Remodeling Collective Violence: James Tong's Rational Choice Model and the Great Strikes of 1877

Abstract

James Tong develops a rational choice model for collective violence by peasant outlaws in pre-modem Ming Dynasty China. I argue that Tong's model can, with some alterations, be used to explain sudden, widespread outbursts of unorganized, collective violence by workers-phenomena which are anomalous vis-à-vis the "expanded logic of collective action." I apply Tong's model to the Great Strikes of 1877. The spark that lighted this prairie fire was a spontane ous nationwide strike by railroad workers. Consistent with Tong's model, rail road workers struck when their wages were reduced below subsistence levels. Because this subsistence crisis coincided with coercive crises at the local and state level and the slow mobilization by the United States Army-which reduced the likelihood of arrest, injury or death in action-these strikes quickly deep ened. They ignited an explosion of concurrent disturbances; sympathy strikes, protest marches and rallies, riots, and general strikes.