<P> At the time, the workers were not represented by trade unions . The city and state governments organized armed militias, aided by national guard, federal troops and private militias organized by the railroads, who fought against the workers . Disruption was widespread and at its height, the strikes were supported by about 100,000 workers . With the intervention of federal troops in several locations, most of the strikes were suppressed by early August . Labor continued to work to organize into unions to work for better wages and conditions . Fearing the social disruption, many cities built armories to support their militias; these defensive buildings still stand as symbols of the effort to suppress the labor unrest of this period . </P> <P> With public attention on workers' wages and conditions, the B&O in 1880 founded an Employee Relief Association to provide death benefits and some health care . In 1884 it established a worker pension plan . Other improvements generally had to await further economic growth and associated wage increases . </P> <P> The Long Depression, beginning in the United States with the financial Panic of 1873 and lasting 65 months, became the longest economic contraction in American history, including the later more famous, 45 - month - long Great Depression of the 1930s . The failure of the Jay Cooke bank in New York, was followed quickly by that of Henry Clews, and set off a chain reaction of bank failures, temporarily closing the New York stock market . </P> <P> Unemployment rose dramatically, reaching 14 percent by 1876, many more were severely underemployed, and wages overall dropped to 45% of their previous level . Thousands of American businesses failed, defaulting on more than a billion dollars of debt . One in four laborers in New York were out of work in the winter of 1873 - 1874 . National construction of new rail lines dropped from 7,500 miles of track in 1872 to just 1,600 miles in 1875, and production in iron and steel alone dropped as much as 45% . </P>

Who started the great railroad strike of 1877