2-1/2 cents an hour in the wages of
the "top-men" and were joined by the trimmers who had grievances of
their own. Soon the strike spread to the other roads and the number of
striking coal-handlers reached 3000. The longshoremen's strike was begun
by 200 men, employed by the Old Dominion Steamship Company, against a
reduction in wages and the hiring of cheap men by the week. The strikers
were not organized, but the Ocean Association, a part of the Knights of
Labor, took up their cause and was assisted by the longshoremen's union.
Both strikes soon widened out through a series of sympathetic strikes of
related trades and finally became united into one. The Ocean Association
declared a boycott on the freight of the Old Dominion Company and this
was strictly obeyed by all of the longshoremen's unions. The
International Boatmen's Union refused to allow their boats to be used
for "scab coal" or to permit their members to steer the companies'
boats. The longshoremen joined the boatmen in refusing to handle coal,
and the shovelers followed. Then the grain handlers on both floating and
stationary elevators refused to load ships with grain on which there was
scab coal, and the bag-sewers stood with them. The longshoremen now
resolved to go out and refused to work on ships which received scab
coal, and finally they decided to stop work altogether on all kinds of
craft in the harbor until the trouble should be settled. The strike
spirit spread to a large number of freight handlers working for
railroads along the river front, so that in the last week of January the
number of strikers in New York, Brooklyn, and New Jersey, reached
approximately 28,000; 13,000 longshoremen, 1000 boatmen, 6000 grain
handlers, 7500 coal-handlers, and 400 bag-sewers.

On February 11, August Corbin, president and receiver of the
Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company, fearing a strike by the miners
working in the coal mines operated by that road, settled the strike by
restoring to the eighty-five coal-handlers, the original strikers, their
former rate of wages. The Knights of Labor felt impelled to accept such
a trivial settlement for two reasons. The coal-handlers' strike, which
drove up the price of coal to the consumer, was very unpopular, and the
strike itself had begun to weaken when the brewers and stationary
engineers, who for some obscure reason had been ordered to strike in
sympathy, refused to come out. The situation was left unchanged, as far