Danver Steven L. (Edited). Revolts, Protests, Demonstrations, and Rebellions in American History: An Encyclopedia (ENG)

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the Republican candidate for the vice presidency. Reid tried to get Frick to restart

negot iations with the AA—worried that the strike and its politi cal repercussions

might ups et the election hopes of their candi date Benjamin Harrison (who was

later defeated by Grover Cleveland)—but Frick refused as he had won the ﬁrst part

of the confrontat ion and was already preparing his next moves. The se saw 16 of

the leading unionists charged with conspiracy, riot, and murder. They were all

jailed for a night and had to post a $10,000 bond. Several company executives

were then charged with murder by the AA, and these individuals also had to post

a $10,000 bond. However, with the militia in control of Homestead, it seemed

clear that Frick was winning.

Then, on July 23, Alexander Berkman (1870–1936), an anarchist originally

from Vilnius, Russia (now Lithuania), and with no connection to the strike, man-

aged to get to meet Frick, shot him twice, and then stabbed him. Frick survived,

and Berkman was charged with attempted murder and sentenced to 22 years in

prison, serving 14 years before being released. Berkman had hoped to focus the

attentionofthecountryontheHomesteadStrike,andheendedupdoingso,but

his actions caused widespread sympathy for Frick across the country. The unionists

had to admit defeat, and by August 12 , Carnegie Steel was able to claim publicly

that production had resumed at full capacity. The AA tried to get a boycott of

Carnegie products, but the strike w as collapsing fast. Many newly arrived immi-

grants were working at the steel plant, and these were gradually joined by returning

workers. The AA, which had entered the confrontation with large strike funds, was

nearly bankrupted. On November 20, they voted by 101–91 to return to work.

Only four workers were eventually charged, three of whom were found innocent

of all charges. However the other, Hugh Dempsey, the leader of the Knights of Labor

District Assembly, was found guilty of trying to poison strikebreakers at the plant

and served seven years in prison. Curiously, the sympathy strikes at Beaver Falls also

lasted until November, and that at Union Mills lasted until August 14, 1893.

The events at Homestead saw a full-scale battle between unionists and Pinker-

ton agents , capturing the attention of the newspapers aro und the United States.

But it also led to the collapse of the AA as a major player in steel works. Member-

ship fell, and gradually other companies were able to follow the leaders of

Carnegie Steel in reducing union power and eventually imposing pay cuts similar

to those at Homestead. The Bost building in Homestead, which was the AA head-

quarters during the strike, was listed as a National Histo ric Landmark, and now

serves as a museum preserving items to do with the strike and also the steel indus-

try in the region.

—Justin Corﬁeld

626 Homestead Strike (1892–1893)

See also all entries under Molly Maguires (1870s); Great Railroa d S trikes (1877);

Haymarket Riot (1886); Seattle Riot (1886); Pullman Strike ( 1894); Lattimer Massacre

(1897); Bla ck Patch War (1909); Lud low Massacre (1914) ; Boston Police Strike (1919);

Battle of Blair Mountain (1921); Bonus Army ( 1932); Toledo Auto-Lite Strike (1934);

World Trade Organization Protests (1999).

Further Reading

Bridge, James H. The Inside History of the Carnegie Steel Company: A Romance of Mil-

lions. New York: The Aldine Book Company, 1903.

Burgoyne, Arthur Gordon. Homestead: Complete History of the Struggle of July, 1892,

between the Carnegie Steel Company, Limited, and the Amalgamated Association of

Iron and Steel Workers. Pittsburgh, PA: Press of Rawsthorne Engraving and Printi ng

Co., 1893.

Harvey, George. Henry Clay Frick: The Man. New York: Beard Books, 1920.

Horan, James D., and Howard Swiggett. The Pinkerton Story. London: William

Heinemann Ltd., 1952.

Krause, Paul. The Battle for Homestead, 1890–1892: Politics, Culture, and Steel.

Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992.

Rayback, Joseph G. A History of American Labor. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co.,

Inc., 1966.

Stowell, Myron R. Fort Frick, or the Siege of Homestead: History of the Famous Struggle

between the Amalgamated Association of Iron a nd Steel Wo rkers and the Carnegie

Steel Company (Limited) of Pittsburg, Pa. Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburg Printing Co, 1893.

Homestead Strike (1892–1893) 627

Amalgamated Association of Iron

and Steel Workers (AA)

This labor union was formed on August 5, 1876, at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from

a merger of the United Sons of Vulcan (which had about 3,500 members), and the

Heaters and Rollers National Association (which had 600 members). Their ﬁrst

president was Joseph Bishop of Pittsburgh, and their aim was to form a trade union

which would represent all iron and steel makers in the United States and Canada,

although they drew most of their support from their members in Pennsylvania.

The AA quickly expanded its inﬂuence in large factories in the area around Pitts-

burgh before the Homestead Strike and had managed to gain higher w ages rates

for its workers (as well as an end to “yellow-dog contracts”), which caused its

membership to quadruple from the 4,100 at its inception.

The AA sanctioned and organized a number of strikes, and initially they had

much success, which further increased their membership. They relied on the threat

of strikes not only in factories and plants in dispute, but also with sympathy action

at other factories and plants. In 1880, John Jarrett of Sharon, Pennsylvania, w as

elec ted as their new president, and under his leadership and that of his success or

Lee, the union came effectively to control s ome works ites. To help ensur e that

strikes were effective, the AA started meticulously planning their actions, relying

on large numbers of strikers and families, unconditional support from its members,

and a strike fund to sustain the workers during a long industrial dispute. They also

cultivated political links, including with members of the Republican Party. How-

ever, for the most part, their success came because of the inaction and unprepared-

ness of the steel company management. It was because of better planning by John

Frick that they lost the Homestead Strike.

The Homestead Strike damaged the AA. A number of steel companies refused

to s ign contracts with the union during the strike, and the AA al so faced much

opposition especially at plants run by Carnegie Steel, such as the Duquesne steel-

works and the Edgar Thomson works. Indeed, Frick was able to prevent its organ-

izing at Homestead after the strike. The AA later merged with the Steel Workers

Organizing Committee to form the United Steelworkers.

—Justin Corﬁeld

Further Reading

Brody, David. Steelworkers in America: The Nonunion Era. New York: Harper Torch-

books, 1969.

629

Brooks, Robert R. R. As Steel Goes: Unionism in a Basic Industry. New Haven, CT: Yale

University Press, 1940.

Krause, Paul. The Battle for Homestead, 1890–1892: Politics, Cultu re, and Steel.

Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992.

Robinson, Jesse S. The Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers.

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1920.

Rose, James D. Duquesne and the Rise of Steel U nionism. Urbana: University of Illinois

Press, 2001.

Carnegie Steel

This co mpany p roduced steel and w as established by Andrew Ca rnegie (1835–

1919) to run his steel mills in Pennsylvania, with most located near the industrial

center, Pittsburgh. Carnegie himself had been born in Scotland and came to the

United States as a teenager. He rapidly came to see the great busines s opportuni-

ties in the United States and, after taking on menial jobs, taught himself through

reading and then started work for the Penns ylvania Railr oad Company. During

and after the American Civil War, there was a great demand for iron, and Carnegie

became heavily involved, ﬁrst in producing ca rs for the railroad and then also

diversifying to include petroleum. However, i ron and steel r emained at the c ore

of his business.

By the late 1880s, Carnegie Steel had emerged as the largest single manufac-

turer of both pig iron and steel rails in the world. In 1889, for the ﬁrst time, U.S.

production of steel—much of it by Carnegie Steel—exceeded that of the United

Kingdom; and Andrew Carnegie, who had grown up in hardship, had emerged as

one of the wealthiest people in the world. Carnegie continued to expand, and the

Homestead Steel Works was a part of this expansion.

As an owner of the company, Carnegie appointed managers whom he trusted

implicitly. One of these was Henry Clay Frick. Thus, although Carnegie owned

the company, it was Frick who became involved in the Homestead Strike while

Carnegie himself vacationed in Scotland, keeping himself extremely distant from

what wa s happening at Homestead. Whether Carnegie had agree d with Frick’s

course of action and then absented himself is not known, but it seems likely that

Frick would not engineer such a confront atio n unless he had the backi ng of the

company’s owner. Certainly Carnegie himself was not ideologically against trade

unions. From his humble origins, he had empathized with the “working man,”

and the wages he paid his workers were certa inly competitive with other similar

industries.

630 Homestead Strike (1892–1893)

In 1901, with Carnegie deciding to retire, Carnegie Steel was transformed into

the U.S. Steel Corporation in what was, at that time, the biggest personal commer-

cial transaction. The new company was the ﬁrst ever to be capitalized at over

$1 billion, and Carnegie took his $225 million share in the form of bonds, spend-

ing the remaining 18 years o f his life as a beneﬁcent philanthropist. He donated

heavily to libraries around t he world and also established the C arnegie Institute

of Technology in Pittsburgh and the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C.

—Justin Corﬁeld

Further Reading

Bridge, James Howard. The Inside History of the Carnegie Steel Company: A Romance of

Millions. New York: Arno Press, 1972.

Carnegie, A ndrew. Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie.EditedbyJohnC.VanDyke.

London: Constable, 1920.

Hill, Napoleon. Think and Grow Rich. Hollywood, CA: Wilshire Book Co., 1973.

Lockouts

The Homestead Strike was, strictly speaking, a lockout that became a strike. While

the latter is an act by the workforce whereby they walk “off the job” or the next

shift does not return to work, the former involves management locking out the

workers to achieve their demands.

With the Homestead Strike, there had been negotiations between the manage-

ment and the unions for many months, and at midnight on June 30–July 1, 1892,

the collective bargaining agreement was set to expire. However, Henry Clay

Frick, the manager, locked out the w orkforce on the previous day. This involved

closing the plant and refusing to let the workers turn up for work on the morning

of June 30. This is what made it technically a lockout rather than a strike, although

the workers refusing to come to work under new conditions from July 1 onward

turned it into a strike.

The reason for the lockout—the term had emerged in about 1860—was basi -

cally because Frick wanted to avoid a situation in which the workforce was able

to disable, sabotage, or vandalize the machinery. This had happened in other work

sites, and Frick had to prepare for the possibility of it happening at Homestead and

costing the company much money in trying to make good any damage. Moreover,

if any of this happened, it is likely that this would be on the afternoon of June 30.

Thus, the lockout was essentially a preemptive move by Frick that took the Amal-

gamated Association of Iron and Steel Work ers by surprise. It is clear that Frick

Homestead Strike (1892–1893) 631

had prepared himself for this many months in advance, using the lockout as a way

of positioning the company at the start of the inevitable conﬂict.

—Justin Corﬁeld

Further Reading

Harvey, George. Henry Clay Frick: The Man . New York: Beard Books, 1920.

Krause, Paul. The Battle for Homestead, 1890–1892: Politics, Cultu re, and Steel.

Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992.

Rayback, Joseph G. A History of American Labor. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co.,

Inc., 1966.

Pinkerton National Detective Agency

This company was established by Allan Pinkerton in 1850 and was formed for the

provision of private security guards. Allan Pinkerton (1819–1884) had been born

in Glasgow, Scotland, the son of a local police sergeant. However when he was

10, his father was badly injured during a riot and was unable to walk again. He

died four years later, and the young Pinkerton had to ﬁnd work, eventually taking

part in Chartist demonstrations and then ﬂeeing Great Britain for the U nited

States. He found work with the poli ce in Chicago but then decided to set u p his

own security company, which had the task of protecting trains. In 1861, Pinkerton

agents managed to foil an assassination attempt on Abraham Lincoln when he was

heading to Washington, D.C., for his inauguration, and were soon employed pro-

vidin g protection for the president. They worked du ring the American Civil War

collecting intelligence. During the 1880s, the company was said to have had more

agents than there were soldiers then in the U.S. Army.

During the 1880s, Pinkertons were used by some of the big industrial compa-

nies to break strikes. The ﬁrst time this had happened had been as early as Septem-

ber 1866 when they were involved to break a strike at Braidwood, Illinois. By the

time of the Homestead Strike, they had already been involved in about seventy

other actions.

The role of Pinkertons was to provide protection for private property and for the

lives of people trying to get to work. They were instructed never to actually work

as strikebreakers—i.e., those taking the place in the workfo rce of those on strike,

but only to protect those doing so, as well as the factory or works from vandalism

or sabotage. They were also to be deputized by a sheriff. There was a good sense

of discip line among t heir agents, and from 1866 until 1892, apparently only two

men had been shot dead by Pinkerton agents—one, it was claimed, accidentally,

632 Homestead Strike (1892–1893)

and t he other in s elf- defe nse. However because of their pivotal role in breaki ng

strikes, they became hated by the union movement, with the general master work-

man of the Knights of Labor, Terrence Powderley, telling a congressional hearing

that “Pinkertons ﬁre upon people too poor to indulge in litigation.”

During the Homestead Strike, the Pinkerton agents retained good discipline and

were led by General George R. Snowden t hroughout much of it. Although there

were periods when some clearly wanted to ﬂee the scene, this did not happen.

However, three of them wer e killed at the scene, and anot her died from his

wounds, with about 100 injured and 28 so badly injured that they were ﬁrst hospi-

talized before being evacuated.

—Justin Corﬁeld

Further Reading

Horan, James D., and Howard Swiggett. The Pinkerton Story. London: William Heinemann

Ltd., 1952.

Morn, Frank. “The Eye That Never Sleeps”: A History of the Pinkerton National Detective

Agency. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982.

Yellow-Dog Contracts

These contracts are agreements between an employer and an employee by which

the employee agrees, as part of their conditions of employment, not to join a labor

union. They were widely used from the late 1880s through the early 1930s as

industrialists sought to keep unions out of their companies. They were outlawed

in 1932 under the Norris-LaGuardia Act.

The idea of banning or restricting membership of trade unions had been around

for as long as the trade unions themselves, with the Tolpuddle Martyrs and other

famous legal cases emanating from laws enacted. However, in the 1870s, with

the inc rease in literacy and with more and more workers signing legally enforce-

able employment contracts, some employers added into the contract that the

employee could not be a union member, or could not join an union during the time

of their employment. These gradually became more and more common in the

United States as well as in Great Britain and other countries that had large unions

for unskilled laborers. They were initially known as “infamous documents” and

later as “iron -clad docu ments.” However they soon start ed to be called “yellow

dog contracts” because a dog was always loyal (and subservient) to its master,

and from 1840, the term came to represent, in the United States, a “mongrel dog

Homestead Strike (1892–1893) 633

or cur, of a yellow or yellowish color.” By 1902, it had come to be used in the sense

in which it is now used, and it was commonly used by the 1920s.

In 1887, the state of New York enacted a law to ban the use of employment con-

tracts that forbade the membership of a union, and other states gradually followed.

However, these contracts were allowed in Pennsylvania in 1892 during the Home-

stead Strike. They were not speciﬁcally the cause of the strike there in 1892,

although they were the direct cause of a strike in Homestead 10 years earlier.

Although he did not like the power of the unions and had tried to curb them in

1882, by 1892, Andrew Carnegie had come to accept unionism; the strike at

Homestead in 1892 had been about pay rates rather than membership of the union.

Part of this was undoubtedly because the late 1880s and early 1890s had seen an

increase in the power of organized labor, with the real risk of sympathy strikes in

other plants, which did actually take place in 1892. Although during the strike,

Carnegie Steel did take nonunion labor, they readily accepted the unionists when

they returned to work at the end of the strike, albeit entirely on their terms.

—Justin Corﬁeld

Further Reading

Rayback, Joseph G. A History of American Labor. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co.,

Inc., 1966.

Seidman, Joel I. The Yellow Dog Contract. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,

1932.

Account of Violence between Strikers and Company

Security Guards (1892)

On June 30, 189 2, mem bers of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers wen t

out on strike against the Carnegie Steel Company plant in Homestead, Pennsylvania, near Pitts-

burgh. The strike followed a company lockout precipitated by a failure of the union and the com-

pany to come to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement. The union sought hired wages,

while the company responded with a wage decrease in an attempt to break the union. The

account reproduced here describes a battle between strikers and company security guards on

July 6, 1892.

Nothing more dramatic in the History of Labor and Capital is recorded than the Incident

of the 6th of July.

The forces of the Nineteenth Century are Capital and Labor, united they tran sform

the desert into a garden, in collision they convert the garden into a waste.

On the 6th of July, 1892, at Homestead, Penn., the Forces met. The sound of the

shock echoed through the labor markets of the world.

634 Homestead Strike (1892–1893)

In this age we regard the French Revolution with surprise, we wonder at the growth

of the power of the mob, we are amazed at the brutality of the people, and we are aston-

ished at the spectacle afforded by the savagery of women.

The Incident of the 6th of July affords a parallel in diminutive form, and is pregnant

with meaning.

Let us see!

A certain man, who has risen from the ranks of labor by thrift, cleverness, and lucky

transactions, has amassed r iches. His name is Andrew Carnegie; his fortune is written

in the millions. Much of this fortune is invested in steel rolling mills at Homestead. These

works cover one hundred and ﬁfty acres of groun d; here work four thousand ﬁve hun-

dred men. The smoke of the ﬂumes asc end day and night to the god of commerce, and

the high price of bread consumes the day wage of the toilers.

Four years ago Carnegie g ave $500,000 to the campaign fund whi ch promised him

“protection” or monopoly . Fourteen competing ro lling mills have passed away and one

hundred acres have been added to the Carnegie plant.

A few weeks since Carnegie’s partners decided that men seeking the protection of a

union or brotherhoo d should not be employed at the works. He who sought “prote c-

tion” denied protection.

As the custom is, the time came when the Employer and Employe should ﬁx the price

of wages. The Man asked one dollar more than the Master was wil ling to pay. “Protec-

tion” had poured gol d into his strong box, and raised the price of beef, bread, and

clothing.

The Wage-giver and the Wage-taker could not agree about the one dollar.

And the works shut down!

The Advisory Committee of the locked-out workmen said: Let there be order! And

there was order.

The Master of the mill said: Let there be protection! A fence, twelve feet high, of stout

boards mounted on three feet of slag, four miles in length, closed in the works. This fence

was bored with holes to allow the passage of a riﬂe barrel from the inside. It was sur-

mounted with barbed wires, connected w ith powerful dynamos, so that they could be

made alive with electricity. S earch lights were mounted at certain points, and nozzles

connected with hydrants supplied with boiling water at others. At an excellent point of

vantage, a dete ctive camera was set up in orde r to secure photographs of invaders, for

the purpose of prosecution in the courts of law controlled by the Master of the Mill.

So much for the stockade. The Hessians were to be imported. The Master of the Mill

said: Hire Pinkerton’s men.

A foreign armed force was to settle the question of one dollar in wages.

“We have done our best to preserve order and have succeeded in preserving it. We

cannot now, of course, be responsible for anything that may occur in consequence of

your action.” So said the Advisory Committee to the Sheriff.

It is the morning of July 6. The sun has not risen, the morning star shines in the

inverted blue bowl over the silent factory and on the river.

Homestead Strike (1892–1893) 635