Brakemen's Brotherhood

Working atop moving trains in all weather, railroad brakemen performed the most dangerous task in the most dangerous American industry of the 1870s and 1880s.

The Brakemen's Brotherhood was an early American railroad brotherhood established in 1873. The group was a secret society organizing railroad brakemen into a fraternal benefit society and trade union. The organization was largely destroyed in the aftermath of the failed Great Railroad Strike of 1877, although it continued to maintain an existence nationwide through the 1880s.