Labor Struggle

Labor Struggle. The Battle of Homestead. , One of the most dramatic conflicts in American labor history-the Battle of Homestead-bloodied the soil on this site in 1892., The Carnegie Steel Company, under the management of Henry Clay Frick, refused to recognize the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers and locked the workers out of the mills on June 28, 1892. The Union responded by calling a strike to begin on July 1., On the morning of July 6, 300 Pinkerton agents, hired by Carnegie Steel to guard the mill, attempted to land their barges at the dock of this pump house. They were met by thousands of townspeople enraged at this threat to their livelihood., Over the course of the daylong battle, seven workers and three Pinkertons were killed. Countless others were wounded. The remaining Pinkertons surrendered to the crowd who beat and jeered at them as they were forced to run a "bloody gauntlet" into town where they were later taken away by train., The Pennsylvania National Guard was called in to govern the town and help the company regain control of the mill. The National Guard governed the town for 95 days., The strike failed, and the steel industry was not successfully re-unionized until the 1930s.,

From The Homestead Strike Song: , Now, boys, we are out on strike, you can help us if you like, , But you need not till I tell you what it's about , They want to lower our wages, we think it is not right; , So for union's cause I want you all to shout!

, (Sidebar):, The Pump House, This pump house was one of two built on this side of the Monongahela. Built in 1892 and expanded in 1896, it pumped water from the river into the Homestead Works for nearly a century., Steel mills require water to cool steel ingots and billets during the rolling process, to clean scale (a waste by-product) from rolled steel, and to cool equipment. It takes 32,000 gallons of water to produce one ton of finished steel., (Captions):, An Awful Battle at Homestead, PA (from The Police Gazette, 1892) , Rivers of Steel Archives, Pump House, 1892 , Rivers of Steel Archives