Last week we discussed the air traffic controllers and the PATCO strike of 1981. This week I thought we'd go back about a hundred years and examine the first confrontation between a modern corporation and organized labor, the Homestead Strike of 1892.

But first, ever so briefly, in 1856, Sir Henry Bessemer had discovered an efficient way to make steel, and with vast iron ore deposits in the area of the Great Lakes, Pittsburgh quickly became the steel capital.

At the same time, industrialist Andrew Carnegie had decided by 1873 to concentrate his business acumen on the steel industry. Carnegie realized the tremendous potential that existed in the product and it fit one of his many mottoes, "Capitalism is about turning luxuries into necessities." Steel became a necessity.

In particular, with the expansion of the railroad between 1880 and 1900, US Steel production rose from 1.25 million tons to over 10 million annually. Carnegie's furnaces produced about one-third of the nation's output.

He was also the first to recognize the importance of controlling unit costs and Carnegie stressed that the employees should understand the full breakdown. "Responsibility for money or materials (must) be brought home to every man," he would say.

By 1892, something else was in full swing, that being the union movement. The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers (hereafter, "Amalgamated"), founded in 1876, quickly became the largest craft union with some 24,000 workers. But this excluded the unskilled and it had failed to organize the largest steel plants. The Homestead Works of Pittsburgh was an important exception.

Back in 1883, Henry Clay Frick, one of the great dirtballs of all time, had sold Homestead to Carnegie. Frick had initially made his fortune in the coal industry (and since my relatives in the Pittsburgh area worked under his thumb, we don't care much for the man). Carnegie then eventually made Frick president of the Homestead Works.

Since Carnegie was focused on costs more than anyone else in the business, he was soon able to dominate the industry. Of course maintaining cost controls also meant holding down wages. But Amalgamated had already organized the plant when
Carnegie purchased it.

Carnegie prided himself on his good relations with labor. He even spoke fondly of unions and he wanted the workers to simply call him Andy. In 1886, he wrote, "To expect that one dependent upon his daily wages for the necessaries of life will stand by peacefully and see a new man employed in his stead is to expect too much."

But Carnegie was a hypocrite, for at the same time his laborers were generally working 12-hour days, 7 days a week, with new immigrants being paid just $9 a week, less than they were making in Europe. Even after a strike in 1889, Amalgamated had to settle for a sliding wage scale that paralleled the profits of the plant in exchange for continuing union recognition.

The next showdown was slated for 1892, when the contract came up for renewal. And as the July deadline approached, Carnegie and his Homestead president, Frick, knew what had to be done. The steel industry was in the midst of a general business slowdown and if profits were to be maintained near existing levels, the number of workers would have to be reduced. In addition, the union had to deal with the fact that labor-saving devices were constantly being created, thus further impinging on their jobs.

As was his tradition, Andrew Carnegie left Pittsburgh for his castle in Scotland most every summer, and this year was no exception. That meant that Frick was running the whole show.

Before he left, Carnegie and Frick had proposed a lower minimum wage for the new contract as well as a loss of bargaining power for the union. Great deal, huh? And while Carnegie may not have known the extent to which Frick would take advantage of his full authority, he certainly had a good idea of what was to come and clearly didn't stand in the way.

On June 29, 1892, a lockout of the union workers began at the Homestead Works. Frick had a 3-mile long stockade installed around the factory, complete with barbed wire and slots for rifles. Knowing that the union wouldn't accept the reduced wage pact, the Amalgamated formally struck on July 1. Frick's whole goal was to replace the union workers with cheaper nonunion labor. But as the unionists were protesting outside the plant, it would be tough to bring in the nonunion folks without protection.

In the middle of the night on July 6, 300 Pinkerton detectives, notorious for their union-busting tactics, secretly cruised down the Monongahela River towards Homestead. They were loaded up on two barges and hoped to surprise the unionists camped outside the works. But a union sentry spotted them and, instead, the well-armed unionists were lying in wake for the Pinkertons.

No one knows who fired the first shot, but what is known is that a gun battle (with a little dynamite thrown in, courtesy of the unionists) ensued which lasted the better part of the day. In the end, the heavily outnumbered Pinkertons had to surrender and were forced to walk a gauntlet, where they were pummeled by the strikers and their wives.

Homestead proved to be the bloodiest labor battle the country had witnessed. But the final casualty figures are still unclear (each of my sources had a different tally, for instance). So, I'm going to pick the median of the various totals and say that about 13 died; 3-7 Pinkertons and 6-10 steel men. What is not in dispute is that hundreds were wounded, with over 100 of those being serious.

Of course, now the unionists were in charge of the plant. Well, that wasn't going to work so on July 12 the governor of Pennsylvania sent in 8,000 state militiamen to reoccupy Homestead and thus allow strikebreakers to get production flowing again.

Then on July 23, a Russian-Polish immigrant anarchist by the name of Alexander Berkman (who had nothing to do with the strike or Homestead beforehand) entered the office of Henry Frick and attempted to kill him. Frick was shot but was able to wrestle the man down. That same day he went back to work, bandages and all. And it was also at this point that the unionists saw support for their cause drastically eroded within the public.

The strike dragged on until November, but Amalgamated was finished at Homestead. When Andrew Carnegie returned from Scotland he was none too sympathetic. No concessions were made and the lower wages were imposed with longer hours. Carnegie said nothing in public about the battle of July 6 but he knew where the blame lay. Years later he said, "No pangs remain of any wound received in my business career save that of Homestead."

The Homestead strike of 1892 represented a reversal for the labor movement that lasted until the days of the New Deal. And for the president of the United States, Benjamin Harrison, the response to the strike was crushing in his race for reelection against Grover Cleveland that fall. Harrison was abandoned by labor and it worsened when he used federal troops to take over the Coeur d'Alene mines in Idaho later that campaign season.

Next week, we start a series on the mineworkers and their union.

Sources:

"Morgan: American Financier," Jean Strouse
"The American Century," Harold Evans
"A History of the American People," Paul Johnson
"The Presidents," edited by Henry Graff
"America: A Narrative History," Tindall and Shi

Brian Trumbore