The press swarmed into town. Townspeople had picnics and celebrated, but a pall hung over the town as everyone was on tenterhooks waiting to see what would happen next. Tensions increased until three days later, the dispute exploded into a day-long gun battle between workers and company-hired Pinkerton Guards. The Pinkertons, trapped on barges on the Monongahela River, inevitably had to surrender. It was one of the very few union-company conflicts of that period that ended in a worker victory.
The Fourth of July was an important holiday. For many years, it was the only day during the entire year that Carnegie Steel gave the workers off. Otherwise, they toiled seven days a week in round-the-clock shifts to keep the finished steel rolling off the production line. In 1890 the average worker received about $10 a week, just above the poverty line of $500 a year. It took the wages of nearly 4,000 steelworkers to match the earnings of Andrew Carnegie.
The Pennsylvania Milita entering Homestead
The workers' victory was short-lived. On July 12th, the Pennsylvania Militia of the National Guard marched in and took over the mill. A few days later, the Homestead Works slowly began restoring production using replacement workers.
It had been a
pyrrhic victory for the workers. In his book "Steelworkers in America:
The Nonunion Era," labor historian David Brody notes that the daily wages of the highly skilled workers at
Homestead shrank by one-fifth between 1892 and 1907, while their work
shifts increased from eight hours to 12 hours.
When journalist Hamlin Garland visited Homestead in 1893, he found a dirty, depressed town with a haggard, overburdened work force:
"A COLD, thin October rain was falling as I took the little ferry-boat and crossed the Monongahela River to see Homestead and its iron-mills. The town, infamously historic already, sprawled over the irregular hillside, circled by the cold gray river. On the flats close to the water's edge there severe masses of great sheds, out of which grim smoke-stacks rose with a desolate effect, like the black stumps of a burned forest of great trees. Above them dense clouds of sticky smoke rolled heavily away."
"They wipe a man out here every little while," a worker told Garland. "Sometimes a chain breaks, and a ladle tips over, and the iron explodes.... Sometimes the slag falls on the workmen.... Of course, if everything is working all smooth and a man watches out, why, all right! But you take it after they've been on duty twelve hours without sleep, and running like hell, everybody tired and loggy, and it's a different story."
* * * *
William McQuade, a plate-mill worker, commented, "We stop only the time it takes to oil the engine," a stop of three to
five minutes. "While
they are oiling they eat, at least some of the boys, some of them; a
great many of them in the mill do not carry anything to eat at all,
because they haven't got time to eat."
Garland's guide through the Works was a former mill worker. Witness this exchange as they stopped to watch a worker:
" That looks like hard work," I said to one of them to whom my companion introduced me. He was breathing hard from his work.
" Hard ! I guess it's hard. I lost forty pounds the first three months I came into this business. It sweats the life out of a man. I often drink two buckets of water during twelve hours; the sweat drips through my sleeves, and runs down my legs and fills my shoes. "
" But that isn't the worst of it," said my guide; " it's a dog's life. Now, those men work twelve hours, and sleep and eat out ten more. You can see a man don't have much time for anything else. You can't see your friends, or do anything but work. That's why I got out of it. I used to come home so exhausted, staggering like a man with a ' jag.' It ain't any place for a sick man--is it, Joe ? "
---from "Homestead and its Perilous Trades--Impressions of a Visit" Hamlin Garland, McClure's Magazine, June 1894.
If one is to judge by the traffic on U.S.roads, the fully loaded flights, and the number of "no vacancy" signs at resorts and campgrounds, Americans still enjoy the Independence Day break from their labors. Today, very few of the workers at The Waterfront shopping area built on the site of the Homestead Works even know that one of the largest steel mills in the world once stood there. Most of the restaurants and stores are open on the Fourth. If they know about the July 6th battle, it's likely because they learned it in school.
It's rather ironic that in the 1890s, the holiday that celebrates U.S. independence from Britain highlighted the workers' slaving away at the mill on the other 364 days. For most of the workers, it probably was a day to catch some needed rest before their next shift started.
Have fun on the Fourth and enjoy your day off, America. It wasn't always like this.
"The Stars and Stripes Forever" John Philip Sousa, 1894
"The Stars and Stripes Forever" John Philip Sousa (1894) played by the U.S.. Navy Band
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