Homestead. Bart. Field Marshal Sir John Burgoyne
be construed as reflecting upon the efficacy of the McKinley bill and the Republican party's pledges to American labor; while the Democratic and independent press subjected the manufacturers to merciless criticism.
All this was full of encouragement to the workingmen. They felt that their cause was expanding from the dimensions of a mere local trouble to those of an affair of national importance, affecting the destinies of the dominant political parties. At Homestead, which had previously been a Republican stronghold, the Democratic propaganda found special favor. "If all else should fail us," thought the men, "we can, at least, have revenge at the polls in November."
And they kept their word.
It is not within the province of the writer of this narrative to analyze the peculiar aspect put upon the case of the workingmen by political agitators for campaign purposes. Merely the facts are stated here, leaving it to the reader to make his own deductions as to the justice or injustice of the assaults on the American system of protection to labor provoked by the seeming selfishness of tariff-enriched manufacturers. Suffice it to state that every shot told and that, if the whole truth were known, it would be found that political considerations went a long way to prevent the other manufacturers from joining Mr. Frick in a body and using their combined resources to destroy the Amalgamated Association and strip their employees of all means of self-defense.
It will be seen that the position of the Homestead workers was greatly strengthened by the common danger. Homestead was not to be alone in its fight. The entire Amalgamated Association was threatened, and the spirit of mutual helpfulness was, therefore, powerfully stimulated at all points. The good old unionist principle, "One for all, and all for one," was bound to receive a full and magnificent exemplification.
On June 15, the convention of the Amalgamated Association completed the general wage scale for iron mills and presented it to the manufacturers' committee. The manufacturers responded by producing a scale of their own, embodying extensive reductions. This was the beginning of a dispute, stubborn on both sides, which was kept up long after the final adjournment of the convention, that body assigning the duty of conferring with the manufacturers to a special wage committee.
The consideration of the scales for steel mills, including that prepared by the Homestead lodges, was not completed by the convention until June 23. On that day, a committee, headed by William Roberts, one of the most intelligent of the Homestead mill workers, appeared at the offices of the Carnegie Company, on Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, and was escorted to Mr. H. C. Frick's private room. Mr. Frick, General Manager Potter, H. L. Childs and F. T. F. Lovejoy acted for the company in the conference which followed. Mr. Roberts, acting as spokesman for his colleagues, presented the Homestead scale as approved by the convention, and explained that the employees were prepared to concede several points, admitting, however, of no reduction exceeding 15 per cent, in any department. The men were willing even to reduce the minimum selling price of billets on which the rate of wages should be estimated to $24 per ton, but the firm insisted upon the $23 rate, which, as previously explained, signified a serious depression in wages.
The conference, after a discussion lasting several hours, broke up without accomplishing anything.
The following day, June 24, had been fixed by Mr. Frick as the last on which the Carnegie firm would treat with its employees as members of the Amalgamated Association. The day passed without a conference. It was believed, however, that, in view of the concessions which the men had stated their willingness to make, even though they refused to make the complete surrender which Mr. Frick demanded, the firm would consent to fresh conferences with the committee. Yet the fact that the firm, which had sufficient orders on hand to keep the mill busy for many months, was canceling these orders, coupled with the extraordinary preparations for warfare which were being made at the mills, cast a damper on the hopes of the men. There was hardly a ray of sunshine to brighten the gloomy outlook.
On June 25, Mr. Lovejoy, secretary of the Carnegie Company, stated through the newspapers that the conferences were at an end, that the firm had decided to make the rate of $23 a ton on billets the basis of wages, and that this rate would be enforced without regard to the opinion of the Amalgamated Association. It was also the intention to change the time of fixing the wage schedule from June to January, so that if a strike or lock-out should occur, the hardships of the winter season would strengthen the company's hand. So, at least, the men interpreted the proposed change.
Mr. Lovejoy's statement, although given out in an informal way, was generally accepted as meaning that the ax was forthwith to be let fall upon the neck of organized labor at Homestead, and that no human power could stay the hand of the executioner.
Still all was quiet at Homestead. June 25 was Saturday and pay-day, but the day was marked by less activity and bustle than usual. The stores were not crowded, and little money was spent. In the face of trouble, the end of which it was impossible to foresee, men carefully put away the contents of their pay envelopes. The wolf might come to the door before long and resources had to be husbanded. Few cared for the little Saturday jollifications common at other times. Wherever a group of mill men came together, the one theme of discussion was the ultimatum of the firm, the prospect of a wholesale discharge of union men on July 1 and the meaning of the warlike equipment of the mill property.
A new and significant name was devised for the Carnegie enclosure, with its ramparts, watch towers, search-lights and other suggestions of war, and flew from mouth to mouth with the rapidity of lightning.
"Fort Frick."
An ill-omened name it was, bristling with offensive associations; but its propriety as a descriptive epithet could not be questioned.
Who was to occupy the "fort?" Whose guns were to be used through those loopholes?
"Pinkerton detectives," said some, and the rumor that an army of "Pinkertons" had been hired and might already be on its way to garrison the works and shed the blood of the men of Homestead found ready credence and deepened the feeling of resentment abroad in the town. Many were disposed to believe that Pinkerton scouts had arrived and were making things ready for the coming of the main guard.
On Tuesday, June 28, the company ordered the armor-plate mill and the open-hearth department shut down, throwing 800 men out of employment.
This was the beginning of the lock-out, for a lock-out it was, and not a strike, as has been very generally represented.
A strike occurs when dissatisfied workingmen cease work of their own accord and refuse to return until the cause of dissatisfaction is removed.
A lock-out originates with the employing individual or corporation, and consists in the refusal to let the employees work until they come to terms with the employer.
As Mr. Frick took the initiative, the trouble at Homestead was distinctively a lock-out, although, if Mr. Frick had chosen, he could have permitted it to take the form of a strike.
It made little difference in the end which of the contestants took the first aggressive step. Once the Frick ultimatum was promulgated, a struggle was inevitable, and if the firm had not thrown down the gauntlet, the men most assuredly would have forced the fighting on their own account.
The night of June 28 witnessed strange scenes in Homestead. The pent-up feelings of the men now found vent unrestrainedly. Effigies of Frick and Potter were hung on telegraph poles. Denunciations of the firm and its policy were heard on every hand. Knots of angry men gathered outside the board fence that hedged the mill enclosure, peered through the loopholes at the watchmen on duty within and talked defiantly of what would happen if the methods that triumphed over the poor, disorganized serfs in the coke regions were to be tried upon four thousand sturdy and intelligent steelworkers. If an apostle of non-unionism had ventured upon the streets of Homestead that night he would have fared badly.
The next morning, at the call of the officers of the local lodges, 3,000 steelworkers met in the opera house. The chairman of the executive committee stated to the meeting that, at a conference of committeemen representing the eight lodges, held on the preceding evening, it had been decided to submit the question of shutting down the mechanical department of the mills to the steelworkers en masse, irrespective of affiliation with the lodges, and that the decision thus arrived at should be binding on all. This report was approved and a motion was made that a committee