Strike Busting: Swedes and Norwegians willing to work for less at Finlay's Stores, Atlantic Dock, 1885.

On Saturday March 14, 1885, workers at Finlay's Stores were told that they hourly rate would be cut to 20 cents an hour, down from twenty-five. They refused to work for less pay and the company replaced them with about fifty Swedes and Norwegians. So reported the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on March 16, 1885.  The article does not say what the ethnicity of the striking workers were. 

According to the account Oto Erickson was painfully struck on the head by a rock thrown by a striker.  No arrestes were made, but the police presence on the dock was increased.

(Between 1879 and 1893 economic hard times in Norway resulted in a massive emigration from that country)

Text of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 16, 1885 article:

TROUBLE ALONG SHORE.
Swedes and Norwegians at Work at Finlay's Stores.

On Saturday the men working at Finlay's Stores, Atlantic Dock, were informed that hereafter the rate of wages would be twenty cents an hour instead of twenty-five. This morning they refused to work and their places were promptly taken by Swedes and Norwegians. As a party of the the new comers, numbering about fifty, were going to work, escorted by four officers, they passed a large body of strikers. A stone was thrown by one of these which struck a Swede named Oto Erickson, of No. 6 Cornhill street, New York, on the head, inflicting a painful wound. No arrests was made. Captain Reilly, to prevent any further trouble, placed an additional number of officers on duty at the dock.

Date:

1885

Item Relations

Item: Finlay Stores and two men in a dinghy, Atlantic Basin ca. 1870 is related to This Item

Related Tour

Sources:

Share this Item