Martin Irons

The strike that made Irons famous began in March 1886, after Jay Gould's Texas and Pacific fired a foreman in Marshall. Irons, of Knights of Labor District Assembly 101, called it, and it spread across Gould's southwestern lines. Workers uncoupled cars and seized switches. Gould hired strikebreakers and Pinkerton detectives, and Governor John Ireland sent militia and Rangers to Fort Worth. The Handbook of Texas calls the failure the Knights' first major defeat. Irons was blacklisted, and in 1894 the secretary of the Social Democratic party of Texas gave him a home at Bruceville.

What the plaque says

Martin Irons A native of Scotland, Martin Irons (1833-1900) came to the United States at the age of fourteen as a machinist's apprentice. After learning the trade,he lived and worked in numerous places throughout the country. By 1884,he was employed as a machinist in the Missouri Pacific Railway shop in Sedalia, Missouri. A firm believer in organization as a means by which individuals could improve their lives, Irons became an active participant in groups such as the Knights of Pythias and the Grange. While working in Sedalia, he became interested in an early union society known as the Knights of Labor and was instrumental in organizing workers employed by Jay Gould's network of southwestern railroad lines. The Railroad Union, known as District Assembly 101, went on strike in 1886. Irons, then chairman of the executive committee, came into prominence as its leader. The strike was marked by violence, and when it ended, Irons was blacklisted. He retired in nearby Bruceville but remained active in social reform movements until his death. Iron's grave in the Bruceville Cemetery is marked by a monument, placed in 1911 by the Missouri Federation of Labor. (1984)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mother Neff State Park — 14 mi
  A Leon River park that grew from six acres Isabella Neff left the state in her 1921 will, where Civilian Conservation Corps Company 817 built a stone tower, a pavilion and roads in the 1930s.
• Armstrong Browning Library — 17 mi
  A three-story Italian Renaissance library on the Baylor campus built to hold A. J. Armstrong's Browning collection, dedicated in December 1951 and now, by its own account, the world's largest of Browning material.
• Dr Pepper Museum — 17 mi
  The 1906 bottling plant of the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company, built where Dr Pepper outgrew a Waco drugstore soda fountain, now the Dr Pepper Museum.
• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 17 mi
  The Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.

More markers nearby

• Site of Bruceville Methodist Church — 0.4 mi
• Bruceville Baptist Church — 0.5 mi
• First Baptist Church of Eddy — 2.3 mi
• Charles A. Westbrook Plantation — 3.0 mi