Switchmen's Mutual Aid Association
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| Founded | March 2, 1886 |
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| Date dissolved | July 1894 |
| Country | USA and Canada |
The Switchmen's Mutual Aid Association of North America (SMAA) was a 19th-century fraternal benefit society and trade union in the United States of America. Its members included the operators of railway track switches and those who coupled train cars in railway yards. Organized in 1886, the union came to its demise in July 1894 with rise of the American Railway Union and the smashing defeat it was delivered in the 1894 Pullman Strike. The organization was succeeded in October 1894 with the establishment of the Switchmen's Union of North America.
The first trade union of American railway switchmen was a local organization founded in the city of Chicago during the tumultuous labor struggles of 1877. In June of that year James Cullerton, a switchman for the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway, sent word to the various rail yards of the city asking for three delegates from each to be dispatched to an organizational meeting. A total of 15 delegates showed up for the meeting, which launched a short-lived organization called the Switchmen's Brotherhood. This was supplanted by a new organization on August 18 of the same year called the Switchmen's Union, with Cullerton again playing a leading role. This organization continued in existence at least through 1881, failing to expand outside of Chicago but nevertheless providing a nucleus for development of a future union.
Cullerton's pioneering effort finally saw growth in 1884 with increased local membership and activity in Chicago and expansion of the concept to other local organizations in railroad cities in the Midwest.
These autonomous local Switchmen's Unions began to feel the need for a national organization and a call was issued for a founding convention, to be held February 22, 1886, in Chicago. A well-attended organizational convention lasting 8 days followed, with the body electing officers, establishing a monthly magazine, and carrying on extensive discussions in secret session.
A follow-up convention was scheduled to begin September 20, 1886, in Kansas City, Missouri. This gathering was known as the First Annual Convention of the SMAA and was attended by delegates from 25 lodges affiliated with the organization. The main business of the gathering was consumed in the writing of a constitution and bylaws for the governance of the organization.James L. Monaghan, a graduate of the Philadelphia school system who had studied law for two years, was elected the first Grand Master of the organization. Monaghan would be elected to the Illinois State Legislature in November 1888, to be succeeded as head of the SMAA by Minneapolis resident Frank Sweeney.
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