The 1892 Homestead strike in Pennsylvania and the ensuing bloody battle instigated by the steel plant's management remain a transformational moment in U.S. history, leaving scars that have never fully healed after five generations.
The skilled workers at the steel mills in Homestead, seven miles southeast of downtown Pittsburgh, were members of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers who had bargained exceptionally good wages and work rules. Homestead's management, with millionaire Andrew Carnegie as owner, was determined to lower its costs of production by breaking the union.
Carnegie Steel Co. was making massive profits—a record $4.5 million just before the 1892 confrontation, which led Carnegie himself to exclaim, "Was there ever such a business!" But he and his chairman, Henry Frick, were furious workers had a voice with the union. "The mills have never been able to turn out the product they should, owing to being held back by the Amalgamated men," Frick complained to Carnegie.
Even more galling for them was that, as Pittsburghlabor historian Charles McCollester later wrote in The Point of Pittsburgh, "The skilled production workers at Homestead enjoyed wages significantly higher than at any other mill in the country."
So management acted.
First, as the union's three-year contract was coming to an end in 1892, the company demanded wage cuts for 325 employees, even though the workers had already taken large pay cuts three years before. During the contract negotiations, management didn't make proposals to negotiate. It issued ultimatums to the union. The local newspaper pointed out that "it was not so much a question of disagreement as to wages, but a design upon labor organization."
Carnegie and Frick made little effort to hide what they had in mind. Their company advertised widely for strikebreakers and built a 10-foot-high fence around the plant that was topped by barbed wire. Management was determined to provoke a strike.
Meanwhile, the workers organized the town on a military basis. They were "establishing pickets on eight-hour shifts, river patrols and a signaling system," according to McCollester.
Frick did what plenty of 19th-century businessmen did when they were battling unions. He hired the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, which was notorious for such activities as infiltrating its agents into unions and breaking strikes-and which at its height had a larger work force than the entire U.S. Army.
When Frick plotted to sneak in 300 Pinkerton agents on river barges before dawn on July 6, word spread across town as they were arriving and thousands of workers and their families rushed to the river to keep them out. Gunfire broke out between the men on the barge and the workers on land. In the mayhem that ensued, the Pinkertons surrendered and came ashore, where they were beaten and cursed by the angry workers.
At the end of the battle between the Pinkertons and nearly the entire town, seven workers and three Pinkertons were dead. Four days later, 8,500 National Guard forces were sent at the request of Frick to take control of the town and steel mill. After winning his victories, Frick announced, "Under no circumstances will we have any further dealing with the Amalgamated Association as an organization. This is final." And in November, the Amalgamated Association collapsed.
According to labor historian David Brody, in his highly acclaimed Steelworkers in America: The Nonunion Era, the daily wages of the highly skilled workers at Homestead shrunk by one-fifth between 1892 and 1907, while their work shifts increased from eight hours to 12 hours.
That was not the only measure of the steel workers' defeat. As Sidney Lens pointed out in his classic The Labor Wars: From the Molly Maguires to the Sit-Downs, membership in the Amalgamated Association plummeted from 24,000 to 10,000 in 1894 and down to 8,000 in 1895. Meanwhile, the Carnegie Steel Co.'s profits rose to a staggering $106 million in the nine years after Homestead. And for 26 long years—until the last months of World War I in 1918—union organizing among steelworkers was crushed.
At the end of the 19th century, Homestead inspired a song well known around the country, "Father Was Killed by the Pinkerton Men." The lyrics of this deeply angry ballad began: "'Twas in Pennsylvania town not very long ago,/Men struck against reduction of their pay./Their millionaire employer with philanthropic show/Had closed the works 'till starved they would obey./They fought for home and right to live where they had toiled so long,/But ere the sun had set, some were laid low."
For his role in breaking the union, anarchists Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate Henry Clay Frick.
Megathreads and spaces to hang out:
- ❤️ Come listen to music and Watch movies with your fellow Hexbears nerd, in Cy.tube
- 💖 Come talk in the New Monthly queer thread
- 💛 Read and talk about a current topics in the News Megathread
- ⭐️ October Movie Nominations ⭐️
reminders:
- 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
- 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes struggle sessions over upbears
- 💜 Sorting by new you nerd
- 🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can go here nerd
- 🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog
Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):
Aid:
- 💙Comprehensive list of resources for those in need of an abortion -- reddit link
- 💙Resources for Palestine
Theory:
New Megathread Nerds!!!
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🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog
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🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can go here nerd
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Remember nerds just like in the old site, no current struggle session discussion here on the new general megathread, i will ban you from the comm and remove your comment, have a good day/night :meow-coffee:
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The educational part of this mega is so hard to read. Like, looking at the prospect of organizing Amazon and knowing that our ability to organize peacefully is determined by the willingness of either the corporations to play ball or the government to take our side.
It's just a reminder there's no replacement for revolution.
Check out "This Non-Violent Stuff'll Get You Killed" by Charles Cobb. It talks about the other side of Civil Rights that wasn't put in the high-school history books, about how everyone was strapped pretty much whenever there wasn't an actual peace march going on. It's an eye opener.
As a traumatized middle aged single man with a severe mental illness, severe depression, ADHD, and PTSD I need a great deal of community support, like social interaction type support, and I am not getting that nor does it seem likely I ever will.
In accordance with the will of the gods and by the acclimation of this council I blame Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Seriously though, this sucks. I just want a hug but I haven't had any "Can I have a hug?" people in my life for years.
It also sucks that it's after midnight and every piece of technology available to me has been lovingly engineered to make me feel inadequate and wanting and direct my attention at advertisements for things that I don't need that promise to alleviate this crushing malaise. Love that. My favorite thing about the 21st century.
Also, First.
So here's a problem with getting an EV I was not expecting: I can't plug it in at home!
Now my car did come with a wall plug, and it is a hybrid so I'm not SOL if I lose my charge, but the problem here is that I'm living at my parents' house for the time being and they get their electricity at a reduced rate. Their utility company has a system where your price jumps up of you use more than a certain number of KWH of power in a month - but that's not the asinine part, the asinine part is that the "baseline" electricity fluctuates month to month and they don't tell you what it is until the end of the month.
So I looked at my mom's electric bill and realized that charging my battery every couple of days would add like 20% to her usage, and almost definitely bump her up into the higher-priced tier. Now you might be thinking that the higher prices would only be for the one month and I could just pay her the difference - oh no, the higher price stays for at least a year before she can apply to go back to the lower price again, last time this happened to her she was at the higher price for like two years before she could go back to the lower one.
Anyway just thought I'd vent about it, probably gonna just be driving on hybrid mode for the forseeable future. Maybe I should run an extension cord to our neighbor..?
Jesus, what the fuck are those contractual conditions ? are you buying your electricity from a warlord in an underground bunker ?
The thing about that 600 posts a day limit on twitter is the very first time I opened twitter today I already had it.
I’m really inclined to agree with the people saying they probably didn’t pay a bill tbh
I don't really have much to say, but it looks like y'all could use this
hell ya trans ppl with transphobic parents are deadass braver than any troop
No, tell him because there was never a good male role model in the house she adopted the feminine way. Tell him it's his fault a transition occurred because he was a terrible man. Girlboss, gaslight
I am Black, and am totally enamoured by jet-black skin and exaggerated buttocks on black women
Review on goodreads for a decolonial Marxist book
site went down because our hosting provider had an oopsie
more importantly, since Twitter now doesn't show people tweets if you don't have an account, we made a Mastodon: @hexbear@matapacos.dog
Please give it a follow. I've asked the admins to post about it & sticky it sitewide, until that happens people who browse the mega are the cool kids who get the link first
It is a federated micro-blogging platform (A.K.A. Twitter clone) composed of over 10,000 independently operated, but interconnected servers. It was a major inspiration for Lemmy, which is licensed under identical terms and speaks the same protocol.
https://privacy.thenexus.today/mastodon-a-partial-history/
Scratched onto the glass of a random bus shelter
Big anarchy symbol and "fuck nazis" underneath
Counterbalances the fuck globohomo graffiti I saw yesterday