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Striking Steelworkers EJ Meeker provided the illustration for an article on a bloody labor struggle at a Carnegie steel mill in 1892. The article was published in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly on July 14, 1892. The text is extracted from the original publication.   The Homestead Works  "The conflict between the Carnegie Steel Company and its workers, to the number of some 5,000 men, come to a bloody culmination at the Homestead works, situated on the Monongahela River, eight miles southeast of Pittsburg. The situation was, briefly, as follows: The scale of wages agreed upon between the Carnegies and the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, and which had been in force for the past three years, expired on June 30th. Mr. Henry C. Frick, the President of the Carnegie Steel Company, formulated a new schedule of rates with reductions averaging thirty per cent." H. C. Frick, President of Carnegie Steel  "The men prepared to go on strike July 1st. This move was anticipated by the firm, who discharged the men, and announced the mills as temporarily closed, thus forestalling the strike by a lockout. Carnegie Steel Company converted the mill property into a defensive fortification, and called upon Sheriff McCleary of Allegheny County, to furnish deputies for the protection of the plant, and of the non-union men who were to replace the strikers." Sentry box at the Homestead works  "On Tuesday, the fifth, the sheriff sent a squad of deputies to take possession of the works, but they were intercepted by the strikers and induced to return to Pittsburgh. On Wednesday morning, before daybreak, three hundred Pinkerton “detectives” hurriedly summoned from Chicago and other points, arrived in the city. Armed with revolvers and Winchester rifles, they were embarked on barges and towed up the river to Homestead." River patrol boat 
"The strikers, massed on the riverbank, awaited them, with the grim determination to fight off any attempted landing of the Pinkertons. Such a landing, nevertheless, the latter attempted to make. It was then that the first shot was fired – from which side it is impossible to say authoritatively; but in any case, it was the signal for a double fusillade, which brought down three of the strikers and the leader of the Pinkertons.
The workers began to float burning oil down the river to set fire to the Pinkerton barges. It became so hot for the Pinkertons, that finally they hoisted the white flag and surrendered to the workmen they had been sent to disposses. Such is the situation at Homestead as these pages go to press. Governor Pattison of Pennsylvania, in response to the sheriff’s appeal for military aid, has declared that the “local authorities must exhaust every means at their command” before extreme measures could be resorted to. Mr. Frick and the Carnegie company declare that they have no idea of yielding, and that they will look to the State to take care of their property. This much they certainly have a right to demand as against mob law and mob violence." The Hungarian colony at the Homestead Works |
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