The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 was the first labor strike in the United States. The tension was between the workers and the business corporations during the Second Industrial Revolution. The main cause of the workers strike was due to the Panic of 1873. The Panic of 1873 was when the banking firm of Jay Cooke & Company collapsed after investing too much on railroad securities. The Panic of 1873 caused a huge financial depression, which led to workers wages being cut and thousands being laid off. Workers were not the only ones that suffered; the investors of the stock market also suffered. Many corporations began to fail, they then started to let workers go and lower their wages. One industry greatly affected by this crisis was the railroad industry in the east. Railroad companies in the east such as Pennsylvania Railroad and Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad cut workers wages multiple times in less than just a year. With multiple wage cuts a factor in the despair of the workers already, Railroad companies began to push their limits by adding more freight trains to the lines without hiring more workers to manage them. This angered many workers and caused them to finally go on strike. On July 17, 1877 workers blocked freight trains in Martins burg, West Virginia and demanded better pay. The governor of Maryland called in the Militia and Federal troops to break the strikes but they were unsuccessful. Angry workers threw stones and the militia fired in the crowd, killing 10 people. The strikes quickly spread throughout the United States. Soon strikes in Pennsylvania, Missouri, Illinois, Kansas, and California occurred. In other states farmers and other laborers supported the Railroad strikers for the same cause. The workers demanded higher wages and better working conditions.