The Taftville Cotton Mill Strike of 1875

The general prosperity which prevailed in the United States during and after the Civil War was shattered by the Panic of 1873 and the resulting Depression of the 1870s, from which there was little relief until 1879.

The Panic of 1873 was triggered by the failure in September 1873 of the brokerage firm of Jay Cooke and Company. Within a year there would be 5,000 business failures in the nation, including the collapse of major factories, banks, and railroads. An economy that had been operating at a fever pitch for more than a decade was over-trading, over-producing, and over-speculating. The failure of the Cooke firm and others bred a psychology of fear that brought American business to a standstill.

The closing of businesses and factories produced widespread unemployment. Twenty-five thousand were laid off in Philadelphia, eighteen thousand in Troy, three thousand in Lynn, and twenty thousand in Newark. The plight of those workers who managed to retain their jobs was not bright. Although prices fell, wages were declining even faster.

As a major manufacturing state, Connecticut quickly felt the effects of the Depression of the 1870s. Banks closed, bankruptcies multiplied, and major firms closed their doors. Workingmen were hard hit, as unemployment rose and wages fell significantly between 1873 and 1875. The tough times for workers led in Connecticut, as in other industrial states, to particularly bitter capital-labor confrontations.

Perhaps the most significant of such confrontations in Connecticut was a strike at the Taftville Cotton Mill in April 1875. A number of factors figured in the workers' decision to strike. Taftville workers were particularly incensed by the company's apparent attempt to gain back all wages paid out (under $10 for a sixty-seven-hour week) via high rents for company-owned housing and high prices at the company-owned store. An oft-cited declaration of what was taking place at Taftville came from a workingman who asserted that he and his daughter had worked full time for over three months and had received but four dollars in cash payment.

But the spark which truly lit the strike fuse at Taftvilie was an attempt by the company to terminate unionization. When workers protested two 12% pay cuts, they were informed that one-half of the pay cuts would be restored to those workers who had not participated in the organization of a union. The result was that all 1,200 workers struck.

The fate of those who struck at Taftville revealed much about the condition of labor in late nineteenth-century Connecticut. The company replaced the striking workers with strikebreakers and evicted the strikers from company-owned housing. The plight was intensified by the antilabor legislation of the Connecticut General Assembly. The Assembly enacted a strict tramp law, aimed at workers such as those at Taftville, who became drifters after their strikes were broken.

From such circumstances as those of the unsuccessful strikers of Taftville would come increased unionization. Connecticut workers in the next decades would participate in ever growing numbers in organizations such as the Knights of Labor in the 1880s and subsequently in the American Federation of Labor.

For Further Reading

Bingham, Harold J. History of Connecticut. 4 vols. New York, 1962. (See especially II, 680-682.)

Moret, Marta. A Brief History of the Connecticut Labor Movement. Storrs, Connecticut, 1982.

* Entry under revision.