In June of that year James Cullerton, a switchman for the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway, sent word to the various rail yards of the city asking for three delegates from each to be dispatched to an organizational meeting.

[2] These autonomous local Switchmen's Unions began to feel the need for a national organization and a call was issued for a founding convention, to be held February 22, 1886, in Chicago.

[2] A well-attended organizational convention lasting 8 days followed, with the body electing officers, establishing a monthly magazine, and carrying on extensive discussions in secret session.

[4] James L. Monaghan, a graduate of the Philadelphia school system who had studied law for two years, was elected the first Grand Master of the organization.

[4] The gathering was noteworthy for its elevation of another mainstay of the SMAA to prominence when it elected 26-year old Chicago native William A. Simsrott as Grand Secretary and Treasurer of the organization.

The SMAA was part of this myriad of organizations — a diffusion of decision-making authority and range of competing institutional interests which made unity of action during strikes extremely difficult.

At 4 pm on February 27, 1888, all locomotives of the CB&Q system were delivered to their terminal points and all engineers and firemen of the railway walked off the job and a protracted strike was begun.

[10] A meeting was held in Chicago on March 5 between the two striking organizations, at which it was agreed that the engineers and firemen of these parallel lines should notify their employers that while they would continue to perform all of their other duties, they would henceforth no longer handle CB&Q cars on the trains which they operated.

[13] The strike was ultimately lost by the unions, lending to a general sense of unease with the efficacy of the diffused craft form of labor organization.