REMODELING COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE - TONG,JAMES RATIONAL CHOICE MODEL ANDTHE GREAT STRIKES OF 1877

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, widesprea d outbursts of unorganized, collective Violence by workers-phenomena w hich are anomalous vis-glis the ''expanded logic of collective action' '. I apply Tong's model to the Great Strikes of 1877. The spark that l ighted this prairie fire was a spontaneous nationwide strike by rail-r oad workers. Consistent with Tong's model, rail-road workers struck wh en their wages were reduced below subsistence levels. Because this sub sistence crisis coincided with coercive crises at the local and stare level and the slow mobilization by the United States Army-which reduce d the likelihood of arrest, injury or death in action-these strikes qu ickly deepened. They ignited an explosion of concurrent disturbances; sympathy strikes, protest marches and rallies, riots, and general stri kes.