Authors: Raymond Lamont-Brown
By the late 1880s American workers were beginning to flex their muscles more and the smaller unions linked up with larger groups like the American Federation of Labor.
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Workers became more militant, as the great railroad strike of 1886, which paralysed Chicago, was to show. Extremists even resorted to bomb-throwing and radicalism became the vogue on public platforms and in the press. Capital and labour united was fast becoming capital versus labour, and vice versa. As the employer of 15,000 men, Carnegie offered his opinions on the ‘labour question’ and ‘labour struggles’ in such reviews as
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He agreed in principle that workers should get a better return from profits, and wrapped his sentiments in his usual wordy altruism. However, he much preferred face-to-face bargaining with his workforce than talks with representatives of a nationwide union not known to him, and believed that ‘a friendly, even a familiar, relationship was the best protection against the worst evils inherent in a large rolling mill’.
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He felt that when his workers could refer to him as ‘the little boss’, or even ‘Andy’, he could negotiate with them better. Further, while being sympathetic to workers wishing to better themselves, he was against violent revolution: ‘Rioters assembling in numbers and marching to pillage will be remorselessly shot down,’ was his opinion for the future.
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Nevertheless, Carnegie believed, employers should not knowingly provoke violence, as had been seen when ‘imported labourers’ (i.e. ‘scabs’ to the striking workers) had been brought in to the work areas to replace the strikers. ‘Thou shalt not take thy neighbour’s job’ became one of Carnegie’s mantras. The right to strike peaceably was one thing, noted Carnegie, but rioting violently was another – as were employers who repaid agitation with severity. Even so, another Carnegie mantra developed: ‘Union leaders who impeded progress had to be stopped.’ Always he sought to increase efficiency in his workforce. Both sides in industry, he believed, should act within the law.
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This was his attitude when dealing with the strike at his Edgar Thomson Braddock mill during 1887–8. Because of difficult trading conditions wages had been reduced; the men refused to accept this and the mill was closed on 17 December 1887. When conditions improved in February 1888 Carnegie refused to reopen the mill until a new wages structure was agreed for the future. What he wanted was to tie wages to the price of steel rails in the market place, and he also wanted 12-hour shifts to suit the non-stop operation of the blast furnaces. The men refused these proposals, and Carnegie kept the works closed, honouring his principle not to use ‘imported labour’. The works only reopened when the men voted to return on Carnegie’s terms. Thus his tactics were to meet frontal attack with blockade. His published views on this subject reached a wide audience, but dismayed many of America’s industrial leaders.
Carnegie wanted to introduce the same conditions at his Homestead mill as he had at the Braddock. At Homestead, however, the Amalgamated Association had a stronger influence and opposition was more vigorous; a strike issued when news of the implementation circulated on 1 July 1889. Carnegie was in Europe and the deadlock was in the hands of William L. Abbott, chairman of Carnegie, Phipps & Co. Abbott decided to use ‘imported (non-union) labourers’. Violence erupted as the men attempted to descend from the trains bringing them to the works. The Sheriff of Allegheny and 120 deputies headed off the strikers and peace was restored. Abbott negotiated with the men, who were prepared to accept Carnegie’s sliding-scale wage structure but not any changes to the existing shift patterns. This agreement would last until 1892. The Amalgamated Association saw it as a capitulation on the part of management and thus a triumph for trade unionism at Homestead. Carnegie, although pleased with the outcome, was not impressed that Abbott had tried to use ‘imported labourers’ instead of following his tactics at Braddock.
During January 1889 Henry Clay Frick became chairman of Carnegie, Bros & Co., Carnegie believing that the promotion would enhance the company. Frick was to prove a strong character in dealing with strikers in the coke fields in February 1890. Since 1882–3 Carnegie had been a substantial investor in the H.C. Frick Coke Co. and Frick had acquired an interest in Carnegie Bros & Co. in 1887. But there was more to his appointment than that; from at least 1883 Carnegie had been contemplating retirement and he believed that Frick was the man to take over his mantle. Yet there was a serious flaw in the arrangement because Frick did not believe in the sentiments Carnegie had expressed in his 1886
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articles. Fundamentally he believed that a company could employ who it chose, pay what it chose, and sack who it chose. Frick was no friend of the trade unions.
On 1 July 1892 Carnegie Bros & Co. was federalised and the Carnegie Steel Co. Ltd came into being with Frick as chairman. At this point the capital of Carnegie Bros had risen to $25 million, with a profit of around $4.5 million per year; the new company was formed to embrace this larger business. It was the largest steel company in the world. There were twenty-three major stockholders in the new corporation: Carnegie held $13.8 million; Henry Phipps Jr and Henry Clay Frick had $2.75 million each and George Lauder – Cousin Dod – $1 million.
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Dod was one of the seven company chairmen. In modern values, by way of example, Dod’s shares were worth around $4.33 million.
The emergence of the new company coincided with the expiry date of the wage agreement with the Homestead workers. Overall Carnegie wanted to reduce tonnage wage payments to reflect the increased productivity won by the new machinery he had installed; again he wanted a reduction in the minimum wage to reflect the depressed steel market. Although the path to achieving the new agreements would not be smooth, Carnegie believed that the policy he had enacted in 1889 would win the day and Frick was not unduly worried either. Only 325 of the 3,800 employees at Homestead would be directly affected by the new wage structures anyway.
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Most of the men affected were highly skilled and of British or German origin, and most were members of the Amalgamated Association. The bulk of the unskilled workforce included Hungarians, Slavs, Poles, Italians and others, many of whom could not speak English. Among them the Hungarians were considered the wildest, and the most prone to violence and disaffection. Their work was brutal and hazardous, dealing with molten metal in a work environment where health and safety came low on the list of priorities. The unskilled were paid in the range of $12.50 per week compared with the $40 of the skilled. Nevertheless Carnegie was in no doubt that Frick would successfully negotiate new rates with the men involved and in the spring of 1892 he set sail for Europe with Louise.
Eight weeks after Carnegie left, Frick met with the leaders of the representative Amalgamated Association union. Their demands were clear: a renewal of the existing Homestead wage agreement to last until 1895. Frick refused. Proposals were exchanged, with the men agreeing to a one dollar a week reduction in the standard wage; Frick required two dollars. There seemed to be room for manoeuvre. As Carnegie’s biographer Burton J. Hendrick points out: ‘To the unprejudiced observer it would look as though the disputing parties were approaching an agreement.’
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Yet the main problem was Frick himself. Instead of following Carnegie’s lead and meeting the union leaders face-to-face to talk, Frick conducted negotiations through third parties like Homestead superintendent John A. Potter. In fact Frick’s last word was an ultimatum. Later a report would note: ‘Frick . . . seemed to have been too stern, brusque and somewhat autocratic. . . .’
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Frick knew there would be trouble, and gave orders for the Homestead property to be ‘secured’. This meant building a ‘high board fence’ around the mill’s perimeter with a barbed wire topping, searchlights and strategic portholes. The workers saw this as a provocative ‘offensive and defensive’ measure. Frick also hired operatives of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Glasgow-born Allan Pinkerton, had emigrated to America in 1842 and became a detective and deputy-sheriff at Chicago in 1850; in 1852 he formed his own detective agency (the first in the USA) which solved a series of train robberies. In 1861 he guarded Abraham Lincoln and was the head of the US Secret Service during the Civil War. By the 1890s Pinkerton’s agents were notorious for their brutality, having helped break or control some seventy strikes. It must be said, though, that in employing these agents Frick was not doing anything unusual, as such a move was common practice among industrialists and railroad companies who felt threatened by crime, riots or labour troubles.
The Carnegie Steel Co. had reached a watershed; as far as Frick and the managers were concerned the Amalgamated Association was of no relevance. Homestead was closed down on 30 June 1892. Every employee was disengaged; any worker wishing to return must do so as a non-union man and each applicant would be vetted. Pinkerton’s agents secured the works from any attack and protected the workmen employed by the management to replace the strikers. Outside Homestead workers met, listened to union and anti-capitalist speakers and hung effigies of Frick and Potter from lamp posts. Some caricatures were set on fire.
Striker reaction was swift. They seized the city of Allegheny (population 12,000), the roads of the Monogahela River and assorted Carnegie properties. Mayor John McLuckie, another Carnegie employee, sided with the strikers, as did most of the citizens. An advisory committee was set up to oversee their tactics with worker Hugh O’Donnell as chairman. A cordon of pickets sealed the city, and those with no pressing reason to be there were sent away; even the Sheriff of Allegheny County and his deputies were expelled, his calls for law and order being ignored. The whole countryside was staffed with worker-guards, vigilantes and reconnoitring parties. Frick and his managers were barred from the $6 million Homestead property. By early July 1892 the strikers controlled the Carnegie properties, and anger seethed to the point of anarchy; Carnegie’s company faced destruction.
Frick still believed that his Pinkerton agents could bring the difficulties to an end. Even though the local sheriff had been given short shrift, Frick did not feel it necessary to ask Governor Robert E. Pattison of Pennsylvania to call in the state militia. Yet with the strikers blockading Homestead territory, how would the Pinkerton agents gain access?
The best point of access, Frick decided, was via the riverbank landings, accessible under the cover of darkness. Two armed barges containing 300 agents were to be towed in by the tug-boat
Little Bill
. The small flotilla left its moorings at Bellevue, some 5 miles south of Pittsburgh, at 2am on 6 July 1892; through a welcome bank of fog they reached their destination unimpeded. Yet from the outset their progress was being monitored by the strikers’ pickets. When they reached their destination the agents, under their leader Captain Heinde, were met by a vociferous crowd of strikers and their families who rushed to the riverbanks near Homestead. The agents were subjected to a barrage of stones, assorted missiles and even revolver fire. The crowds swelled as the agents reached the Homestead wharves, with estimates of 10,000 striking workers facing the 300 Pinkerton agents.
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A shot rang out from the crowd and the agents returned fire with a volley from their Winchester rifles. Captain Heinde was hit in the hip. Indiscriminate firing began and continued for five minutes or so, resulting in three agents mortally wounded, five strikers dead and many more wounded. The agents scattered, taking shelter in the barges and behind piles of goods on the wharves. The crowd, angered by the deaths of their comrades, became a murderous mob; they surged forward and a two-hour battle ensued.
The strikers’ skills with dynamite, burning oil and an ancient artillery piece were so inept that the intended murder of all the Pinkertons was not achieved. Slowly the engagement quietened and the more reasonable leaders of the strikers calmed the mob and raised a flag of truce. The agents were urged to surrender. A truce was agreed on the proviso that the agents would be given a safe passage to Homestead railway station. Even so many had to run the gauntlet of the enraged strikers’ families on the way to the station, while others hid in buildings or made their way to the hospital. In this, the most terrible event of US industrial history, nothing positive was achieved by Frick and the Carnegie property still remained in the hands of the strikers.
With hindsight, commentators agreed that State Governor Pattison could have prevented the riot. By 10 July he had taken action and 8,000 state militiamen under Major-General Snowdon entered Allegheny; without any resistance from the strikers the Homestead mills were handed back to Frick. The House report of the Congressional Committee convened to examine what had happened underlined the great mistake that Frick had made:
If Mr Frick had gone to Governor Pattison in person and laid the case before him, instead of employing the Pinkertons in the first instance, we believe that the Governor would, as he finally did, in the discharge of his plain duty, have sent a sufficient force to enable the sheriff to have taken possession and delivered to the Carnegie company their property, to the end they might have operated their mills in their own way and have avoided a riot.
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An unexpected event would rescue Frick from eternal ignominy. On Saturday 23 July 1892 an appointment was made with Frick for a man who claimed to be an agent for a New York employment agency to discuss supplying a workforce for Homestead to replace the strikers. At 2pm on that day, while Frick and his vice-chairman John G.A. Leishman sat in the office of the Carnegie Steel Co., the man was shown in. Frick sensed danger; he rose from his desk and advanced towards the man – who raised a pistol and shot him in the neck. As Frick fell the man fired again, hitting him in the neck again. Bravely Leishman grappled with the man, knocking his arm as he fired again so that the third bullet hit the ceiling. Frick scrambled to help Leishman, as the man produced a dagger fashioned from a file. He wounded Frick again in the hip, the side and the leg. At length the man was overpowered by clerks from the adjacent offices. After the man had been handed over to the police, and doctors had attended to Frick’s wounds, he resolutely returned to his desk. A telegram was prepared for Carnegie: