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The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 began on July 16 at the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad depot in Martinsburg, West Virginia, when workers walked off the job to protest a ten percent wage cut — the third reduction in a year. Federal troops were eventually required to break it, and by early August the strike was winding down with over a hundred dead nationwide. The card's recipient, J. Edward Duke of Charlestown, lived in Jefferson County — immediately adjacent to Berkeley County, where Martinsburg sits and where the strike ignited. The B&O main line ran directly through his county.
Walker, writing from Staunton on August 2nd at nearly eleven at night, drops a cheerful note relaying news about a mutual friend or family member named Nell and wishing Duke could visit. Then, almost as an aside, he asks: "How about the strike? Haven't you gotten over that yet?" — a casual question that carries real weight given Duke's proximity to the epicenter of the worst labor unrest the United States had seen to that point.
Staunton connected to the broader rail network via the Valley Railroad, which tied into B&O operations, so Walker was not insulated from the disruption either. The card captures two Shenandoah Valley correspondents navigating a moment of national upheaval with the wry economy that postal cards invited — barely room for the news, and barely a sentence for the strike that had shaken the country.
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