Sometimes lasting only a few days, these strikes were often "marked by almost continuous and often spectacular violent conflict,"[2] at times amounting to prolonged riots and weeks of civil insurrection.

[3] Electrified streetcars posed an attractive target for striking unions like the Amalgamated Street Railway Employees of America.

Streetcar strikes rank among the deadliest armed conflicts in American labor union history.

[2] Despite the transit disruption, which sometimes lasted for months, and despite the fact that many of the casualties were passengers and innocent bystanders, "the strikers invariably enjoyed wide public support, which extended beyond the working class.

Foremost among them was James A. Farley (1874–1913), who specialized in streetcar strikes—he claimed to have broken 50—and was said to command an army of forty thousand scabs [5] to be deployed anywhere in the country.