Northwest Switchmen Strike
November 30, 2,300 switchmen walked out, crippling 13 roads of the Northwest, threatening a tie-up of business from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Coast. One railway president is quoted as saying that the strike will result in the most complete tie-up of railroad traffic in the territory affected that has ever been known, not even excepting the great strike of 1894. President L. W. Hill of the Great Northern, son of James J. Hill, said: “We will fight. We carried the men through the financial depression without a cut in pay. Every five years or so we have to meet this question, and it now is time to settle.” One of the first effects of the strike was a rise in the price of wheat in the Chicago grain market. The great difficulties at present, of course, lie in the yards.