Feature Photo - "Palace" car during the 1929 strike

NOPSI 625 during the 1929 transit strike. The car appears to be on Canal Street, in front of Canal Station at N. White St. The car was extensively vandalized, which means the photo was likely taken between 5-July-1929 and 15-July-1929. The photo is from the Franck studios, who were regularly retained by NOPSI lawyers for shooting traffic accidents and such.

Contract negotiations with the five-year old corporation formed to consolidate electric and transit service in the city, New Orleans Public Service, Incorporated (NOPSI), broke down at the end of June, 1929. The union walked on July 1st. On July 5th, NOPSI tried to break the strike by resuming operations with management and non-union labor operating the streetcars. This resulted in various incidents of vandalism across town, as well as one streetcar being overturned and burned on Canal Street.

The 1929 strike is generally regarded as the birth of the New Orleans "po-boy" sandwich. To show solidarity with the striking motormen and conductors, Martin Brothers Restaurant on St. Claude Avenue offered free sandwiches to the strikers. They took whole loaves of New Orleans French bread, filled them with fried potatoes and roast beef gravy. It was the kind of a sandwich even a "poor boy" could afford.

The union and NOPSI settled the strike by October, 1929, but it seriously damaged the company's reputation, and ridership never got back to the levels of the "golden age" of 1910-1928.