and definitely a recommendation for any person new to Marx & socialism.
Mark Kruger gives a clear and concise description of all major events leading up to the 1877 Strike, it's consequences for the city (even discussing the Veiled Prophet), and how this affected capital in America. Let's hope the Missouri History Museum takes note of this phenomenal work!
Absolute must own, 5/5 stars.
Mark Kruger gives a clear and concise description of all major events leading up to the 1877 Strike, it's consequences for the city (even discussing the Veiled Prophet), and how this affected capital in America. Let's hope the Missouri History Museum takes note of this phenomenal work!
Absolute must own, 5/5 stars.
April 7, 2024
Clear and informative. I didn't know much about the 1877 strike, one of the largest, most radical and consequential in US history, and this really gives you everything you need. It especially gives you all the contextual information you could ever want, with chapters on the Paris Commune, patterns of immigration, the Workingman's Party, and the Civil War. My only complaint is that Kruger is very fond of repetition. Some repetition is totally fine and even helpful, but there were a few moments (particularly in the Epilogue) when he repeats information he just gave you a few paragraphs back. That's a small gripe about an otherwise great book.
October 8, 2023
Interesting, but ultimately a little hard to read. History is always a challenge for me, though.
Kruger does a good job of laying out all the strands that connect the 1877 St. Louis Commune to the rest of history, and this book is an excellent introduction. However, Kruger, like a lot of historians, struggles to conjure up a compelling narrative from the events.
I think the issue is that Kruger isn’t opinionated enough. He’s trying to write a general introduction, which is admirable but a little boring. Much better, I think, would’ve been a history with an opinion. Even if his opinion had been something I disagreed with, I think this book would’ve been a lot more fun to read if he’d been seeking to prove something.
Kruger does a good job of laying out all the strands that connect the 1877 St. Louis Commune to the rest of history, and this book is an excellent introduction. However, Kruger, like a lot of historians, struggles to conjure up a compelling narrative from the events.
I think the issue is that Kruger isn’t opinionated enough. He’s trying to write a general introduction, which is admirable but a little boring. Much better, I think, would’ve been a history with an opinion. Even if his opinion had been something I disagreed with, I think this book would’ve been a lot more fun to read if he’d been seeking to prove something.
September 17, 2025
Poorly written, disorganized, and repetitive. So much background is provided about the factors leading to the 1877 St. Louis Commune that the actual event (a railroad strike turned general strike) is limited to the last 50 pages. And it turns out that the much-vaunted, historic first takeover of an American city by a communist collective actually lasted less than a week, happened more or less by accident, and led to no lasting improvements. I did learn something about the 1848 German revolution, the legacy of which was the presence of a large, educated German population in St. Louis. But I could have gotten that from a Wikipedia entry. I hate to one-star any book, but writing this bad should never have seen the light of day.
February 20, 2026
A truly interesting account of a forgotten uprising in American working-class history. Importantly, Kruger connects the dots between the St. Louis Commune and all the world historical events that led to it.
Five Stars!
Five Stars!
June 21, 2025
A good introduction to a little-understood era. Because this period has been romanticized in popular culture, or historicized as a bygone "Gilded Age of Robber Barons," its true nature has been obscured in a fog of nostalgia lethal to our own times. In the final quarter of the 19th century, the age of Social Darwinism and zero-sum capitalism, the specter of revolution raised its head in what is now "red" country of a different kind. Mr. Kruger takes the reader on a journey through a period that has returned full circle.
The "Communism" referred to here was not the Soviet-style Leninism of the cold war, but that would not have mattered in 1877 St. Louis, as it did not in the witch-hunting 1950s. What was at stake is the very notion of social democracy, which had nothing to do with American "freedom" as defined by the "natural elite" of business rule. Workers had no rights these masters were obliged to respect - the "wages of whiteness" were minimum. Thus erupted a civil war of a new type, beginning as a general strike on the railroads and spreading to every urban-industrial island across the landscape.
And of course it was the immigrant to blame, importing his foreign ideas and terrorist philosophy. While German migrants did bring socialism to these shores, American "exceptionalism" was supposed to negate this influence as an open-ended society for all. That workers of all backgrounds and colors were attracted to its alternative shows America is not - and never was - the exception its propagandists propose. American democracy was no antidote to the Paris Commune, and in the end the threat of overwhelming force and outright occupation broke a largely non-violent mass movement.
Fast-forward 150 years and it seems we've recycled this past in its crudest form. Again Devil-take-the-poor Social Darwinism predominates; the Gospel of Wealth is proclaimed from pulpits; threats of martial law and "take no prisoners" weaponization is spread through the Internet as easily as the telegraph, with the media, the courts, and the state prostituted to power. *This* is the Great America to be Made Again, and as then it's a sorry thing to behold.
As a note on the book itself, Mr. Kruger's writing does get a bit tedious. There is much repetition and page-filling, and the style seems geared toward high school students. I can somewhat overlook this, as younger people are the very ones needing this background to the world they will face. Take it for granted Mr. Kruger's book will be one purged from libraries as "pornography" because it bares the putrid origins of those now in power.
The "Communism" referred to here was not the Soviet-style Leninism of the cold war, but that would not have mattered in 1877 St. Louis, as it did not in the witch-hunting 1950s. What was at stake is the very notion of social democracy, which had nothing to do with American "freedom" as defined by the "natural elite" of business rule. Workers had no rights these masters were obliged to respect - the "wages of whiteness" were minimum. Thus erupted a civil war of a new type, beginning as a general strike on the railroads and spreading to every urban-industrial island across the landscape.
And of course it was the immigrant to blame, importing his foreign ideas and terrorist philosophy. While German migrants did bring socialism to these shores, American "exceptionalism" was supposed to negate this influence as an open-ended society for all. That workers of all backgrounds and colors were attracted to its alternative shows America is not - and never was - the exception its propagandists propose. American democracy was no antidote to the Paris Commune, and in the end the threat of overwhelming force and outright occupation broke a largely non-violent mass movement.
Fast-forward 150 years and it seems we've recycled this past in its crudest form. Again Devil-take-the-poor Social Darwinism predominates; the Gospel of Wealth is proclaimed from pulpits; threats of martial law and "take no prisoners" weaponization is spread through the Internet as easily as the telegraph, with the media, the courts, and the state prostituted to power. *This* is the Great America to be Made Again, and as then it's a sorry thing to behold.
As a note on the book itself, Mr. Kruger's writing does get a bit tedious. There is much repetition and page-filling, and the style seems geared toward high school students. I can somewhat overlook this, as younger people are the very ones needing this background to the world they will face. Take it for granted Mr. Kruger's book will be one purged from libraries as "pornography" because it bares the putrid origins of those now in power.
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