The Homestead Pump House and the Battle of Homestead Foundation

Becky and I went to a museum in Pittsburgh to research the Homestead Strike of 1892. This was a strike of steel workers who got laid off because they wouldn't accept huge pay cuts. But as we learned, history is often told from the point of view of the wealthy and privileged, and the museum didn't give us much information. So we talked to Russ Gibbons from the Battle of Homestead Foundation, a group of people who try to tell history from the common person's perspective. Russ introduced us to the wonderful world of Pittsburgh activism.

The history that Russ and friends want to keep alive is the Battle of Homestead. It's a tragic story with all the makings of a Hollywood blockbuster and it goes like this:

The Setting: Carnegie Steel Plant at Homestead, just outside Pittsburgh (by the Monongahela River) in 1892.

The Bad Guys: Henry Clay Frick and the Pinkerton Detective Agency.

The Good Guys: Members of the steelworkers' union.

The Plot: It was the end of the union's contract with the steel company and the contract had to be renegotiated. Frick wanted to break up the union and pay the workers way less money. He wouldn't budge, and the workers couldn't agree to it.

The Plot Thickens: So Frick decided to lay off all of the workers, put a fence up around the steelworks, and top it with barbed wire, adding peepholes for rifles. Then he hired Pinkerton security to protect the new people he hired at lower wages.

And Now It Gets Ugly: Thousands of people started picketing. On the night of July 5, 300 Pinkerton guards went to the mill on barges. As they got closer, the crowd warned them not to step off the barges. When a Pinkerton man tried to shove a striker aside, he fired, wounding the detective. In the gunfire that followed, seven workers and three detectives were killed.

The townspeople ran the Pinkerton detectives out of Homestead, and soon the whole country was watching, mostly siding with the workers, but Frick showed no regret for the deaths. During John Morris' crowded funeral, the minister denounced Frick by saying, "There is no more sensibility in that man than in a toad."

The Sub-Plots: While all this occurred, Andrew Carnegie, who owned the mill, remained out of the spotlight in his vacation castle in Scotland. All he'd say was that he was pleased with Frick's work. Oh, by the way, Carnegie was paying $2,000 a week for his Scottish castle (a fortune now and an even bigger fortune then)… and he was cutting worker wages!?!? Unbelievable!

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At the same time, Sasha Berkman and Emma Goldman, two Russian anarchists in New York, were really mad about it all. Sasha decided he would do his part for the cause by killing Frick. On July 23, he burst into Frick's office, shot, and stabbed him. Although he seriously injured Frick, he didn't kill him. He did, however, kill public support for the strikers, because many people thought the strikers were behind the attempt. The union condemned Sasha's act, but it didn't help. Suddenly, the newspapers weren't so sympathetic and the strike seemed doomed.

The Aftermath: On November 21 the strike was called off. The strikers agreed to return to work, but only about 400 of the 2,200 were hired back and the rest were blacklisted, unable to find jobs in steel mills anywhere in the country.

A year later, Frick, unimpeded by unions, cut wages at Homestead by 60%. Men were forced to work 12-hour shifts seven days a week. Later, Carnegie paid Frick this compliment: "He never disappoints; what he promises he more than fulfills."

Going around Pittsburgh, you'd think Frick and Carnegie were the heroes of this story. Their names are everywhere! But you can only find two markers in honor of the Homestead strikers in town.

Russ and his colleagues, Steffi and Charles, are changing that. They are determined to tell the story of Homestead and shape the way the site of the battle is preserved.

They are reclaiming Homestead history from the rich people (like Frick and Carnegie) and giving it back to the workers. A century later, the ghosts of Homestead may finally rest in peace.

Daphne