Homestead Strike of 1892
Near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
On the morning of July sixth, eighteen ninety-two, three hundred Pinkerton agents loaded onto barges and tried to land near this riverbank. Carnegie Steel had hired them to break a strike at the Homestead mill, where workers had shut the plant down after management slashed wages. The steelworkers and townspeople were waiting.
In a firefight that lasted through the morning, seven workers and three Pinkerton agents were killed before the agency men surrendered. The strikers had won the battle. They lost the war.
On July twelfth, eight thousand Pennsylvania National Guardsmen arrived and occupied Homestead, protecting replacement workers. By November the strike was broken, the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers was crushed, and Carnegie Steel had established the open shop. The Homestead Strike became one of the defining episodes in American labor history, a symbol of what capital was willing to do to maintain control.
