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Title: Homestead - A Complete History of the Struggle of July, 1892, between the Carnegie-Steel Company, Limited, and the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers
Author: Burgoyne, Arthur G., -1914
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Homestead - A Complete History of the Struggle of July, 1892, between the Carnegie-Steel Company, Limited, and the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers" ***
PUBLISHERS' NOTE.
At the suggestion of many members of labor organizations, the publishers
of "HOMESTEAD" have decided to set apart five per cent. of the net
profits derived from the sale of the work as the nucleus of a fund for
the erection of a monument in commemoration of the battle of July 6,
1892. A suitable design shown in the engraving opposite page 288 has
been chosen, and it is hoped that the workingmen of the United States
will co-operate to secure the successful execution of the plan. Men and
events of prominence in almost all other fields of human activity are
immortalized by enduring testimonials; but organized labor has
practically nothing to mark its achievements and serve as a reminder to
future generations. A better beginning could not be made than with the
heroes of Homestead, and it is especially fitting that the first impetus
should be given in connection with this history. Such aid as it is in
their power to lend to the formation of a Homestead Monument Association
and the accomplishment of its object is cheerfully tendered by
THE PUBLISHERS.
HOMESTEAD.
A Complete History of the Struggle of July, 1892, between
the Carnegie·Steel Company, Limited, and the Amalgamated
Association of Iron and Steel Workers.
BY
ARTHUR G. BURGOYNE.
ILLUSTRATED.
PITTSBURGH, PA.
1893.
ENTERED ACCORDING TO ACT OF CONGRESS, 1893,
BY D. S. MITCHELL,
IN THE OFFICE OF THE LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS, AT WASHINGTON.
PRESS OF
RAWSTHORNE ENGRAVING AND PRINTING CO.
PITTSBURGH.
INTRODUCTION.
The demand voiced by representative workingmen in the Pittsburgh
district, not only on their own account but on that of their brethren
the world over, for a correct and impartial history of the Homestead
trouble, sufficiently explains the appearance of this volume.
The importance of the theme requires no demonstration. Since labor first
organized for its own protection it has passed through no period more
prolific in soul-stirring events and significant developments than that
extending from July to November, 1892, and including the lock-out at the
Carnegie mills, the battle with 300 Pinkerton guards, the military
occupation of Homestead, the trial of labor leaders on capital charges
and the ultimate collapse of the Amalgamated lodges for lack of funds to
continue the struggle against non-unionism. This was a conflict of far
more than local interest. It was watched with anxiety by both friends
and foes of organized labor on both sides of the Atlantic; it claimed
the attention of leaders of thought in all departments of human
activity; it stirred up the British House of Parliament and the United
States Congress, agitated the newspaper press of both continents, became
an issue in the election for President and is said to have contributed
more largely to the defeat of Benjamin Harrison by Grover Cleveland than
any other influence.
The injection of partisan considerations into public discussion of the
Homestead affair led naturally to a vast amount of misrepresentation,
and even at this late day the causes and character of the struggle are
widely misunderstood. It has been the mission of the author of this
history to sift out the truth, to make clear the motives and methods of
the disputants on both sides, and to recount in detail the events of the
contest without sacrificing historic accuracy to romantic effect.
Personal observations in the course of visits to the "seat of war" while
hostilities were in progress, and subsequent conversations with the
leaders has made the task a comparatively easy one.
Little attempt is made to philosophize on the varying phases of the
labor question as presented at Homestead. It is left largely to the
reader to form his own deductions from the facts set forth and from the
opinions of recognized authorities, not forgetting Mr. Carnegie himself,
which are liberally cited.
That through the perusal of "Homestead" new light may be borne in upon
some of the many who persist in regarding the American workingman as a
mere piece of mechanism, deservedly at the mercy of his employer, is the
earnest hope of
THE AUTHOR.
PITTSBURGH, November 22, 1893.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. CAPITAL IN ITS STRONGHOLD.
Homestead and Its Mills--The Rise and Progress of the
Carnegie Firm--How The "Star Spangled Scotchman"
Made His Fortune--He Labors For Years and Then
Lapses Into Luxury--H. C. Frick's Career as Coke
King and Iron Master--The Fine Art of Crushing
Strikes--Carnegie and Frick Join Hands and the
Latter Becomes the Master-Spirit--Condition of
Organized Labor at Homestead 3-14
CHAPTER II. THE GATHERING OF THE STORM.
History and Methods of the Amalgamated
Association--Operation of the Sliding Scale at
Homestead--Superintendent Potter Makes Amicable
Suggestions _a la_ Carnegie--An Ultimatum From
Frick--He Threatens Non-Unionism and Fortifies the
Mills--Lodges Hold a Sunday Morning Meeting--Burgess
McLuckie's Bold Speech--"High Fences, Pinkerton
Detectives, Thugs and Militia"--Political Exigencies
Give Hope to the Workmen 15-26
CHAPTER III. LOCKED OUT.
Frick's Allies--A Plan of General Assault on the
Amalgamated Association Falls to the Ground--The
Labor Question in Politics--Democrats Make Capital
Out of Wage Reductions--Frick Confers With a
Workmen's Committee and Rejects a Compromise--Mills
Shut Down and Are Declared Non-Union--"Fort
Frick"--Lodges Appoint an Advisory
Committee--Guarding the Town 27-40
CHAPTER IV. THE PINKERTON GUARDS.
Planning a Siege--History of the Pinkertons--Hatred of
Organized Labor for Soldier Policemen--Frick's
Cold-Blooded Letter--The Sheriff of Allegheny County
is Enlisted in the Carnegie Forces--Millmen Dispose
of a Sheriff's Posse--The Gathering of the
Invaders--Departure of the Pinkerton Barges for
Homestead 41-51
CHAPTER V. THE FIRST SHOT.
On Board the Barges--Floating Barracks Equipped for
Bloody Warfare--Up the Monongahela at
Midnight--Homestead Gets Warning--Defenders at the
Mill Landing--Frick's Army Repulsed With Heavy
Loss--Hugh O'Donnell Takes Command of the
Workmen--Sheriff McCleary's Appeal to the
Governor--Frick Refuses to Interfere 52-64
CHAPTER VI. THE BOMBARDMENT.
Cannonading the Barges--Silas Wain's Sad Death--The
Little Bill Returns and Runs the Gauntlet--A Car of
Fire Terrifies the Pinkertons and Drives Captain
Rodgers to Flight--Amalgamated Officials
Arrive--Dining Under Fire--Horrors in the
Guardsmen's Quarters--The Killing of Detective
Connors--Dynamite--Suicide on the Barges--Messages
From Abroad--Congress Acts 65-77
CHAPTER VII. THE SURRENDER.
Amalgamated Officials as Mediators--President Weihe
Calls a Mass Meeting and Counsels Peace--Hugh
O'Donnell's Speech--The Brave Young Leader Procures
a Surrender--Pinkertons Run the Gauntlet--A Savage
Mob Assails the Prisoners--Arrival of the
Sheriff--The Frick Troop of Invaders Driven From the
State 78-88
CHAPTER VIII. AFTER THE BATTLE.
Carnegie's Property Protected--Confidence Still Strong
Among the Men--Homestead as a News Center--The
Death-Roll--Burial of the Dead--Anarchists Get a
Short Shrift--The Sheriff Fails Again--Interviewing
the Governor--Martial Law in Sight--Proceedings in
Congress--Opinions of Newspapers and Publicists--A
Press Censorship Established at Homestead 89-101
CHAPTER IX. SOLDIERS TO THE FRONT.
The Sheriff's Last Effort--Mr. Frick Issues a Statement
and the Amalgamated Association Responds--Political
and Industrial Organizations Indorse the Homestead
Men--Interviewing Carnegie--Censorship of the
Press--Governor Pattison Orders Out the National
Guard--Strength of the Militia--Locked-Out Men
Prepare to Welcome the Blue Coats--A Speech That
Burgess McLuckie Never Delivered 102-115
CHAPTER X. CAMP McCLELLAN.
Snowden's Sharp Tactics--The Taking of Homestead--Troops
in Possession--Soldiers Repel Advances and the
Fraternal Reception is Declared Off--O'Donnell's
Committee at Headquarters--Suspicion and Resentment
Abroad--The Little Bill Returns--Congressmen Hold an
Investigation--Capital and Labor in Conflict on the
Witness Stand--The Cost of Producing Steel Remains a
Riddle 116-132
CHAPTER XI. THE FIRST ARRESTS.
Bringing in the "Blacksheep"--Pittsburgh, Beaver Falls
and Duquesne Men Come Out--An Alarm in Camp--The
Governor Arrives--The Boycott as a
Persuader--Politics to the Rescue--Murder Charged
and Warrants Issued--McLuckie, O'Donnell and Ross
Surrender and are Released on Bail--General
Snowden's Disheartening Announcement 133-145
CHAPTER XII. THE SHOOTING OF FRICK.
Berkman, a Russian Autonomist, Attempts the Life of the
Carnegie Chairman--Mr. Frick's Bravery--"The
Shooting Will in no Way Affect the Homestead
Strike"--Militiaman Iams Cheers the Assassin and is
Drummed Out of Camp--Public Indignation over the
Iams Affair--Snowden, Hawkins, Streator and Neff
Indicted--Workingmen Prosecute Carnegie Officials
for Murder 146-158
CHAPTER XIII. BERKMAN AND IAMS.
Frick's Assailant Railroaded to the Penitentiary--The
Iams Trial--Hanging by the Thumbs Approved by a
Jury--The Mills Filling Up--Sermons to
Non-Unionists--Strikers Go Through the Plant--The
Relief Fund--Gompers Arrives and Makes an Incendiary
Speech--Pittsburgh and Mahoning Manufacturers
Capitulate--William and Robert Pinkerton on the
Defensive 159-173
CHAPTER XIV. POLITICIANS AT WORK.
A Suppressed Congressional Report--Sympathy Strikes
Prove a Failure--Gompers as a Boycott Wielder--The
Slavs Weaken--Plans of the Republican National
Committee--Smooth Mr. Milholland Enlists Hugh
O'Donnell--Honest John McLuckie Refuses to be
Muzzled--The Milholland Scheme Falls
Through--Outbreaks at Homestead--The Search for
Pinkerton Guns--Mr. Frick Revisits the Mill 174-188
CHAPTER XV. TREASON.
Progress in the Mill--A Quartette of Aristocratic
Non-Unionists--Sickness Breaks Out--More
Arrests--Jack Clifford Suspected of Treachery, but
is Held Without Bail for Murder--167 True Bills
Returned--Supreme Justice Paxson in the Saddle--He
Orders Arrests for Treason and is Generally
Condemned--Snowden Favors the Gallows for
Homesteaders--Judge Agnew on Treason--Paxson
Instructs the Grand Jury and Pronounces the
Homestead men Traitors--Carnegie in Scotland 189-208
CHAPTER XVI. THE FIRST BREAK.
More Prosecutions--The Soldiers Withdraw--A Non-Union
Hotel Dynamited--Homestead Figures in Parades and
Gives a Democratic Majority--Slavs Weakening--The
_Local News_ Predicts Defeat--Gompers Again--Sheriff
McCleary is Harassed and Increases His Corps of
Deputies--Lawyer Jones in Trouble--Schwab Succeeds
Potter as Superintendent--Homestead's Last
Riot--Striker Roberts Hints at Defeat--Mechanics and
Laborers Go Back to Work 209-225
CHAPTER XVII. CAPITULATION.
The Last Mass Meeting--Strikers Surrender
Unconditionally--Cost of the Homestead Dispute to
Capital, Labor and the State--Few Old Hands Get Work
and Poverty Stalks Abroad--Noble Service of Relief
Committees--The Coming of Santa Claus--Congressional
Investigations Wind Up Without Accomplishing
anything--A Batch of Useless Reports--The Kearns
Anti-Pinkerton Bill Becomes a Law in Pennsylvania 226-240
CHAPTER XVIII. THE FIRST TRIAL.
Sylvester Critchlow Arraigned--Pinkertons on the
Stand--The Prosecution Makes a Strong Showing--A
Suspicious Carnegie Banquet--Attorneys Erwin and
Argo to the Rescue--An Alibi for the Defense--John
S. Robb Attacks Mr. Erwin--The "Northwestern
Whirlwind's" Magnificent Oration--He Captures the
Court and Confounds the Prosecution--"Not
Guilty"--The Backbone of the Murder Charges Broken 241-260
CHAPTER XIX. WEAVING NEW TOILS.
An Epidemic Investigated--Detectives Charge Poisoning
and Arrests are Made--Gallagher and Davidson Turn
Informers--Dempsey and Beatty are Indicted--Hearings
and Trials--A Tangled Mass of Medical Testimony--Mr.
Brennen's Little Hibernicism--Defendants are
Convicted and Heavy Sentences Imposed--Gallagher
Recants and Then Reconsiders--Clemency Refused by
the Pardon Board 261-279
CHAPTER XX. THE DENOUEMENT.
Clifford Tried For His Life--Alibi Testimony--Attorneys
Erwin and Anderson Win New Laurels--"Not
Guilty"--Hugh O'Donnell at the Bar--The Homestead
Leader as a Reporter and Peacemaker--Weak Testimony
for the Prosecution--Major Montooth Ridicules the
District Attorney's Substitute--O'Donnell
Acquitted--The Carnegie Lawyers Abandon the
Field--Berkman's Accomplices Disposed Of 280-295
CONCLUSION 296-298
[Illustration: ANDREW CARNEGIE.]
CHAPTER I.
[Illustration: CAPITAL IN ITS STRONGHOLD]
HOMESTEAD AND ITS MILLS--THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE CARNEGIE
FIRM--HOW THE "STAR-SPANGLED SCOTCHMAN" MADE HIS FORTUNE--HE
LABORS FOR YEARS AND THEN LAPSES INTO LUXURY--H. C. FRICK'S
CAREER AS COKE KING AND IRON MASTER--THE FINE ART OF CRUSHING
STRIKES--CARNEGIE AND FRICK JOIN HANDS AND THE LATTER BECOMES
THE MASTER-SPIRIT--CONDITION OF ORGANIZED LABOR AT HOMESTEAD.
In a bend of the south bank of the Monongahela River, eight miles from
Pittsburgh, nestles the thriving town of Homestead, a place of about
12,000 inhabitants, built up by the wealth and enterprise of the
Carnegie Steel Company and the thrift of the artisans employed by that
great manufacturing corporation.
Without the Carnegie mills there would be no Homestead. Like the
mushroom towns that sprang up along the Northern Pacific Railroad while
the line was in process of construction and that died out as fast as the
base of operations was shifted, so Homestead sprang into being when the
site now occupied by the town was picked out by Andrew Carnegie as a
producing center, and so, too, if the Carnegie firm were to move its
works to-morrow, would Homestead be blotted off the map, or, at best,
reduced to the rank of an insignificant village.
The interdependence of the works and the town is absolute.
The mill property covers 600 acres, bordering on the river, and includes
thirty-seven acres under roof. The products comprise boiler and armor
plates, beams and structural iron of various kinds. The manufacture of
armor-plate for the United States Navy is conducted on a scale of
unparalleled magnitude. From the huge hydraulic cranes lifting and
carrying from place to place a weight of 200 tons, yet operated easily
by one man, down to the delicate machinery in the finishing department,
the equipment of the armor-plate mill is a marvel of mechanical
perfection. The great beam and structural mills, the Bessemer department
and the bloom and billet mills are also magnificently equipped and are
conducted on a mammoth scale, in comparison with which the operations of
other American steel mills are almost insignificant.
[Illustration]
Railroad tracks gridiron the yards and nineteen locomotives are required
for the transportation of material. The repair shops cut an important
figure and an army of blacksmiths, roll-turners, carpenters, tinners
and other mechanics is employed to keep every detail of the working
equipment in perfect order.
The plant is lighted throughout with electricity.
Within easy reach of the mills are the offices of the mill
superintendent and his corps of clerks, draughtsmen and engineers. Eight
handsome residences, farther back from the yard, are occupied by the
assistant managers. There is also a club house for the use of guests and
officers.
The foundation of this immense concern, representing a capital of
many millions of dollars, and employing nearly 4,000 men, was laid in
1880, when, according to the census report, Homestead had a population
of less than 600. The firm which has made all this possible, which,
by virtue of intelligent effort and phenomenal accumulation and
utilization of capital has called into being a full-fledged American
town, with schools, churches, prosperous mercantile establishments,
independent minor industries and a well-organized municipal government,
is controlled by two men, whose names have, through the events to be
recorded in this volume, been made familiar as household words the world
over--Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick.
Andrew Carnegie is a self-made man, the son of a poor weaver of
Dunfermline, Scotland. In 1845, the lad, then 12 years old, emigrated
to the United States with his parents and settled in Pittsburgh. He was
put to work tending a small stationary engine, and afterwards became
a telegraph messenger boy and, in course of time, an operator. The
Pennsylvania Railroad Company made him clerk to the superintendent of
its Pittsburgh office and manager of its telegraph lines. About this
time he met Woodruff, the inventor of the sleeping-car, and took a share
in his venture. The enterprise was profitable and yielded what may be
considered the nucleus of Mr. Carnegie's wealth. Again the young man was
promoted, securing the superintendency of the Pittsburgh division of the
Pennsylvania road. His future was now assured if he chose to continue
in the railroad business; but his tastes, or rather his keen foresight
led him in another direction. In company with his brother Thomas and
others he purchased an established rolling mill, and from this grew the
most extensive and profitable system of iron and steel industries in the
world.
Mr. Carnegie has frequently challenged public notice by acts of
philanthropy. He has given free baths and a free library to his native
town of Dunfermline, a histological annex, known as the Carnegie
laboratory to Bellevue Hospital, New York; a free library and music hall
to Allegheny City; a free library and music hall, costing more than
$1,000,000, to Pittsburgh; a free library to Edinburgh, Scotland, and
similar donations to Braddock and other places where he has business
interests. He has a fondness for literature, has written several books,
of which "Triumphant Democracy; or Fifty Years' March of the Republic"
is the most pretentious, and at one time controlled eighteen English
newspapers in the Radical interest. Mr. Carnegie married late in life
and has since maintained establishments in New York and at Cluny Castle,
Scotland, rarely visiting his mills.
Estimates of Andrew Carnegie's character vary widely. To those
associated with him in business he is known as a firm and considerate
friend, quick to discern ability and generous in rewarding it. As
an employer of labor he bore a high reputation for liberality and
sympathetic regard for the well-being of his employees until the
occurrence of the trouble at Homestead in 1892. How far he was
personally chargeable with responsibility for Mr. Frick's iron-handed
policy in that affair has never been positively determined; but it is
certain that the relentless spirit shown by Mr. Frick cost Mr. Carnegie
much of his popularity.
The connection of Henry Clay Frick with the Carnegie iron and steel
industries, did not begin until Andrew Carnegie had reached the zenith
of his success. Mr. Frick, however, had already carved his way to wealth
along a different line, and was himself a millionaire. His success
was gained in coke, and he came to be known as "the Coke King." Coke
is indispensable to the manufacture of steel, but for a long time its
production remained a separate industry. The Connellsville region, lying
about fifty miles south of Pittsburgh, was occupied by a number of small
producers, whose cut-throat mode of competition was highly advantageous
to the steel men. Starting with small holdings, Mr. Frick gradually
increased his territory and the number of his ovens until he obtained
a practical monopoly of the Connellsville production and was able to
dictate terms to consumers. He further strengthened his grip on the
trade by investing heavily in coal lands and thus acquiring an unlimited
source of supply for his ovens.
Mr. Carnegie perceived the rich possibilities of a union between the
steel and coke industries, and, in 1882, bought a half interest in the
Frick Coke Company for $1,500,000. Six years later, on the death of
one of his partners, he induced the coke king to enter the Carnegie
Company, and the interests thus combined have since been, to all intents
and purposes, a unit.
The details of Mr. Frick's early career may be recited in very few
words. He is the son of a farmer and was born at West Overton, Pa., in
1850. After gaining the rudiments of an education in the common schools
of Fayette County, he began business life as a dry goods clerk in Mount
Pleasant. Leaving the dry goods business he became book-keeper in his
grandfather's distillery at Bradford. He lived economically and with the
money which he saved out of his salary he embarked in the coke business
with A. O. Tintsman and Joseph Rist. Although barely 21 years old, he
was the senior partner of the firm, which began with an equipment of 300
acres of land and 50 ovens. The opening of the Mt. Pleasant and Broad
Ford railroad imparted new life to the coke trade about this period
and young Frick took advantage of the boom to add to his firm's plant.
The firm also built the Henry Clay works of one hundred ovens on the
Youghiogheny River near Broad Ford.
In 1876 Mr. Frick bought out his partners and continued the business on
his own account. In the following year a depression of trade placed the
lease of the Valley coke works at his disposal. The young operator put
Thomas Lynch in charge, and despite the dullness of the market, kept the
works going every day in the year.
In the fall of 1877 Mr. Frick took into partnership E. M. Ferguson, the
owner of a plant of 70 ovens, and the new firm operated as H. C. Frick &
Co. A year later the firm leased the Anchor works and the Mullen works
near Mt. Pleasant and admitted Walton Ferguson as a partner.
In 1879 the coke trade revived amazingly, prices advancing from a
maximum of $1.15 a ton to $4 and $5 a ton. The Frick Company continued
to extend its business until, in 1882, it controlled 3,000 acres of coal
land and 1,026 coke ovens. Meanwhile Mr. Frick organized the Morewood
Coke Company, limited, and built the Morewood works of 470 ovens,
the largest works in the region. Carnegie Bros. & Co., Limited, were
admitted into the firm in January, 1882.
The Frick corporation now pushed its operations with such vigor that, in
1890, according to a semi-official statement, it "owned and controlled
35,000 acres of coal land and 43 of the 80 plants in the region,
aggregating 10,046 ovens, three water plants with a pumping capacity
of 5,000,000 gallons daily, and 35 miles of railroad track and 1,200
railroad cars. 11,000 men were then employed by the company, and for the
equipment of its plants it had 23 locomotives, 72 pairs of stationary
engines, 172 steam boilers and 816 horses and mules."
Mr. Frick had several serious strikes to contend with. His plan of
campaign was always the same--to crush the strikers by main force and
make no concessions. The Coal and Iron police, an organization of
watchmen maintained under a state law, the drilled and armed watchmen
of the Pinkerton detective agency, and the state militia were pressed
into service as the occasion demanded, and the shedding of blood and
sacrifice of human life resulted on more than one occasion.
Mr. Frick's character need not be analyzed at this point. It will be
illustrated clearly enough as our narrative progresses.
The Homestead mill and the Frick coke works, vast as they are,
constitute merely a fraction of the Carnegie Company's interests. In
addition to these the Company owns the Edgar Thompson furnaces and the
Edgar Thompson steel works at Bessemer, eleven miles from Pittsburgh on
the Pennsylvania railroad; the Duquesne steel works, on the same side
of the Monongahela river as the Homestead works; the Lucy Furnaces,
Pittsburgh; the Keystone Bridge Works, Pittsburgh; the Upper and Lower
Union Mills, Pittsburgh; the Beaver Falls mills at Beaver Falls, 32
miles from Pittsburgh on the P. & L. E. railroad; the Carnegie Natural
Gas Company; the Scotia ore mines in Center County, Pa.; the American
Manganese Company, and interests in several large ore companies in the
Lake Superior region. About 13,000 persons are employed in the various
concerns operated by the firm, and of these about 3,800 are engaged in
the works at Homestead.
In June 1892, Andrew Carnegie, while maintaining the controlling
financial interest in the firm, transferred the managing authority
to H. C. Frick. At that time the firm was reorganized, the separate
enterprises which had previously been conducted under the names
of Carnegie Bros. and Company, Carnegie, Phipps & Co., and other
independent titles, being merged under the control of a single
corporation known as the Carnegie Steel Company, Limited. H. C.
Frick was made chairman, the other partners being Andrew Carnegie,
Henry Phipps, Jr., George Lauder, H. M. Curry, W. L. Abbott, John
G. A. Leishman, F. T. F. Lovejoy, Otis H. Childs and sundry minor
stockholders whose interests were conferred upon them by Mr. Carnegie by
way of promotion.
The power of the firm in the iron and steel industries was now
dictatorial. On the fiat of the Carnegie Company depended almost
entirely the price of steel in the market. Rivalry was dwarfed and
competition nullified. Rarely in the industrial history of the world has
a similarly powerful monopoly been built up on no other foundation than
the combination of brains and capital, with such indirect aid as the
protective tariff system affords.
Against this tremendous power,--a power equal to the control of 13,000
men and more than $25,000,000 of capital, the men of Homestead were
destined to pit themselves in a life and death struggle; how destructive
and hopeless a struggle will appear from the story told in these pages.
The men of Homestead, on their side, had comparatively limited resources
to count upon in a battle against such fearful odds. They reckoned, to
begin with, upon that species of _esprit de corps_ which prevails among
workingmen, especially those of the more intelligent class, and which is
the solid ground under the feet of organized labor.
Not that the 3,800 workmen in the Homestead mills had a complete and
comprehensive organization. On the contrary, out of this number,
not more than one thousand were enrolled in the eight lodges of the
Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers maintained in the
town. These were the workers known as "tonnage men," because the nature
of their employment permitted the graduation of their wages on a scale
determined by the price of billets per ton. Outside the lodges were the
mechanics and laborers, working, for the most part, for daily wages.
At the same time, the joint influence of fraternity and of confidence
in the force of organization was deemed sufficient to inspire all the
Homestead workers, in and out of the lodges, to make common cause in
the event of a quarrel between the lodges and the Carnegie firm. Should
this emergency arise, it was argued, the firm could not find enough
non-union steelworkers in the United States to take the places of its
army of employees, and as a consequence, if the men went out on strike,
the mills would have to be shut down and the heavy loss resulting would
force the firm to come to terms.
With this impression ingrained in their minds, the men smiled
confidently at the suggestion of a cut in wages, and tacitly defied the
new chairman, Mr. Frick, to do his worst.
That the new chairman was liable to make some disagreeable departure
had to be admitted by the most confident. Dubious associations hung
around the name of this man H. C. Frick. He had acquired unpleasant
notoriety by reducing wages in the coke regions, and by crushing the
labor insurrections which followed by the employment of Pinkerton
detectives and even by calling in the state militia. There was no
dilettantism or liberally-advertised philanthropy of the Carnegie stripe
in Frick's composition. Everybody knew that. He was a man of blood and
iron like Bismarck, so the workmen said; cared not a penny whether his
underlings loved or hated him, and rather preferred an opportunity to
crush--crush--crush intractable working folk under his heel than not.
Was this man placed in power by Andrew Carnegie in order to carry out at
Homestead what he had carried out in the coke regions; to challenge
organized labor by the submission of conditions which it could not
accept and, on its refusal, try the old game of crushing the unions
under foot? Did Carnegie shrink from the task himself and pick out Frick
as a willing and capable instrument? Such were the questions discussed
in the lodge-room and in the privacy of the domestic circle at Homestead
during the time which intervened between the re-organization of the
Carnegie interests and the next annual signing of the wage scale.
Whatever conclusions might be reached, there was one thing certain at
all events, in the not too penetrating judgment of the unionists: Frick
might reduce wages, and Frick might fight, but Frick could not repeat in
conflict; with the 3,800 brawny and intelligent artisans at Homestead
the comparatively easy victories which he had gained over his poor coke
workers. So said they all, and they believed it, too, as firmly as if it
were Holy Writ.
The feeling of ownership had a place in the reasoning of these simple
people. Many of them had bought and paid for their homes and were
pillars of the borough government. Some were still paying for their
dwellings--paying off the mortgages held by the Carnegie Company, which
had been in the habit of helping those who cared to build, and which
even did a regular banking business for the advantage of its employees.
It was clearly impossible that men of substance, heads of families,
solid citizens of a prosperous municipality could be rooted up, as it
were, out of the soil in which they were so firmly planted and beaten to
earth by the creature of their labor--for without labor, it was argued,
capital would be impotent and valueless.
In this mood, with suspicions as to the mission of Chairman Frick, but
with impregnable confidence in themselves, the men prepared to settle
the scale of wages, which was to be agreed upon in the spring of 1892
and to go into effect on July 1.
They sought no advance in wages, but it was a foregone conclusion that,
if wages were to be depressed, they would offer implacable resistance.
There was calmness in all quarters at this time. No smoldering embers of
dissatisfaction; no long nourished grievances were in existence to
precipitate a sudden outbreak.
Mr. Potter, the superintendent of the Homestead mill, calmly discharged
his daily round of duties.
Mr. Frick sat in his comfortable office in Pittsburgh, and calmly mapped
out a plan of some, as yet, unheralded campaign.
Mr. Carnegie calmly continued to hob-nob with European celebrities and
to indulge his _penchant_ for the erection of free libraries.
There was not a cloud the size of a man's hand to mar the serenity of
the horizon that bounded the little world of the Carnegie interests.
The gathering of the storm had not yet begun.
CHAPTER II.
[Illustration: THE GATHERING OF THE STORM]
HISTORY AND METHODS OF THE AMALGAMATED ASSOCIATION--OPERATION OF
THE SLIDING SCALE AT HOMESTEAD--SUPERINTENDENT POTTER MAKES
AMICABLE SUGGESTIONS _a la_ CARNEGIE--AN ULTIMATUM FROM
FRICK--HE THREATENS NON-UNIONISM AND FORTIFIES THE
MILLS--LODGES HOLD A SUNDAY MORNING MEETING--BURGESS
McLUCKIE'S BOLD SPEECH--"HIGH FENCES, PINKERTON DETECTIVES,
THUGS AND MILITIA"--POLITICAL EXIGENCIES GIVE HOPE TO THE
WORKMEN.
The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers is, with the
possible exception of the Association of Window Glass Workers, the best
generaled and most substantially organized labor organization in the
United States. One of the fundamental principles in the doctrine of the
association is to avoid and discourage strikes; and so closely has this
article of faith been observed that the number of strikes officially
ordered in the iron and steel industries has been small in comparison
with the record of most other labor unions.
The adjustment of wage scales by the association is largely the affair
of the lodges. The equipment and requirements of different iron and
steel mills vary considerably, and hence, each mill or kindred group of
mills must have a separate scale, adjusted to its needs. It is incumbent
on the lodges to report their respective scales to the association at
large through the medium of an annual delegate convention. Should there
be a dispute in any district, the convention passes upon the merits of
the case and decides whether or not it shall be taken up by the
association as a whole. If not, the usual mode of procedure is to notify
the belligerent lodge or lodges to yield the disputed points. If, on the
other hand, the association decides to intervene, the chief executive
officers are authorized to act, and it becomes their duty to exhaust all
fair means of bringing the recalcitrant mill-owners to terms, before
countenancing a strike. An official order to strike commits the
association to the payment of weekly benefits to the strikers.
The president of the Amalgamated Association is always chosen with
special reference to his capacity for cool, stable, conservative
leadership. Mental brilliancy is not so much sought after in the man who
is called upon to fill this responsible position, as level-headedness
and inflexible nerve. William Weihe, who served as president during the
troublous days of 1892, fully met these requirements. A giant in
stature, slow and deliberate in speech and action, and never committing
himself without being perfectly sure of his ground, Weihe was just the
man to preserve the dignity and influence of the association when the
spectres of riot and anarchy stalked abroad and organized labor,
smarting from a thousand gaping wounds, threatened to break down the
bulwarks of law and order and to sacrifice the good-will of its
friends. At no time throughout a contest which set men's souls aflame
from one end of the land to the other did President Weihe lose his
self-possession or his ability to stand between the solid fabric of the
association and those of its friends, who, in the rashness of the hour,
would fain have involved it in the ruin which engulfed the lodges at
Homestead.
The Homestead scale was prepared early in the spring. In January, the
superintendent of the mill, Mr. Potter sent for the joint committee of
the local lodges and requested that the men prepare a scale. It was not
the policy of the Carnegie firm, Mr. Potter said, to leave the way open
for a strike. If there were differences of opinion between employer and
employees, the proper method of settlement was by arbitration, and it
was, therefore, advisable that the scale should be presented early, so
as to leave ample time for an amicable adjustment of disputed points.
For three years previous, the men had been working under what was known
as a sliding scale, an expedient which at the time of its adoption was
regarded as a sure preventive of strikes. This scale established as the
basis on which wages were to be determined, the market price of steel
billets, in the manufacture of which the Carnegie Company was
extensively engaged. When the price of billets went up, wages were to go
up correspondingly, and when the price of billets went down, wages were
to be correspondingly lowered. $25 a ton was agreed upon as the minimum.
If billets were quoted below that figure, there was to be no further
depression of wages. In other words, the men and the firm were
practically in partnership, increased profits to the latter meaning
increased earnings to the former, unless the bottom fell out of the
market, in which case it became the duty of the stronger partner to
protect the weaker.
The circumstances under which this equitable compact was made are of
interest in so far as they exhibit the very different temper of the
Carnegie Company towards its men in the past from that which marked its
line of conduct after Mr. Frick was placed at the helm. In January,
1889, the men, who had been working under a yearly scale, quarreled with
the firm over the terms proposed for the ensuing year and a strike was
declared. William L. Abbott, a man of comparatively mild and liberal
disposition, was then serving as chairman. Mr. Abbott undertook to break
the strike, and when the men resorted to riotous conduct, called upon
the sheriff of the county for aid. The sheriff, Dr. Alexander
McCandless, an official who enjoyed great popularity, and possessed the
courage and tact essential in such an emergency, went promptly to the
scene with a force of deputies recruited for the occasion. At the first
encounter with the mob, the deputies let their courage ooze out at their
fingers' ends and fled from the town.
The sheriff, nowise disheartened by the desertion of his forces, took
the best possible means of ending the trouble by constituting himself a
mediator between the Carnegie firm and the strikers. Through his efforts
a conference was arranged, and peace was restored through the adoption
of the famous sliding scale, with the understanding that it would hold
good until June 30, 1892. Mr. Carnegie, then absent in Europe, professed
to be much pleased with the amicable settlement arrived at and the
incidental guarantee of peace for three years to come, and for the time
being the names of Sheriff McCandless and William L. Abbott were
surrounded with a halo of glory.
When Superintendent Potter, in January, 1892, spoke to the men about a
new scale, he gave no hint of the prospect that the firm contemplated
sweeping away the beneficial arrangement which had so long governed
their earnings. As already noted, Mr. Potter touched upon the subject of
possible differences of opinion and of the firm's desire that such
differences should be settled in a friendly way.
The shadow of Mr. Frick loomed up gloomily in the background, it is
true, but there was really no occasion to think of shadows when the
genial Potter presented himself as the very embodiment of sunshine. The
ideas put forth by this gentleman bore the special brand of Mr.
Carnegie. Mr. Carnegie was on record as being opposed to the use of
force in settling disputes between capital and labor. In 1886, he had
written for the magazines on this question, and the liberality of his
views had elicited general commendation. Thus he said in the _Forum_:
"Peaceful settlement of differences should be reached through
arbitration. I would lay it down as a maxim that there is no excuse for
a strike or a lock-out until arbitration of differences has been offered
by one party and refused by the other."
Mr. Carnegie declared further, that "The right of the workingmen to
combine and to form trades unions is no less sacred than the right of
the manufacturer to enter into association and conference with his
fellows, and it must sooner or later be conceded." Manufacturers should
"meet the men _more than halfway_" and "To expect that one dependent
upon his daily wage for the necessaries of life will stand by peaceably
and see a new man employed in his stead is to expect much."
This was the gospel of Carnegie in 1886, and, the shadow of Frick to the
contrary, notwithstanding, it was not singular that it should have been
the gospel of Potter in January, 1892.
It was, then, with a feeling of reasonable security that the men went to
work upon their scale. This, when completed, differed little from that
of the previous three years. It was presented to Mr. Potter in February,
but, strange to say, did not seem to please that worthy exponent of the
Carnegie idea of harmony. The joint committee of the lodges waited
frequently upon the superintendent in the hope of reaching some definite
conclusion, but the conferences were barren of results.
At length, to the amazement of the men, the Carnegie firm officially
promulgated a new sliding scale, based on billets at $26.50 per ton as a
standard, but fixing as the minimum basis of wages, $22 per ton, instead
of $25 as formerly. As the billet market was now abnormally depressed--a
condition which, it was claimed by many, had been designedly brought
about in order to give the Carnegie Company a pretext for wage
reductions--it was apparent that a serious reduction in many departments
of the mill would follow the acceptance of the firm's propositions.
June 24 was fixed as the last day on which the men could accept as
members of the Amalgamated Association. After that date, the firm would
not consent to treat with them otherwise than as individuals. In short,
Mr. Frick wanted it to be understood, definitely and finally, that, if
his employees did not yield promptly and with a good grace, he would
non-unionize the mill and abolish the right of self-protective
organization, to which Mr. Carnegie, six years before, had feelingly
referred as "sacred."
[Illustration]
There was a flavor of coke region discipline about the Frick ultimatum
which was not calculated to promote good feeling at Homestead. Nor did
it. The men who drove the sheriff's deputies out of Homestead in 1889
might yield to milder measures, but the crack of the whip was
irritating. "Are we to be lashed into Mr. Frick's way of thinking?" men
asked one another, and the very thought bred insurrection.
If there was a calm now, it was the calm that preceded a hurricane.
As if to accentuate the sentiment of disaffection among the Homestead
people, Mr. Frick accompanied the issuance of his ultimatum with
preparations of a warlike character. A large force of men was employed
upon the construction of a solid board fence, three miles in extent,
surrounding the property of the firm between the Pittsburgh, Virginia &
Charleston railroad and the Monongahela river. All the workshops were
included within this enclosure. The offices and stables, situated on the
other side of the railroad, were similarly enclosed. An elevated wooden
bridge connected the two enclosures. The fence was surmounted with
strands of barbed wire, and perforated at intervals, as if for the
convenience of sharpshooters stationed within, although Mr. Frick, in
his testimony before a committee of Congress, averred that the holes
were simply for the purpose of observation. High in the air, at the ends
of the tall mill buildings, twelve-foot platforms were erected, on which
were placed electric search-lights, designed to enable sentinels to keep
watch at night over every part of the mill yard.
There was a cold and sanguinary determination about these provisions
which boded ill for the workmen. Clearly, the redoubtable tamer of the
coke-workers had made up his mind to force a bloody conflict with
organized labor, and the wage ultimatum was his defi. One of King John's
barons could not equip his feudal castle with more elaborate
offensiveness than this nineteenth century ironmaster displayed in
fortifying his mill, with the apparent intention of making war--actual
war with arms upon the men of Homestead. So it was that the men viewed
the preparations at the mill. The supposition that Mr. Frick might
regard their disposition as one of invincible stubbornness, sure to lead
to deeds of violence, and that his fences, barbed wire, loopholes,
platforms and search-lights might be pure measures of self-defense was
not entertained for an instant.
The fortification of the mill was a huge threat--a challenge--an insult.
With this exhibition of brute force held up before them, the workmen
deemed their manhood, as well as the life of their organization to be at
stake. Come what might, they must now burn their boats behind them, as
the firm had done, and refuse to recede an inch from their demands.
While affairs were taking this ominous turn at Homestead, the annual
convention of the Amalgamated Association met at Pittsburgh, the session
opening on June 7. Of the stormy conditions under which the delegates
came together and which caused their deliberations to be protracted for
an unusual period, mention is reserved for another chapter. Suffice it
to state here that the delegates from Homestead duly submitted their
scale; that it received the indorsement of the association, and that the
local lodges were empowered to persist in their demand for the retention
of the rate of $25 a ton on billets as the minimum basis of tonnage
men's wages. This made it optional with the local lodges to declare a
strike, although it followed by implication only, and not of necessity,
that the strike, if ordered, would receive the sanction and support of
the association.
Excitement in Homestead mounted rapidly to fever heat.
The first concerted public demonstration on the part of the men was on
Sunday, June 19, when the lodges held an open meeting in the opera
house. Some of the leading officials of the association and many
delegates to the Pittsburgh convention from other states were present.
The gathering included almost the entire working force of the Homestead
mill. William A. Carney, First Vice-President of the association acted
as chairman. The speechmakers, for the most part, while exhorting the
men to stand firm, counseled moderation and respect for the law.
A young vice-president of the association, Jere Doherty, touched upon
the place of the wage-worker in politics and the efficacy of the
Homestead struggle as a test of the protection guaranteed to labor by
the Republican party.
The crowning address of the day was made by John McLuckie, the burgess
of the town, a simple, earnest, straightforward man, whose rugged
eloquence told more forcibly with the brawny multitude who heard him
than if it had been couched in the language of a Cicero or a
Demosthenes. Burgess McLuckie said:
"What brings you here this morning? Is it idle curiosity, or is there a
real, tangible reason beyond? The cause of this wage trouble is not
generally understood. We were persuaded to vote the Republican ticket
four years ago in order that our wages might be maintained. As soon as
the election was over a widespread feeling on the part of the
manufacturers towards a reduction of wages was exhibited all over the
land. As soon as the McKinley bill was passed, the article in the
production of which we work was the only article that suffered a
reduction. It is Sunday morning, and we ought to be in church, but we
are here to-day to see if we are going to live as white men in the
future. The constitution of this country guarantees all men the right to
live, but in order to live we must keep up a continuous struggle. This
is the effect of legislation and nothing else. The McKinley bill reduced
the tariff on the four-inch billet, and the reduction of our wages is
the result. You men who voted the Republican ticket voted for high
tariff and you get high fences, Pinkerton detectives, thugs and
militia!"
There was politics in this speech, but almost every member of a labor
organization is a politician in a small way, and McLuckie's bill of
indictment against the Republican party struck fairly home. It had been
freely charged that, when the McKinley tariff bill was being prepared,
Andrew Carnegie had waited on the conference committee which put the
finishing touches to the measure and secured as a return for his
generous contributions to the Republican campaign funds, a reduction in
the duty on steel billets, this product being the single standard of
wages in his Homestead works. As the Carnegie firm controlled the billet
market, there was nothing to hinder a depression of prices, as a seeming
consequence of a lower duty, and this was to serve as a cover for the
new scale and the Frick ultimatum.
The plausibility of this story, and the bluntness with which McLuckie,
himself a poorly paid workman of the Carnegie Company, put the political
duplicity involved before his fellow workmen exercised a telling effect.
Particularly did the pointed allusion to "high fences, Pinkerton
detectives, thugs and militia" carry weight in the estimation of the
workingmen present at that Sunday morning meeting. Nor did it stop
there, for within the next twenty-four hours this, the first public
arraignment of the Republican party and the Carnegie Company jointly was
flashed over the telegraph wires to newspapers in all parts of the
United States, and the country at large began to realize that there were
two ways of looking at the doctrine of "protection to American labor,"
and that the difference between them was on the eve of receiving an
impressive demonstration.
The temper of the people of Homestead after the meeting of the lodges,
was, in spite of the scarcely concealed militant resolution harbored in
the breasts of the men as individuals, moderate and orderly. There was
still time, they reasoned, for Mr. Frick to withdraw his defiant
ultimatum. Nearly two weeks remained until the new wage scale would be
enforced. In the mean time there would be conferences. Possibly Mr.
Carnegie might be heard from over the cable. Perhaps even the great men
who were interested in proving that protection protects would use their
influence to obviate the astounding object lesson which would be
presented to the world if the Carnegie firm, at the noontide of its
prosperity, should reduce the wages of its employees. If there was hope
in this way of looking at the prospect, it was a forlorn hope, and the
most sanguine of the tonnage men, who were the first to be affected by a
change in the scale, could not consider it otherwise.
The cloud was plain to be seen, but of the silver lining not a vestige
was perceptible.
So the men went to bed on that Sunday night with McLuckie's bold words
ringing in their ears, and a strong conviction deep down in their hearts
that a crash was coming, that somebody was destined to go under, and
that, come what might, the victors of 1889 would not show the white
feather.
CHAPTER III.
[Illustration: LOCKED OUT]
FRICK'S ALLIES--A PLAN OF GENERAL ASSAULT ON THE AMALGAMATED
ASSOCIATION FALLS TO THE GROUND--THE LABOR QUESTION IN
POLITICS--DEMOCRATS MAKE CAPITAL OUT OF WAGE REDUCTIONS--FRICK
CONFERS WITH A WORKMEN'S COMMITTEE AND REJECTS A
COMPROMISE--MILLS SHUT DOWN AND ARE DECLARED NON-UNION--"FORT
FRICK"--LODGES APPOINT AN ADVISORY COMMITTEE. GUARDING THE
TOWN.
About the time of the assembling of the delegates to the convention of
the Amalgamated Association, the Pittsburgh _Post_, a Democratic
newspaper, printed an article in which it was alleged that the impending
conflict at Homestead was to be precipitated not in the interest of the
Carnegie Company alone, but in that of all the iron and steel
manufacturers of Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio. Homestead, it
was said, was chosen as a battle ground, (1) because of the ease with
which the mill property could be equipped for offensive and defensive
purposes; (2) because the ruin wrought in that town by a disastrous
strike would be more sweeping and complete than could be effected
anywhere else, and (3) because the Carnegie Company had the largest
interests to serve and should, therefore, be willing to bear the brunt
of the battle. If war was declared, and the lodges at Homestead were
broken up, the other manufacturers were to follow the lead of the
Carnegie Company, defy the Amalgamated Association and reduce the wages
of their employees to an extent varying from 20 to 60 per cent.
The _Post's_ story received little credence when it appeared, but later
on the course of events gave it a strong coloring of probability. Mr.
Frick proceeded to fortify the Homestead mills with every evidence of
inviting a desperate conflict. At the same time, the other manufacturers
commenced to show their hand, those of the Mahoning and Shenango Valley,
a district located about fifty miles from Pittsburgh, taking the
initiative by announcing a general reduction of wages ranging from 20 to
60 per cent. The Pittsburgh manufacturers avoided taking a distinctly
aggressive stand, but gave out significant statements to the effect that
the condition of the iron and steel market rendered it impossible for
them to continue paying the rate of wages maintained during the previous
year.
These symptoms of depression in one of the most generously protected
industries within a short time after the passage of the McKinley tariff
bill afforded a prolific subject of commentary to the opponents of the
high tariff system. Both political parties made their nominations for
the presidency in the month of June, when the labor trouble was waxing
warm, and it became only too plainly perceptible that, since the
Republican party took its stand mainly on the benefit resulting to
American labor from the protective tariff, Republicanism would be held
answerable by the working classes for the proposed wage reductions in
Pennsylvania. As a matter of fact the efficacy of the tariff as a
wage-maintaining agency had been grossly overdrawn by stump orators and
over-zealous partisan newspapers. For years it had been dinned into the
ears of the workingman that it was his duty to vote for Republican
candidates because the Republicans in Congress maintained the high
protective tariff and the high protective tariff meant high wages.
But now, at the opening of a presidential contest, the workingman was
confronted with what seemed to be proof positive that the high tariff
had lost its virtue, and when the Democratic press pointed to the
astonishing spectacle of wage reductions ordered by the "pampered iron
barons" of Pennsylvania, as illustrating that the protective system was
a sham and a fraud, what wonder that organized labor was quick to accept
the indictment as a just one!
The Democratic national convention did not lose sight of the opportunity
thus offered, and in the platform on which Grover Cleveland was
nominated at Chicago perhaps the most telling plank was that which
denounced the protective system as fraudulent and referred to the
strikes in the iron trade as an immediate attestation of the failure of
"McKinleyism."
Meanwhile, newspapers friendly to President Harrison sought to dissuade
the iron and steel manufacturers from making the threatened cut in wages
and precipitating a general conflict with the operatives. In Pittsburgh,
especially, a bitter discussion was carried on, the papers controlled by
the manufacturers persistently asserting that the tariff has nothing to
do with the making of wage scales and that a general wage reduction and
consequent strikes during a presidential campaign could not 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.
[Illustration: HENRY CLAY FRICK.]
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.
[Illustration]
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 be appointed to request the mechanics and day laborers
to quit work at once. A workman asked if the watchmen were to be
included, and another answered: "Three years ago the watchmen wanted to
come out and now they _must_ come."
The motion passed amid tremendous cheering.
The chairman of the executive committee, resuming his address, refuted
the report spread through the newspapers that six or seven hundred
mechanics and day laborers had signed a scale arranged by the firm. A
committee of this class of workmen, he said, had waited on General
Manager Potter and had been thrust aside pending the settlement of the
tonnage men's wages. After this, the mechanics and laborers had resolved
to cast their lot with the Amalgamated Association, and had signified
their decision to the lodges.
William Roberts, chairman of the conference committee, which had waited
on Mr. Frick by authority of the Amalgamated convention, took the
platform and detailed the action of his committee. Mr. Roberts told of
the committee's offer to concede a basis of $24 and of the firm's demand
that the scale terminate on the last day of the year. "We wouldn't agree
to this," he said, "and I now ask you had we any right to do so?"
"No! No! No!" shouted 3,000 voices.
The speaker described how, when the committee presented as its last and
only demands that a $24 basis be adopted and that the scale expire on
the last day of June, Mr. Frick jumped to his feet and exclaimed hotly:
"Gentlemen, that ends all conferences between you and this firm." "So
you see," Mr. Roberts went on to say, "This is not a strike. The firm
put a snag in our road.... We filled our contract. Now the firm has laid
the entire mill off one day ahead of time. Has it lived up to its
contract?"
Again 3,000 voices shouted "No," and the action of the wage conference
committee was ratified without a dissenting voice.
A resolution was offered providing that, in case any man left Homestead
during the coming trouble without permission from the lodge officials,
the men should refuse to work with him on his return. The chairman asked
all who were in favor of the resolution to rise. Instantly every man in
the hall sprang to his feet and the resolution was adopted with three
cheers and a tiger, followed with hisses for H. C. Frick.
A motion to appoint a press committee, consisting of one member from
each of the eight lodges, was carried after a discussion as to
unreliable reports. The membership of this committee was kept secret for
the time being.
A whirlwind of excitement was roused when a speaker told of a report
that 200 non-union workmen were coming to Homestead disguised in the
blue uniform of Pinkerton detectives. "Watch the depots," was the
unanimous cry that followed this alarmist statement.
When, after a session of two hours, the meeting adjourned, there
remained not the least doubt as to the unity of feeling among all
classes of workers in the town. Every man was ready to enter upon
relentless strife, and if there was a coward or malingerer in any
quarter, he wisely held his peace.
After the general meeting, the eight lodges held a secret session, at
which an advisory committee was appointed, with full power to direct the
workmen's campaign. This body, which played the most important part in
the tragic drama soon afterwards enacted, was composed of the following
members: David H. Shannon, John McLuckie, David Lynch, Thomas J.
Crawford, Hugh O'Donnell, Harry Bayne, Elmer E. Ball, Isaac Byers, Henry
Bayard, T. W. Brown, George W. Champene, Isaac Critchlow, Miller Colgan,
John Coyle, Jack Clifford, Dennis M. Cush, William McConeghy, Michael
Cummings, William Combs, John Durkes, Patrick Fagan, W. S. Gaches,
Nathan Harris, Reid Kennedy, John Miller, O. O. Searight, John Murray,
M. H. Thompson, Martin Murray, Hugh Ross, William T. Roberts, George
Rylands and George W. Sarver.
Special committees were appointed to patrol the river stations and all
entrances to the town. The patrols were directed to cover their beats
night and day and report to the advisory committee. Arrangements were
also made to have the river patrolled in skiffs, and the steamboat
"Edna" was secured to aid in this service.
Headquarters were established in a commodious public hall, with
accommodations for telegraph operators, the committee being expected to
maintain communication with all parts of the country, so as to obtain
instant information of any movement of non-union men designed for
service at Homestead. The liquor saloons were visited and the
proprietors requested to use special precautions against the promotion
of drunkenness and disorderly gatherings, under pain of being required
to close their establishments.
Eight effigies of Carnegie officials were cut down by the committee, and
notice was given that persons outraging decency in this manner in the
future would be disciplined.
The burgess of the town, John McLuckie, was informed that he might call
upon the Amalgamated Association for whatever number of men he might
deem necessary to assist him in preserving the peace.
In short, the government of Homestead had now passed absolutely into the
hands of the advisory committee of the Amalgamated lodges, and the
committee was determined to use its arbitrary authority for the
preservation of order and decency and the protection of life and
property as well as the exclusion from Homestead of non-union men,
better known to the unionist as "scabs" or "black sheep."
On July 2 the entire force of employees at the Carnegie mills was paid
off and served with notices of discharge.
With the exception of a slight altercation between General Manager
Potter and some of the men who were guarding one of the gates of the
mill there was no disorder.
Secretary Lovejoy now made his final statement on behalf of the firm
declaring the mill to be permanently non-unionized. "Hereafter," he
said, "the Homestead steel works will be operated as a non-union mill.
We shall not recognize the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel
Workers in our dealings with the men. The mill will be an open one where
all men may work regardless of their affiliation with a labor
organization. There will be, no doubt, a scale of wages; but we shall
deal with the men individually; not with any organization. Such a thing
as a union will not be recognized. There will be no further conferences
with the Amalgamated Association."
The mammoth steel plant was now deserted, except by a few watchmen and
the government steel inspectors, with whom the advisory committee did
not interfere.
The locked-out men were perfectly organized and ready to fight against
any odds at a moment's notice. A report that strangers were on the way
to Homestead along either of the railroads brought a battalion of
stalwart fellows to the stations on the outskirts.
Mr. Frick might as well have undertaken to storm Gibraltar as to
introduce a force of non-unionists into the town.
Meanwhile the convention of the Amalgamated Association had finished its
business, elected new officers, including a successor to President Weihe
in the person of Mahlon M. Garland, and left it to a committee to fight
it out with the manufacturers. This the committee was doing with
considerable success. The ominous turn which affairs were taking at
Homestead, together with the endless reproaches heaped upon the
graceless beneficiaries of the protective tariff by Mr. Harrison's
campaign managers had a most discouraging effect on the manufacturers'
committee and it was plain to be seen that the "fight all along the
line," inaugurated a month before, was to end in a compromise favorable
to the Amalgamated Association.
Mr. Frick was left to do his own fighting, single-handed and alone.
CHAPTER IV.
[Illustration: THE PINKERTON GUARDS]
PLANNING A SIEGE--HISTORY OF THE PINKERTONS--HATRED OF ORGANIZED
LABOR FOR SOLDIER POLICEMEN--FRICK'S COLD-BLOODED LETTER--THE
SHERIFF OF ALLEGHENY COUNTY IS ENLISTED IN THE CARNEGIE
FORCES--MILLMEN DISPOSE OF A SHERIFF'S POSSE--THE GATHERING OF
THE INVADERS--DEPARTURE OF THE PINKERTON BARGES FOR HOMESTEAD.
While Mr. Frick's men were busily engaged in perfecting a martial
organization and putting the government of the town of Homestead on a
war footing, Mr. Frick himself was not idle. He did not waste any time
in considering projects for immediately introducing non-union men into
the mills, being well aware that, if men foolhardy enough to take the
risk of "blacksheeping" at Homestead could be found, it would still be
impracticable to get them past the picket lines of the locked-out
steelworkers, and that, even if a force of non-unionists could be
piloted into the mill their presence would be the signal for an attack
by the union men and possibly for the destruction of the firm's
property.
Mr. Frick had another plan--a plan suggested by his successful
encounters with the Connellsville coke-workers. He conceived the idea of
garrisoning "Fort Frick" with a sufficient number of armed and
disciplined Pinkerton guards to hold any attacking force at bay and
later on to bring in non-union workmen under cover of the Pinkerton
men's rifles.
How long this project had been maturing in the mind of the Carnegie
Company's chairman cannot be told. Certain it is that he had made up his
mind to carry it out long before he met the wage conference committee
for the last time, and that when, on June 23, he went through the form
of a discussion with Mr. Roberts and Mr. Roberts' confreres, he had not
the least notion of coming to any kind of an understanding other than
that which might be brought about by force.
Mr. Frick was too well acquainted with the estimation in which the
Pinkerton men are held by the labor unions to underrate the import of
his action, and can hardly have been ignorant of the fact that in
bringing on these myrmidons, he was making doubly sure of sanguinary
times at Homestead.
A sketch of the personnel and methods of the "Pinkerton National
Detective Agency," as it is styled by its chiefs, will make clear to the
reader the reasons for the hatred and contempt entertained for this body
by workingmen everywhere.
The agency was founded in 1850 by Allan Pinkerton, a young Scotchman,
who had been brought into public notice at Elgin, Ill., by his success
in ferreting out a counterfeiter. Allan Pinkerton's fame as a detective
became national. He organized a war secret service, was trusted by
Lincoln, whose life he once saved; by Grant and other national leaders
in war times, and aroused continual interest by his strokes of skill and
daring. The enterprise from which sprang the Pinkerton "standing army"
of to-day was set on foot in a shabby little office in La Salle Street,
Chicago, and there the headquarters of the agency still remain.
Pinkerton detectives came into great request and were soon engaged in
the unraveling of crimes and the hunting down of criminals all over the
continent. Allan Pinkerton meanwhile discerned a fresh source of profit
and turned it to account by hiring out his men as watchmen for banks and
great commercial houses. The "Pinkerton Preventive Watch," composed of
trained men, uniformed and armed, and acting independently of the
municipal police, was established.
The emblem adopted by the agency was a suggestive one. It consisted of
an eye and the motto, "We never sleep."
As old age came on Allan Pinkerton and his business kept growing, he
turned over the work of supervision to his sons, William A. and Robert
A. Robert was placed in charge of a branch bureau in New York and
William remained in Chicago. Agencies with regular forces of men were
established in Philadelphia, Boston, St. Paul, Kansas City and Denver.
By communication with these centres, the chiefs could control, at a few
days' notice, a force of 2,000 drilled men, and this could be expanded
by drawing on the reserves registered on the books of the agency for
service on demand, to 30,000, if necessary,--more men than are enrolled
in the standing army of the United States.
When a large number of recruits is needed, the Pinkertons usually
advertise in the newspapers asking for able-bodied men of courage, but
without stating for whose service. In New York, prospective recruits are
brought to a building on lower Broadway where the Pinkertons have an
armory, stocked with Winchester rifles, revolvers, policemen's clubs and
uniforms. After the number of men needed is secured, the addresses of
the eligible applicants for whom there are no places are taken and they
are notified to hold themselves in readiness for a future call. Men who
have served in the army or as policemen receive the preference.
Pinkerton detectives have no real authority to make arrests. They are
rarely sworn in as special constables or as deputy sheriffs and the
uniform which they wear is merely for show.
Of late years they have been employed very frequently to protect the
property of great manufacturing corporations during strikes or
lock-outs. This is, without exception, the most trying and perilous
service which they have to undergo. The pay is good, however, the rate
agreed upon for duty at Homestead, for example, being $5 a day for each
man.
In the great strike on the New York Central railroad, which cost the
Vanderbilt corporation $2,000,000, the item for Pinkerton service was
about $15,000. The guards were posted at danger points all along the
line. Conflicts with the strikers were frequent, and, in many cases, the
guards used their rifles with deadly effect. On August 17, 1890, they
killed five persons, one a woman. So freely were the Pinkerton rifles
brought into play during this trouble that the people of New York state
became thoroughly aroused and forced the legislature to pass an
anti-Pinkerton bill.
The agency was responsible for the killing of a boy during a
longshoremen's strike in Jersey and at Chicago during the Lake Shore
railroad strike a man named Bagley fell a victim to Pinkerton lead. The
guard who shot Bagley was spirited away and never brought to justice.
Pinkerton guards have done duty in the miners' strikes in the Hocking
Valley, at the H. C. Frick Company's mines in the Connellsville region
and at Braidwood, Ill., as well as in all the great railroad strikes
since 1877.
In recent years, the conversion of the guards into an irresponsible
military organization, with self-constituted authority to overawe
striking workmen has provoked a feeling of intense hatred on the part of
organized labor towards these soldier-policemen. Attempts to abolish the
Pinkerton system by legislation have succeeded in only a few states, New
York and New Jersey among the number, for the reason that the
corporations which find use for armed mercenaries have sufficient wealth
and influence to control legislative action.
Congressman Thomas Watson, of Alabama, a representative of the Farmers'
Alliance, introduced a bill in Congress making it illegal for private
persons to maintain a "standing army" to usurp the police powers of the
states, and made a strong plea for its passage, but the measure failed.
The great industrial corporations have a hold upon the federal
legislature too strong to be broken by the insistence of common people.
As has already been told, the men of Homestead entertained a profound
abhorrence of the Pinkertons and were resolved to push resistance to any
extreme rather than permit themselves to be whipped into submission by
armed hirelings. They had no knowledge of Mr. Frick's dealings with the
agency, although their familiarity with the Frick policy in the coke
regions, coupled with the equipment of the mill property for occupation
by a garrison excited a well-defined suspicion of what was coming.
Mr. Frick gave the final order for a supply of guards in a letter
written to Robert A. Pinkerton, of New York, on June 25, the day after
his meeting with the wage committee from the Amalgamated convention. The
order was given in as matter-of-fact a manner as if the Carnegie
chairman were bespeaking a supply of coke or pig-iron.
"We will want 300 guards," he wrote, "for service at our Homestead mills
as a measure of precaution against interference with our plan to start
the operation of the works again on July 6, 1892."
"These guards," Mr. Frick went on to direct, "should be assembled at
Ashtabula, O., not later than the morning of July 5, when they may be
taken by train to McKees Rocks, or some other point on the Ohio River
below Pittsburgh, where they can be transferred to boats and landed
within the enclosures of our premises at Homestead. We think absolute
secresy essential in the movement of these men, so that no demonstration
can be made while they are en route."
As Mr. Frick acknowledged in his letter the receipt of "your favor of
the 22d," it was evident that the negotiations with the Pinkerton agency
had been pending for some time.
Immediately after having despatched his order for a Pinkerton battalion,
Mr. Frick sent for Captain Rodgers, of the towboat Little Bill, and
directed him to fit up two barges with sleeping accommodations and
provisions for 300 men, who were to be taken on board at some point not
then determined, brought to the works at Homestead, and subsequently
lodged and boarded on the barges.
He also notified the sheriff of Allegheny county, William H. McCleary,
through Messrs. Knox & Reed, attorneys for the Carnegie Company, that
there would be a strike at Homestead and that 300 Pinkerton watchmen had
been engaged, and requested the sheriff to deputize the entire force;
that is to say, to appoint them police agents of the county. The sheriff
maintained afterwards that, on the advice of his attorney, he had
declined to deputize the Pinkerton men until they should be installed in
the mill and had reserved the right to act at his discretion when that
time came. Mr. Frick, on the other hand, declared on the witness stand
that the sheriff consented to deputize the men and assigned his chief
deputy to swear them in.
The train was now laid; the fuse was lit, and all that remained to be
done in the Carnegie camp was to wait for the explosion.
To disarm suspicion on the other side, however, Mr. Frick, as the crisis
approached, gave out information leading the public in general and the
locked-out men in particular to believe that he meant to rely on the
ordinary processes of law to protect him in the non-unionizing of his
works. On the evening of July 4, after a conference with the other chief
officers of the firm, he furnished a statement to the newspapers
alleging that there was no trouble to be feared, that the men were
weakening, a large number of them being anxious to get back to work, and
that the plant would be placed in the hands of the county, the sheriff
being requested to furnish enough deputies to ensure adequate
protection.
With all his firmness, the doughty chairman of the Carnegie Company
dared not make a clean breast of his program. The way for the _coup de
grace_ had to be cleared by strategy and dissimulation.
The locked-out men celebrated Independence Day with due patriotic
fervor. The force of guards was increased from 350 to 1,000, the picket
system being expanded so as to form an outline five miles in extent,
covering both sides of the river.
In the afternoon an alarm was sent in to headquarters. Two men had been
seen landing from a boat near the works and were taken for spies. Quick
as a flash a thousand men rushed to the river bank and inclosed within a
semi-circle of stalwart forms the place where the suspects had landed.
It proved that the latter were merely honest citizens of the town
returning from a picnic across the river, but the incident showed how
effectually the men kept themselves on the _qui vive_, precluding the
entry of an enemy at any point.
When Sheriff McCleary reached his office in the Allegheny County
court-house, on the morning of July 5, he found awaiting him a formal
application from the Carnegie Company for the services of one hundred
deputies at Homestead. The Sheriff was discomfited by the demand. His
predecessor in office, Dr. McCandless, had been forced to engage in a
long and irksome legal battle in order to recover from the Carnegie
Company the money due for the service of deputies at Homestead in 1889,
and the prospect of a fresh dispute over the pay of special officers
was not inviting. So Mr. McCleary, who was gifted by nature with a
strong tendency to evasiveness, returned an evasive answer, and
conceived the idea of going to Homestead with his own office force of
twelve men and making some sort of dignified showing pending the arrival
of that army of Pinkertons, which he already knew to be moving on the
devoted town.
The Sheriff and his little posse proceeded accordingly to Homestead and
were received by the men, if not with cordiality, at all events with
decent consideration. A proclamation was issued embodying the usual
warning against breaches of the peace. Then a phalanx of strong-limbed
steel workers escorted the officers to the mill and pointed out that
nobody was trespassing upon or damaging the Carnegie Company's fortified
territory.
The sheriff stated that, under the law, the company should be permitted
to bring in whatever men it chose and to operate its own works.
The men responded that neither the county authorities nor anyone else
would be permitted to bring non-union men into the mill, and, having
thus emphatically signified their purposes, escorted the sheriff and his
followers--all of them more or less afflicted with nervousness--to the
railroad station and saw the little party safely out of town.
Had the sheriff been less evasive, less nervous, less of a politician
and more of a man, there was still time for him to avert disaster. He,
as chief police officer of the county, had been informed of the coming
of Mr. Frick's hired army. He could not fail to be aware that a
collision between the Pinkerton men and the 4,000 steelworkers was
bound to come, that blood would run like water at Homestead, that
demoralization and disgrace, and perhaps even heavy financial loss to
the county would follow, and that, therefore, to remain supine in the
face of all this, to let the crash come and not lift a finger to prevent
it was literally a dereliction of duty.
There was no obligation resting on this official to keep Mr. Frick's
operations secret. On the contrary, he was under a strong moral
obligation to prevent the execution of those operations at all hazards
by giving them prompt publicity and enabling the exhaustion of all
available legal means of stopping an invasion of the county by armed
mercenaries of a class condemned by law in two neighboring states and
bitterly hated by workingmen in every state of the Union.
It did not appear to occur to the sheriff that the hiring of Pinkerton
detectives was an offensive arraignment of himself as the county's chief
executive officer. The one idea uppermost in his mind seemed to be to
steer clear of the whole unpleasant business as far as he conveniently
could and to trust to luck and the Pinkertons to pull Frick through
somehow.
Decidedly a weak and inefficient man, this sheriff. For the time being,
he had abdicated in favor of Frick and the Pinkertons and it would not
be his fault if the devil were not unchained.
And now from a score of cities came the Pinkerton myrmidons to the
headquarters at Chicago, few among them knowing or caring on what
mission they were bound, as long as they got their daily rations and
their daily pay, but all comprehending that blind obedience was the
watchword. Captain F. H. Heinde had been detailed to take charge of the
expedition, and under his guidance the men proceeded from Chicago to
Youngstown, and thence to Bellevue, on the Fort Wayne railroad, opposite
the Davis Island dam, arriving at this point at 10:30 o'clock on the
evening of July 5.
Early in the day, Mr. Frick had issued final orders to Captain Rodgers,
directing him to tow his two barges down the Ohio River to the dam in
time to meet the battalion of Pinkerton guards. Captain Rodgers duly
carried out his orders. With the boats Little Bill and Tide, each having
a barge in tow, he arrived at the dam at 10 P. M. There he was met by
Colonel Joseph H. Gray, Sheriff McCleary's chief deputy, who had been
dispatched by the sheriff to "keep the peace," if his own testimony and
that of the sheriff are to be accepted, whereas, according to Mr.
Frick's story, his real mission was to deputize the Pinkerton guards and
thus render the county liable for the acts of these strangers.
At 10:30 P. M., the trainload of guards arrived; the men embarked in the
barges; the Little Bill and the Tide puffed away as cheerfully as if
they were towing a pleasure party, and in the stillness of the beautiful
July night the expedition moved slowly in the direction of Homestead.
CHAPTER V.
[Illustration: THE FIRST SHOT]
ON BOARD THE BARGES--FLOATING BARRACKS EQUIPPED FOR BLOODY
WARFARE--UP THE MONONGAHELA AT MIDNIGHT--HOMESTEAD GETS
WARNING--DEFENDERS AT THE MILL LANDING--FRICK'S ARMY REPULSED
WITH HEAVY LOSS--HUGH O'DONNEL TAKES COMMAND OF THE
WORKMEN--SHERIFF McCLEARY'S APPEAL TO THE GOVERNOR--FRICK
REFUSES TO INTERFERE.
The barges on which Captain Heinde and his 300 men embarked were
primitive specimens of the boat builders' art, previously used for the
transportation of freight. Unlike the ordinary coal barge, these were
roofed in, and, were it not for the flat roof, would have exactly
resembled Noah's ark. They measured 125 feet long and 20 feet wide. One
was known as the Iron Mountain; the other as the Monongahela. These
floating barracks had been purchased a week before the time of the
Pinkerton expedition by an agent of Mr. Frick's, and quietly fitted up
at the landing-place of the Tide Coal Company, in Allegheny City. The
Iron Mountain was equipped as a dormitory, several tiers of berths being
constructed on both sides and furnished with bed clothes. Two rows of
cots occupied the middle of the floor. The Monongahela was converted
into a vast dining-room. Two rows of tables were placed in the middle
and board seats were provided. In the stern was a commodious kitchen,
with a full outfit of stoves and cooking utensils. An experienced
steward and a corps of twenty waiters were employed. At the last moment
a number of mysterious looking cases were put on board. These contained
Winchester rifles and had been forwarded to the Carnegie Company by
Adams Express. Watchmen at the landing met all inquiries with the
explanation that the barges were intended for the transportation of
laborers to the Beaver dam on the Ohio River.
It has been said that most of the Pinkerton men had no idea of the
nature of their mission. The fact is that only the officers of the
expedition comprehended the gravity of the work in hand. However, when
the men found themselves being conveyed up the river in the close
quarters which the barges afforded to so large a number, many of them
became uneasy, and, weary as they were after their long trip by rail,
but few were able to close an eye.
As the barges approached the mouth of the Monongahela River, the lights
of the two great cities of Pittsburgh and Allegheny illuminated the
surface of the waters; but no midnight wayfarer who saw the Little Bill
and the Tide, with their odd-looking tows, dreamt for an instant that
within those coffin-like craft was the Frick army of invasion and that,
within a few hours, those same craft would harbor terror, bloodshed and
death. The two cities slept on, unconscious of the thunderbolt that was
to fall at the dawning of the day.
When the boats drew near the Smithfield Street bridge, which connects
South Pittsburgh with the city proper, there were, however, keen eyes to
note their coming. A scout from Homestead, who was one of a detail
appointed to look out for suspicious movements along the Pittsburgh
wharves under the cover of night, detected the ominous procession and,
hurrying to a telegraph office, wired the warning to Homestead: "Watch
the river. Steamer with barges left here." On receipt of this news, the
advisory committee prepared to issue a general alarm at five minutes'
notice. The belief at headquarters was that 100 special deputies were on
the way to take charge of the mill under orders from the sheriff.
With the exception of the disabling of the Tide, nothing occurred to mar
the serenity of the invading force until near daylight. Up the
Monongahela steamed the little tugs, the barges gliding stealthily in
their wake. Captain Rodgers, somewhat inflated with the idea of his
dignity as commodore of a war fleet, stood on the deck of the Little
Bill and chatted with Pinkerton Detective J. H. Robinson, of Chicago.
The Tide being disabled, the Little Bill had to "lock" both barges
through at Lock No. 1, where a dam crosses the river.
At 3 A. M. the barges reached the B. & O. railroad bridge at Glenwood.
Day was breaking, but a heavy fog overhung the water, so that the barges
were not visible from the shore; nor could the watchers on deck
perceive what was going on a few hundred yards away on the Homestead
side of the river.
Yet, while the signs of danger were hidden from the eye, there were
manifestations, the significance of which could not be misunderstood.
The voices of men, women and children were heard breaking in harshly
upon the stillness of the early morning. Scout called to scout almost
loudly enough for their words to be caught by the listeners on the
water.
Captain Heinde, although a brave man, and used to dangerous situations,
felt a sinking of the heart at this unmistakable proof that the secret
of the expedition was no longer a secret and that if a landing was to be
made at Homestead, it would have to be gained by fighting for it.
A feeling of alarm seized upon the green hands among the guards. There
was danger in the air, and numerous as they were, what chance was there
for self-defense as long as they were cooped up within four walls? It
took the utmost tact and firmness on the part of the experienced guards,
who served as officers, to calm the anxious ones and lead them to
believe that they would soon reach safe quarters on _terra firma_.
About this time, a horseman riding at breakneck speed, dashed into the
streets of Homestead giving the alarm as he sped along. In a few minutes
the news that barges, supposed to be filled with deputies, were nearing
the town had spread far and near and, with one accord, the people rushed
to the river bank. Here, for two hours that seemed like weeks, thousands
of men and women waited for the arrival of the enemy--a dangerous enemy,
they felt sure, judging by the manner of his coming.
As the barges drew nearer to Homestead, the noise on the shore grew
louder and louder and soon the sharp crack of rifles rang out, giving a
foretaste of what was in store for the unwelcome visitors. Whether these
shots, which were fired before the Pinkertons attempted to land, were
intended as signals or were aimed, in a random way, at the barges has
never been determined. There is no doubt, however, that the firing from
the bank stopped as soon as the Little Bill and its tow drew up opposite
the mill landing.
This landing was on the beach within the mill enclosure, Mr. Frick
having had the wire-topped fence carried down to low-water mark, so as
to shut off all access by land. Above the landing-place frowned a steep
eminence largely composed of slag and other refuse from the mill. At
this point, also, rise the piers of an iron bridge, over which the P.,
McK. & Y. railroad runs into the mill yard. This bridge is familiarly
known at Homestead as the "Pemickey."
No sooner did the waiting multitude on the river bank perceive that the
occupants of the barges meant to put in at the Carnegie Company's
landing-place than, with a roar of anger, strong men tore down the fence
that barred their path, and ran to the spot where, had they delayed five
minutes longer, the Pinkerton men would have disembarked in safety.
Prior to this time the workmen had religiously refrained from
trespassing upon the company's property. It had been their set purpose
to avoid the odium which would attach to any act suggesting vandalism or
arbitrary assaults upon property rights.
But now was not the time to think of conservative methods. Who could
tell what kind of invaders were in those ugly-looking barges?
Were they deputies whom the sheriff sought to bring in like a thief in
the night? Were they--and at this thought every man's blood boiled--a
regiment of Pinkertons brought there to repeat the Pinkerton exploits of
a few years before in the coke regions?
[Illustration: RIVER ENTRANCE TO THE WORKS.]
What were the odds, one way or the other? Whoever the visitors were,
they came with every manifestation of an evil purpose, and was not
self-preservation the first law of nature, applying as such to a
Homestead steelworker in danger of losing his job and, perhaps, his
home?
So the fence went down, and the straight road from the river to the mill
was blockaded by a band of resolute fellows that neither Pinkerton men
nor sheriff's deputies could hope to overcome.
The scene at this time within the barge Iron Mountain, which had been
towed close to the shore, was one of wild confusion. The plan of a
secret landing had been frustrated, and there was nothing for it now but
a hand-to-hand conflict against terrible odds.
The cases of rifles were broken open and these weapons and revolvers
were hastily distributed among the men. About fifty men were armed with
clubs. Captain John W. Cooper, of the New York and Philadelphia
division, Captain Charles Norton, of the Chicago division, and Captain
Heinde, who had general charge of the expedition, supervised these
arrangements. When all were in readiness for battle, a gang-plank was
shoved out and the three captains stepped forward, with Heinde in the
van. Twenty of the rank and file appeared behind them on the bow of the
boat.
At this offensive move, the Homestead men, most of whom were armed,
shouted a fierce warning.
"Go back," they cried, "go back, or we'll not answer for your lives."
There were blue uniforms among the group on the bow of the Iron
Mountain, and these told their own story to the excited people on the
shore.
For a moment the Pinkerton men stood at bay. The scene before them was
one to appal the bravest. On the beach several hundred men and
women--for mothers, wives and sisters had joined in the mad rush to the
landing-place--some of them half dressed, some carrying loaded guns,
some with stones or clubs in their hands; in the distance hundreds more
rushing to the defense; in the background a huge embankment intercepting
the passage to the mills; behind them the river and the chance of saving
themselves by flight. Retreat, however, would have been ruinous to the
prestige of the Pinkerton agency besides resulting probably in throwing
upon the agency the entire cost of the fruitless expedition, for Mr.
Frick would hardly be willing to pay for services not even fairly begun.
So the warning of the workmen was disregarded, and, with a word of
command to his men, Captain Heinde pressed forward.
Suddenly a shot was fired--whether from the barges or from the shore has
always been a mystery.
Captain Cooper turned instantly towards the barges and in a loud voice
gave the order: "Fire!"
A score of Winchester rifles were discharged into the crowd on the bank
with deadly effect. Several of the workmen were seen to fall. The first
blood had been shed and now the one thought of the men of Homestead was
_vengeance_, merciless and complete, on the strangers who had come to
shoot them down.
The volley fired from the barges was repaid with interest, and when the
smoke from the answering discharge cleared away it was seen that havoc
had been wrought on the barges. Captain Heinde had been shot through the
leg; J. W. Kline and another detective were mortally wounded and perhaps
a dozen others on the Pinkerton side were wounded more or less severely.
The Little Bill was fairly riddled with bullets, and Captain Rodgers,
having taken the injured men off the barges, lost no time in steaming
away from his uncomfortable quarters, leaving the Pinkertons to land, if
they could, and if not, to remain where they were and make the best of a
desperate situation.
Both sides now withdrew, the workmen abandoning their exposed position,
where they offered an easy target to the marksmen on the barges, and
establishing themselves on the heights, while the Pinkertons retired
into the barges and proceeded to prepare for renewed action by cutting
loopholes in the sides of the craft. It would have been suicidal to
attempt another sally.
One of the last of the workingmen to leave was an intrepid fellow who
had thrown himself, face down, upon the gang-plank just as Captain
Heinde came out, and waited, with revolver cocked for the advance of the
enemy. If the guards had landed, they would have done so over his body.
The leadership of the Homestead defenders in this crisis devolved, by
common consent, upon Hugh O'Donnell, a man who, in outward appearance,
showed none of the customary attributes of a labor leader. A young,
handsome individual he was, pale-faced and black-moustached, and rather
slight of build. His attire suggested rather the man of fashion than the
horny-handed individual generally accepted as the correct type of
mill-worker. O'Donnell, however, was one of the superior class of
workmen; enjoyed a comfortable income, and owned his own well-appointed
residence, over which one of the plumpest and prettiest little wives in
Homestead presided. Of the great influence exercised by this man over
his fellow-workmen there could be no question. "Hughey," as they called
him, was admired and looked up to. Fluent of speech and quick of action,
he was the right man to take control on an occasion such as this.
Associated with him in the government of the crowd that had come
together haphazard to repel the Pinkertons were Hugh Ross and Jack
Clifford, both pugnacious and the latter with a strong trace of the
daredevil in his disposition.
O'Donnell's first design was to drive the Pinkertons away without firing
a shot, and if the latter had heeded his advice and desisted from the
attempt to land, there would have been no sacrifice of life and limb.
But once the attack was made, the young leader saw that it was useless
to plead for peace, and devoted himself accordingly to the task of
getting the women and children out of the way and removing the wounded,
among whom were William Foy, Michael Murray, Andrew Soulier, John Kane
and Harry Hughes.
The workmen now occupied themselves with the construction of ramparts
out of pig and scrap iron. Enough of these were piled up to accommodate
scores of sharpshooters. Men armed with rifles also took positions at
various points of vantage in the mill buildings and a desultory fire was
kept up. At the same time armed men appeared on the other side of the
river and began a fusillade on the barges. The non-combatants--men,
women and children to the number of about 5,000--thronged the steep
hills which rise above Homestead, whence they had an unobstructed view
of what was taking place in the mill yard and on the river.
A few venturesome spirits pulled out in skiffs and fired into the barges
at close quarters.
The Little Bill crossed to Port Perry, opposite Homestead, without
further mishap. There is a B. & O. railroad station at that place, and
there Captain Rodgers and Deputy Sheriff Gray put Captain Heinde and
five other wounded Pinkertons on a city-bound train with instructions
to have them taken to the West Penn and Homeopathic hospitals.
The burgess of Homestead, honest John McLuckie, issued a proclamation
ordering the liquor saloons to be closed and calling upon all good
citizens to help him in preserving the peace. As the burgess was a
staunch Amalgamated man and himself a sharer in the common tribulation,
everybody understood, as a matter of course, that the preservation of
the peace, from his point of view, consisted in a united effort to make
short work of the Pinkertons.
While these events were transpiring at the scene of action, the
telegraph wires were carrying the news of the battle to all parts of the
country. In Pittsburgh excitement rose to fever heat. Sheriff McCleary
reached his office early and, having come to the conclusion that, where
300 Pinkerton men were worse than powerless, it was useless for him to
think of interposing, sent a message to Governor Pattison, briefly
detailing the situation at Homestead and the inability of the civil
authorities to cope with it, and soliciting "instructions at once." The
governor promptly answered as follows: "Local authorities must exhaust
every means at their command for preservation of peace."
The sheriff, who had been hoping that the militia would be ordered to
his relief, was much discomfited by this plain intimation that, as chief
peace officer of the county, he was expected to be up and doing instead
of collapsing under fire. Being a prudent man, however, he took no
risks, but remained in the safe seclusion of his office.
At the Carnegie offices there were no signs of perturbation, although
Mr. Frick and his associates were early informed of the bloody outcome
of their scheme of invasion. President Weihe, of the Amalgamated
Association, urged a conference with the men as the only expedient which
might be successfully employed to stop the shedding of blood.
The answer to this humane suggestion was characteristic. It was a flat
refusal. "Our works are now in the hands of the sheriff," said Secretary
Lovejoy, "and it is his official duty to protect the property from
destruction or damage. If it is necessary in his judgment to call out
troops, he is the proper authority to do so. Everything is in his
hands."
This, at a time when the sheriff was publicly announcing that he was
powerless, and when the chances were a hundred to one that the entire
force of Pinkertons would be destroyed like rats in a trap, betokened
very clearly that the sacrifice of life was a trifle in the eyes of the
Carnegie officials compared with the sacrifice of the non-unionist
policy to which the firm had tied itself down. The Pinkertons might be
killed to the last man, but the Frick ultimatum must stand. No doubt,
the firm also considered that the worse the turn taken by affairs at
Homestead, the stronger the probability that the militia would be
ordered out, and that, with soldiers on the ground, there would be no
trouble about bringing in non-unionists.
There was, then, nothing to be looked for in the way of humane mediation
at the hands of the firm, and nothing in the way of masterful
intervention at the hands of the sheriff.
Four thousand infuriated steelworkers and three hundred caged
Pinkertons were to be left to fight out their deadly quarrel without let
or hindrance.
The dictates of law and humanity were alike suspended upon that July
day--the most unfortunate day in the history of organized labor in the
United States.
[Illustration: THE BATTLE AT THE LANDING.]
CHAPTER VI.
[Illustration: THE BOMBARDMENT]
CANNONADING THE BARGES--SILAS WAIN'S SAD DEATH--THE LITTLE BILL
RETURNS AND RUNS THE GAUNTLET--A CAR OF FIRE TERRIFIES THE
PINKERTONS AND DRIVES CAPTAIN RODGERS TO FLIGHT--AMALGAMATED
OFFICIALS ARRIVE--DINING UNDER FIRE--HORRORS IN THE
GUARDSMEN'S QUARTERS--THE KILLING OF DETECTIVE
CONNORS--DYNAMITE--SUICIDE ON THE BARGES--MESSAGES FROM
ABROAD--CONGRESS ACTS.
While the heroes of the battle at the landing were building breastworks
in the mill-yards and keeping up an intermittent fire on the enemy, a
busy scene was in progress at the telegraph office in the advisory
committee's headquarters. Here a temporary arsenal was established and
rifles, shot guns and ammunition were distributed to volunteers eager to
take a hand against Mr. Frick's emissaries.
Soon a new terror was added to those already menacing the Pinkertons.
The dull roar of a cannon was heard proceeding from the heights across
the river, and, at the first shot, a huge gap was torn in the roof
of the outer barge. Another shot flew wide of the barges and struck
Silas Wain, a young steelworker who was standing in an exposed part
of the mill yard, killing him instantly. Wain's sweetheart, a young
English girl named Mary Jones, to whom he was to have been married
in a few weeks, almost lost her reason when the news of her lover's
death reached her, and was delirious for hours. In consequence of
this unfortunate occurrence, the cannon that did the mischief--a
twenty-pounder--was subsequently shipped across to the Homestead side.
Another piece of ordnance, of smaller calibre, was taken from the
quarters of the Homestead Grand Army post and mounted at the pump-house
of the county poor farm, adjoining the mill-yard. Owing to the elevation
of the position, however, and the inexperience of the men who were
handling the guns, it was found impossible to get the range of the
barges and both pieces were ultimately abandoned.
[Illustration: BEHIND THE BARRICADES.]
As the morning advanced, the workmen began to realize that some more
effective means than rifle bullets must be resorted to in order to
dispose of the barges and their obnoxious freight. The Pinkertons took
care not to expose themselves, unless when one more venturesome than the
rest undertook to make a reconnoissance and emerged on the bow of either
barge. As this exploit invariably attracted a hail of bullets it was not
frequently attempted. About 50 of the guards, all of them old hands in
the Pinkerton service, kept up a regular fire through the loopholes cut
in the sides of the barges, rendering it unsafe for a workman to show
himself outside the furnace-stacks and piles of metal used as ramparts.
George Rutter, an old and respected Amalgamated man and a member of the
Grand Army, forfeited his life by taking chances on the accuracy of the
Pinkerton men's marksmanship. He was shot in the thigh and died from the
wound a few days later. John Morris, another mill-worker, and Henry
Striegel, a young man who was on the field merely as a sympathizer, met
the same fate. Striegel accidentally shot himself with his own gun, and
was struck by shots from the barges after he fell.
Shortly after 11 o'clock, the Little Bill steamed back towards the
landing-place flying the Stars and Stripes, Captain Rodgers having
conceived the idea that the mill men would not dare to fire on the
national flag, despite its being hoisted above a hostile craft. The
captain's mind was speedily disabused of this idea. Volley after volley
was poured into the little steamer, smashing the glass in the
pilot-house and making the splinters fly in all directions. The man at
the wheel, Alexander McMichaels, had to abandon his post and rush below.
John T. McCurry, who had been hired the day before as watchman on the
boat, without being informed of the kind of service in prospect, was
shot in the groin, and Captain Rodgers only saved his life by throwing
himself on his face on the deck. According to the story told afterwards,
the Captain had purposed connecting with the barges and releasing them
from their perilous position, but was glad enough to run the gauntlet
with his own boat without attempting to relieve others.
The Little Bill arrived at a moment when the escape of the Pinkertons
seemed hopeless. A body of desperate men had formed the design of
burning the barges, and commenced by setting fire to a raft composed of
timbers soaked with oil and floating it down the river.
A groan of agony was sent forth from the unhappy wretches in the barges
when this messenger of death was seen drifting towards them. Some of the
men, driven to the verge of insanity by the suspense of the morning and
the dread of death at any moment, proposed to desert the barges and try
to swim to a place of safety. One of the captains put a quietus on the
plan by threatening to blow out the brains of the first man who
endeavored to desert his fellows in the face of danger which menaced all
equally.
The burning raft failed to accomplish its mission. The flames which shot
up from it when it was launched were gradually extinguished by the water
and, by the time it reached the barges, it was only a charred and
blackened mass.
Nowise discouraged by their failure, the men on shore turned their hand
to a new plan of incendiarism. From the converting department of the
mill down to the water's edge where the barges were moored runs a
railroad switch, forming a steep incline. A car was run on to this
switch and loaded with barrels of oil, lumber, waste and other
combustibles. A torch was applied to the inflammable pile, and the car
of fire, from which the flames mounted high in the air, was sent
whirling down the incline. Thousands of eyes were fixed upon this
spectacle. The Pinkertons gazed with blanched faces and trembling limbs,
confident that their last hour had come. Far back on the hills, women
and children watched what was being done and shouted their approval. The
sharpshooters dropped their guns and looked on with bated breath.
Surely that fiery monster, looking like a thing of life as it sped
downward, would crash into the barges and do its work with infernal
effectiveness.
[Illustration: THE CAR OF FIRE.]
But no. Great as was the momentum of the car, it came to a sudden stop
when the wheels embedded themselves in the soft soil at the water's
edge, and the workmen were again baffled.
The Little Bill, which, in the absence of the wheelman, had been
knocking about aimlessly between the barges and the shore, was the only
sufferer. The little tug was badly scorched, and those on board had to
labor like Trojans to preserve her from total destruction. After this
crowning stroke of misfortune, Captain Rodgers decamped with all
possible celerity, and went on down the river to Pittsburgh. His
departure was a blow to the Pinkertons, who were hoping that the Little
Bill might tow them out of danger. Now that the tug was gone, the last
ray of hope vanished, and it seemed to be a question of only a short
time until the expedition, already badly shattered, would be burnt up or
blown up.
The Little Bill's departure was the signal for renewed firing, which was
maintained so vigorously that probably not less than 1,000 shots were
fired within ten minutes.
At this time the scenes in Homestead beggared description. The streets
were filled with women, weeping, wailing and wringing their hands and
begging for news of husbands, sons and brothers. Females were excluded
from the mill yard, and very wisely, for if admitted they would only
have hampered the fighting men and exposed their own lives without
benefit to anyone. In some places, substantial citizens gathered and
discussed plans for stopping the conflict, the only drawback to which
was that not one of them was feasible. Elsewhere groups of belligerents
canvassed projects for the killing of the Pinkertons in a body. And all
this amid the crackling of rifle-shots and the din of a legion of angry
voices.
President-elect Garland and Vice-President Carney, of the Amalgamated
Association, arrived early on the ground and were met with due honors by
the local committee. Mr. Garland's well-known figure was recognized at
once by the men. He was deeply affected by the gravity of the occasion
and expressed regret that things had reached such a lamentable
extremity. One of the leaders escorted the visiting officials to the
front and let them ascertain, by personal observation, how little use
there was in striving to mediate between the workmen and the Pinkertons,
since every shot fired by the former was meant to avenge the death of
their comrades. Vice-President Carney said openly that if Mr. Frick had
consented to waive the demand to have the scale expire on the last day
of the year, instead of the last day of June, the wage question might
have been amicably settled and the present carnage avoided.
At noon a telegram was received at the headquarters of the advisory
board stating that the governor had refused to call out the militia and
that the sheriff had started up the river with a squad of deputies. The
gratification of the people over the governor's attitude was not a whit
keener than their resolve to send the sheriff and his deputies to the
right-about if it was proposed to clear the way for the introduction of
the Pinkertons into the mill.
However, nothing was further from Sheriff McCleary's mind than a visit
to Homestead while the bullets were flying. The sheriff held a
consultation with Judge Ewing, of the quarter sessions court, and with
other gentlemen learned in the law, but without results other than those
exhibited in an order to close the saloons in Homestead and Mifflin
township, which was sent out at noon, and in a second message to the
governor. The latter communication embodied an urgent plea for aid,
recited the episodes of the early morning at Homestead, declared that
there were "no means at my command to meet the emergency," and that any
delay in ordering out troops might lead to further bloodshed and
destruction of property.
The governor made no response to this appeal.
By noon, the men who were posted behind the ramparts in the yard of the
Homestead mill were almost worn out with fatigue and hunger. Most of
them had been up all night without tasting food, and the strain upon
them had been enough to tax sorely the most robust physique. At 1
o'clock a relief expedition was organized and a squad of men carrying
baskets of provisions made their way into the yard and by dodging behind
furnace stacks and piles of iron managed to reach their suffering
comrades without exposing themselves to the fire of the enemy. Cheers
from the throng on the hills behind greeted this successful maneuver.
The men on guard, after eating a hasty meal, tired and begrimed as they
were, announced their intention of staying at their posts to the end.
From time to time, the Pinkertons waved a flag of truce, but it was not
respected any more than was the national flag hoisted on the Little
Bill. Sentiment had no place in the calculations of the men who formed
the garrison in the mill yard. The Pinkertons had made the attack; they
had been warned off and refused to go when they had the chance, and they
had fired upon the workmen and taken many lives. Therefore, they need
expect no quarter. So the flags of truce were shot down one after
another and as the display of these symbols made it necessary for one of
the Pinkertons to expose himself in every instance, and exposure
invariably meant being wounded, this recourse was soon dropped
altogether. The horrors of the position of these men increased every
hour. The atmosphere of the barges was stifling. The relentless rays of
the July sun beat down upon the roofs of the craft and raised the
temperature within beyond the limit of endurance. There was scarcely a
breath of air to carry away the noxious exhalations from the lungs of
the 300 men within and the fumes of smoke and powder. Bullets, bolts,
scrap metal and other missiles struck the frail structures on every side
and gave promise of demolishing them piecemeal before sunset.
Occasionally a missile found its way through a loophole and brought down
one of the guards. It was in this way that Thomas J. Connors, of New
York, was killed. Connors was sitting under cover in the outer barge,
with his head buried in his hands, when a rifle bullet whizzed through
the open doorway of the barge and struck him in the right arm, severing
the main artery. He died in a few hours. This man's death is a matter of
special interest, since it was afterwards made the basis of indictments
for murder lodged against several of the Homestead leaders.
The wounded Pinkertons were waited upon and helped as far as the limited
resources of the barges permitted by A. L. Wells, a young student of
Bennett Medical College, Chicago. Wells had joined the expedition for
the purpose of earning enough money during the vacation months to help
him comfortably through his next year's course. He was a stout-hearted
fellow and did his best to alleviate the sufferings of the unfortunates
around him, many of whom lay groaning in agony on the floor, amid pools
of blood. The young man fortunately escaped injury and stuck to his
suffering companions to the last, unmindful of his own comfort. Even in
that Pinkerton barge there was room for genuine heroism.
Shortly after one o'clock, a council of war was held among the men
behind the barricades, and a new plan was agreed upon for the quick
destruction of the barges.
Dynamite.
[Illustration: THROWING DYNAMITE BOMBS.]
Here was a sure destroyer; one that could be trusted to do the work
which the burning raft and the car of fire had failed to do. A supply of
stick dynamite was obtained and a dozen of the most reckless men in the
yard opened up a bombardment of the barges with the deadly explosive.
But somehow the sticks of dynamite proved little more effective than the
means previously utilized. Most of them fell wide of the mark and the
few which struck the barges did slight damage. Guardsman Wells, in
telling the story of the fight afterwards, held that the first stick
thrown tore a hole in the side of the barge Iron Mountain as easily as
if the barge were made of paper. If so, this was the only instance in
which the dynamite was really effective. The workmen, who felt confident
that it would be easy to blow the barges to pieces, were greatly
disappointed. It looked as if they might keep on firing lead and iron
into the vessels forever without wiping out the enemy, while the
importance of ending the battle before nightfall was plain to all of
them.
About this time, it is said, some of the Pinkertons, unable to endure
the agony and suspense any longer, eluded the vigilance of their
officers and committed suicide by drowning. Detective Atkinson, of New
York City, made this statement in a Pittsburgh newspaper on the day
after the battle: "When we saw that preparations were being made to burn
the barges, I loaded my revolver and made up my mind to blow out my
brains should the boat be set on fire. I am just as positive that not
less than a dozen of our men committed suicide during the day as I am
that I am standing here. I saw four jump into the water and sink and I
have been told that several others made away with themselves in the same
way." The proprietors of the Pinkerton agency professed subsequently to
have examined their roster and accounted for all the missing men, and
that, with one exception, there were no cases of suicide. Atkinson's
story, however, was corroborated by others, and is given here as having,
at least, a semblance of truth.
The news received over the telegraph wires at the advisory committee's
headquarters was not of a character to dampen the ardor of the Homestead
defenders or lead them to dread the accounting to which somebody must be
held after the score which they had to settle with the Pinkertons would
be wiped out in blood. First came the information that the sheriff had
thrown up his hands and that the governor declined to call out the
militia. Then messages of sympathy and encouragement began pouring in,
and, as these multiplied, the conviction impressed itself upon the men
that they were fighting not only their own battle, for the salvation of
themselves and their families, but the battle of organized labor as a
whole, and that the eyes of workingmen all over the continent were upon
them. Perhaps this was an extravagant conception, but it was
substantially justified by the tone of the telegrams sent in from far
and near, proffering aid and bidding the men of Homestead stand to their
guns. Even from far-away Texas came the news that artillery would be
shipped to Homestead to help the cause of labor. To many rough fellows,
heroic in their way and easily misled by circumstances, it appeared more
likely than not, that the killing of those two barge-loads of Pinkerton
guards was but the first step in a conflict of national extent, which
would wind up in the coming of an industrial millennium. Hardly a man
among them imagined that the law would seek atonement for the death of
Mr. Frick's hired invaders.
One of the most significant bits of news that reached the men was that
conveyed in a dispatch from Washington, D. C., to the effect that
Representative Caminetti, of California, had introduced in Congress a
resolution reciting the benefits conferred upon Andrew Carnegie by
protective tariff legislation and calling for the appointment of a
committee to investigate and report upon the cause of the Homestead
lock-out and its sanguinary consequences.
There were some cool-headed and conservative people in Homestead who
tried to assemble a mass meeting for the purpose of taking measures to
stop the shedding of blood and to have the Pinkerton barges removed and
sent down the river. The pleas of these would-be peacemakers fell upon
deaf ears. In fact, it became dangerous to suggest a cessation of
hostilities within the hearing of those who had experienced their
baptism of fire and felt that lust of bloodshed which is said to be
latent in the breasts of most men. He who talked of meeting the
"Pinkerton butchers" half way challenged suspicion as a coward or a
traitor.
CHAPTER VII.
[Illustration: THE SURRENDER]
AMALGAMATED OFFICIALS AS MEDIATORS--PRESIDENT WEIHE CALLS A MASS
MEETING AND COUNSELS PEACE--HUGH O'DONNELL'S SPEECH--THE BRAVE
YOUNG LEADER PROCURES A SURRENDER--PINKERTONS RUN THE
GAUNTLET--A SAVAGE MOB ASSAILS THE PRISONERS--ARRIVAL OF THE
SHERIFF--THE FRICK TROOP OF INVADERS DRIVEN FROM THE STATE.
At three o'clock President William Weihe, of the Amalgamated
Association, came up from Pittsburgh, bearing a commission from the
Sheriff. He was accompanied by Assistant President-elect C. H. McEvay,
of Youngstown, Ohio; Secretary Shaw, Charles Johns and other prominent
officials and members of the association. President-elect Garland joined
the party. The visitors, whose mission was one of mediation, arrived
none too soon. The same indefatigable individuals who had experimented
with the burning raft and the car of fire, had just turned their
attention to pumping oil into the water and throwing heaps of burning
waste upon it, expecting to set fire to the barges by this means. It
was also determined to pump streams of oil upon the barges with the aid
of the borough fire-engines and, having once thoroughly soaked the craft
with the inflammable fluid, dynamite, the men thought, ought to do the
rest.
There was a lull in these proceedings when word was passed along the
line that the Amalgamated officials desired to address the men. The
mass-meeting, which a few citizens of the town had unsuccessfully sought
to bring about was now gotten together in a short space of time and with
no appreciable difficulty, for the men entertained a high regard for
President Weihe and were anxious at heart to hear what advice he might
have to tender them. The meeting was held in one of the mill buildings.
Mr. Weihe addressed the crowd, explaining that he came by virtue of an
agreement with the sheriff to propose that the Pinkertons be allowed to
depart with the guarantee that they would not return. The barbarity of
continuing the battle until it ended in an absolute massacre was
enlarged upon, and it was pointed out that the workmen were already
victorious and could afford to rest on their laurels and to avoid
tarnishing the good name of Homestead by committing what the world would
regard as an outrage upon humanity.
Mr. Garland, who had mounted on a boiler as a rostrum, followed in an
earnest appeal to the manhood of his hearers. "For God's sake, brethren,
be reasonable" he cried. "These men have killed your comrades, but it
can do no good to kill more of them. You have doubtless had two lives
for one already."
A roar of disapproval greeted this deliverance. "We'll have the lives
of the rest of the villains," shouted a chorus of angry voices. "Let us
blow them out of the water or burn them alive." "Order, order!" cried
others, and the rebuke was reinforced by a display of clubs and brawny
fists which had the effect of silencing the turbulent element for the
time being.
"If you permit these men to depart," Mr. Garland continued, "You will
show to the world that you desire to maintain peace and good order along
with your rights. Public opinion will still uphold you in your
struggle."
Again clamorous disapproval greeted the speaker. Cries of "Kill them!"
"Burn them!" were heard on all sides, but there were also a few who
shouted "Let them go!"
Mr. McEvay spoke next. "This day," he said, "You have won a victory such
as was never before known in the history of struggles between capital
and labor." Tremendous cheering followed this diplomatic exordium.
"But," the speaker resumed, "If you do not let these men go, the
military will be sent here and you will lose all you have gained. We
have no assurances, but we hope for a conference if peace is
established. It is certain that, after this lesson, Pinkerton detectives
will never come here again." Cheering was renewed when Mr. McEvay
finished and the cries of "Let them go" increased in volume.
[Illustration: HUGH O'DONNELL.]
Mr. Weihe seized this opportunity to suggest that a steamer be allowed
to come up the river and tow away the barges. "Will the Little Bill come
after them?" somebody howled, and once more pandemonium broke loose. Mr.
Weihe's promise that an unobjectionable boat would be secured had,
however, a quieting effect, and the meeting dispersed leaving the
impression in the minds of the officials that the Pinkertons could be
released.
The news of what had taken place in the meeting traveled quickly through
the mill yard, reaching even the tireless laborers who had been throwing
oil on the barges and who were now engaged in bombarding them with Roman
candles, sky-rockets and other fireworks--surplus Fourth of July stock
obtained from the stores.
Hugh O'Donnell seized this opportunity to make another plea for peace.
Grasping a small American flag, the intrepid young leader sprang upon a
pile of iron and commanded the attention of perhaps a thousand men, who
gathered eagerly around him. O'Donnell began his speech cautiously,
discussing the situation in such a manner as to feel the pulse of his
auditory and make sure that he had their sympathy. After having assured
himself of his ground, he unfolded a plan for a pacific settlement,
suggesting that a truce be arranged, and that the workmen take the
initiative by displaying a white flag.
"Show the white flag? Never," was the unanimous response. "If there is
any white flag to be shown, it must fly from the boats."
This brought O'Donnell to the point he wished to reach, "What will we do
then?" he asked.
"We will hold them in the boats until the Sheriff comes and we will have
warrants sworn out for every man for murder. The Sheriff will then have
to take them in charge," said one man, and, singularly enough,
considering the mood in which the men had been a few minutes before,
this comparatively mild proposal evoked a general shout of approval.
O'Donnell, satisfied that a peaceable adjustment could now be effected,
stepped down and went among the men strengthening the resolution which
had just been taken. In the meantime the Pinkertons had been holding a
final conference among themselves. A majority favored surrender and
forced the captains, who were still doggedly bent upon holding out, to
give in. Once more a white flag was hoisted on the Iron Mountain, and
this time it was not shot down.
At the sight of the flag, the workmen cheered and cries of "Victory!"
"We have them now," "They surrender," rent the air.
O'Donnell, accompanied by two other members of the advisory committee,
ran down to the river bank and received the message of the detective
who acted as spokesman. The purport of it was that the Pinkertons would
surrender if protection from violence were assured to them. After a
short parley, this was agreed to, although the howls and imprecations of
an unruly mob which had thronged into the mill-yard boded ill for the
fulfilment of the guarantee. O'Donnell had more than his own comrades
to answer for. Throughout the afternoon thousands of outsiders--some
of them millmen from South Pittsburgh, some roughs and toughs who
relished the prospect of taking a hand in a fight of any kind, some
Anarchists, aching for a chance to strike a blow at "Capital" and its
representatives--had walked into Homestead over the railroad tracks and
were now mingled with the steelworkers. These strangers, of course, were
careless of consequences and indifferent to the restraining influence of
O'Donnell and those associated with O'Donnell in ending the conflict.
The women, too, were not to be relied upon. After being shut out of the
battle-ground all day, it was questionable whether or not they could be
held in check when the Pinkertons were placed at their mercy. It is well
to bear these facts in mind in connection with the painful scene which
is now to be depicted.
The Pinkertons, despite O'Donnell's pledge of protection, seemed to lose
all heart when the moment came to leave the barges. Nobody was willing
to be the first to go on shore, and, as if seized by a panic, the
helpless wretches huddled together behind benches and boxes and waited,
in fear and trembling, for a summons from the other side. The workmen,
however, were not slow to make themselves masters of the situation.
Hundreds of them rushed down the bank, crossed the gang-plank and
clambered into the barges. On the shore a tremendous crowd gathered,
hooting and yelling, most of them carrying weapons of some kind. No
wonder the Pinkertons blenched. They had to run the gauntlet, and if the
experience before them was not destined to be almost as trying as that
attributed to the victims of the gauntlet torture in tales of Indian
life, it was not because the mob did not show all signs of thirsting for
a fierce carnival of revenge.
The crowd on the shore formed itself, as if by a preconcerted plan, into
two lines, 600 yards long, between which the men from the barges had to
pass. As the first of the Pinkertons emerged from the barge Iron
Mountain, it was seen that he carried his Winchester rifle. "Disarm
him," yelled the crowd, and directly every one of the guards was forced
to lay down his arms.
Then the Pinkertons came out, in a dilapidated looking string, walking,
running or crawling as best they could. The first few passed through the
lines without molestation beyond hoots, jeers and imprecations. Suddenly
the fury of the mob broke out. A man struck a detective with his open
hand. The example was contagious. Clubs and stones were used with
demoniacal ferocity. Women, converted for the nonce into veritable
furies, belabored Mr. Frick's janizaries with bludgeons, stoned them,
kicked them and spat upon them. The hated Pinkerton uniforms were torn
off and cast into the river. Cries for mercy were treated with derision.
As a means of identification the Pinkertons had been compelled to
uncover their heads, and thus offered an easy mark to their half-crazed
assailants.
"Men, for the love of God, have mercy on me," shrieked a gray-headed
man, wounded and bleeding. Mercy! The time for that weakness had gone
by. The suppliant was an accursed Pinkerton and again and again he was
struck down and beaten before he reached the end of those terrible
lines.
One young fellow, on leaving the gang-plank, threw himself on his knees,
burst into tears and begged to be spared. Kicks brought him to his feet
again, and he had hardly risen when he was felled to the earth by a
blood-stained club.
The satchels and other small articles that the Pinkertons carried were
snatched from them and destroyed.
Only those who were seriously wounded were permitted to pass without
being attacked.
While this exhibition of barbarism was in progress, Hugh O'Donnell and a
corps of aids, representing the advisory committee, made frantic efforts
to shield the prisoners; but the mob, for the most part, owed no
allegiance to the Amalgamated lodges, and set the officials at defiance.
In fact, several of the men who made up the hastily-formed escort were
themselves struck and reviled for their humanity.
The Pinkertons were led through the streets to the rink, or opera-house,
suffering indignities all the way. Even children threw mud and stones at
them. Arrived at the rink, the entire posse was driven in like a herd of
sheep. Guards were placed and members of the Amalgamated Association,
assisted by physicians of the town, attended to the wounded. Entrance to
the rink was not secured without serious trouble. A crowd of Hungarians
gathered here to take vengeance for the death of one of their countrymen
who had fallen in the early morning skirmish. Women were among them and
incited the men to mischief. When the Pinkertons appeared, a brawny
Hungarian seized one of them by the throat and struck him in the face,
while a stoutly-built woman belabored him with a club. A guard, placed
there by the advisory committee, leveled his gun at the Huns, and
shouted "Stand back, or by ---- I'll shoot the next man or woman that
raises a hand against them. We have promised to protect them and we'll
do it, even if we have to use our guns." This declaration provoked a
howl of rage and cries of "Kill the murderers." Instantly a dozen guns
were leveled at the mob, and disaster might have followed, had not
Burgess McLuckie come forward, commanded peace and assured the crowd
that the Pinkertons would be locked up and held for murder. No further
trouble was experienced in getting the bruised and battered prisoners
into their temporary quarters.
A sorrier sight than these men presented when they were assembled after
the horrors of the day's fighting in the barges and of the march to the
rink could not well be imagined. By actual count, one hundred and
forty-three of the survivors were suffering from painful wounds or
contusions, and those who had by extraordinary good luck, escaped with a
whole skin, were half dead from fear and exhaustion.
They were kept in the rink under guard until near midnight. In the
interim a conference was held between the borough council and the
workmen's committee, at which it was agreed to let the Sheriff come to
Homestead and remove the Pinkertons, whose presence in the town was a
standing incentive to disorder. The Sheriff was sent for accordingly and
arrived on a special train at eleven o'clock in company with the chief
executive officers of the Amalgamated Association and W. J. Brennen,
solicitor for the association. The Pinkertons were hurried into the
Sheriff's train as quickly as their condition would permit, locked
securely in the cars, and brought to Pittsburgh, where, after a score of
the most dangerously wounded men had been removed to the hospital, the
train was switched quietly to a side-track in the Pennsylvania Railroad
yards, there to remain until the authorities decided what should be done
with the Carnegie Company's troublesome agents. An hour or two later, it
was decided, after a consultation held by the Sheriff with his bondsman,
Chris L. Magee, a gentleman prominent in Republican politics, and the
railroad officials, that the men should be sent east, and they were
accordingly taken out of town, without considering the demand for their
arrest and indictment. This was, no doubt, the best thing that could be
done under the circumstances, in view of the strong feeling against the
Pinkertons among the working people of Pittsburgh.
When the Pinkertons had been driven from the barges, both vessels were
subjected to a thorough search. Among the articles brought to light was
a roster containing 266 names, divided into squads of 20, each in
command of a lieutenant. Notes in the book showed that some of the men
had been on duty at Walston, Pa., at Cleveland and other points where
strikes had occurred.
The barges were for a time thronged with curious men, women and
children. Somebody said "Burn them." Then the sight-seers fell back; a
few stout fellows carried out the last boxes of Winchesters and
ammunition; oil was thrown upon the boats; a torch was applied to each;
and, in a few minutes, the Iron Mountain and the Monongahela were
enveloped in flames. The delight of the on-lookers at this finale to the
tragic events of the day knew no bounds. They cheered, clapped their
hands and even danced with glee while the dry wood blazed and crackled,
and two huge columns of smoke rose lazily towards the sky and formed
clouds overhead. Not until the vessels had burned to the surface of the
water and the last hissing embers disappeared beneath the placid bosom
of the Monongahela did the enthusiasm abate.
The removal of the Pinkertons allowed the men of Homestead to rest for
the first time in forty-eight hours, and the town now lapsed into its
normal condition of quietude. Pickets were posted as usual to guard
against surprise, but, aside from these watchers, the whole population
sought repose, and by dint of sheer exhaustion, slept as soundly as if,
a few hours before, carnage had not reigned supreme.
Whether the sheriff of Allegheny county slept or not is an open
question. His last act before going to Homestead to remove the
Pinkertons was to set his clerks at work making out notices to leading
residents of Pittsburgh and Allegheny City, calling upon them, as loyal
citizens of the commonwealth, to report next morning for service as
special deputies at Homestead. The list was made up largely of editors,
bankers, wealthy merchants and others of a class not likely to respond
with alacrity. The outlook for a campaign against the fighting men of
Homestead with such an army was hardly of a kind to promote wholesome
slumber.
Mr. Frick, on whom the responsibility for the slaughter at Homestead was
generally supposed to devolve, spent the night at his palatial residence
in the East End, under the guardianship of private detectives.
Late at night, Secretary Lovejoy furnished a statement to the press. The
Carnegie Company, he claimed, had offered $10,000 to any steamboat
captain or owner who would go up the river and tow the barges down, but
could find no one willing to take the risk. The company now left
everything to the sheriff, with whom, quoth the secretary, "we cannot
interfere in the discharge of his duty."
CHAPTER VIII.
[Illustration: AFTER THE BATTLE]
CARNEGIE'S PROPERTY PROTECTED--CONFIDENCE STILL STRONG AMONG THE
MEN--HOMESTEAD AS A NEWS CENTER--THE DEATH-ROLL--BURIAL OF THE
DEAD--ANARCHISTS GET A SHORT SHRIFT--THE SHERIFF FAILS
AGAIN--INTERVIEWING THE GOVERNOR--MARTIAL LAW IN
SIGHT--PROCEEDINGS IN CONGRESS--OPINIONS OF NEWSPAPERS AND
PUBLICISTS--A PRESS CENSORSHIP ESTABLISHED AT HOMESTEAD.
At three o'clock on the morning of July 7, a committee of picked men
made a search of the Homestead works, keeping a sharp look-out for stray
Pinkertons, spies or other interlopers. Nothing was discovered. Even the
rats were scared away from the place, where empty cartridge shells,
wadding and discarded weapons--mute evidences of the bloody work that
had been done the day before--were scattered around in profusion. Having
completed its round, the committee retired to headquarters and prepared
an order requiring the watchmen, who had deserted their posts when the
battle with the Pinkertons began, to resume the guardianship of the
Carnegie Company's property. The men had guaranteed protection to the
plant and showed by this step that they meant to keep their word.
At an early hour all Homestead was stirring, and anxious crowds
assembled at headquarters and other distributing centers of information
to ascertain what the new day was likely to bring forth. For the most
part, the feeling of self-confidence which had inspired the locked-out
men was as strong now, when a reaction might have been expected to set
in, as it was at any time previously. Rumors of the coming of a fresh
detachment of Pinkertons put the men on their mettle, and it was
apparent that a repetition of Mr. Frick's experiment would be worse than
futile.
Nobody gave serious thought to the likelihood of prosecutions to follow.
The Pinkertons were invaders, whose purpose was to murder, and the
workmen were legally justified in repelling them _vi et armis_. So the
people reasoned, and this line of argument seemed, in their judgment, to
be the only one that could present itself to any fair-minded and
intelligent person. Even if it was wrong to kill and wound armed
invaders, they believed it would be preposterous to think of arresting
and imprisoning several thousand citizens.
The extraordinary interest taken in affairs at Homestead by the world
without was demonstrated by the fact that, within the twenty-four hours
elapsing after the firing of the first shot on July 6, this usually
quiet little town was transformed into the busiest and most prolific
news center in the United States. An army of newspaper correspondents
from all parts of the country found quarters in the hotels and took
possession of the telegraph offices. The ten daily papers of Pittsburgh
had variously from two to ten men on the ground. The New York _World_
headed the list of outsiders with five correspondents and a special
artist. The New York _Herald_, _Sun_ and _Mail and Express_; the Chicago
_Tribune_ and _Herald_; the Philadelphia _Press_ and _Times_; the
Cleveland _Leader_ and _Press_, and the Baltimore _Sun_ and _World_ all
dispatched bright, able "specials" to the scene of disturbance with that
admirable promptitude which makes American journalism a world's wonder.
The Postal and Western Union Telegraph Companies also proved fully equal
to the emergency. The Postal Company placed a corps of operators in a
large room in the building where the Amalgamated Association held its
meetings, and the Western Union, in addition to its regular office,
established an annex in a restaurant, where two expert operators were
kept busy handling huge masses of "copy," intended to be put in type,
perhaps a thousand miles away. The excellence and magnitude of the work
done by the newspaper men and telegraph operators at Homestead from this
time on were unprecedented. Reporters from Pittsburgh were on hand to
meet the Pinkertons when a landing was attempted, fraternized with the
firing parties behind the barricades while the battle was in progress,
interviewed the Pinkertons as they emerged from the barges after the
surrender, and withal seemed to lead a charmed life, for there is no
record of injury to any of the "gentlemen of the press." The latitude
enjoyed by the journalistic fraternity was owing chiefly to the
influence of Hugh O'Donnell, who had himself been a newspaper
correspondent in a small way and who realized besides the advisability
of aiding the press to secure accurate details of the struggle, so that
the motives and actions of the workmen should not be injuriously
represented. The gallant young leader had his reward. In a single day,
the newspapers made him world-famous.
The making up of a list of the killed and wounded turned out to be a
difficult matter. The Pinkertons had been hurried away, carrying many of
their wounded with them and leaving not more than a dozen of their
number in the Pittsburgh hospitals. At Homestead, there was a tendency
to conceal the losses of the workingmen. How many of the latter were
badly wounded has never been definitely ascertained. The official list
of the dead, on both sides, as it appears on the books of the coroner of
Allegheny County, is as follows:
Detectives--J. W. Klein, Edward A. R. Speer and T. J. Connors.
Workmen--Joseph Sotak, John E. Morris, Silas Wain, Thomas Weldon, Henry
Striegel, George W. Rutter and Peter Farris.
Speer, who was a Pinkerton lieutenant in Chicago, was shot in the leg
and lingered at the Homeopathic Hospital, in Pittsburgh, until July 17,
when death ended his sufferings.
Rutter also survived until July 17. He fell at the first volley, having
been shot in the thigh and abdomen. This man was a veteran of the Union
army and one of the most respected millworkers in Homestead. He
possessed courage above the ordinary and died rejoicing that he had
been able to lay down his life for his fellow workmen.
At two o'clock in the afternoon of July 7, the members of the
Amalgamated lodges and of the various other local societies were
marshaled in attendance at the funeral services of their dead
brethren--John E. Morris, Silas Wain and Peter Farris. The funeral of
Morris was under the supervision of the order of Odd Fellows, of which
he was a valued member. Rev. J. J. McIlyar conducted services at the
Fourth Avenue M. E. Church, and delivered an impassioned oration,
embodying a recital of the untoward events which had made Homestead a
place of mourning. "The millmen," he said, "were organized in an
association that enabled them to obtain just and adequate remuneration
for their services. The existence of this union of the men was
threatened by a body of Pinkertons, employed by somebody for the
purpose. This is what has put this blessed man in his coffin to-day; a
perfect citizen; an intelligent man; a good husband who was never
lacking in his duty; a brother who was devoted and loyal and who will
surely find his reward."
Rev. Mr. McIlyar told how easily the difficulty between the Carnegie
firm and its employees might have been adjusted had arbitration been
resorted to. "But," he added, "this town is bathed in tears to-day and
it is all brought about by one man, who is less respected by the
laboring people than any other employer in the country. There is no more
sensibility in that man than in a toad." While the minister was speaking
the sobs of Morris's broken-hearted widow interrupted his address, and
her grief found a sympathetic echo in the hearts of all present.
Crowds lined the route to the cemetery and watched with tear-dimmed eyes
the passage of the funeral cortege. On the way the hearse that bore the
remains of Peter Farris fell into line. After the last sad rites had
been performed over the graves of Morris and Farris, another procession
was formed and all that was mortal of Silas Wain was removed to its
resting-place.
Towards evening a stir was created by the appearance on the streets of a
little band of anarchists from Allegheny City, who, like vultures
attracted by the scent of prey, were drawn to the scene of trouble by
the hope of fomenting still greater disorders. The unbidden guests
proceeded to distribute incendiary circulars, setting forth that the
mills were the rightful property of the workingmen and should be seized
as such, and calling on the good people of Homestead to become
anarchists and strike for liberty hand-in-hand with their "brothers."
Two of the agitators were placed under arrest and confined in the
lock-up. The rest were promptly shipped out of town with an admonition
not to return. It caused the workmen much concern to suppose that they
might be credited with anarchistic tendencies; and, as a consequence, a
species of censorship was established over the newspaper correspondents,
with a view to preventing the publication of reports describing the
Homestead defenders as a set of cut-throats and desperadoes, whereas,
they wished the whole world to know that they were honest men, fighting
for bread for themselves and their wives and children.
On the night of July 6, as has been told in the preceding chapter,
Sheriff McCleary set his clerks to work on the issuing of notices to
prominent citizens to report for service as deputies. The papers were
delivered early in the morning, but the results were far from
satisfactory. Some of the editors, bankers, merchants, manufacturers and
political leaders addressed were too far advanced in years to be
physically fit for active service, at least one of the number being over
80 years of age. Others had too wholesome a regard for their own safety
to risk doing duty at Homestead and preferred being arrested and fined,
if a penalty should be required. Only thirty-two men reported at the
sheriffs office, and these were unarmed. The sheriff dismissed them with
the remark that it was useless to go to Homestead with so small a force.
Governor Pattison, however, was not moved by the representation that an
appeal directed to persons who were not likely to undertake police duty
under any circumstances exhausted the powers of the county government.
He had already taxed the sheriff with shirking his duty and the course
of events after the battle did not seem to have altered his opinion on
this head. But the sheriff had made up his mind to incur no danger that
he could avoid, and, therefore, remained all day in his office, leaving
the local authorities of Homestead to preserve the peace if they could
or would. The only important move which he made looking to the
restoration of order was to call a conference in the evening to consider
a proposition to introduce deputies into the Homestead works. At this
meeting, C. L. Magee, John F. Cox, a Homestead attorney, Burgess John
McLuckie, Hugh O'Donnell, President Weihe and President-elect Garland,
of the Amalgamated Association, David Lynch, William Roberts, Jerry
Doherty and James McCrory, also of the Amalgamated Association, were in
attendance. As might have been expected no definite conclusion was
reached, beyond what was embodied in the assurances tendered by the
Amalgamated men that they would do their utmost in the interest of
peace. The persistent refusal of the Carnegie Company to lift a hand for
the prevention of another outbreak or to exhibit any trace of friendly
consideration for its locked-out employees was an obstacle in the path
of the peacemakers that could not well be overcome.
A conference of militia officers at the Seventh Avenue Hotel, in which
the sheriff was also a participant, excited considerable interest. The
purpose of this consultation, it was understood, was to consider the
facilities for getting the citizen-soldiery into the field on short
notice, in case the governor should finally decide to order them out.
Much uneasiness was felt in Homestead concerning the chances of military
interference. The citizens were naturally averse to the quartering of
troops in the town for an indefinite period. It was apparent that this
was what Mr. Frick was aiming at. His own hired troop having failed, it
was his desire, with the aid of Sheriff McCleary, to force the governor
to call out the troops of the state and place them indirectly at the
disposal of the Carnegie firm. With the militia at his back, the
Carnegie Company's chairman counted on easily filling the mill with
non-union men and breaking up the Amalgamated lodges.
In order to prevent the execution of this design and to offset the
sheriffs representations, leading citizens of Homestead telegraphed the
governor requesting him to take no action until he had conferred with a
committee which would immediately wait upon him at Harrisburg. The
committee, which consisted of Attorney John F. Cox, Hugh O'Donnell, J.
H. Williams, Dr. John Purman and G. W. Sarver, reached the executive
chamber at 10:20 P. M. on July 8 and remained in conference with the
governor until midnight. Messrs. Cox and O'Donnell made strong arguments
against the calling out of the military, assuring the governor that
order was restored in Homestead and that the sheriff would be allowed to
take peaceable possession of the Carnegie property. Governor Pattison's
reply was to the effect that insubordination would be checked if it took
the whole military power of the state and of the nation; but, he added,
the rights of all parties to the struggle would be maintained without
regard to the merits or demerits of the business differences between
them, and the military would be subordinated to the civil power. In
short, without stating positively that he would call out the military,
the governor sent the committee home with a pretty firm conviction that
Sheriff McCleary's supineness had done its work and that, unless
conditions altered amazingly, the troops would soon be on the ground. It
was learned afterwards that the governor had sent an officer of the
national guard to examine into the condition of things at Homestead and
make an accurate report. The experiences of this individual, who, being
a stranger, fell under suspicion and had some disagreeable encounters
with the pickets and workmen's committees, were, no doubt, the real
occasion of the governor's action; for it is certain that Sheriff
McCleary's pleading telegrams had little weight at Harrisburg.
In the meantime, the aspect of affairs at Homestead became, if anything,
more warlike. After the burial of their dead comrades had been attended
to, the men set about strengthening their defenses, so as to guard
against any attack, whether from Pinkertons or others. The fence around
the mill-yard was repaired; the picket lines were restored and
reinforced and arms and ammunition were freely distributed. Scouts were
sent out with instructions to post themselves in the railroad yards
around Pittsburgh and at points along the river and to give the alarm at
the approach of an invading party of any description. The military
organization of the men was well-nigh perfect, and it was manifestly
impossible that they could be surprised.
But one alarm was given during the night. At 1 A. M. the ringing of
bells and the blowing of whistles aroused the town, and the works were
quickly surrounded by men carrying loaded rifles. When it was
ascertained that the alarm was a false one, the crowd just as quickly
dispersed and from a state of wild excitement the town lapsed back into
peace and quietude.
Much encouragement was given to the men by the interest taken in their
cause not only by organized labor throughout the land but by some of the
most noted men in public life. Congress entered into the discussion of
the Homestead struggle with extraordinary zest. Representative
Camminetti opened the ball in the lower house on July 6, and on the
following day Mr. Palmer, of Illinois, made a fiery speech in the
senate, declaring the Pinkerton invasion to be an insult to the
commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and that the coercion of wage-workers by
an armed force was reprehensible and called for the sternest
condemnation. Mr. Palmer maintained further that the workmen of
Homestead, having built up the mills by their labor, had a right to
insist upon, permanency of employment and reasonable compensation. Mr.
Voorhees, of Indiana, argued that the Homestead troubles were the direct
result of the Republican tariff system, by which the iron barons of
Pennsylvania were heavily protected with a pretended understanding that
the workingman would get his share of the benefits conferred. Mr.
Carnegie, the speaker said, had done his part by sending an armed mob to
shoot down his employees if they refused to serve for reduced wages or
to abandon their jobs to others whose services could be had for less
money. The Pinkertons had been killed by men acting in self-defense, and
it was his only regret that Carnegie himself had not been at the head of
that squad "instead of skulking in his castle in Scotland." Republican
senators responded to these speeches, defending the protective tariff,
but emphatically repudiating Pinkertonism. While these proceedings were
going on in the senate, the house busied itself with arrangements to
send a committee to Homestead, and several speakers also took occasion
to denounce the employment of Pinkerton trained bands as contrary to the
spirit of American institutions.
The press of the country was almost a unit in deploring the harsh
methods employed by the Carnegie Company and in demanding legislation
prohibiting the maintainence of a Pinkerton "standing army" and its
utilization in labor troubles. The New York _World_ suggested that the
dispute at Homestead be settled by referring it to a board of
arbitration, to be composed of Governor McKinley, of Ohio; Governor
Pattison, of Pennsylvania, and Terence V. Powderly, Grand Master Workman
of the Knights of Labor. The New York _Sun_ stood alone among the
Democratic papers in upholding Mr. Frick and the Pinkertons.
General B. F. Butler, whose reputation as a constitutional lawyer gave
special significance to his remarks, expressed the opinion that the
Carnegie Company should be held legally responsible for the provocation
of bloodshed, since it had prepared for riot and sent an armed
expedition to precipitate it. In his judgment, the government should
cause the Pinkerton forces to be disbanded.
General Weaver, the nominee of the People's Party for president,
pronounced the outbreak an illustration of the subjugation of the
Republic to corporate despotism. "When Rome was near her fall," he said,
"the wealthy barons had their braves. Our corporate barons have their
Pinkertons.... The frightful condition of affairs in Pennsylvania will
strike the whole country like an alarm bell at midnight."
The newspapers containing these expressions were scanned with avidity by
the locked-out men, and, at the same time the scrutiny exercised over
the reporters was made all the more vigorous as it became apparent even
to those of limited intelligence that Homestead was now the focus of
world-wide observation, and that the judgment formed abroad depended
entirely on the carefulness and veracity of the correspondents. Some of
the latter protested hotly against what they regarded as unwarrantable
interference with their work, but protests counted for nothing. Spies
and impostors had slipped into town in the guise of newspaper men and
the committeemen of the lodges deemed it necessary to supervise with the
utmost vigor the work of those whose credentials were accepted,
especially since the reporters were necessarily aware of the identity of
the most active combatants and were in a position to betray secrets
which might be used afterwards with fatal effect. Several correspondents
who were suspected of making a questionable use of their opportunities
were arrested and driven out of town, and those who were allowed to
remain, had to wear badges provided for them by the committeemen. That
there was reasonable foundation for these precautions was attested later
on when it turned out that a few men who professed to represent
reputable journals were in the pay of the Carnegie Company. One of these
spies held credentials from a well known Chicago newspaper.
CHAPTER IX.
[Illustration: SOLDIERS TO THE FRONT.]
THE SHERIFF'S LAST EFFORT--MR. FRICK ISSUES A STATEMENT AND THE
AMALGAMATED ASSOCIATION RESPONDS--POLITICAL AND INDUSTRIAL
ORGANIZATIONS INDORSE THE HOMESTEAD MEN--INTERVIEWING
CARNEGIE--CENSORSHIP OF THE PRESS--GOVERNOR PATTISON ORDERS
OUT THE NATIONAL GUARD--STRENGTH OF THE MILITIA--LOCKED-OUT
MEN PREPARE TO WELCOME THE BLUE-COATS--A SPEECH THAT BURGESS
McLUCKIE NEVER DELIVERED.
With the exception of alarms caused by rumors that Pinkertons were
coming in force, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, July 8, 9 and 10, were
comparatively uneventful days at Homestead.
On Friday morning Harris Striegel, a lad of 19, who had been among the
first to fall, was buried with solemn ceremonies. In the afternoon a
mass meeting was held at the rink, under the auspices of President Weihe
and other officers of the Amalgamated Association. William J. Brennen,
attorney for the Association, addressed the men, advising them to let
the sheriff take possession of the works. If they refused to do this, he
said, the militia would be ordered out, and then, if resistance should
be offered, the troops would undoubtedly fire upon the citizens at a
fearful cost of human life. Other speakers took the same ground as Mr.
Brennen, and the disposition of the men seemed favorable to the
admission of the sheriff and a posse of unarmed deputies. Nevertheless,
the meeting adjourned without taking definite action.
Sheriff McCleary arrived in the town shortly after the adjournment of
the meeting and was met by Dr. Gladden and five business men. The
sheriff said that at the conference held in his office the night before
he had received from attorney Cox and Dr. Gladden a list of twenty
business men of Homestead who would serve as deputies. Only six out of
the twenty were on hand to serve. What was there for him to do but to go
home again? A large crowd surrounded the speaker, listening to his
remarks, and followed him wherever he went. One of the locked-out men, a
turbulent individual, named Burke, accused the sheriff of double-dealing
and abused him roundly. Mr. McCleary hastened to get out of his
uncomfortable quarters and boarded the first train for Pittsburgh.
The Amalgamated leaders devoted considerable time to the discussion
among themselves of an interview given by Mr. Frick to the Philadelphia
_Press_ and published simultaneously in the Pittsburgh morning papers.
This deliverance conveyed a carefully prepared history of the trouble
between the Carnegie firm and its workmen, justified every act of the
former, condemned every act of the latter, and declared that the firm
would never again recognize trades unions. The principal points in Mr.
Frick's defense were these:
1.--That $23 a ton for billets was a reasonable minimum on which to base
wages, and that its acceptance should follow from the fact that the
introduction of new machinery into the mills, at great expense, had
enabled the men to increase their output and consequently to increase
their earnings.
2.--That the expiration of the sliding scale on June 30 was
embarrassing, because, in order to make contracts for the year, the firm
should be informed on January 1 of the rates of wages to be paid.
3.--That the improvements already referred to warranted a decrease in
tonnage rates, and that, even allowing for this decrease, the tonnage
men would make more money than they did when the sliding scale went into
effect in 1889.
4.--That there was no question of starvation wages, since the reductions
proposed would affect only 325 men out of 3,800[A], and would merely
bring the wages of these men to an equality with those paid in other
mills operated with union labor but not possessing the improved
appliances of the Carnegie plant.
[A] The event shows that Mr. Frick cannot have been
sincere in this statement. Wages have been seriously
depressed in almost all departments of the Homestead
mill.
5.--That in the non-union mills operated by the Carnegie Company, good
wages were paid and the employees were contented.
An answer to Mr. Frick's statement was drawn up by the workmen and
published on the following day. The arguments in rebuttal were briefly
as follows:
1.--That, as the workingmen do not sell the product of their labor, they
must, under a sliding scale, protect themselves by requiring a minimum
basis of wage-rates, which should not fall so low as to involve the
payment of extremely low wages.
2.--That the enjoyment of fair rates of wages by the non-union workmen
at Braddock and Duquesne was due to the fixing of a standard by the
Amalgamated Association, below which the wages of non-unionists could
not decently be permitted to fall.
3.--That, in preparing the scale, the workmen had made full allowance
for improved machinery, not forgetting that the improvements had
displaced many men, and thus, in a manner, repaid the cost of the
investment. If there had been a misunderstanding on this head, it could
have been adjusted by fair discussion, but fair discussion was
impossible with an employer who declined to confer.
4.--That, of the 3,800 men employed, all or nearly all were affected by
one or the other of the changes proposed, to-wit: a reduction in the
minimum, another reduction in the proportionate rate of pay (thus making
a double reduction) and the termination of the scale on December 31,
1893, instead of June 30, 1894.
In concluding their answer, the workmen said, "If argument and honest
reasoning were substituted for the reserve and coldness of manner seen
in the company's present attitude, there might be reason to expect an
end of this deplorable state of affairs."
On Saturday, the Democratic Committee of Allegheny County met in
Pittsburgh at the call of its chairman, William J. Brennen, Esq., the
attorney for the Amalgamated Association, and, after the completion of
routine business, adopted, by an unanimous vote, resolutions
sympathizing with the men of Homestead in their efforts to "maintain
American and resist European pauper wages," condoling with the friends
of those who had been "shot down by the hirelings of a greedy and
arbitrary combination of capital" and denouncing Pinkertonism. These
resolutions were presented by Jere Dougherty, of the Amalgamated
Association.
Resolutions of similar tenor were adopted by all the labor unions in
Allegheny County, and thousands of lodges in other localities placed
themselves on record to the same purpose and, in most cases, coupled
their expressions of sympathy and endorsement with offers of financial
support. The South Side Glassworkers' Union, of Pittsburgh, demanded
that the city councils reject Andrew Carnegie's gift of $1,000,000 for a
free library, since the library would be paid for by the reduction of
workingmen's earnings. This home-thrust was repeated by scores of other
unions in and around Pittsburgh, and, as a consequence, the councils let
public business go to the wall and avoided holding a meeting until the
excitement had simmered down. The fact is that, since the gift had been
accepted, the money received and deposited to the order of a special
commission, and some of it already spent, there was no way of returning
it; but anyhow the councils did not venture on a discussion of the
question, which must have led to a division on pro-Carnegie and
anti-Carnegie lines.
At Columbus, O., 2,000 workmen met in the statehouse yard and passed
resolutions calling upon the Pennsylvania authorities and the United
States Congress to exterminate the Pinkerton system.
At Chicago, representatives of 20,000 men engaged in the building trades
discussed the propriety of taking up arms and marching to the relief of
Homestead.
Even in England, the trades unions entered protest against the Carnegie
methods and called upon Kier Hardie, a workingmen's representative in
Parliament, to whose election expenses Andrew Carnegie had contributed
£100, to return the amount forthwith. Mr. Hardie very promptly forwarded
the money, not to Mr. Carnegie, but to the people of Homestead, who, he
held, had a valid title to receive and use it.
Three days elapsed after the battle at Homestead, before the English
agents of the American press associations, who had been ordered to
follow him up, were able to locate Mr. Carnegie and obtain an interview.
Although regularly advised by cable of the progress of the troubles at
his mills, he did not let the news interfere with his pleasures, but
spent those three days on a coaching tour from Edinburgh to Kinloch, in
Scotland. At Kinloch, he rented a shooting-box for eight weeks at a cost
of $10,000. Here an American interviewer found him. According to the
correspondent's statement, he was received by Mr. Carnegie in a
"contemptuous and insulting" manner, as if the "intrusion upon his ducal
magnificence" were a thing to be resented with the hauteur distinctively
belonging to an American iron baron, who can afford to have castles and
shooting-boxes in Europe. In response to a request for his opinion on
the occurrences at Homestead, Mr. Carnegie said: "I am not willing to
express an opinion. The men have chosen their course and I am powerless
to change it. The handling of the case on the part of the company has my
full approval and sanction. Further than this, I have no disposition to
say anything."
Possibly this brusque statement may have been prompted in a measure by
the irritation resulting from the use of the deadly parallels at the
little millionaire's expense in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, a marked copy
of which lay upon a table in the reception hall of the lodge. On one
side appeared a report of Mr. Carnegie's philantrophic talk at the
opening of the free library at Aberdeen, where he was seconded by the
Earl and Countess of Aberdeen, and on the other a tell-tale table of
reduced wages at Homestead.
The report of this interview with the high-priest of arbitration
supplied a rich theme of comment to the locked-out men and it was well
for Mr. Carnegie's dignity, that, just at this time, 3,000 miles
separated him from his employees. Even at that distance, his ears must
have tingled.
On Saturday evening, the press committee of the Amalgamated lodges, of
which Hugh O'Donnell was chairman, distributed official press badges to
the newspaper correspondents whose credentials were approved, and the
committee signified its purpose of keeping close watch on the work of
these gentlemen and of expelling from the town anyone of the number who,
either by a violation of confidence or by sending out false statements
proved himself unworthy of toleration. The reporters proposed the
appointment of a committee composed of two newspaper men, two workmen
and a fifth member, selected by these four, to pass upon disputes as to
news matter, but this proposition was dropped on the receipt of a
guarantee from Hugh O'Donnell that the rights of the press would be
respected.
Throughout all these proceedings, the men acted in the belief that they
were doing their best to maintain good order, and, although the
committee which had been sent to Harrisburg returned without genuinely
reassuring news, no one seemed to have the least idea that the military
would be called out.
However, the visit of the governor's agent, previously referred to, had
already borne fruit when, on the morning of Sunday, July 10, Sheriff
McCleary forwarded his final appeal for military aid. In this
communication, the sheriff once more averred that his powers were
exhausted, and that the civil authorities could not raise a force of
deputies large enough to cope with the locked-out men, "Only a large
military force," he added, "will enable me to control matters."
At 10 o'clock on Sunday night the governor issued the following order:
_George R. Snowden, Major-General Commanding N. G. P._:
Put the division under arms and move at once, with ammunition,
to the support of the sheriff of Allegheny County, at Homestead.
Maintain the peace, protect all persons in their rights under
the constitution and laws of the state. Communicate with me.
ROBERT E. PATTISON, _Governor_.
Sheriff McCleary was informed of this order and directed to communicate
with General Snowden.
Immediately on receipt of his instructions, General Snowden issued
orders to the brigade commanders. General Robert P. Dechert, in command
of the First Brigade, with headquarters at Philadelphia, was directed to
concentrate his brigade in camp at Mt. Gretna, near Lebanon, in the
eastern part of the state, by Monday afternoon, battery horsed, and
taking three days' rations. General J. P. S. Gobin, of the Second
Brigade, was ordered to concentrate his command at Lewiston, moving
west. General John A. Wiley, of the Third Brigade, composed of regiments
from Western Pennsylvania, was ordered to proceed with his command to a
point on the Pennsylvania Railroad within easy reach of the Monongahela
River.
Within twelve hours from the time when Major General Snowden received
the Governor's order the entire National Guard of Pennsylvania was on
the march, fully equipped and ready for any kind of service.
It was no makeshift army that thus took the field on a few hours'
notice. General Sherman said at the Garfield inauguration that the
Pennsylvania Militia were the best body of troops in the National Guard
of the country and, if confirmation of the accuracy of his judgment were
needed, the Homestead "campaign" furnished it in amplest measure. The
Guard underwent a signal transformation after the Pittsburgh railroad
riot of 1877. Prior to that time it was a loosely constituted, loosely
governed organization, wholly unfitted for service in an emergency and
serving principally as an agency for the distribution of military
titles. The disastrous consequences of the movement against the
Pittsburgh rioters, in which ignorance, incompetency and lack of
concrete organization, in addition to causing the destruction of
millions of dollars' worth of property came near bringing about the
loss of many lives, opened the eyes of Major General Hartranft, then
Governor of the state, and led him to formulate and carry into execution
a plan of reorganization the success of which is seen to-day in the
superiority of the Pennsylvania militia to any other body of troops in
the United States outside the regular army. Under Governor Hartranft's
direction the several divisions of the guard existing under the old
order of things were merged in a single division of three brigades,
composed of eighteen regiments of infantry, three troops of cavalry and
three batteries of artillery. The maximum enrollment was limited to 8000
men. The regiments are recruited from all parts of the state and include
all classes of citizens--farmers, mechanics, clerks, merchants and
gentlemen of leisure.
The mobilization of this great body of men was accomplished with a
degree of celerity and effectiveness unknown since the civil war. When
the regiments advanced on the morning of July 11, all had nearly their
full complement of officers and men. In a single night, preparations for
service, the duration and hardship of which could not be estimated, were
completed, and 8000 soldiers stood unreservedly at the disposal of the
commonwealth.
The news that the soldiers were coming was received in Homestead without
any perceptible feeling of alarm. It was understood by every one in the
town that resistance to the power of the commonwealth was out of the
question, and at the same time the idea went abroad that General Snowden
and his men would confine themselves to the preservation of the peace
and not aid Mr. Frick in the manning of the mill with non-unionists or
the landing of another force of Pinkertons. There were, it is true,
some hot-heads who disputed the justice of the Governor's action and
canvassed the possibility of resisting the militia or of inducing the
workingmen who bore arms for the state to make common cause with their
brethren in the beleaguered town. The advisory committeemen, however,
aided by other influential and intelligent citizens, were quick to
suppress these disorderly symptoms and to emphasize the necessity of
giving the soldiers a cordial and patriotic reception.
At two o'clock on Tuesday afternoon a mass meeting of workingmen was
held in the rink, with Hugh O'Donnell in the chair. Burgess McLuckie
made a fervent address, counseling a friendly demeanor towards the
soldiers and eulogizing the Governor. "This man Pattison," said the
sturdy Burgess, "Is acting quietly and rightly. He understands our
position. He does not cater to monopolies.... Your friends are about to
come; the safest, the best people that can come. We don't want
Pinkertons here. We want the militia.... I stand here to say that any
man who insults the militia shall be taken to the river and ducked."
Cheers and laughter followed this sally and a motion in favor of ducking
in the river any man who insulted the militia was carried unanimously.
John M. Carter, of the Baltimore _News_, who was fresh from an interview
with the Governor, delivered a cheering speech, and other addresses of a
prudent, common-sense tenor were made by members of the Amalgamated
Association.
The feeling of friendship for the militia became contagious. It was
decided that the blue-coated visitors should be received in state. All
the brass bands in town took to rehearsing music of a triumphal
character, to the inspiring strains of which Homestead was to be
amicably turned over to its "protectors." In one band room, when the
question of appropriate tunes came up, the exhilaration of the hour
brought forth some odd suggestions. A young man who proposed "See the
Conquering Hero Comes" was summarily suppressed, and a like fate befell
an individual who thought the "Rogues' March" might fit the occasion.
"Hold the Fort." "Comrades," "Johnny Get Your Gun" and "The Bogie Man"
were canvassed, but a compromise was not reached until some gentleman of
equal tact and discretion suggested "Ta Ra Ra, Boom De Ay," which was
accepted without a dissenting voice as the correct thing to express
Homestead's new-born sentiments of hope and contentment.
A reception committee, headed by Burgess McLuckie and Hugh O'Donnell,
was designated to welcome the representatives of the state and it
remained only for the latter to reciprocate in kind to convert the
military occupation of the town into a love-feast.
The Burgess issued a proclamation warning strangers to get out of town,
directing the closing of drinking-places and enjoining women and
children to keep off the streets. This duty performed, Honest John
McLuckie immersed himself in the study of a speech, of specially
artistic construction, intended for the edification of Major General
Snowden and his staff on their entrance into Homestead, and warranted to
inspire those dignitaries with a profound sense of the good-will and
law-abiding spirit of the people of the town and their cheerful
readiness to fraternize with the troops.
Unfortunately this little _chef d'oeuvre_ was never delivered.
Like the flower in Gray's "Elegy," it was "born to blush unseen and
waste its sweetness," if not on desert air, at all events on the cold
and irresponsive dead wall of military discipline.
All other themes of interest had now sunk out of sight in the face of
the great event of the hour--the converging of the militia regiments
upon Homestead. Even the Pinkertons, the fear of whose return with
reinforcements had endured over Sunday, were forgotten, and the entire
community was on the tip-toe of expectation, not knowing at what moment
the glitter of swords and bayonets and the clatter of horses' hoofs
would herald the advent of the advance guard.
Night fell and still no soldiers. General Snowden had taken care not to
advertise the route of the troops nor the time of their arrival. It was
his purpose to take the town by surprise and to occupy the positions
selected in advance by an officer detailed to make a reconnoissance,
before the people could be apprised of the nature and scope of his
movements.
The maneuvers were carried out with the desired secrecy, the newspaper
men and telegraph operators along the lines of march being kept in the
dark, despite their habitual alertness.
So the Homestead folk went to bed without the opportunity of looking
down the muzzles of any guns except their own and even these, together
with the Winchesters taken from the Pinkertons as the lawful spoils of
war, had been hidden from view, the occasion for their use having now
finally departed.
While the good people on the banks of the Monongahela slept the sleep of
contentment, the soldiers of the First Brigade were stretched shivering
on the open ground at Mt. Gretna, and General Snowden, with all of the
Second and Third Brigades, except the regiments of the extreme West, was
traveling as fast as the Pennsylvania Railroad Company could carry him
towards the scene of disturbance.
CHAPTER X.
[Illustration: CAMP McCLELLAN]
SNOWDEN'S SHARP TACTICS--THE TAKING OF HOMESTEAD--TROOPS IN
POSSESSION--SOLDIERS REPEL ADVANCES AND THE FRATERNAL
RECEPTION IS DECLARED OFF--O'DONNELL'S COMMITTEE AT
HEADQUARTERS--SUSPICION AND RESENTMENT ABROAD--THE LITTLE BILL
RETURNS--CONGRESSMEN HOLD AN INVESTIGATION--CAPITAL AND LABOR
IN CONFLICT ON THE WITNESS STAND--THE COST OF PRODUCING STEEL
REMAINS A RIDDLE.
In pursuance of Gen. Snowden's plan to take Homestead by surprise, the
Second and Third Brigades, instead of being massed as announced in the
newspapers, at Brinton, a station on the Pennsylvania R. R. nearly
opposite Homestead, came together at Radebaugh, a mile and a half west
of Greensburg, and 28-1/2 miles distant from Pittsburgh. By 2.30 A. M.
all the regiments had reached the rendezvous, and at 5 A. M. the order
to advance was given and the troops moved towards Homestead, crossing
the Monongahela river over the P. V. & C. bridge near Braddock. The
Tenth and Fourteenth regiments, and a battery, were left on the Braddock
side of the river with orders to occupy the hills above Port Perry, from
which the guns would sweep the mill yards and the Homestead river front.
The early morning hours were full of surprise for the people of
Homestead. Look-outs were posted at all avenues of approach and anxious
crowds hung around the telegraph offices. As it drew on towards 9
o'clock, a report was circulated that the troops were at Greensburg.
Telegraphic inquiries dispatched to that place brought the response that
they were not there. At 9.25 the operator at Greensburg sent this
message: "No. 23 was wrecked above this place last night; tracks are
blocked and troops are delayed." A bulletin conveying the news was
pasted on the window of the telegraph office and elicited faint cheers
from the crowd. Evidently several hours must yet elapse before the
soldiers would arrive, and the interval was ample to rest and eat
breakfast.
But at the very moment when the Greensburg operator was ticking his
message over the wires, a train pulled into Munhall station at the
eastern end of the town, and from a parlor car in front a tall,
distinguished-looking man, wearing the stars of a major-general,
alighted, followed by six others in uniform and an individual in
civilian's clothing. It was Major General Snowden, accompanied by his
staff and Sheriff McCleary. Behind the general officers' train, which
was made up of two cars, came another train of ten cars, from the
windows of which bayonets and muzzles of guns protruded. Then came
another train and another and still others, until 95 cars were drawn up
in line, all bearing the same freight of guns and bayonets and
lusty-looking fellows in the blue uniform of the National Guard.
There were, perhaps, 200 men and boys at Munhall when the military
trains came in. Some of them had been up all night and were but half
awake. None of them had expected the soldiers to arrive at that depot.
After the first surprise was over, half a dozen scouts, who had been
posted by the advisory committee, ran towards the town shouting: "The
troops! the troops!" The rest of the crowd pressed in around the staff
officers' train and looked on with curious interest.
General Snowden, fearing that there was trouble brewing, held a hasty
consultation with his staff, and had the troops drawn up in line without
a minute's loss of time. Company E of the Eighteenth regiment was
selected for skirmish duty and marched along the tracks, clearing the
crowd away. Then the whole regiment advanced, throwing out detachments
of skirmishers as it went, and taking a straight course to the place of
encampment.
Shanty Hill, the position selected, lies north of the town and forms
part of the Pittsburgh Poor Farm, which had been purchased by the
Carnegie Company, but was still held by the city under a special
arrangement. The hill slopes gently towards the base but develops midway
into a rather steep ascent. A broad plateau extends back from the
summit. A better position for military purposes could not have been
found. The town and the mill yards stretched out below, covered within
easy range by batteries on the heights, and no movement could occur on
the streets without being detected from above.
Before the scouts who ran to give warning of the presence of the
soldiers had fairly begun to spread the alarm, the Eighteenth regiment
had gained the summit of the hill and formed a line of battle. The
Fifteenth regiment followed and formed a line of battle to the right of
the Eighteenth, then came the Thirteenth, Twelfth, Fifth, Ninth and
Seventh regiments, and within half an hour 4,000 men were drawn up in
parallel lines of battle, overlooking the town, and ready, at the word
of command, to turn 4,000 rifles on the crowds that, by this time had
massed below.
[Illustration]
Meanwhile the surprised citizens of Homestead perceived another force of
soldiers marching and counter-marching on the hill tops on the other
side of the river, their bayonets and field pieces glittering in the
morning sunlight.
Homestead was beleaguered at all points. Without the firing of a shot or
the semblance of a parley, the town, which a week before had been the
scene of carnage, was captured, and its guardians were taken so
completely by surprise that they scarcely realized what was occurring
until the troops were in possession.
General Snowden had proved himself an admirable tactician, and the
swiftness and unerring precision with which he handled the large body of
men under his control were universally applauded.
The unexpected fashion in which the soldiers entered broke up all the
plans that had been arranged for their reception. The Homestead bands
remained mute; Burgess McLuckie's speech was relegated to oblivion, and
the reception committee was nonplussed by the circumstance that the
guests had made themselves at home without waiting for a formal
reception. It appeared, in short, that the soldiers were so intent upon
business that they had no time for sentiment and that the process of
fraternizing was not to be so easy as the people had expected.
If there was any doubt on this head it vanished when some of the workmen
endeavored to make their way up Shanty Hill in order to mingle with the
"boys in blue." Sentinels barred the way and informed those who sought
to pass, that until further orders, no civilian would be allowed to go
through the lines. So the townsfolk, including the committeemen of the
Amalgamated lodges, had to content themselves with clustering at the
foot of the hill and watching the manoeuvres of the troops from a
distance.
Shortly before noon a number of prominent citizens and leaders of the
Amalgamated Association held a conference and appointed a committee to
wait upon General Wiley (General Snowden's presence on the ground was
not yet known), to tender the good wishes and co-operation of the
Amalgamated Association and the people of Homestead, and to request that
the military receive the workingmen in a body, accompanied by brass
bands.
The committeemen obtained access to the headquarters of the Third
Brigade, but, on stating the nature of their mission to General Wiley,
were referred by him to General Snowden, who had established his
division headquarters at the Carnegie school house on Shanty Hill.
Sheriff McCleary was found in conference with General Snowden.
Captain Coon, an ex-militia officer and a representative citizen, spoke
for the committee, informing the General of the desire of the
Amalgamated Association and of the citizens generally to co-operate with
the state authority in maintaining order. General Snowden checked the
speaker with the statement that he did not recognize the Amalgamated
Association or any authority other than that of the Governor of
Pennsylvania and the Sheriff of Allegheny County. The best way in which
the people of Homestead could co-operate with the state troops was, he
said, by behaving themselves. Captain Coon undertook to renew the offer
of assistance, but was cut short with the assurance that such offers
could not be accepted.
At this point, Hugh O'Donnell stepped forward and explained that what
the people desired was to attest their cheerful submission to legal
authority in contrast to their refusal to submit to illegal authority as
represented by Mr. Frick's troop of Pinkertons.
"The gentleman behind you is the one to whom you should submit," said
General Snowden, with a wave of the hand towards Sheriff McCleary.
"We have always submitted to his authority," said O'Donnell.
"I beg your pardon," rejoined the General, "but you did not do so at the
mill."
O'Donnell made a gesture of dissent. "I leave it to the Sheriff if we
have not submitted," he retorted.
"No; you did not," replied the Sheriff. "You didn't allow my deputies to
take charge of the works."
Some further parley ensued, O'Donnell asserting that the committee
represented, not the Amalgamated Association, but a citizens' mass
meeting and General Snowden responding that he recognized no citizens
but those of Allegheny County.
"Then," said the former, "as citizens of Allegheny County we come to see
you."
"Then I'm glad to see you, gentlemen," was the General's rejoinder, "I
am glad that our position here is welcomed by the citizens of Allegheny
County."
O'Donnell now proposed that the men of Homestead, with four brass bands,
be permitted to pass in review before the troops, but met with a flat
refusal, General Snowden stating that he was there on the business of
the state and not to indulge in formalities.
This concluded the interview and the committee withdrew in anything but
a comfortable frame of mind.
It was useless to talk now of welcoming the soldiers as friends any more
than of resisting them as foes. They had come to do the duty imposed on
them by the state with mechanical precision and indifference to the
human conditions around them. As well think of fraternizing with the
pieces of ordnance that glistened ominously on the hill top as with the
icy Snowden and Snowden's 4,000 subordinates. This tall, courtly
gentleman with the huge moustache and gold-rimmed glasses perched upon
his classic nose, seemed to have not a grain of sentiment in his
composition. He was the visible incarnation of the state's police
powers, stern and inflexible, and it is not overstating the case to say
that, before night, all Homestead secretly detested him.
Sheriff McCleary, after quaking in his shoes for a week, fairly reveled
in the sunshine of General Snowden's presence. With cannon to right of
him, cannon to left of him, cannon in front of him and soldiers on all
sides, the Sheriff became a new man and began to talk in a tone of
authority which he had not previously ventured to assume. One remark
attributed to him was that the men who took part in the fight with the
Pinkertons would be prosecuted for riot and murder. When this ominous
threat was bruited abroad, it created a sensation among the workmen.
Most of the men, however, affected to regard it as mere buncombe. The
participants in the affray were pledged to secresy, and, it was
contended, if suits were to be entered at all, the whole population of
Homestead would have to be made defendants. Still there was a growing
feeling of uneasiness, especially since it was suspected, with good
reason, as it proved afterward, that there were Pinkerton spies in town
for the purpose of collecting evidence to be used in criminal
prosecutions.
The immediate result of the disquietude thus developed was to put a
keener edge on the discontent inspired by the uncongenial behavior of
the military. Men gathered in groups on the streets and indulged in
bitter murmurings. "We have been deceived," they said, "deceived by the
Governor; deceived unwittingly, but none the less effectually, by our
own advisers. We have stood idly by and let the town be occupied by
soldiers who come here, not as our protectors, but as the protectors of
non-union men, for whom Frick is now scouring the country and who will
be brought into the mill and installed in our places with the aid of
the commonwealth. Then, if we undertake to resist the seizure of our
jobs, we will be shot down like dogs. It is the story of the coke
regions over again."
As if to add fuel to the fire, the "Little Bill," the very name of which
could not be mentioned by a Homesteader without a profane accompaniment,
steamed up to the landing place adjoining the mill yard in all the glory
of an official dispatch boat. One of General Snowden's first acts had
been to charter the detested little tug for the use of the state, and
Captain Rodgers, still smarting from the effects of his experience on
July 6, was only too glad to obtain the chance of confronting his old
enemies under circumstances which insured his safety. The return of the
Little Bill had upon the locked-out men the effect that a red rag has
upon a bull.
Whatever hopes were based by the men of Homestead on the presence of
sympathizers, workmen like themselves, in the ranks of the militia were
quickly counteracted. It having come to the ears of Colonel Kreps, of
the Fifteenth regiment, that some of his men had promised to hand over
their guns to the steelworkers in the event of trouble caused by an
attempt of the Carnegie Company to operate the mill, the Colonel caused
the regiment to be drawn up in line, mentioned the report which he had
heard and closed with the words--"Let any man be foolish enough to
attempt anything of the kind and I will shoot him down in his tracks."
After this, the militiamen put a bridle on their tongues and
disaffection was not hinted at.
Although martial law, in the strict sense of the term, was not declared
at Homestead, General Snowden took the precaution of establishing a
provost guard which made the rounds of the town and fulfilled the dual
function of bringing disorderly stragglers into camp and repressing
dangerous demonstrations among the townspeople. Burgess McLuckie's
police were of little use and the saloonkeepers had disregarded the
order to close their establishments, so that a close watch had to be
kept to prevent drunkenness and disorder, particularly among the
soldiery.
Nothing was left undone to make Camp McClellan, as it was called, a
model of disciplinary perfection.
Just about the time when the National Guard was taking possession of
Homestead, a special committee detailed by the National House of
Representatives to investigate the trouble between the Carnegie Company
and its employees, arrived in Pittsburgh. The committee consisted of W.
C. Oates, of Alabama, chairman; W. H. Bynum, of Indiana; C. J. Boatner,
of Louisiana; E. B. Taylor, of Ohio, and Case Broderick, of Kansas.
Messrs. Taylor and Broderick were the only Republican members.
The committee visited Homestead in the afternoon, and at 7.30 P. M.
began the hearing of testimony.
H. C. Frick was the first witness. In answer to leading questions he
detailed the membership, resources and operations of the Carnegie
Company, the wages paid at Homestead, the nature of the sliding scale
and the events leading up to the lock-out.
Judge Oates asked: "Not counting anything by way of interest on
investment, what is the cost per ton of billets?"
MR. FRICK.--I hardly think that is a fair question. I do not think you
ought to ask me to go into that.
COL. TAYLOR.--Would you object to informing us of the cost per ton of
steel?
Mr. Frick answered that he would.
MR. BOATNER.--Don't feel disposed to give away the secrets of the trade,
eh?
To this the witness responded that the matter in question was a trade
secret and must be respected as such.
Mr. Frick was then questioned concerning his enlistment of Pinkerton
guards. He had acted, he said, on the conviction, gathered from prior
experience, that the sheriff was powerless. After June 24, the firm had
decided to hire the guards at $5 a day per man, and to put new workmen
into the mill. The witness read a copy of a letter which he had sent to
Robert A. Pinkerton under date of June 25. The communication called for
300 guards to be used in enabling the starting of the Homestead mill on
July 6, directed the massing of the force at Ashtabula, O. and advised
"absolute secresy in the movement of these men, so that no demonstration
can be made while they are in route." It concluded as follows: "As soon
as your men are upon the premises, we will notify the sheriff and ask
that they be deputized either at once or immediately upon an outbreak of
such a character as to render such a step desirable."
Mr. Frick was plied with interrogations concerning the Little Bill, the
barges and the famous fence topped with barbed-wire, and Mr. Boatner
asked particularly as to the "port-holes" in the latter. "They were
made," the witness replied gravely, "for the purpose of looking out to
see who might be on the outside."
The examination of the Carnegie chairman was not completed when the
committee adjourned, after a two hours' session, and on the resumption
of the hearing next morning, he was again placed on the stand.
Congressman Boatner opened the ball by endeavoring to ascertain whether
or not there had been an agreement between Mr. Frick and the Pinkerton
agency prior to June 25, a point on which it appeared, Mr. Frick's
memory was defective. Neither could a direct answer be obtained as to
the time when it was deemed advisable to arm the guards. The question of
wages was taken up again, Mr. Frick stating that the rates at Homestead
were higher than at any other mills, that the proposed reduction
averaged 15 per cent. and yet the men would make still more money from
month to month under the new terms than they made under the old. The
examination of the Carnegie Chairman ended with the reading of a
schedule of wages paid to tonnage men under the old scale.
Captain Rodgers, of the Little Bill, was the next witness. He told the
story of the arrival of the Pinkertons, the trip of the barges up the
river and the fight at the mill landing substantially as it has been
related in the preceding pages of this volume.
Sheriff McCleary followed and was closely catechized as to his supposed
official sponsorship for the Pinkertons. The Sheriff denied that he had
promised to deputize the Pinkertons. Having been informed by Messrs.
Knox & Reed, the Carnegie Company's attorneys, that the Pinkertons would
be sent up and that a deputy would be needed to aid in preserving the
peace, he had, he said, ordered Colonel Gray to go and that "if there
was much opposition to their landing he should order the captain and
the Pinkertons to come away." No amount of cross-examining could shake
Mr. McCleary's assertion that the Pinkertons were not deputized and that
Colonel Grey was not authorised to deputize them.
President Weihe, of the Amalgamated Association, explained the sliding
scale system, the propositions submitted by the Carnegie Company, and
the workmen's reasons for rejecting those propositions. The reductions
in wages resulting from the acceptance of the firm's terms would range,
he said, from 10 to 30 per cent. As to improvements, the Association
always made allowances for these, and no objection was offered if jobs
were done away with. The change proposed in the scale-signing date would
have set an example which other mills throughout the country would have
been sure to follow.
Mr. Weihe was asked to state his views on arbitration. He declined to
speak for the Association, but gave it as his individual opinion that
arbitration, whether compulsory or by voluntary tribunals was an
unsatisfactory resort, the issue being almost invariably against the
workingman. The trouble in estimating wages resided in the fact that the
firms could not be persuaded to tell the exact cost of production.
Hugh O'Donnell succeeded Mr. Weihe on the witness stand. He told of the
organization of the advisory committee with himself as chairman and of
the posting of guards outside the mill fence, who "were told not to use
force."
"Were they ordered to use violence to keep men out?" the witness was
asked.
"No sir, they were not. Their purpose was to keep all out by peaceable
methods."
O'Donnell described the attempt of the Pinkertons to land and his own
efforts to check the bloodshed which followed. "I am sure," he said "the
crowd near the water had no guns."
"Who fired the first shot?" asked a committeeman.
"I cannot say."
"Do you know anything of the attempt to fire the barges with oil?"
"I decline to answer."
Resuming his story, O'Donnell recounted the incidents of the surrender
and the terrible march to the rink. "The detectives," he said, "received
most inhuman treatment, but our men did everything to protect them, as I
can prove, and many received wounds on the trip to the town rink." Asked
as to his wages, he replied that he earned $144 a month. His explanation
of the antipathy of the laboring class to Pinkerton detectives was that,
in the special case under consideration, the workmen looked upon the
Pinkertons as "armed invaders and allies of capital," and also because
"if the Pinkertons got possession they would aid the firm in bringing in
non-union men."
Burgess McLuckie testified to being an employe of the Carnegie firm,
earning from $60 to $65 a month. He volunteered the statement that
"there is a gigantic conspiracy somewhere, aided and abetted by
legislation, to deprive the workingmen of their rights under the
constitution of this government--those of life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness," and illustrated this assertion by referring to the
reduction of the tariff on billets, the identical article on which the
compensation of the Homestead men was based. Carnegie and McKinley, in
his opinion, were fellow conspirators in this case. He characterized the
Pinkertons as "lazy thugs employed by unscrupulous capitalists."
Congressman Taylor interjected a remark as to the signs of prosperity in
Homestead, and especially, the comfortable looking houses there. "Well,"
rejoined McLuckie, "let me ask you a question. Are those homes too good
for workingmen to live in?" "Not half good enough," answered Mr. Taylor.
"Thank you," said McLuckie. Everybody smiled at this little exchange of
compliments.
William Roberts, a member of the advisory committee, gave a very clear
statement of the causes of dissension at Homestead. The wage reductions,
he held, affected not the men who were making exceptionally high wages
but many who for eight weeks had not averaged $1 a day. For instance,
one man who, under the old scale made $2.23 a day would make under the
new one offered by the firm only $1.32, while the heater who made $4.31
suffered no reduction. Mr. Roberts advocated compulsory arbitration. In
answer to a question regarding the comparative rates of wages in the
Homestead and other mills, he said: "In the American iron works,
Carnegie's principal competitor, a roller is paid 70 cents per ton while
at Homestead he is paid only 22 or 23 cents. A plate-mill roller at
Homestead is paid 14 cents per ton, while at Jones & Loughlin's he is
paid 72 cents. The product is similar, it goes into the same market and
is used for the same purpose."
Colonel James H. Gray, Sheriff McCleary's chief deputy, described the
trip of the barges to Homestead, and corroborated the Sheriff's claims
that the Pinkertons were not deputized and that orders had not been
given to deputize them. He said positively that the Pinkertons did not
fire a shot until they had to do so in self-defense. This concluded the
second day's session of the committee.
When the committee re-convened on the morning of July 14, John A.
Potter, general superintendent of the Homestead mills, was the first
witness summoned. Mr. Potter furnished data as to the equipment and
capacity of the mills, but expressed ignorance as to the cost of
producing a ton of steel. He assigned as the reason for reducing wages
that the Carnegie firm was "ahead of competitors" and paying more than
the owners of similar mills, and therefore thought it should have "some
of the advantages." Mr. Potter had been on the Little Bill when the
Pinkertons tried to land at Homestead, but had declined to take the
responsibility of entering the mill yard by force.
The remainder of the morning was occupied principally with the hearing
of Homestead workmen who testified as to the effect of Mr. Frick's
propositions upon their respective earnings, and of watchmen and others
who had been connected with the Pinkerton's expedition and who described
their various experiences.
Mr. Frick was recalled and permitted to rebut some of the assertions
made by the workingmen. To prove that his firm did not control the
billet market he cited the fact that Jones & Laughlin's mill has a
capacity of 1000 tons daily, while the output at Homestead is 800 tons
daily. He again refused to give the labor cost of producing a ton of
steel although Congressman Boatner twitted him with refusing to give
the information "on which protective legislation is asked for."
"I do not think we asked for the legislation," observed Mr. Frick.
"You have been greatly misrepresented then," said Mr. Boatner grimly.
Mr. Frick estimated the value of the Homestead plant at from $5,000,000
to $6,000,000, and stated that the capitalization of the Carnegie
Company was considerably in excess of $25,000,000.
Having heard all sides of the case, the committee closed its labors
early in the afternoon and returned to Washington where congress awaited
its report.
CHAPTER XI.
[Illustration: _THE_ FIRST ARRESTS]
BRINGING IN THE "BLACKSHEEP"--PITTSBURGH, BEAVER FALLS AND
DUQUESNE MEN COME OUT--AN ALARM IN CAMP--THE GOVERNOR
ARRIVES--THE BOYCOTT AS A PERSUADER--POLITICS TO THE
RESCUE--MURDER CHARGED AND WARRANTS ISSUED--McLUCKIE,
O'DONNELL AND ROSS SURRENDER AND ARE RELEASED ON BAIL--GENERAL
SNOWDEN'S DISHEARTENING ANNOUNCEMENT.
The locked-out men were not mistaken in their belief that the Carnegie
Company would take advantage of the presence of the military to bring
non-union men into the mill. Troops were early detailed to garrison the
mill yard, and a line of sentries was posted outside the fence, so that
there could be no interference by the workmen either from the railroad
or the river. The steamboat Tide was used as a special transport for
non-unionists, the first squads of whom came over from Swissvale, on the
Pennsylvania railroad, and were taken across the river under cover of
Colonel Hawkins' guns. Agents of the firm were set to work in every
large city procuring recruits, and while it was found rather difficult
to tempt men to risk the desperate chances of a trip to Homestead to
take the places of the conquerors of the Pinkertons, a small number were
secured each day until, within a week after the first squad was brought
in, nearly one hundred men were quartered within the mill enclosure.
Hundreds of cots were provided for the accommodation of the new hands,
and large quantities of food and other supplies were laid in. At the
same time, the firm advertised for proposals to build 100 houses on the
City Farm plan of lots at Munhall station, thus signifying its intention
of establishing permanent quarters for those who were to take the places
of the old employees.
On Friday, July 15, for the first time since the lock-out began, smoke
issued from the cupolas of the great steel plant. The furnaces were lit
at last, and the news circulated rapidly throughout the town that the
company was suspected of having smuggled in enough non-unionists to
renew operations. An excited mob rushed pell-mell towards the mill yard,
but was stopped short at the picket lines, where the guards, with
levelled bayonets, barred progress.
As a matter of fact there were but few steelworkers among the first
hundred men brought in by the Tide. Fifteen of them were carpenters, who
were engaged on a temporary lodging house between the machine pressing
mill and the river, and a majority of the others were waiters, cooks,
clerks and bosses.
A final notice to the old employees was posted in Homestead on July 16.
It set forth that "individual" applications for employment would be
received by the general superintendent until 6 P. M., Thursday, July
21; that it was the company's desire to retain those of its former
workmen who had not taken part in the disturbances, and that the
positions of those who failed to comply with this notice would be given
to non-union men.
The locked-out men treated this manifesto with indifference, letting the
prescribed period pass by without any sign of a desire to return to work
on Mr. Frick's terms. Their sole reply was embodied in a circular issued
July 22, wherein it was set forth that the workingmen of Homestead and
the general public had a vested interest in the great industrial
establishment built up by the labor of the one and indirectly sustained
by tariff taxes paid by the other; that those interests would be
asserted and defended in the courts and the halls of legislation and
that the men rested their cause--"the cause of American liberty against
anarchy on the one hand and despotism on the other, with the courts, the
legislatures and the public conscience."
On this same day a large force of non-union men reported at the Carnegie
offices in Pittsburgh and were shipped to Homestead on the Tide,
starting from the Monongahela wharf amid the jeers of a crowd of
on-lookers. Similar trips were made every day thereafter, the safe
arrival of the first batches of recruits having emboldened others. Once
the ball was set rolling, the firm experienced little trouble in
securing men. There is always an army of unemployed in the United
States, and upon these as well as underpaid workers in various
lines--clerks, struggling young professional men and others--who were
tempted by the high wages said to be paid at Homestead the firm could
and did draw freely. The Homestead leaders contended that it would be
impossible to operate the mills without a force of expert steel workers,
but Mr. Frick seemed to care little about skill as long as he could
secure men able and willing to learn the work entrusted to them. The
mills, it appeared, were to be a school in which an entirely new set of
artisans were to be instructed, regardless of the losses that must be
sustained in the process.
[Illustration: BRINGING IN NON-UNIONISTS.]
In the meantime trouble was brewing in other concerns operated by the
Carnegie Company. Mr. Frick had already signed the scale at the
Pittsburgh and Beaver Falls mills, and expected to accomplish at these
plants much of the work which was suspended at Homestead. The workmen at
both places, however, sympathized with their brethren at Homestead and
decided accordingly to break their contract with the firm and go out on
strike until the trouble at Homestead should be fairly adjusted. The
Pittsburgh men, employed at the Upper and Lower Union Mills in
Lawrenceville, went out on July 15 and the Beaver Falls men on the
following day. The mill at Duquesne was non-union, but there, too, the
spirit of resistance manifested itself and on July 19, the men took
preliminary steps toward entering the Amalgamated Association so as to
be in proper shape to strike. On July 20 the Duquesne lodges were
permanently organized and on the 23d a strike was declared.
Homestead was now, in a degree, under martial law, the power of the
borough authorities being limited to the arrest of drunken and
disorderly persons. Two companies of soldiers did guard duty on the
streets and had orders to arrest any of Burgess McLuckie's special
policemen found exceeding their duty.
Life in Camp Black was anything but a bed of roses. Colonel Hawkins'
command spent two days and nights on the hills above Port Perry without
tents and suffered much from the inclemency of the weather, broiling
heat alternating with rain that drenched the men to the skin. A storm
blew down most of the tents on the second day of the encampment.
The first alarm that brought the soldiers out occurred after midnight on
July 15. Someone brought in word that the camp was to be attacked from
the rear. Bugles were sounded, the drums beat to arms, and in a few
minutes the Second and Third brigades were ready for action and threw
out their skirmish lines, while the force of pickets was doubled. The
alarm proved to be a false one; nevertheless the Sixteenth regiment was
kept under arms until daybreak.
It had been decided that the period of service at Homestead should take
the place of the regular annual encampment of the National Guard, and
Governor Pattison and his staff arrived accordingly on the 19th to
conduct the annual inspection, to which a week's time was devoted. Some
of the workmen supposed that the Governor might entertain the idea of
mediating between the conflicting parties, but it was soon found that he
harbored no such design. He visited the mills, inspected the scene of
the battle with the Pinkertons and conversed informally with citizens of
the town concerning the history of the trouble, but declined to
interfere further, confining himself mainly to his official functions as
Commander of the National Guard. Quarters were assigned to the Governor
and his staff in three comfortable cottages belonging to the Carnegie
Company, adjoining the Carnegie hotel on Eighth avenue, and opposite the
main entrance to the steel works. General Snowden and his staff had been
patronizing the hotel cuisine, previously sacred to the discriminating
palates of the Carnegie officials. An odd incident temporarily deprived
the General of this accommodation. One morning the head waiter, having
formed the opinion that the troops were helping to take the bread out of
the mouths of the workingmen, informed the proprietor that he could not
be instrumental in conveying the staff of life to the mouths of "the
enemy" and resigned on the spot. The head cook followed, and the
under-waiters and cooks went out with their leaders. When the officers
arrived for breakfast and found that there was nothing to eat, the air
was made blue with profanity. The boycott was one which all the military
force of the commonwealth was powerless to lift. After this, General
Snowden had his meals prepared and served at headquarters by a colored
cook drafted from one of the regiments. Young women who could be relied
on not to indulge in a sympathetic strike were installed in the places
of the cooks and waiters who had deserted from the hotel.
While the workmen were somewhat dismayed by the signs of activity within
the mill enclosure, feeling, as they did, that the thin end of the
non-union wedge had already been inserted, they stoutly refused to admit
that the firm could find enough skilled steelworkers in the country to
operate the mill or could successfully utilize green hands in the
intricate work which it had taken old employees, in many cases, years to
learn. This argument seemed invincible and was used on every hand as
confirming the supposition that the firm was merely making a pretense of
manning and operating the mill, so as to discourage the old hands and
provoke a stampede back to work. Such devices as this, the men said,
would be futile. The Homestead workers were firmly bound together and
there would be no deserters from their ranks. Mr. Frick might be able to
get non-union laborers, helpers, blacksmiths, mechanics, carpenters and
painters, but all these had to depend on the skilled labor of the men
who made the steel. Without rollers, heaters, shearers, cutters and
other trained workers, the mills could not start, and on these the
Amalgamated Association had a solid hold and would maintain it.
"Our weapon," said Hugh O'Donnell, "will be the boycott--the
workingman's only effective weapon. While Carnegie is seeking to starve
us into submission, we will endeavor to strike a blow at his every
industry. The strikes at Lawrenceville and Beaver Falls, and the action
of some of the carpenters' unions in refusing to work in buildings where
Carnegie's structural material is used constitute the kind of assistance
that we want."
There was certainly abundant reason for anticipating a general boycott
of the Carnegie Company's product. Labor unions in Pittsburgh, Chicago,
Philadelphia and elsewhere were holding meetings and pledging themselves
to carry out the program outlined by O'Donnell and it was even reported
that the railroad brotherhoods would interpose to prevent the
transportation of freight to and from the various Carnegie plants.
In any case there was no fear of actual suffering among the locked-out
men for a long time to come. Under the rules of the Amalgamated
Association, strike benefits would be paid out of the treasury of the
order and an additional and comfortably large fund was created by the
contributions which flowed into Homestead daily from every section of
the country.
There was also a strong conviction among the men that the Republican
party leaders would come to the rescue. The political aspect of the wage
dispute was explained in a previous chapter. This phase of the matter
was taken up with fierce avidity by the Democratic press after the
conflict of July 6, and the country rang with denunciations of a
protective policy which protected the manufacturer only and left reduced
wages and Pinkerton lead to the workingman as his share of tariff
benefits. Genuine apprehension was felt among the Republican
politicians, and Republican newspaper organs, seeing and dreading the
disturbed condition of the labor world, hardly dared respond to the
sneers of the opposition. The high tariff party had so long catered to
the labor vote that the problem of meeting labor's demands with regard
to Homestead was full of embarrassment, and it was evident that
President Harrison's prospects of re-election were seriously threatened.
The leaders at Homestead, knowing the dependence of the Carnegie Company
on tariff legislation and believing that the fealty of Messrs. Carnegie
and Frick to the Republican party would be an all-powerful consideration
in a crisis wherein the presidency itself was at stake, sent Hugh
O'Donnell to New York to confer secretly with General Clarkson and other
ruling spirits in the Republican national committee. O'Donnell left on
this mission on July 17. On the following day Mr. Frick played another
trump card, the forcing out of the military having been the first of a
hand which the implacable little chairman confidently asserted would
turn out to be all trumps.
Burgess John McLuckie was arrested on the charge of murder.
And this was not all. The information, lodged before Alderman McMasters,
of Pittsburgh, in pursuance of which the warrant for McLuckie's arrest
was issued, included also the names of Hugh O'Donnell, Sylvester
Critchlow, Anthony Flaherty, Samuel Burkett, James Flannigan and Hugh
Ross. F. T. F. Lovejoy, secretary of the Carnegie Company, was the
prosecutor and he affirmed that the men named "did of their malice
aforethought feloniously and riotously with force and arms and deadly
weapons kill and murder one T. J. Connors then and there being in the
peace of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania." A second information charged
the same persons with the murder of Silas Wain.
Three constables were sent to Homestead to make the arrests. They
applied to General Snowden for assistance, which was promptly furnished,
two companies of infantry being detailed to their support. At the same
time the patrols were increased and two regiments were kept under arms
so as to be ready for any contingency. No trouble was experienced,
however. The accused had been forewarned and all, with the exception of
O'Donnell and McLuckie, had locked up their houses and gone into hiding.
The doughty burgess, strong in the consciousness of his innocence, went
to Pittsburgh at an early hour, surrendered himself at the alderman's
office and was committed to jail. Before the prison gates closed upon
him, he informed the newspaper representatives that the Amalgamated men,
in turn, would make informations against Carnegie, Frick and Potter. "We
will make this man Frick come down on his knees so hard that the sound
will be heard in the farthest corner of civilization" was honest John's
last observation as he was led into durance.
Secretary Lovejoy also had something to say for the enlightenment of the
public. "We have good cases against 1000 of these men," he said "and
from now on from twelve to fifteen informations will be made every day.
The laws of Pennsylvania are very broad on this subject. Persons who
were on the premises at the time of the shooting are liable not only as
accessories, but as principals."
McLuckie spent only one night in jail, being released next morning on
$10,000 bail after a brief hearing before Judge Magee in the county
criminal court. He took the first train for Homestead and was received
there with acclamations, the townspeople turning out _en masse_ to
receive him. A procession was formed in his honor, and to the strains of
"Home, Sweet Home," performed with unusual energy by the crack brass
band of the town, the hero of the hour was escorted to the rink, where
he made a speech of thanks to the people.
Hugh O'Donnell no sooner heard that a warrant was out for his arrest
than he suspended his operations in New York and returned to Homestead.
Like McLuckie, he spared the constables the trouble of arresting him
and, in company with Hugh Ross, proceeded to Pittsburgh with the
intention of surrendering. The two men went directly into the criminal
court and, without the aid of an attorney, presented themselves to Judge
Magee. O'Donnell addressed the judge, explaining that he had not sought
to evade the arrest and asking that the law take its course. The judge
was non-plussed by the unprecedented behavior of the two workmen in thus
walking calmly into what was, from their point of view, the "lion's
den," but, after some questioning, advised them to surrender themselves
at the office of Alderman McMasters. This they did, and within an hour,
they were behind prison bars. Two days later Peter Allen and Nathan Foy
were arrested at their homes and lodged in jail.
An application for the admission of O'Donnell and his companions to bail
was heard by Judge Magee on Saturday, July 23. Attorneys William J.
Brennen and John F. Cox appeared for the defendants on behalf of the
Amalgamated Association, and District Attorney Clarence Burleigh and D.
F. Patterson, Esq. represented the prosecution. The testimony of a
number of Pinkerton detectives, newspaper reporters, deputy sheriffs and
others was taken, showing conclusively O'Donnell's leadership and his
presence at the battle in the mill yard. The defence argued that
O'Donnell's part in the "riot" was that of a peacemaker. Judge Magee
reserved his decision until Monday, when he finally admitted the four
prisoners to bail in the sum of $10,000 each, the case having "within
its possibility a conviction of murder in the second degree."
The succession of arrests had, of course, a depressing effect on the
people of Homestead. A still more discouraging circumstance was General
Snowden's announcement that the troops would be kept in Homestead until
one side or the other should give in. As long as the troops remained the
mill was so securely guarded that the question was not merely of
providing against violence but of preventing the Amalgamated men from
obtaining access to the non-unionists and bringing persuasion to bear
upon them after the manner customary with labor organizations. General
Snowden was denounced without stint for what the men construed as a
desire on his part to play into the hands of the Carnegie Company. But
the General did not seem to mind denunciations. The last attempt to
subjugate him was made by the high constable of the borough on an
occasion when a stray cow had paid the debt of nature within the lines
of the encampment. The constable undertook to storm the enemy's works
with a view to compelling the interment of the cow with the honors of
war, but was seized and incarcerated over night in the guard house.
With the fall of this functionary came the collapse of all that remained
of civil authority in Homestead, and thereafter General Snowden's word
was law.
The advisory committee was sorely perplexed over the disposition to be
made of the guns taken from the Pinkertons. The Attorney General of the
state was addressed on the subject but declined to give advice, and it
was doubtful that the guns could lawfully be retained as the "spoils of
war." Ultimately the individual holders of the weapons settled the
matter in their own way by hiding the trophies where prying detectives
would be unable to find them.
The death of George W. Rutter, at the Homeopathic hospital, Pittsburgh,
on July 18 closed the list of fatalities on the side of the workingmen.
Rutter remained in a delirium until the last, always imagining in his
ravings that he was back on the bank of the Monongahela, fighting
against the Pinkertons. He was buried at Verona, Pa., where his widow
and children resided.
CHAPTER XII.
[Illustration: THE SHOOTING OF FRICK.]
BERKMAN, A RUSSIAN AUTONOMIST, ATTEMPTS THE LIFE OF THE CARNEGIE
CHAIRMAN--MR. FRICK'S BRAVERY--"THE SHOOTING WILL IN NO WAY
AFFECT THE HOMESTEAD STRIKE"--MILITIAMAN IAMS CHEERS THE
ASSASSIN AND IS DRUMMED OUT OF CAMP--PUBLIC INDIGNATION OVER
THE IAMS AFFAIR--SNOWDEN, HAWKINS, STREATOR AND NEFF
INDICTED--WORKINGMEN PROSECUTE CARNEGIE OFFICIALS FOR MURDER.
"Frick is shot!"
Such was the appalling announcement blazoned on bulletin boards, passed
from mouth to mouth and hurried over the telegraph wires on the
afternoon of Saturday, July 23, while O'Donnell and Ross were undergoing
their preliminary hearing in the county court. The first question on
every lip was, "Did a Homestead man do the shooting?" and great was the
feeling of relief among the sympathizers of organized labor when it was
learned that the would-be assassin, Alexander Berkman, was a Russian
anarchist, and that his crime was prompted solely by the teachings of
the infamous class of outlaws to which he belonged.
Berkman came to the United States in 1886, fresh from the University of
Odessa, where he had inbibed the principals of the Autonomists--extreme
Anarchists who believe in redressing social wrongs by individual action.
He became a compositor in the office of Johann Most's paper, _Die
Freiheit_, wrote freely for Anarchistic publications and allied himself
with the worst class of revolutionary plotters in the metropolis. The
beginning of 1893 found him living with Emma Goldman, a Russian woman of
some note as a speech maker among the Anarchists, and spending much of
his time in the beer halls frequented by Anarchists and Nihilists.
Berkman seemed to be consumed with a desire to shine in the eyes of his
mistress and of the blatant, beer-sodden circle of which she was the
star, by giving a practical exemplification of his fidelity to
Autonomist doctrine.
"Who is the worst enemy of society in America?" he asked himself, and
when the Homestead trouble broke out, he imagined that his question was
answered.
Frick was the man--Frick, the oppressor of workmen, the representative
of the power of wealth and of might antagonizing right. "Undoubtedly,"
thought Berkman, "this man is society's arch-enemy and a fit mark for
the weapon of an Autonomist."
So the misguided wretch made up his mind to murder the Carnegie
chairman, and proceeded accordingly to Pittsburgh, armed for
assassination. In company with Henry Bauer and Carl Knold,
active anarchists of Allegheny City, Berkman inspected the
_Chronicle-Telegraph_ building on Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, in which
Mr. Frick's office is located, and mapped out a program of attack.
Representing himself as an employment agent, who desired to confer with
the Carnegie chairman regarding the furnishing of non-union labor, he
experienced little trouble in obtaining access to Mr. Frick's private
room. He made several visits before the day of the shooting, and was
suspected by no one. The neatly-attired, slight, young man who appeared
so anxious to help the firm in its endeavors to procure workmen was one
of the last men who would be supposed to harbor murderous designs.
At noon on the day set for the consummation of his plan, Berkman sent in
his card to Mr. Frick, requesting an interview, but was referred to the
clerk whose business it was to supervise the transportation of non-union
men to Homestead. The clerk was out and Berkman was told to call again
later. Shortly before two o'clock, Berkman returned and again asked to
see Mr. Frick. He was informed that the Chairman was engaged. After
waiting a few minutes in the hall outside the anteroom adjoining Mr.
Frick's office, he came back once more, and finding nobody present but
the office-boy, handed the lad his card and told him to take it in to
the Chairman. The boy had hardly opened the door of Mr. Frick's office
when Berkman rushed in, drew a revolver and opened fire. Mr. Frick, who
was seated at his desk in conversation with Mr. Leishman, one of his
partners, had his back turned to the intruder and offered an easy mark.
Berkman fired three shots in quick succession, the first two lodging in
Mr. Frick's neck, while the third struck the ceiling. The assassin
attempted to fire a fourth time, but the cartridge failed to explode.
He snapped the trigger several times and finding that the revolver
would not work, threw it on the ground, and, pulling out a stiletto,
advanced upon Mr. Frick, who, wounded as he was, had risen to his feet
to defend himself. Twice Berkman plunged the stiletto into Mr. Frick's
side and he was about to strike a third time when the wounded man,
summoning up all the strength left to him, seized his assailant's arm
and grappled with him in a fierce struggle for life.
All this passed so rapidly that the clerks in the adjoining offices were
unable to reach the scene of the encounter until the moment when Mr.
Frick and Berkman clinched. When they entered, Berkman had the Chairman
pressed against the large window looking out on Fifth avenue and was
trying to release the hand that held the stiletto. Both men were covered
with blood and a pool of blood was on the floor. On the street without,
then thronged with Saturday afternoon promenaders, people stood
transfixed with horror. Some shrieked helplessly. Some, with more
presence of mind, ran to summon the police.
The clerks quickly released Mr. Frick from the grasp of his assailant
and placed him on a lounge. Berkman dashed out of the office, with
several clerks in pursuit, and was caught in the elevator, given in
charge of the police and removed to the Central Station in a patrol
wagon.
Dr. Litchfield, Mr. Frick's family physician, and a number of other
medical men arrived promptly and took charge of the wounded man. Mr.
Frick had not lost consciousness and was able to recognize and speak to
the physicians. They wished to place him under the influence of
chloroform while probing for the bullets, but he forbade this and
submitted stoically to the operation, which lasted two hours. The
extraordinary nerve of the man never left him. After the bullets had
been extracted and his wounds bandaged, he conversed collectedly with
visitors, signed several letters which had been written before the
shooting and talked of being in condition to return to his office on
Monday.
Meanwhile an excited multitude thronged the street outside the Carnegie
offices and defied the efforts of the police to disperse it. At 6
o'clock an ambulance drove up, but it was not used. The news that Mr.
Frick was to be removed to his private residence at Homewood, in the
East End, had spread among the people and the desire to catch a glimpse
of him made the mob unmanageable. Not until 7.45 o'clock was the removal
accomplished. At that hour the crowd was drawn away by driving an
ambulance to the rear of the Carnegie offices. The vehicle was driven
quickly back again, and Mr. Frick was placed in it and carried off while
the coast was clear.
Before being removed to his home, Mr. Frick sent this message to the
reporters: "The shooting will in no way effect the Homestead strike."
Dangerous as the Carnegie Chairman's injuries were, his recovery was
rapid, and two weeks after his encounter with Berkman he was able to
return to his office and resume full charge of the firm's affairs to
which, while on his sick bed, he had still continued to give a
considerable measure of attention.
Berkman was taken to the county jail on Sunday night, there to await
trial. He seemed indifferent to his fate and expressed regret that he
had not succeeded in killing Frick. Bauer and Knold, his supposed
accomplices, were locked up on the following day. A wagon load of
Anarchist literature was seized at the house of Bauer, who acted as an
agent for publications of this character.
The effect of the shooting on public opinion was strongly marked. The
press of Pittsburgh was unanimous in expressing sympathy for Mr. Frick,
and in so doing, voiced the general sentiment of the people. At
Homestead much regret was expressed, and the workmen seemed to feel
that, although Berkman did not represent them or their cause, directly
or indirectly, his cowardly act was certain to prejudice their
interests.
Undoubtedly the attempt to murder Mr. Frick served to hasten the defeat
of the workingmen. The courage displayed by the Carnegie Chairman won
him admiration in quarters where he had previously been condemned, and
there were other circumstances which took the edge off the animosity
generated by his harshness towards organized labor. During the crisis at
Homestead, his young wife became a mother and, so powerfully did the
events in which her husband was the central figure effect her that, for
a time, she lay at the point of death. The child lived only a few days.
Mr. Frick, it was said, in recognition of the fact that the New York
_Sun_ was the only newspaper in the country which took up the cudgels in
his behalf, intended to name the little one Charles A. Dana Frick, after
the editor of that journal. These incidents conspired to soften the
popular heart somewhat, although Mr. Frick did not abate in the least
his hostility towards the Amalgamated men and his determination to break
the back of unionism in the Carnegie mills at any cost.
There was, however, one man in Allegheny county who neither sympathized
with Frick nor scrupled to express his regret that Berkman's weapons
failed to do their work.
This man was W. L. Iams, a youth belonging to one of the best families
in Greene County, who was serving in Company K, Tenth Regiment, under
Colonel Hawkins.
Iams was stretched on the grass outside Lieutenant Colonel J. B.
Streator's tent, chatting with a group of comrades, when the news of the
attempt on Frick's life was brought in. Acting on the impulse of the
moment, and doubtless without measuring the significance of his words,
the young man jumped to his feet and shouted "Three cheers for the man
who shot Frick." Colonel Streator heard the remark and, stepping out of
his tent, asked who had uttered it. Receiving no response, he ordered
the regiment drawn up in line in the company streets, and, after
condemning the language used by Iams as treasonable, demanded from one
company after another the name of the offender. When he came to Company
K, Iams stepped forward from the ranks and said "I did it." The Colonel
asked him why. "Because I do not like Frick" was the answer. Iams was
ordered to apologize before the regiment but refused, and was thereupon
sent to the guard-house and subjected, without the benefit of a trial by
court-martial, to the most degrading punishment known under military
law. He was first strung up by the thumbs with notice that he would be
cut down as soon as he apologized. Although suffering exquisite torture,
the young man remained firm and declined to retract his words. After
hanging for a quarter of an hour, he lost consciousness and the
regimental surgeon, Dr. Neff, ordered him to be cut down. Iams was then
placed in the guard-house until his case was reported to Colonel
Hawkins, at the headquarters of the provisional brigade. The report was
returned with the approval of Colonel Hawkins and General Snowden and an
order from the latter that the man be disgraced and drummed out of camp.
Colonel Streator executed these directions to the letter. Iams' head and
face were half shaved; his uniform was exchanged for an old pair of
overalls and a shirt and dilapidated hat to match, and in this wretched
condition he was led out of camp to the tune of the "Rogues' March." His
sentence carried with it permanent exclusion from the National Guard and
disenfranchisement.
Iams proceeded to Pittsburgh and, strange to say, became the lion of the
hour. He announced his intention of prosecuting the officers concerned
in his punishment and a score of attorneys volunteered their services as
his counsel. Among these was Frank P. Iams, Esq., a cousin of the young
man, who was engaged in practice at the Pittsburgh bar.
Within twenty-four hours the Iams case became a National _cause
celebre_. It was discussed everywhere from Maine to California. Military
authorities waxed warm over it. Legal authorities squabbled over it.
Professional publicists were interviewed concerning it.
Editors made it the subject of tremendous publications. Pictures of
Iams, hairless, mustacheless and defiant appeared in the illustrated
weeklies. The Allegheny County Democrats, happening to have another
convention on hand at this time, took the matter up in a political way,
and as it happened that Colonel Streator was a well-known and popular
Democratic club man, "confusion worse confounded" followed the endeavors
of the workingmen in the convention to secure the passage of resolutions
excoriating the "brutal and inhuman" conduct of Iams' superior officers.
The preponderance of sentiment was everywhere against the officers. In
inflicting a punishment so severe and unusual on a thoughtless youth,
whose insubordinate conduct might have been otherwise chastised with
equally good effect, and especially in denying him even a drumhead
court-martial, they were held guilty of tyrannically exceeding their
authority.
Iams carried out his threat of prosecuting the officers and indictments
were subsequently found against General Snowden, Colonel Hawkins,
Colonel Streator and Surgeon Neff. The trial, however, resulted in the
acquittal of the defendants, the judge and jury being satisfied that
whether the punishment inflicted on Iams fitted the crime or not,
military law permitted its infliction.
After two weeks' service, the military force at Homestead was reduced to
three regiments of infantry, a troop of cavalry and a battery, the
retiring regiments breaking camp on July 27 and 28. Those that remained
were booked for a term of service which was to end only when the
Carnegie mills were in undisturbed operation, an order of things which
was not to be finally established until more than two months later.
Mr. Frick's illness did not stay the hand of Secretary Lovejoy, who
continued to lodge informations against the participants in the affair
of July 6. Pinkerton detectives and a few newspaper reporters who had
been placed on the Carnegie Company's pay-roll furnished the secretary
with the necessary testimony. The first of the workmen to be held
without bail was Sylvester Critchlow, a daring fellow who had done
active duty as a sharpshooter in the mill-yard. Samuel Stewart, a clerk
in the mill, swore that he had seen Critchlow fire at the men in the
barges, and on this evidence the defendant was held liable for first
degree murder and committed to jail pending his trial.
The workmen, for their part, proceeded to carry out their threat of
prosecuting the Carnegie officials. Hugh Ross, himself under bail on the
charge of murder, made information before Alderman King, of the South
Side, Pittsburgh, charging that H. C. Frick, F. T. F. Lovejoy, Robert
Pinkerton, William Pinkerton, J. A. Potter, G. A. Corey, J. G. A.
Leishman, H. M. Curry, C. W. Bedell, Fred. Primer, W. H. Burt, Nevin
McConnell, James Dovey, John Cooper and Fred. W. Hinde "did kill and
murder John E. Morris, George W. Rutter, Silas Wain and Joseph Sotak."
The arrest of Chairman Frick was to be deferred until he should recover
from his wounds. As the Homestead men, for the most part, had been
arrested at such times and under such circumstances as compelled them to
spend a night in jail, before securing a hearing in court on their
application for admission to bail, Ross made special efforts to have the
Carnegie officials subjected to the same experience. This manoeuvre,
however, was defeated. Messrs. Leishman, Lovejoy and Curry, hearing that
warrants were out for their arrest, went at once, in company with a
formidable array of counsel, to the criminal court where Judge Ewing was
sitting, and asked for admission to bail. Judge Ewing said he could not
hear the applications until the defendants had appeared before an
alderman and either waived examination or been held for court; but with
a degree of courtesy probably never before exhibited in a criminal court
he dispatched a messenger for Alderman King, permitted the defendants to
waive a hearing and then went on to consider the question of bail. This
was speedily disposed of. The Judge declined to consider the
representations made by the attorneys of the Amalgamated Association as
to the entrance into the case of the elements of first degree murder.
There was no equality, he held, between the Carnegie officials and the
men in the conflict of July 6. The former were exercising their rights;
the latter were rioters and trespassers, whom it was proper to oppose
with arms. He, therefore, would admit the defendants to bail in the sum
of $10,000.
Messrs. Dovey and McConnell, superintendents of departments in the
Homestead mill, were arrested later and passed the night in jail.
Superintendent Potter and G. A. Corey evaded the constables and
presented themselves before Judge Ewing next morning. Alderman King was
again brought into court and the four men were released on bail in the
same manner as Messrs. Leishman, Lovejoy and Curry. The court ordered
also that Mr. Frick give $10,000 bail and that it be taken at his home.
Judge Ewing was roundly denounced by the workingmen for the lengths to
which he had gone to spare the Carnegie officials the humiliation which
O'Donnell and his companions had been forced to endure. "Evidently,"
they said, "the judges are prejudiced against us and are bent upon
discriminating in favor of our rich and influential antagonists."
Another disquieting circumstance was the verdict arrived at by the
coroner's jury in pursuance of the inquest held on the men who were
killed in the Homestead conflict. In each instance the killing was
charged to an "unlawful assembly," and the jury recommended that "said
unlawful assembly be certified to the September sessions of the grand
jury."
On August 2, Attorney Brennen presented to court a petition signed by
sixty-seven steelworkers of Pittsburgh and Homestead, praying that a
license be issued for the establishment of a voluntary trade tribunal,
in conformity with an act passed in 1883, to arbitrate differences in
the steel trade. The acceptance of the terms of the act must be mutual
between employers and employed. Mr. Brennen entertained hopes that the
Carnegie firm, seeing the willingness of the men to submit to
arbitration, might yet consent to this mode of adjustment. Secretary
Lovejoy settled the matter definitely in the negative by the brief
statement that "The question of recognizing the Amalgamated Association
cannot be arbitrated."
This was the last overture made to the firm on behalf of the workmen.
The latter, however, continued to keep up their courage and maintained
an almost unbroken front, desertions being few and far between. Mass
meetings were held frequently and at these it was invariably agreed that
the mill could not be operated with non-union men, that sooner or later
the firm must yield to the pressure of circumstances and that, with the
help received from the treasury of the Amalgamated Association and from
other sources, the locked-out men could hold out, if necessary, for a
year or more.
There were some who foresaw the collapse of these castles in the air,
but, rather than place themselves under the suspicion of lukewarmness,
they held their peace.
CHAPTER XIII.
[Illustration: BERKMAN & IAMS]
FRICK'S ASSAILANT RAILROADED TO THE PENITENTIARY--THE IAMS
TRIAL--HANGING BY THE THUMBS APPROVED BY A JURY--THE MILLS
FILLING UP--SERMONS TO NON-UNIONISTS--STRIKERS GO THROUGH THE
PLANT--THE RELIEF FUND--GOMPERS ARRIVES AND MAKES AN
INCENDIARY SPEECH--PITTSBURGH AND MAHONING MANUFACTURERS
CAPITULATE--WILLIAM AND ROBERT PINKERTON ON THE DEFENSIVE.
Anarchist Berkman received but a short shrift. He was placed on trial
before Judge McClung on September 19, appearing at the bar without an
attorney and without witnesses. His demeanor was cool and indifferent.
District Attorney Burleigh presented six indictments, charging the
prisoner with offenses ranging from felonious assault and battery down
to carrying concealed weapons.
Mr. Frick was placed on the stand and told the story of the shooting,
and the blood-stained garments worn by the Carnegie chairman at the time
of the attack were put in evidence. Corroborative testimony was
furnished by Mr. Leishman and others.
The prosecution having closed its case, Berkman asked to be permitted to
testify in his own behalf. "I am not guilty," he said. "I have a
defense." A German interpreter was assigned to assist him. The
Anarchist's defense consisted of an inflammatory address covering forty
pages of closely written foolscap. As rendered into English by the
interpreter, sentence by sentence, it was almost unintelligible. It
proved, however, to be a review of the "blood-stained register of
America," beginning with the "murder" of John Brown, cropping out again
in the execution of the Chicago Anarchists who were concerned in the
Haymarket massacre, and culminating in the descent of the Pinkertons
upon Homestead. The statement bristled with denunciations of capitalists
as tyrants who oppress the workingmen, and the inference which it
finally conveyed was that Berkman considered himself a martyr of the
Chicago type whose exploits would serve to rivet the world's attention
on the enormity of the Carnegie Company's crimes against labor.
Strangely enough, it seemed not to dawn upon the mind of this young
fanatic that he and his fellow preachers of anarchy could not possibly
be mistaken as representing the element that toils for a subsistence,
and that a martyr to the cause of beer, blood and idleness must
necessarily be an object of contempt in the estimation alike of the
classes and the masses.
[Illustration: THE CONDEMNATION OF IAMS.]
Judge McClung confined his charge to a few perfunctory remarks and the
jury, without leaving the box, rendered a verdict of guilty on all six
indictments. Sentence was then imposed on each indictment, the
penalties aggregating 22 years imprisonment, twenty-one in the
penitentiary and one in the work-house.
The trial occupied just four hours, attesting that in this case at all
events, justice ceased to travel with a leaden heel.
The Iams episode was not so easily disposed of. Prosecutions were
entered against Colonels Hawkins and Streator and Surgeon Grim on the
charge of aggravated assault and battery, and the defendants were held
under bonds for trial at the September term of court. The trial began on
October 27, before Judge W. D. Porter, and continued for ten days. The
proceedings were watched with special interest by military men, owing to
the issue involved between civil and military law and the prospective
establishment of important precedents. Colonel J. R. Braddocks, of the
Pittsburgh bar, State Senator Edward E. Robbins, of Greensburg, and J.
M. Braden and Albert Sprowls, of Washington, Pa., appeared as counsel
for the defendants; and Frank P. Iams, a cousin of the disgraced
militiaman, and John D. Watson, both of the Pittsburgh bar, conducted
the prosecution.
The defense opened the proceedings by demanding that the indictment be
quashed on the ground that the punishment of Iams was commensurate with
the enormity of his offense against good order and military discipline,
that it conformed to military law, and that jurisdiction in the case
properly belonged to a military tribunal. After some intricate
controversy, Judge Porter denied the plea and ordered the trial to go
on.
Attorney Watson opened for the prosecution, giving a graphic recital of
the torture to which the prosecutor, Iams, had been subjected. Iams
himself was placed on the stand and related his experiences, a fair
conception of which may be formed from the following extract from his
testimony:
"When I was first tied up I asked for a chew of tobacco. Soon I
began to grow tired; my legs cramped; my head ached; my eyes
felt as if they were being pushed from their sockets; the
muscles in the back of my neck seemed as if they were being torn
from the base of the skull. I suffered terrible agony. It seemed
to me that I had been suspended in the air a week before being
cut down. I saw Colonel Streator there. When I was cut down I
was in a dazed condition; everything seemed blurred. The first
thing I remember was when some one gave me some ammonia. I was
lying on the ground; had a terrible headache. Some one gave me
some whiskey. I remained in the guard tent all night."
Attorney Braden endeavored to show on cross-examination that Iams had
prearranged to misbehave in order to secure his discharge; that he had
swallowed tobacco in order to make him sick while under punishment, and
that he had admitted to a friend that the punishment did not hurt him
much, but the lawyer failed to shake the young man's testimony. Before
leaving the stand, Iams stated that if the defendants were convicted it
was his intention to bring a civil suit against them for damages.
Several members of Iams' company were called as witnesses and
corroborated the details of the young man's story. John H. Gladden, an
hospital nurse of the Tenth regiment, testified that he had seen Iams
trussed up by the thumbs, but watched the proceedings only for ten
minutes, as the sight sickened him. Private Kent swore that Colonel
Streator, on hearing it rumored that Iams meant to shoot him on sight,
said that he (Iams) "had better keep out of the way, or he would shoot
him if he could hit at forty yards."
Senator Robbins, whose interest in the case was sharpened by the fact
that he was quartermaster-general of the Tenth regiment, opened for the
defense. He denied that the case had the elements of an assault,
questioned the severity of Iams' punishment, and warned the jury that
the conviction of the defendants must be followed by the destruction of
discipline in the National Guard. Deputy Sheriff Gray was brought
forward by the prosecution to tell the story of the lock-out at
Homestead, the exhaustion of the Sheriff's powers and the fate of the
Pinkertons, so as to make clear the gravity of the conditions with which
the military had to cope. The defense interposed a statement to the
effect that the Governor had exceeded his authority in ordering out the
troops, but this was overruled by the court.
Colonel Streator's story did not materially conflict with that told by
Iams. Colonel Hawkins testified that on the afternoon when Mr. Frick was
attacked he received two communications by signal, one stating that
Frick had been shot by a striker, the other that Frick was dead and that
extraordinary precautions were necessary. He had thereupon ordered all
commanders to be on the alert, to double their camp guards and to send
out three extra patrols. While the camp was in this state Iams had
proposed three cheers for the man who shot Frick. When Colonel Streator
reported the affair, witness had said to him: "Colonel, you know your
duty as a soldier." The situation was critical and prompt measures were
needed.
Robert W. Herbert, a newspaper reporter, said that Iams had told him of
his intention to shoot Streator, and that in speaking of General
Snowden, the young man had said, "I will get even with that four-eyed
---- ---- ---- on the hill." One of the hospital nurses swore that Iams
had made himself sick with tobacco, and another that Iams had been
drinking and wanted to be confined in the guard-house. Surgeon Grimm
illustrated for the court's edification the knot, known as a
close-hitch, by which the rope was fastened on Iams' thumbs, and
described it as not being a severe kind of knot. Veterans of the civil
war bore witness that the punishment suffered by Iams was in accordance
with the usages of war and that it was mild considering the gravity of
the offense.
An amusing _lapsus linguae_ marked the evidence of Colonel Norman M.
Smith, of the Eighteenth regiment. Here was the colloquy:
ATTORNEY IAMS.--"You have hung men up by the thumbs in your regiment?"
COLONEL SMITH.--"I have never had occasion, but if I had, I would
_cheerfully_ do so--I mean, I would do so. I wish to strike out the word
'cheerfully.' That was a slip." Whereupon an expansive smile illumined
every face in the court-room.
The closing speech for the defense, delivered by Senator Robbins, was a
fine forensic effort, bearing in the main on the absence of malice and
the necessity of extraordinary punishment when soldiers mutiny in the
field. Attorney Iams, in closing for the prosecution, compared his
relative to the Savior on the cross, and averred that the only reason
why the youth was not permitted to die while suspended by the thumbs was
because the defendants "wanted him alive next morning in order that they
could shave his head and drum him out of camp." Judge Porter charged
squarely in favor of the defense, telling the jury that, "If Colonel
Streator, in punishing Iams, was actuated only by upright motives in an
effort as an officer to maintain order, he should not be punished."
It took the jury twenty-one hours to arrive at a verdict. A few stood
out for conviction on the charge of simple assault and battery, which
had been ruled out by the court, and, to test the matter, an appeal was
made to Judge Porter for instructions. The judge replied with a scathing
rebuke. When the jurors next appeared they returned a verdict of
acquittal, but directed that, in the aggravated assault and battery
case, the costs be divided between Colonel Hawkins and Streator.
While there was much sympathy for Iams, this finding was commonly
regarded as a just one, in view of the supreme necessity of maintaining
discipline in the military service and the wide latitude permitted by
military usage in punishing delinquencies in the field. It is safe to
say, however, that the harsh penalties imposed upon Iams will never
again be resorted to in the National Guard of Pennsylvania without
reference to a court-martial.
While these events were in progress, the mills at Homestead were filling
up rapidly with non-union men. The Tide kept up her daily trips, and the
sight of brawny fellows with bundles, duly ticketed for "Fort Frick,"
became so common on the Monongahela wharf at Pittsburgh that people
ceased to marvel at it and to curse and scoff at the blacksheep. By the
first of August there were over 800 men at work, their board and lodging
being provided within the mill enclosure. Regimental chaplains were
secured to hold regular services on Sunday, with the assistance of a
band which took the place of a choir. Chaplain Hays, of the Fifteenth
regiment, preached the first sermon. His theme was "Saul of Tarsus,"
with which eminent biblical character he managed to connect Private Iams
and the anarchists, denouncing both the latter as liberally as he
praised the scriptural hero. After this sermon, the more illiterate of
the non-unionists were firmly convinced that Saul of Tarsus was the
leading non-unionist of his time besides being a regular martinet in
military matters.
Superintendent Potter now claimed openly that the strike was broken,
that about forty of the firm's old employees had quietly returned to
work and that a majority of the rest were ready and anxious to return.
The advisory board met these assertions with an emphatic denial,
crediting Mr. Potter with making a "gigantic bluff," as Vice Chairman
Thomas Crawford put it, for the purpose of discouraging the strikers.[B]
Mr. Potter, however, invited the advisory board to send a committee to
inspect the mill and verify his representations. The invitation was
accepted and four skilled steelworkers went through the plant and
narrowly inspected the work going on in every department. At a mass
meeting of the strikers, held on August 2, this committee reported
that, while it was true that a large number of men were at work in the
mill, little actual progress was being made, and that the consequent
loss to the firm was heavy enough to justify the most sanguine
expectations on the side of the Amalgamated Association. The chief
officers of the Association were present when the report was made, and
delivered speeches full of enthusiasm and confidence. Every man at the
meeting pledged himself to stay out to the bitter end.
[B] The term "strikers" is used here because, when the
firm invited its employees to return to work, the
lock-out ceased, and the union men were placed in the
position of being on a strike.
An attempt to "evangelize" the non-unionists was made by the
distribution of circulars appealing to their manhood in the name of
organized labor. These bills were dropped into the mill yard from trains
passing over the Pemickey bridge and seemed to produce some effect,
inasmuch as several of the non-unionists left the mill and accepted
money from the Amalgamated Association to take them to their homes.
Unfortunately the ease with which funds were obtained in this way led
many of the worst characters in the mill, after being dismissed for
laziness or misconduct, to make descents on the Association's treasury,
backing up their demands with amazing tales of the difficulties
experienced in trying to operate the mills with green hands, including
accidents of the most appalling description. Many of these fictions
crept into the newspapers and produced a sensation.
The relief fund established for the benefit of the strikers was swelled
daily by contributions from all parts of the United States and Canada,
ranging in amount from one to twelve hundred dollars. Soliciting
committees were sent into the coal and coke regions and elsewhere and
met on every hand with a generous reception. An immense sum was needed
to meet the daily demands of the army of the unemployed. The disbursing
officers, however, husbanded their resources by refusing to give out
cash. To those in need of assistance orders on the grocery stores for
provisions were issued. The amounts given out in this way aggregated
about $3,000 a day.
President Samuel Gompers, of the American Federation of Labor, with
which the Amalgamated Association is affiliated, arrived in Pittsburgh,
accompanied by the other executive officers of the Federation, on August
12 and settled down at once to the injection of new life into the
Homestead campaign. On Saturday, the 14th, he addressed 1500 men in the
Homestead rink, throwing a ferocious vigor into his remarks which verged
on incendiarism. Of the assault on Mr. Frick he said:
"I have been asked for my opinion of the attack on the life of
Mr. Frick. I don't know why I should be asked to go out of my
way to give Berkman an additional kick. I never heard of him
until after he made his attack. The laws of Pennsylvania will
take care of him. I do know, however, that I have heard of
thousands of men being shot down by day and by night, each and
every one of whom was a better man than this despot, Frick. Yet
I have never been asked for my opinion of any of these cases."
Mr. Gompers intimated that a boycott might be declared against the
Carnegie Company, in spite of the decisions of the Pennsylvania courts
construing boycotting as conspiracy, and he added that he would not fear
to come personally within the borders of Pennsylvania and declare it.
A highly encouraging event which took place at this time was the signing
of the scale by the Pittsburgh iron manufacturers. The manufacturers'
committee and the wage committee of the Amalgamated Association had been
holding a succession of conferences, without approaching a settlement
for a period of fully six weeks. Not until the second week in August did
they arrive at an agreement. On the evening of the 11th the stubborn
determination which characterized both sides was suddenly relaxed and
the labor world was surprised with the announcement that the
manufacturers had decided to sign the scale in consideration of a 10 per
cent. reduction in the wages of finishers--the highest priced men
employed in steel mills. They had originally demanded a reduction of
puddlers' wages from $5.50 to $4.50 per ton. This the Association
steadily resisted and with unquestionable justice. Even the _American
Manufacturer_, the biased organ of the employers, was forced to admit
editorially that the puddler, being a handicraftsman and in no wise
affected by mechanical improvements, was not a proper subject for a wage
reduction. Finding this demand hopelessly untenable, the manufacturers
asked instead for a reduction in finishers' wages, and after fifteen
useless conferences, suggested that the matter be referred for
arbitration, as the Amalgamated committee had no power to act. The
arbitration proposal was submitted to the lodges and overwhelmingly
rejected, but the wage committee was authorized to act on a change in
the finishers' scale. It was then decided to submit to the 10 per cent.
reduction. The effect of this settlement was to give work at once to
40,000 idle men in the Pittsburgh district, and as the Mahoning Valley
manufacturers and workmen quickly followed suit, the entire iron
district of Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio was relieved from a
situation pregnant with disaster to employers and workmen alike. The
finishers were the only disgruntled ones, and so keenly did they resent
what they professed to regard as unjust discrimination against their
interests that a number of them seceded from the Amalgamated Association
and formed a union of their own.
At Homestead the signing of the scale by the Manufacturers' Association
was regarded as a capitulation to the power of organized labor which
must force the Carnegie Company to abandon its individual fight.
It was the belief that Mr. Frick had been chosen to bear the brunt
of the general battle against the Amalgamated Association with the
understanding that, if he won, all the mills in the Pittsburgh district
would be made non-union; and the compromise agreed upon was accepted,
therefore, as meaning that the other manufacturers had lost faith in Mr.
Frick's ability to win, and that the Carnegie chairman himself could not
rationally continue his fight, now that his brethren had fallen away
from him. Subsequent events proved the baselessness of this supposition.
It was merely one of many straws at which the Homestead men grasped
eagerly in the face of the Carnegie firm's slow but sure fulfilment of
its pledge to fill the mills with non-union workmen and rely solely
thenceforward upon this class of labor.
The making of informations and counter-informations founded on the
Pinkerton affair went on uninterruptedly. Fred. Primer was the first of
the Pinkertons to be placed under arrest. He was held for court by
Alderman King on the strength of testimony showing that the first shot
on July 6 was fired from the barges. Primer, attended by the attorneys
for the Carnegie firm, was hurried before Judge Ewing, who promptly
released him on his own recognizance, stating very plainly at the same
time that whatever trouble occurred at Homestead was of the workmen's
own making and that no one else should be held responsible for the
consequences. The court also held Edward Burke in $10,000 bail on the
charge of murder preferred by Secretary Lovejoy. Burke had already
acquired some notoriety by an altercation with Sheriff McCleary on the
occasion of the Sheriff's last visit to Homestead before the arrival of
the troops.
The reader has been informed of the inspiriting effect produced upon
Sheriff McCleary by military protection. One of the first results
thereof was the enlistment of a corps of deputies to take the place of
the Homestead police, the latter officials being so thoroughly in
sympathy with the strikers that they devoted their attention chiefly to
the apprehension of non-union men who happened to stray out of the
works. The sight of a non-unionist was always sufficient to incite an
uproar and on several occasions riotous demonstrations were caused by
the appearance on the streets of men who had the hardihood to leave the
mill and walk abroad. The Sheriff kept adding to his force of deputies
according as the military guard was reduced, until when the last of the
troops left Homestead, there were enough civil officers employed to deal
with any ordinary disorder.
The congressional investigation which was begun at Pittsburgh was
resumed at Washington on July 23. Robert and William Pinkerton appeared
to testify, and a committee of the Knights of Labor, consisting of
Messrs. Hayes, Wright and Devlin, was also present and submitted to the
investigating committee a series of questions to be put to the
witnesses. The Pinkerton brothers presented a written statement, giving
a history of their agency and an account of its methods. They upheld the
character of their employees for trustworthiness and reliability, denied
that it was customary for their men to carry arms or that the men ever
wantonly or recklessly fired a shot or used weapons without being sworn
in as deputy sheriffs or otherwise properly authorized, and alleged that
the men sent to Homestead were to have been deputized and that Colonel
Gray was understood to be authorized to deputize them.
When the sub-committee charged with the investigation came to sum up and
prepare a report, it was found that the members were hopelessly divided,
so that the work done, as far as it was likely to affect congressional
action, might be considered as wasted. Some of the members, however, did
not hesitate to give publicity to their individual views. Mr. Bynum held
that if the Carnegie firm could legally bring in 300 Pinkerton guards,
it would be equally justified in bringing in 10,000--that is to say, a
full-sized army equipped to levy war. He spoke in very severe terms of
Sheriff McCleary, describing him as a "poltroon," whose conduct during
the riot was simply cowardly.
The House judiciary committee later received a supplementary statement
from the Pinkerton brothers, replying to attacks made upon Pinkertonism
by Senator Vest and Grand Master Workman Powderly of the K. of L.
In this document many crimes were charged to members of secret
labor organizations, and it was claimed that the organizations
themselves, instead of showing sincere solicitude for law and order, by
disciplining and controlling the guilty ones, were disposed to applaud
outrages committed in their name and to elevate the criminals, when
caught, to the dignity of martyrs. "Notwithstanding the protestations
of the leaders at Homestead," said the Messrs. Pinkerton in conclusion,
"no reasonable man can for a moment doubt that if the troops and deputy
sheriffs were withdrawn, the non-union men now working in the mills
would be murdered, and for no offense, no wrong, no injury to anyone."
[Illustration: PEMICKEY TRACK IN THE MILL YARD.]
CHAPTER XIV.
[Illustration: POLITICIANS AT WORK]
A SUPPRESSED CONGRESSIONAL REPORT--SYMPATHY STRIKES PROVE A
FAILURE--GOMPERS AS A BOYCOTT WIELDER--THE SLAVS WEAKEN--PLANS
OF THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE--SMOOTH MR. MILHOLLAND
ENLISTS HUGH O'DONNELL--HONEST JOHN McLUCKIE REFUSES TO BE
MUZZLED--THE MILHOLLAND SCHEME FALLS THROUGH--OUTBREAKS AT
HOMESTEAD--THE SEARCH FOR PINKERTON GUNS--MR. FRICK REVISITS
THE MILL.
For reasons which were never fully disclosed, the House committee on
Homestead, which entrusted to Representative Oates the preparation of a
report to the general judiciary committee, rejected the report when
completed and decided to let the whole matter drift over to the next
session of Congress. Mr. Oates found that the differences between the
Carnegie Company and its men might have been adjusted, had Mr. Frick
stated to the conference committee the "bottom facts" prompting the
demand for a reduction of wages, but the officers of the company invited
trouble by failing to exercise "patience, indulgence and solicitude,"
and that Mr. Frick, in particular, was "too stern, brusque and somewhat
autocratic." He condemned the employment of Pinkertons and argued that
the company might have prevented bloodshed by relying solely on the
constituted authorities for protection, although he conceded the
inefficiency of Sheriff McCleary. He condemned also as unlawful the
action of the workmen in turning away the sheriff and in hanging in
effigy Messrs. Frick and Potter, denied the right of the Amalgamated
Association to bar non-union men out of employment, and held that the
men of Homestead had no legal right to resist the Pinkerton invasion and
were answerable accordingly to the Pennsylvania courts. In conclusion,
Mr. Oates found that congress had no power to dispose of the questions
involved. A satisfactory arbitration law could not be enacted and it was
a debatable question whether or not congress could do anything to
regulate or suppress Pinkertonism.
On August 3, Vice-President Morton appointed a committee of senators,
composed of Messrs. Gallinger, Pfeffer, Hansbrough, Felton, Sanders,
White and Hill to investigate the Pinkerton corporation. Action by this
body was deferred until after the Presidential election, the chairman
being a stalwart Republican and averse to the opening of proceedings
which might furnish campaign material to the Democrats.
It was not long until the backbone of the sympathy strikes declared at
the Carnegie mills at Lawrenceville, Duquesne and Beaver Falls showed
signs of weakening. At Lawrenceville, the company took precautions
similar to those taken at Homestead. An eight-foot board fence was built
round the mill yard and no person was admitted without a pass from the
superintendent. The strikers placed pickets on guard, but, despite their
vigilance, several hundred non-union men were spirited in and on August
1, the plate mill was started. One hundred and fifty uniformed policemen
and the entire force of city detectives were detailed, at the request of
the firm, to protect the mill property at this time. After one day's
service the majority of the officers were withdrawn, but enough were
left on duty to guard all entrances and approaches to the mill. For the
accommodation of the non-unionists, who dared not venture out, cots were
set up in the carpenter shop, a rough-and-ready cuisine was improvised,
and beer was brought in from the neighboring breweries. The force of
"scab" employees increased rapidly, and in a short time, the watchers
without began to lose heart and relax their vigilance. Nevertheless the
Lawrenceville strike was prolonged for a year, or twice as long as the
strike at Homestead, although the Lawrenceville men had signed a
contract with the Carnegie Company and had no grievance of their own.
When the strike was ultimately declared off, few of the men who went out
were employed again by the firm and many of them found themselves
reduced to poverty.
The Duquesne strike was of short duration. The men had been hastily
organized and the new-born spirit of unionism among them was not strong
enough to inspire and maintain mutual confidence. A report that
non-union men had been secured and that the mill would be started on
August 4 caused a stampede, several hundred of the strikers discarding
their allegiance to the Amalgamated Association and rushing pell-mell
to the mill when it opened up, fearing that their jobs were slipping
away from them, perhaps forever.
Enraged at this defection, the strikers who held their ground, aided by
a large body of men from Homestead, who had camped at Duquesne on the
previous night, took possession of the mill gates and beat back those
who were returning to work. Deputy sheriffs who were on the ground sent
to General Wiley for assistance, which was promptly rendered, six
companies of the Sixteenth Regiment being sent to the scene of
disturbance on a work train. Eleven of the rioters were captured and
taken to Pittsburgh, where they were held for a court trial. On the
morning of August 8, the mill was again opened for work and the
strikers, thoroughly disheartened, resumed their jobs in a body, every
man, with the exception of those arrested for riot, getting his old
place.
The strike at Beaver Falls, where 900 men are employed, with a weekly
pay-roll of $12,000, lasted four months. It was free from disorder, the
mill being shut down from the time the strike was declared. The
financial loss to the town was so heavy and affected the business people
so severely that it was deemed useless to stay out, and, when the firm
re-opened the mill, the three Amalgamated lodges formally abandoned the
strike and marched back to work in a body.
Sentiment at Homestead was kept warm by the unflagging efforts of the
Amalgamated officials and of President Gompers, of the Federation of
Labor. Mr. Gompers clung tenaciously to his idea of imposing a universal
boycott upon Carnegie products, and the Homestead men accepted the
suggestion with enthusiasm, believing that by this means the firm could
be brought to its knees. Hugh O'Donnell was one of the most earnest
advocates of the plan and stated through the press that it was bound to
furnish a solution for the Homestead problem. As a preliminary step, the
strikers issued a printed appeal to workingmen not to "work up the
material shipped from the works of the Carnegie Steel Company during the
present strike."
At a conference of the general officers of the Federation with Mr. Weihe
on August 12, the boycott plan was considered and finally negatived,
probably because of the well-known attitude of the Allegheny County
courts towards persons concerned in this form of conspiracy. As Mr.
Gompers and his colleagues had been holding up the boycott as a panacea,
their backdown was regarded with much disfavor by the strikers, but a
few red-hot speeches at a mass meeting on the following day, including
the famous address by Mr. Gompers, an extract from which appears in the
preceding chapter, put the rank and file in good humor again. There are
times when oratory covers a multitude of sins.
Once out of range of the orator's power, however, the strikers had to
meet and tacitly admit the force of some discouraging circumstances.
Grumblings were heard even at the expense of Hugh O'Donnell and Burgess
McLuckie. O'Donnell left Homestead mysteriously late in July and it was
rumored that he had been detailed to confer with Republican leaders in
the east with a view to bringing political pressure to bear on Messrs.
Frick and Carnegie. The actual history of O'Donnell's mission is given
here for the first time in print.
It has already been explained that C. L. Magee, of Pittsburgh, in
addition to being interested as a Republican leader in the settlement of
the Homestead troubles, was still more profoundly concerned in the
affair by reason of his being Sheriff McCleary's bondsman. Mr. Magee was
well aware that attempts to influence either Mr. Carnegie or Mr. Frick
were a waste of energy. The next best step, in his opinion, was to
influence the men of Homestead themselves, and, above all, to put a stop
to the speech-making of Burgess McLuckie and others in opposition to the
McKinley bill, to "free trade in labor" and other sins charged to the
account of the Republican party just when the Republican party was least
able to stand assaults. In pursuance of this purpose he communicated
with John L. Milholland, of New York, chairman of the Republican
committee on industrial affairs, advising him to arrive at an
understanding with O'Donnell and McLuckie. Milholland, recognizing the
critical nature of the situation, at once proceeded to Homestead, and
induced O'Donnell to accompany him to New York. The young Homesteader
left without confiding his plans to anybody. A reporter of the _New York
World_, however, recognized Milholland, discovered what was on foot and
informed the _World_ by telegraph, whereupon the management of that
journal detailed a special man to meet and shadow the travelers when
they reached Philadelphia and also succeeded in placing a confidential
agent in Milholland's office as stenographer, with instructions to watch
developments in the Homestead affair.
The upshot of the conference in New York, to which O'Donnell was a
party, was that the young labor leader pledged himself to use his
influence to silence the anti-tariff orators of Homestead, and
particularly McLuckie, and the Republican National Committee, in return,
guaranteed an early settlement of the wage trouble, to the satisfaction
of the workingmen.
On his return, O'Donnell told Hugh Dempsey, Master Workman of D. A. 3,
K. of L., of his agreement and enlisted Dempsey's aid in bringing
McLuckie to terms. Dempsey sought out the sturdy burgess, took him into
the parlor of a hotel and laid the Milholland scheme before him.
"It rests with you, John, to settle this whole trouble," said the Master
Workman.
"How so?" asked McLuckie.
"Well," said the other, "All you need do is to write a few lines over
your signature, stating that you have been misquoted and to quit making
Democratic speeches, and the Republicans will give you anything you want
and settle the wage question, besides."
McLuckie's eyes blazed and his big fist came down on the table with a
bang. "So," he said, "you want me not only to sacrifice my independence,
but to write myself down a PUBLIC LIAR! If any other man made such a
proposal to me, Hugh, I would knock him down."
"Don't be unreasonable, John," the Master Workman argued. "Remember what
is at stake. Remember that it is in your hands to stop misery and
bloodshed and restore happiness to Homestead."
"Yes, at the price of my own character," rejoined the big Burgess,
hotly. "Say no more, Hugh. Come what may, I shall never denounce myself
to the American people as a liar and a hypocrite."
Here the conversation ended and the two men left the hotel. Just then
Hugh O'Donnell came out of a hotel across the street, and seeing
McLuckie and Dempsey hastened to join them.
"What do you think he has been asking me to do?" said McLuckie, with a
contemptuous glance at Dempsey, and then he recounted the interview at
the hotel.
O'Donnell laughed. "Why, John," he said, "it was I that asked Dempsey to
talk to you. If you are as sensible a man as I take you to be, and are
anxious to render real service to your friends here, you will do as the
National Committee wants you to, and you'll never regret it."
McLuckie answered with bitterness that O'Donnell was mistaken in him,
that his manhood was not for sale to the politicians, and that he would
treat as an enemy any man who met him with proposals the acceptance of
which would place him in a dubious light before the American people.
The endeavor to silence McLuckie and make him recant did not end here.
The Burgess was warned by members of the Advisory Board that his
anti-tariff talks were damaging the cause of the strikers; nevertheless
he declined to put a bridle on his tongue and let slip no opportunity of
speaking on the text, "Protection for the manufacturer and free trade in
labor," with incidental references to the connection between high
tariff, high fences and Pinkerton thugs.
Shortly after the meeting with O'Donnell and Dempsey, President Weihe
assigned O'Donnell and McLuckie to speak at a labor meeting in Boston.
Funds for the trip were supplied by the Boston people and O'Donnell was
the purse bearer. When the men arrived in New York, O'Donnell urged
McLuckie to go with him to Milholland's office, but without success.
After the Boston meeting a reporter of the _Boston Herald_ was detailed
to accompany the men back to Homestead. Arriving in New York, O'Donnell
again broached the subject of visiting Milholland, but McLuckie was
obdurate. At this point, according to the Burgess' own story, O'Donnell
left his two companions, promising to meet them at the depot in time to
catch a morning train. McLuckie and the _Herald_ man were on hand, but
O'Donnell failed to keep his appointment. The day wore on without any
sign of O'Donnell's coming. Finally McLuckie informed the _Herald_ man
that, as O'Donnell carried the purse, he was unable to pay his fare to
Pittsburgh. The reporter advanced the necessary cash and they left New
York without an inkling of the whereabouts of their missing companion.
It was afterwards ascertained that O'Donnell had hunted up Milholland to
notify him of the impossibility of dealing with McLuckie and had
probably forgotten his fellow-travelers in the excitement attending his
"con-fab" with the great manipulator of industrial affairs for political
purposes.
O'Donnell's course in these negotiations may be excused on the dual
ground of inexperience in politics and a desire to benefit his townsmen
by securing somehow a termination of the strike favorable to the
wage-workers. He was dealing with sharp and not over-scrupulous
practitioners, who dealt largely in promises and cared little about
performance and less about any damage that might be sustained by
O'Donnell himself, provided that their immediate aims were accomplished.
The sole reward obtained by the young leader was seven months'
confinement in the Allegheny County jail and abuse at the hands of rival
leaders at Homestead. William Roberts was especially severe in his
condemnation of both O'Donnell and McLuckie, crediting them with being
partners in an unauthorized political move, which was sure to be barren
of results. Mr. Roberts himself entered the employ of the Democratic
National Committee as a stump speaker before the campaign was over, and
remained an ardent low-tariff Democrat until the rejection of his
application for a position in the Internal Revenue Collector's office at
Pittsburgh convinced him of the error of his ways and led him to take
the stump for protection.
Smarting under the criticisms to which he was subjected, Hugh O'Donnell
went before the advisory board demanding that he be supported by a vote
of confidence or else be permitted to resign. McLuckie seconded the
request for a vote of confidence, and O'Donnell received his
vindication.
The conduct of the Hungarian laborers caused the advisory board no
little uneasiness. These unfortunates, always poorly paid, had, for the
most part, no savings to fall back on and were quickly reduced to
destitution. It was hard to expect them to starve for the sake of
vindicating union principles, but at the same time it was looked upon as
important to hold them in line with the other strikers, because a break,
even among the lower class of workmen, would be very damaging to the
union cause. The fear of a break among the Huns was a continual source
of anxiety.
Mr. Frick, having recovered in a remarkably short time from the effects
of his wounds, returned to his duties on August 5. A few days later,
Messrs. Potter and Childs appeared on the streets of Homestead for the
first time since July 6. They were on their way to attend a magistrate's
hearing and had to pass through a crowd of several hundred men at the
headquarters of the mechanics and laborers. Both officials were cool and
seemingly unconcerned. They were not molested in any way, the men merely
gazing at them in silence as they passed.
Although the Gompers boycott turned out to be only a flash in the pan,
the boycotting spirit found a foothold even among the children in
Homestead. An amusing illustration of precocity in this regard was
furnished in the little chapel at Munhall station on the Sunday after
Mr. Gompers' arrival. Mrs. Agnew, the wife of a foreman at work in the
Carnegie mill, and her daughter had charge of a Sunday school in this
modest place of worship. With the echoes of Mr. Gompers' speech still
ringing in their ears, a number of sober-faced boys assembled as usual
for instructions, but, before the exercises had fairly commenced, every
lad present arose and solemnly marched out. One of the urchins, when
questioned, said that he didn't propose to be "teached by der wife an'
daughter of no blacksheep." Happily, as soon as the F. of L. issued a
no-boycott manifesto, Sunday school took up again at Munhall and went on
without further mishap.
The life of the men at work in the mill was by no means a pleasant one.
They were closely confined, not daring to go out, for some time after
the mill was first manned, unless on Saturdays, when those who cared to
go to Pittsburgh were taken down on the Tide and allowed to remain away
over Sunday. By the middle of August about 200 non-unionists were lodged
in the company houses near the mill under protection of the military.
The first of these that undertook to bring in his household goods, found
that even military aid was insufficient. A crowd of strikers met the
teamster who was hauling the goods at the ferry-boat and threatened him
with severe handling if he again ventured to haul the property of a
blacksheep through the streets of Homestead.
[Illustration: THE PEMICKEY BRIDGE.]
The first and only real outcropping of trouble between the workmen and
the militia arose from conflicts between the crews of freight trains
passing over the Pemickey bridge and a detail of soldiers stationed on
the obnoxious Little Bill. The soldiers reported that trainmen or
strikers concealed on the trains had fired upon them and they were
instructed, if again assailed, to return the fire. On the evening of
August 18, wild excitement was caused by the noise of a fusillade on the
river front of the mill yard. If the statement of the militiamen on
board the Little Bill is true, five revolver shots were fired at the
boat from a freight train, the first shot coming from the engine and the
others from the cars. The fire was returned from the boat and when the
train reached the other side of the river, the batallion stationed on
the hill above the B. & O. railroad, under the command of Captain Fred
Windsor, also opened fire, the rattle of musket balls against the
freight cars sounding like the patter of a hail storm. The men in the
mill were panic-stricken, believing that the events of July 6 were about
to be duplicated, and there was also a hub-bub among the strikers, but
the arrival of the provost marshal's guard quickly restored order. The
conductor of the freight train stoutly affirmed that the shots which
alarmed the soldiers on the Little Bill were merely torpedo explosions,
and this was very probably the case, since it is in the last degree
unlikely that a few men on a slowly moving freight would undertake to
cope with a large number of soldiers on the boat and on shore. The
soldiers were at all times consumed with anxiety to do some genuine
fighting, and on this occasion the fire-eaters in the Fifteenth and
Sixteenth regiments made no secret of their disappointment when they
found that the incipient skirmish on the river was not to be followed by
a "go" with the strikers.
Two days previous to this affair, the provost guard, under Major
Crawford, had a brush with the townspeople which came within an ace of
developing into a pitched battle. Frank Tracey, a non-union laborer, was
arrested for larceny, and four of his brother blacksheep were taken with
him to Alderman Oeffner's office by the arresting officer. Tracy was
committed to jail amid the cheers of a crowd which had gathered in and
around the magistrate's office. When the four non-unionists came out,
the mob surged around them and some of the more violent suggested
lynching or a ducking in the river as fit treatment for the "scabs."
Clubs and stones were picked up, and the situation began to look serious
when Major Crawford appeared at the head of a squad of men, with fixed
bayonets and guns at half cock, and forced the crowd to disperse. Some
of the citizens derided the soldiers as "pale-faced boys," and a stout
young woman shook her fist under the line of military noses and
threatened to extinguish the entire National Guard. Nevertheless, the
non-unionists were enabled to return to the mill in safety and the last
murmurings of the tumult were silenced by policemen and deputy sheriffs
after Major Crawford left the scene.
Other outbreaks of similar character spurred to renewed vigilance the
militia and the Sheriff's deputies, who had fallen into the habit of
lounging and dozing in shady places, and within a few days after Major
Crawford's collision with the mob, large numbers of non-union men
succeeded in moving their goods from the ferry into the company houses
without suffering molestation.
Pinkerton detectives began a systematic search for guns on August 28,
but without result. The Winchesters taken from the guards on the barges
had been smuggled into a safe place of concealment where even the
Pinkertonian eye that "never sleeps" was unable to discover them.
On August 31, Mr. Frick visited the mill for the first time since the
beginning of the wage trouble. He was accompanied by a detective, but
needed no protection, as the strikers showed no disposition to grow
wrathy over his presence. Mr. Frick made a complete inspection of the
mill, pronounced the various departments to be in excellent working
order and informed the reporters that the strike was a thing of the
past.
CHAPTER XV.
[Illustration: TREASON]
PROGRESS IN THE MILL--A QUARTET OF ARISTOCRATIC
NON-UNIONISTS--SICKNESS BREAKS OUT--MORE ARRESTS--JACK
CLIFFORD SUSPECTED OF TREACHERY, BUT IS HELD WITHOUT BAIL FOR
MURDER--167 TRUE BILLS RETURNED--SUPREME JUSTICE PAXSON IN THE
SADDLE--HE ORDERS ARRESTS FOR TREASON AND IS GENERALLY
CONDEMNED--SNOWDEN FAVORS THE GALLOWS FOR HOMESTEADERS--JUDGE
AGNEW ON TREASON--PAXSON INSTRUCTS THE GRAND JURY AND
PRONOUNCES THE HOMESTEAD MEN TRAITORS--CARNEGIE IN SCOTLAND.
During the month of August, the mill continued to fill up rapidly with
non-union recruits. Among these there was an admixture of worthless
characters, who went to Homestead only for the novelty of the thing or
for the purpose of securing a few square meals and perhaps a little
money from the Company without imposing any special tax on their
energies. Men of this type rarely spent more than a day or two in the
mill. Once their curiosity or rapacity was satisfied they deserted,
threw themselves into the arms of the strikers, represented themselves
as having been deluded by the firm's agents and in the majority of
cases secured pecuniary aid from the Amalgamated Association. The
strikers invariably welcomed desertions and did not always trouble
themselves to inquire minutely into the circumstances prompting the
sudden change of heart on the part of the deserters. The stories told by
the latter to the advisory board eclipsed Munchausen's wildest flights,
winding up, as a rule, with the assurance that, owing to bad treatment
and breaches of faith regarding the wages to be paid, almost the entire
corps of non-union men was preparing to quit work.
The exodus of idlers and incapables did not, however, in any way impair
the progress which Superintendent Potter and his new hands were making,
despite the reports to the contrary circulated among the strikers. The
force of employees increased rapidly and as the wages offered were
considerably higher than the average earnings of clerks and young men
just beginning a professional career, many representatives of those
classes were attracted into the Carnegie Company's service. Among the
persons of education and refinement thus enlisted were four once
prominent brokers on the Pittsburgh oil exchange, Messrs. Linn L.
Dilworth, C. D. Leslie, John McLaughlin and J. L. Agnew. Mr. Dilworth
was set to work running an engine, Mr. Leslie became foreman of the cold
saw department, and Mr. Agnew was placed in the armor-plate department.
Mr. McLaughlin, who was at one time considered the "highest roller" on
the Oil City and Pittsburgh floors, accommodated himself to the duties
of a subordinate position at fair wages.
The completion of the last piece of armor-plate for the government
cruiser Monterey, on September 3, made it plain enough that the works
were being operated in earnest and that the expectation that the firm
would be unable to execute its contracts with the government, as long as
green hands were employed, was destined to be defeated. In any case,
there was a special clause in the government contracts providing for an
extension of time in the event of labor troubles, so that the firm had
nothing to fear from that quarter. The answer of the strikers when
confronted with the circumstances was that the material turned out was
necessarily defective and must be rejected by the government. This
claim, however, was not substantiated.
About this time sickness began to spread among the non-unionists. The
Company physicians had their hands full and a large number of men had to
be conveyed to the Pittsburgh hospitals. John McGeorge, a resident of
Allegheny, was taken to his home and died there, and McGeorge's son, who
had been working in the mill with his father, was also stricken down.
The attending physician diagnosed the malady in these cases as typhoid
fever and assigned as the cause the impurity of the water used for
general consumption in the mill. At first the Company hushed up the
rumors of the presence of what seemed to be an epidemic among the men,
and it was not until many deaths had occurred that the matter was
publicly ventilated. Of the mystery involved in this affair and the
manner in which it was solved an account will be given in another
chapter.
Weekly mass meetings, at which the men were assured that the company was
only "making a bluff" and that, sooner or later the old hands would have
to be reinstated, the Amalgamated Association recognized and wages kept
up to a decent figure, kept life in the strikers' organization for an
astonishingly long time. The loyalty of the workingmen to one another
and their cheerful confidence in the power of unionist principles and
unionist methods to overcome all obstacles were almost sublime. General
officers of the Amalgamated Association took part in all these
assemblages and distinguished themselves by inculcating a spirit of
moderation and respect for the law. Other orators gave full rein to
opinions surcharged with bitterness and resentment, and Mr. Frick, the
Sheriff and the Common pleas judges came in for many an unmerciful
scoring. John Oldshue, leader of the Slavs, figured in every meeting,
interpreting for the benefit of his countrymen and delivering
exhortations on his own account.
With the exception of an information for murder lodged against Edward
Burke, who was already in jail on charges of riot and unlawful
assemblage, Secretary Lovejoy's program of prosecutions remained
untouched throughout the month of August. At the beginning of September,
Mr. Lovejoy warmed up to his work again and caused warrants to be issued
for the arrest of Hugh O'Donnell, Hugh Ross, Matthew Foy and William Foy
for the murder of Detective John W. Klein. All the defendants were
already under $10,000 bonds on the charge of killing T. J. Conners and
Silas Wain, and the apparent design was to multiply the amount of bail
until the resources of the union leaders were exhausted and confinement
in jail could no longer be avoided. Matthew Foy was arrested at once.
O'Donnell surrendered two weeks later, on his return from New York.
Elmer E. Bales, Harry Bayne and Oscar Colflesh were also arrested on
charges of riot and conspiracy.
At the hearing on the conspiracy charge against Hugh O'Donnell, George
W. Sarver, David Lynch, William T. Roberts and William McConegy, before
Alderman McMasters, a sensation was created by the testimony of George
S. Hotchkiss, an assistant superintendent in the employ of the Pinkerton
agency. Hotchkiss swore that he had held several conferences with Jack
Clifford, of the Homestead advisory board, and obtained from Clifford
information incriminating O'Donnell and others. The nature of Clifford's
revelations was not made known, objection to the admission of
second-hand testimony being raised by attorney Brennen for the defense
and sustained by the magistrate; but the report went out that Clifford
had turned informer and caused consternation among the strikers. The
members of the advisory board, however, defended their associate and
explained that he had conferred with the Pinkerton man solely for the
purpose of "pumping" him. Subsequent events bore out this assertion. The
five men heard before 'Squire McMasters were held for a court trial.
Shortly after O'Donnell and his companions had been disposed of,
Clifford was arrested on a second charge of murder, preferred by the
industrious Lovejoy, and committed to jail. He was also held for
conspiracy, but gave bail on this charge. Next day his application for
bail on the murder charge was brought before Judge Ewing, as was also
that of Matthew Foy. Foy, against whom there was practically no
evidence, was released on $10,000 bail. The testimony against Clifford,
however, was very damaging. Captain John Cooper, of the Pinkerton
agency, swore that when the Pinkerton barges approached the mill landing
at Homestead, he saw Clifford among a crowd of strikers with a pistol in
his hand, and heard him shout, "You ---- ---- ----, don't come ashore,
or we'll kill all of you." Clifford, he said, was the man who approached
the barges with a white flag and arranged for the surrender. Samuel
Stewart, a clerk in the employ of the Carnegie Company, testified that
he saw Clifford attach a fuse to a piece of dynamite fixed in an iron
pipe and hurl this crude bomb at the barges, and that he noticed a
revolver sticking out of the defendant's pocket. On the strength of this
testimony, Clifford was committed for trial without bail. Judge Ewing
refused to hear evidence as to who fired the first shot and said in his
opinion: "The parties on the shore had no duties to perform except to go
away, or as good citizens, to put down the crowd that this defendant,
Clifford, was with. There is no question--there _can_ be no question--of
self-defense about it. I say that we will not go into it, especially in
this preliminary matter."
On September 21, the grand jury returned true bills in all the Homestead
cases presented to that body, 167 in number. The following is the list:
Murder of Silas Wain--James Close, Charles Martz, George
Diebold, ---- Sanderson, Edward McVay, Peter Allen, Sr., Jack
Clifford, Matthew Foy, Hugh O'Donnell, John McLuckie, Sylvester
Critchlow, Anthony Flaherty, Samuel Burkett, James Flannigan and
Hugh Ross.
Murder of T. J. Conners--James Close, Charles Martz, George
Diebold, ---- Sanderson, Edward McVay, Peter Allen, Sr., Jack
Clifford, Matthew Foy, Hugh O'Donnell, John McLuckie, Sylvester
Critchlow, Anthony Flaherty, Samuel Burkett, James Flannigan and
Hugh Ross.
Murder of J. W. Kline--Jacob Stinner, Edward Burke, Jack
Clifford, Hugh O'Donnell, Matthew Foy, William Foy and Hugh
Ross.
Aggravated Riot--Hugh O'Donnell, G. W. Brown, Thos. H. Baynes,
Isaac Byers, Harry Buck, Mark E. Baldwin, M. Cush, Frank Clark,
Isaac Critchlow, Thos. J. Crawford, John Corcoran, John Dally,
John Dierken, Jas. Dunn, John Edwards, Thos. Godfrey, W. H.
Gaches, Jas. S. Hall, U. S. Grant Hess, ---- Hennessey, Reid
Kennedy, Thos. Kelly, Geo. W. Laughlin, H. H. Layman, Robt. G.
Layman, Jack Lazear, Paddy McCool, David Maddigan, Owen Murphy,
John McGovern, Wm. McLuckie, Punk, alias Pete McAllister, ----
McLaughlin, William Oeffner, Dennis O'Donnell, John Alonzo Prim,
Jack Prease, P. J. Rorke, Richard Scott, David H. Shanian,
Newton Sharpe, John Sullivan, Oden Shoemaker, ---- Taylor,
George Holley or Wilkinson, Joseph Wayd, Peter Moran, Lewis
Lewis, Patrick Fagan, W. H. Williams, Mike Naughton, Patrick
Hayes "and certain other evil-disposed persons with force and
arms, then and there, in manner and form aforesaid did make an
aggravated riot, to the great terror and disturbance of all good
citizens of the commonwealth, to the evil example of all others
in like cases offending, contrary to the form of the act of the
general assembly in such case made and provided, and against the
peace and dignity of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania."
Aggravated Riot--Peter Allen, Joseph Akers, Thos. Antes, Oliver
P. Antes, Charles L. Atwood, E. G. Bail, Harry Bickerton, Wm.
Bakely, Jack Bridges, Samuel Burkett, Ed. Burke, James Close,
Jack Clifford, Thos. Connelly, Sylvester Critchlow, Robert
Dalton, George Diebold, Fred. Gunston, Anthony Flaherty, James
Flannigan, Matthew Foy, David Inchico, Evan Jones, E. C. McVay,
John Murray, Peter Nan, Hugh Ross, Benjamin Thomas, ----
Sanderson, H. Troutman, W. Edward Williams, Oliver C. Coon, W.
Mansfield.
Conspiracy--Hugh O'Donnell, Thos. N. Baynes, E. Bail, Isaac
Byers, Wm. Bayard, G. W. Brown, Thos. J. Crawford, George
Champeno, Isaac Critchlow, Miller Colgan, John Boyle, Jack
Clifford, Dennis Cash, Oscar Colflesh, Wm. Conneghy, Mike
Cummings, Wm. Combs, John Dierken, Pat Fagan, W. H. Gatches,
Matthew Harris, Reed Kennedy, David Lynch, John Miller, O. S.
Searight, John Murray, John McLuckie, Hugh Ross, Wm. T. Roberts,
George Ryland, D. H. Hannon and George W. Sarver.
Having exhausted its catalogue of murder, riot and conspiracy charges,
obtained true bills against 167 strikers, and buried the leading spirits
among the Homesteaders beneath an avalanche of bail bonds, Mr. Frick now
proceeded to play what he considered to be his trump card. The Supreme
Court of Pennsylvania, of which at this time Hon. Edward Paxson, a close
friend of C. L. Magee, was Chief Justice, came to Pittsburgh to hold its
annual session. It was deemed possible that the Homestead affair might
come before this body in some shape, after the lower courts disposed of
it, but to nobody aside from the members of the Carnegie Company and
their attorneys did it occur that the superior judiciary would, of its
own motion, undertake to deal with the labor trouble at first hand.
This, however, was what Mr. Frick counted on as the culminating stroke
which was to break the back of the Homestead strike. The step from the
alderman's office to the supreme court room was one which probably no
other individual or corporation in the state would have dreamt even of
suggesting; but Mr. Frick managed to take it seemingly with as much
ease as his secretary exhibited in getting a ward constable to lock up a
few dozen of workingmen for riot or conspiracy.
The blow fell on the morning of September 30. The Chief Justice and his
six associates met in the supreme court chamber of the county court
house and held an hour's conference, at the expiration of which Judge
Paxson sent for District Attorney Clarence Burleigh, and P. C. Knox,
Esq., principal counsel for the Carnegie Company. When these two
gentlemen arrived another hour was spent in consultation. Judge Paxson
then sent for County Detective Harry Beltzhoover, whom he instructed to
subscribe to an information made before him (Paxson) and to arrest the
persons named therein. The information was worded as follows:
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,
_versus_
David H. Shannon, John McLuckie, David Lynch, Thomas J.
Crawford, Hugh O'Donnell, Harry Bayne, Elmer E. Ball, Isaac
Byers, Henry Bayard, T. W. Brown, George Champene, Isaac
Critchlow, Miller Colgan, John Coyle, Jack Clifford, Dennis M.
Cush, William McConeghy, Michael Cummings, William Combs, John
Durkes, Patrick Fagan, W. S. Gaches, Nathan Harris, Reid
Kennedy, John Miller, O. O. Searight, John Murray, M. H.
Thompson, Martin Murray, Hugh Ross, William T. Roberts, George
Rylands and George W. Sarver.
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, County of Allegheny.
Before me, the subscriber, Edward H. Paxson, chief justice of the
supreme court of Pennsylvania and ex-officio justice of the court of
oyer and terminer of Allegheny county, and a justice of the peace in
and for the county of Allegheny, in the state of Pennsylvania,
personally came Harry Beltzhoover, county detective, who upon oath
administered according to law, deposeth and says that heretofore,
to-wit, on or about the first day of July, A. D. 1892, the defendants
above named, being inhabitants of and residents within the commonwealth
of Pennsylvania and under protection of the laws of the commonwealth of
Pennsylvania and owing allegiance and fidelity to the said commonwealth
of Pennsylvania, not weighing the duty of their said allegiance, but
wickedly devising and intending the peace and tranquility of the said
commonwealth to disturb and stir, move and excite insurrection,
rebellion and war against the said commonwealth of Pennsylvania, did at
the borough of Homestead, and in the township of Mifflin, both within
the county of Allegheny and state of Pennsylvania, and elsewhere within
the state of Pennsylvania and beyond the borders of the state,
unlawfully, falsely, maliciously and traitorously compass, imagine and
intend to raise and levy war, insurrection and rebellion against the
commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and in order to fulfil and bring into
effect the said compassings, imaginations and intentions of them, the
said defendants, afterward, to-wit, on the first day of July, A. D.
1892, and at divers other times at the borough of Homestead and in the
township of Mifflin, with a great multitude of persons, numbering
hundreds, armed and arrayed in a warlike manner, that is to say, with
guns, revolvers, cannons, swords, knives, clubs and other warlike
weapons, as well offensive as defensive, did then and there unlawfully,
maliciously and traitorously join and assemble themselves together
against the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and then and there with force
and arms did falsely and traitorously and in a hostile and warlike
manner, array and dispose themselves against the said commonwealth of
Pennsylvania and did ordain, prepare and levy war against the said
commonwealth of Pennsylvania to the end that its constitution, laws and
authority were defied, resisted and averted by the said defendants and
their armed allies, contrary to the duty of allegiance and fidelity of
the said defendants.
All of which the deponent states upon information received and believed
by him, and he therefore prays that a warrant may issue, and the
aforesaid defendants may be arrested and held to answer this charge of
treason against the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
The law under which the proceeding was brought is the Crimes act of
1860, under which the penalty for treason is fixed at a fine not
exceeding $2,000 and imprisonment by separate and solitary confinement
at labor, not exceeding twelve years.
[Illustration: ONE OF THE TRAITORS.]
It was announced that Judge Paxson would hear in person the application
of any of the accused strikers for bail; that when the cases came before
the grand jury he would instruct the jurymen as to what constitutes
treason under the statutes of Pennsylvania, and that, if the cases
should be brought to trial, he would sit on the bench in the court of
oyer and terminer and try them himself. In short, Edward H. Paxson,
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, was master of the
situation. The court of last resort had been by a Frickian turn of the
wrist, converted into a court of preliminary resort, intermediate resort
and all other known varieties of resort, and the strikers were led to
understand accordingly that with Paxson armed to the teeth and ready to
bring them to bay at all points, they might as well throw up the sponge
at once and be done with it.
Detectives Farrell and Mills, assisted by a half dozen deputy sheriffs,
were detailed to capture the defendants named in Beltzhoover's
information. The task was not an easy one, for most of the reputed
"traitors," realizing the difficulty of procuring bail, went into hiding
and their friends took care to throw the officers off the track. Five of
the men--Thomas Crawford, George Rylands, T. W. Brown, W. H. Baird and
John Dierken--were caught on Friday, the day on which the warrant for
their arrest was issued.
On Saturday, Attorneys Brennen and Cox went before Judge Paxson with a
petition for the admission of the accused to bail. Messrs. Burleigh and
Knox were called in, and, after a consultation, the Chief Justice made
an order authorizing the release of any of the defendants on $10,000
bail at the discretion of any judge of the oyer and terminer court.
Judges Kennedy and Porter heard the applications, but rejected the
bondsmen offered except in the case of William Baird.
Despite the supposedly sacred character of the supreme bench, criticism
of Judge Paxson's extraordinary action was freely indulged in by the
members of the Pittsburgh bar and reproduced in the public press. Hardly
a voice was raised in commendation of the Chief Justice's arbitrary
interference, and the consensus of legal opinion, as mirrored in the
newspapers, was to the effect that the disturbance at Homestead, being a
purely local affair and directed against a private corporation, could
not be construed as treason against the state.
The boldness with which this view of the case was stated by competent
authorities gave much encouragement to the strikers, and at the regular
weekly mass meeting, on Saturday, October 2, Vice-President Carney, of
the Amalgamated Association, and other orators were emphatic in their
claims that the treason charge was trumped up as a measure of
intimidation and would fall to the ground if ever put to the test of a
court trial. The strikers were, therefore, advised to stand their
ground, and the Carnegie Company was warned that, when all the members
of the advisory board were imprisoned, there would be other men to take
their places, and that if all the men in Homestead were cast into jail
the women would still be there to keep up the fight for the rights of
organized labor. These sentiments were received with clamorous approval.
No little surprise was created by the publication of a statement from
Major-General Snowden setting forth that he was originally responsible
for the treason prosecution. During his sojourn at Homestead in command
of the militia, General Snowden said, he had suggested to the Carnegie
attorneys, Messrs. Knox and Reed, that the advisory committee was guilty
of treason. The lawyers pooh-poohed the idea, but evidently thought
better of it, for three weeks prior to the issuance of warrants by Judge
Paxson, Mr. Knox met the General in Philadelphia and asked his help in
the preparation of briefs. General Snowden responded that it would
hardly be wise for him, while serving as commander of the state forces,
to appear as counsel for the Carnegie Company. When the brief was
prepared, however, it was sent to him to be passed upon and received his
indorsement. General Snowden did not hesitate to say for publication
that, in his opinion, death would be rather a mild penalty for members
of the advisory committee.
Perhaps the most significant deliverance of the hour on the subject of
the treason charge was that embodied in a letter written to the
Pittsburgh _Commercial-Gazette_ by the veteran jurist, Hon. Daniel
Agnew, ex-chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Judge Agnew
declared that the Homestead affair was riot and not treason. "It is
easy," he said, "to distinguish treason from riot. It lies in the
purpose or intent of the traitor to overthrow the government or subvert
the law or destroy an institution of the state. Riot is a breach or
violation of law, but _without a purpose against the state_."
Those of the Homestead men charged with treason, who were not already
held for murder, managed, for the most part, to find bail. Many
continued in hiding. Burgess McLuckie, tired of running after bondsmen,
had betaken himself to Youngstown, O., and, acting on the advice of
Attorney W. T. Anderson, of that city, refused to return without a
requisition. Honest John was lionized by the Youngstown people,
delighted them with his speeches about high tariff and high fences and
could have found a body guard any time to defy the Carnegie Company, the
Supreme Court, the militia and all the other powers in Pennsylvania.
On the morning of Monday, October 10, the grand jury of Allegheny County
assembled in the criminal court room, which was thronged with attorneys
curious to watch the development of Judge Paxson's program. At 9.30 A.
M., the Chief Justice entered accompanied by Judges Stowe, Kennedy,
McClung and Porter, of the county courts, all of whom took seats on the
bench while Judge Slagle sat with District Attorney Burleigh behind the
clerk's desk.
The gravity of the occasion was felt by everyone and dead silence
prevailed as Judge Kennedy opened the day's proceedings with a few words
to the jurors stating that, in view of the unusual nature of the treason
cases, Judge Paxson had "kindly consented" to instruct the jury.
The Chief Justice began his charge by explaining that his intervention
was due to the supreme importance of furnishing an authoritative
interpretation of the law in the Homestead cases and that he acted at
the invitation of the county judges. He then entered upon a review of
the conditions and events at Homestead. "The relation of employer and
employee," he said, "is one of contract merely. Neither party has a
right to coerce the other into the making of a contract to which the
mind does not assent. The employer cannot compel his employee to work a
day longer than he sees fit nor his contract calls for, nor for a wage
that is unsatisfactory to him. It follows that the employee cannot
compel his employer to give him work or to enter into a contract of
hire, much less can he dictate the terms of employment. When the
negotiations between the parties came to an end, the contract relations
between them ceased. The men had no further demand upon the company,
and they had no more interest or claim upon its property than has a
domestic servant upon the household goods of his employer when he is
discharged by the latter or when he voluntarily leaves his service, nor
does it make any difference that a large number were discharged at one
time; their aggregate rights rise no higher than their rights as
individuals. The mutual right of the parties to contracts in regard to
wages, and the character of the employment, whether by the piece or day,
whether for ten hours or less, is as fixed and clear as any other right
which we enjoy under the constitution and laws of this state. It is a
right which belongs to every citizen, laborer or capitalist, and it is
the plain duty of the state to protect them in the enjoyment of it."
The organization and plan of campaign of the Advisory Committee were
reviewed at length, its chief object being stated as "to deprive the
company of the use of its property and to prevent it from operating its
works by the aid of men who were not members of the Amalgamated
Association." Then followed a narrative of the Sheriff's preliminary
manoeuvres and of the Pinkerton expedition, as viewed from a strictly
Paxsonian standpoint. After recounting the details of the battle at the
mill landing, the surrender of the Pinkertons, and the occupation of
Homestead by the military, the Chief Justice went on to say:
"We can have some sympathy with a mob driven to desperation by hunger as
in the days of the French Revolution, but we have none for men receiving
exceptionally high wages in resisting the law and resorting to violence
and bloodshed in the assertion of imaginary rights, and entailing such a
vast expense upon the taxpayers of the commonwealth. It was not a cry
for bread to feed their famishing lips, resulting in a sudden outrage,
with good provocation; it was a deliberate attempt by men without
authority to control others in the enjoyment of their rights. * * * It
is much to be feared that there is a diseased state of public opinion
growing up with regard to disturbances of this nature, and an erroneous
view of the law bearing upon these questions has found lodgment in the
public mind. This is evidenced by the accounts of portions of the press,
and it finds expression in the assurances of demagogues who pander to
popular prejudices and in the schemes of artful politicians."
Proceeding to the law in the case, the Chief Justice held that when the
Carnegie Company employed watchmen to guard its works, "it mattered not
to the rioters, nor to the public, who they were, nor whence they came.
It was an act of unlawful violence to prevent their landing on the
property of the company. That unlawful violence amounted at least to a
riot upon the part of all concerned in it. If life was taken in
pursuance of a purpose to resist the landing of the men by violence, the
offense was murder, and perhaps treason."
The legal definition of treason was then read and its supposed
application to the Homestead conflict pointed out as follows:
"A mere mob, collected upon the impulse of the moment, without
any definite object beyond the gratification of its sudden
passions does not commit treason, although it destroys property
and attacks human life. But when a large number of men arm and
organize themselves by divisions and companies, appoint officers
and engage in a common purpose to defy the law, to resist its
officers, and to deprive any portion of their fellow citizens of
the rights to which they are entitled under the constitution and
laws, it is a levying of war against the state, and the offense
is treason; much more so when the functions of the state
government are usurped in a particular locality, the process of
the commonwealth, and the lawful acts of its officers resisted
and unlawful arrests made at the dictation of a body of men who
have assumed the functions of a government in that locality; and
it is a state of war when a business plant has to be surrounded
by the army of the state for weeks to protect it from unlawful
violence at the hands of men formerly employed in it. Where a
body of men have organized for a treasonable purpose, every step
which any one of them takes in part execution of their common
purpose is an overt act of treason in levying war. Every member
of such asserted government, whether it be an advisory
committee, or by whatever name it is called, who has
participated in such usurpation, who has joined in a common
purpose of resistance to the law and a denial of the rights of
other citizens, has committed treason against the state. While
the definition of this offense is the designing or
accomplishment of the overturning of the government of the
state, such intention need not extend to every portion of its
territory. It is sufficient if it be an overturning of it in a
particular locality, and such intent may be inferred from the
acts committed. If they be such that the authority of the state
is overturned in a particular locality, and a usurped authority
substituted in its place, the parties committing it must be
presumed to have intended to do what they have actually done. It
is a maxim of criminal law that a man must be presumed to have
intended that which is the natural and probable consequence of
his acts. Thus, if a man assaults another with a deadly weapon,
or aims a blow at a vital part, the law presumes that he
intended to take life. Aliens domiciled within the state, and
who enjoy its protection, owe temporary allegiance to it and are
answerable for treason."
In conclusion, Judge Paxson said: "We have reached the point in the
history of the state when there are but two roads left us to pursue; the
one leads to order and good government, the other leads to anarchy. The
great question which concerns the people of this country is the
enforcement of the law and the preservation of order."
While the events narrated in this chapter were in progress, while the
workmen of Homestead were being taken to jail in batches and charge
after charge heaped upon them, and while the Supreme Court of the state
was engineering the last grand _coup_ by which the revival of an
obsolete offense was to be made instrumental in winding up the strike at
Homestead, Mr. Andrew Carnegie was busily at work reaping encomiums for
his philanthropy, which at this particular time found vent in the
donation of a memorial library to the town of Ayr, in Scotland. The
corner-stone of this edifice was laid by Mrs. Carnegie two days after
the treason warrants were issued at Pittsburgh. An address of thanks was
made by the mayor, to which Mr. Carnegie replied, part of his remarks
being as follows: "I feel more strongly bound than ever to devote the
remaining years of my life less to aims ending in self and more to the
service of others, using my surplus wealth and spare time in the manner
most likely to produce the greatest good to the masses of the people.
From these masses comes the wealth which is entrusted to the owner only
as administrator." A few groans and cries about Homestead were all that
reminded the audience which heard this generous-spirited speech that, at
the very moment when Mr. Carnegie was speaking, the wealth-givers in his
own employ were being hunted down as traitors, locked up in jail and
supplanted by cheaper workmen.
[Illustration: THE FERRY AT MUNHALL.]
[Illustration: JOHN McLUCKIE.]
CHAPTER XVI.
[Illustration: THE FIRST BREAK]
MORE PROSECUTIONS--THE SOLDIERS WITHDRAW--A NON-UNION HOTEL
DYNAMITED--HOMESTEAD FIGURES IN PARADES AND GIVES A DEMOCRATIC
MAJORITY--SLAVS WEAKENING--THE "LOCAL NEWS" PREDICTS
DEFEAT--GOMPERS AGAIN--SHERIFF McCLEARY IS HARASSED AND
INCREASES HIS CORPS OF DEPUTIES--LAWYER JONES IN
TROUBLE--SCHWAB SUCCEEDS POTTER AS SUPERINTENDENT--HOMESTEAD'S
LAST RIOT--STRIKER ROBERTS HINTS AT DEFEAT--MECHANICS AND
LABORERS GO BACK TO WORK.
As an offset to the activity of Secretary Lovejoy, Burgess John McLuckie
went before Alderman F. M. King on Wednesday, September 21, and lodged
information for aggravated riot and conspiracy against H. C. Frick,
George Lauder, Henry M. Curry, John G. A. Leishman, Otis Childs, F. T.
F. Lovejoy, Lawrence C. Phipps, John A. Potter, G. A. Corey, J. F.
Dovey, Nevin McConnell, William Pinkerton, Robert Pinkerton, John
Cooper, C. W. Bedell, Fred Primer, W. H. Burt, Fred Heinde and others.
In the information for conspiracy the defendants were charged with
conspiring to "depress wages" and to incite riot by feloniously
importing a force of armed men. No arrests were made on these
informations. Blank bail bonds were signed by the Mellon banking firm
and filled in by the defendants.
Sheriff McCleary, while he no longer experienced trouble in procuring a
sufficient number of deputies at $2.50 a day, to patrol every street in
Homestead and enforce order when necessary, found it a hard matter to
induce these emergency policemen to attend to their duties. Non-union
men coming out of the mill at noon for dinner, were repeatedly
assaulted, the intractable element among the strikers caring little for
the presence of the sheriff's officers. Early in September, Mr. McCleary
quietly investigated the methods of his underlings, and ascertained that
many of them were simply taking a holiday at the county's expense. The
force was then reorganized, the loafers being summarily discharged. It
was only now that the sheriff's pent-up feelings found vent. He was
utterly disgusted, he said, and had come to the conclusion that, even if
the salary of the sheriff were increased to $15,000 a year, the man who
sought the office would be an idiot. The show of authority which Mr.
McCleary made had a visible effect and when the deputies bestirred
themselves order was sufficiently restored, for the time being, to
elicit from Provost Marshal Mechling the opinion that, if the sheriff
kept on attending to business, the troops would be withdrawn within two
weeks.
Adjutant General Greenland was very severe on the sheriff, whose
incompetency, he said, was productive of continual harassment to the
troops. In General Greenland's opinion, it was in the sheriff's power,
with twenty-five deputies under his personal direction, to keep the
peace at Homestead and enable the militia to withdraw.
The improvement in the work of the deputies had such a marked effect
that, in the third week of September, the Fifteenth regiment was ordered
home, and, on the last day of the month four companies of the Sixteenth
regiment broke camp, leaving but four companies on the ground, one of
which was posted on the hillside across the river from Homestead. Two
weeks later, on October 13, the last of the militia received orders to
leave, the first intimation of the good news being conveyed to the men
when the band struck up "Home, Sweet Home" at the morning reveille.
Tents were struck and baggage packed in short order, and at 10 A. M. the
last vestige of the encampment was removed, and with a cheer that
re-echoed among the hills the boys in blue marched to Munhall Station
and were soon on the way to their homes in the oil country. The
Homesteaders watched the departure without showing much feeling,
although many of them, doubtless, experienced a consciousness of relief
now that, after ninety-five days of military surveillance, the town was
restored to the hands of the civil authorities. Henceforward the
preservation of the peace was exclusively in the hands of the sheriff's
deputies, thirty in number.
An outrage which caused considerable indignation about this time was the
attempt made by unknown desperadoes to blow up the Mansion House, a
hotel situated at the corner of Fifth avenue and Amity street, in the
most populous quarter of Homestead. The establishment was conducted by
Mrs. Marron, a widow who had been induced to come from Pittsburgh in
order to provide boarding for employees of the Carnegie firm. She
secured 40 boarders from among the clerks and non-union steelworkers
employed in the mill. On the night of October 6, when the occupants of
the hotel were sleeping, an explosive of some kind was thrown through a
window of the dining-room on the ground floor. The missile exploded with
great force, tore a hole through the floor and penetrated the cellar.
Beyond the wrecking of an empty room, however, no damage was done. Mrs.
Marron naturally laid the blame for the occurrence on the strikers, but
they stoutly disclaimed responsibility and contended that the damage had
been done by a natural gas explosion and not by a bomb thrown with
intent to kill and destroy. Another theory which found favor among the
men was that some wily foe to organized labor had done the mischief in
order to discredit the cause of the strikers and hasten the end of the
strike by altering the drift of public sympathy. Mr. Frick offered
$1,000 for the arrest of the supposed dynamiter and $100 additional was
offered by the advisory committee, but the reward was never earned.
The night of October 8 was made memorable by Homestead's share in the
greatest Democratic parade held in Pittsburgh during the presidential
campaign. Preparations for this event had been in progress for some
time. In previous years Homestead had been a Republican stronghold,
giving heavy majorities for high tariff candidates, but as has been
signified in the preceding pages, political sentiment in the town had
undergone a complete revulsion, and the men were determined to make this
fact conspicuous in the Pittsburgh demonstration. Under the command of
David Lynch and Charles Guessner, 600 of the strikers marched in the
parade, and were greeted with cheers all along the route. When the
Homestead men arrived opposite the court house, they halted and gave
three rousing cheers for Hugh O'Donnell and others of their associates
who were confined in the county jail. Passing down Fifth Avenue, the
Carnegie offices were reached. Here the marchers gave vent to their
feelings in a chorus of groans.
Some of the transparencies carried in this notable procession spoke
volumes for the influence of the Homestead trouble as a political
factor. One bore a picture of a rooster and the inscription:
"The cock will crow in '92
Over Fort Frick and its Pinkerton crew."
On another appeared the query, "Who protects the 2,200 locked-out men in
Lawrenceville?" and the response, "Ask McKinley," while on the reverse
side was the defiant invitation:
"Show us a man in a Pittsburgh mill
Who had his wages raised by the McKinley bill."
The maker of this couplet may have been weak in the matter of rhythm,
but the deadliness of his low tariff logic challenged and received
admiration from the crowd.
Yet another legend worth noting was: "The Three (Dis) Graces--Protection
for Carnegie, Persecution for his men and Pinkertons for support." At
every glimpse of the mottoes quoted, the mob of on-lookers cheered
lustily and it looked on that October night very much as though
Pittsburgh, the headquarters of high tariff sentiment, had become
suddenly inoculated with free-trade virus. There could be no mistaking
the opinion of the crowd as to Mr. Frick and the Pinkertons. Evidently
the friends of these worthies had accepted discretion as being the
better part of valor and remained at home.
The eclat with which the Homesteaders performed their part of the
political display in Pittsburgh encouraged them to repeat the
demonstration still more energetically in their own town. October 23 was
fixed as the date on which the cession of Homestead to the Democracy was
to be celebrated. On that evening the town was profusely decorated,
Chinese lanterns, bunting, starry flags and red fire contributing to the
picturesqueness of the scene. The parade, held in honor of Cleveland and
Stevenson, was headed by the best known Republicans in the district,
including such notables as Thomas J. Crawford, W. T. Roberts, Captain O.
C. Coon and William Gaches. Prominent among the emblems carried was a
live sheep painted black, beside which stood a man arrayed as a negro
wench. On the float occupied by this group was the motto, "This is
Protection." As the float moved along the street, men, women and
children strained their lungs with the cry of "Carnegie's Blacksheep!"
The success of the Homestead demonstration was the "last straw," and
Republican missionaries visited the benighted town no more.
The Hungarians continued to grow more and more restless as they saw the
number of men in the mill increase and the chances of their getting back
their jobs diminish correspondingly. All these foreigners belonged to
the laboring class and it was especially hard for them to stand the
strain of a long period of idleness. Arnold Frank, a representative of
the race who continued in the employ of the Carnegie Company, devoted
himself to quiet missionary work among his compatriots and took frequent
occasion to inform the newspapers that a break in the ranks of the Slavs
might be looked for at any time. Mr. Frank claimed to be the recipient
of daily applications for jobs from Hungarian strikers and that these
men were sick and tired of hardships endured for the benefit of an
organization which did not even admit them to membership. Slav leaders,
who were loyal to the Amalgamated Association, rebutted Mr. Frank's
statements, alleging that their fellow-countrymen received their full
share of strike benefits and were just as steadfast as any other class
among the strikers.
Another cause of disquietude was a sudden change of base on the part of
the Homestead _Local News_, which was originally the mouth-piece of the
advisory board. In its issue of October 15, the _News_ editorially
reviewed the situation, setting forth that there were now over 2000
workmen in the mill, 200 of these being former Homestead employees, that
recruits were daily being received and preparations being made to
accommodate a large additional number of non-unionists; and that
businessmen and intelligent members of the Amalgamated Association
privately admitted that the battle was lost. In conclusion the article
held these two conclusions to be indisputable: "First--The Carnegie
Company is gradually succeeding. Second--The great Homestead strike is
gradually dying out." The treachery of the _News_, as the men regarded
it, provoked unbounded indignation among the strikers. Nevertheless the
truth of the statement made by the paper was privately conceded by many
Homestead people, and especially by the store-keepers, whose capacity
for doing business on trust was being taxed to an extent threatening
some of them with bankruptcy. The sympathies of these people were
entirely with the Amalgamated Association; but, on the other hand, the
prospect of heavy loss to themselves, in case the strike should be a
failure, stared them in the face, and the apparent success of the
Carnegie Company in manning its works boded ill for the prospect of
their recouping themselves.
One assertion made by the _News_, viz.: that 200 former Homestead
employees had returned to work, was stigmatized as an absolute falsehood
by the union leaders, who insisted that not one union man had forsaken
his allegiance.
Two days later, a quartet of unionists, including a heater, a mechanic,
an engineer and a laborer, applied for and obtained work. This was the
first break in the ranks of the strikers that was openly made and
admitted at Amalgamated headquarters.
A visit from Gompers at this time was a positive godsend. The
pugnacious chief of the Federation arrived in state on October 21 and
was met by a brass band and almost the entire population of the town.
A procession was formed and the welcome visitor was escorted to the
rink to the inspiring strains of "See, the Conquering Hero Comes." All
representatives of the press, with the exception of the correspondent
of the Pittsburgh _Leader_, were excluded from the meeting which
followed, the preference given the _Leader_ being due to the reputation
exclusively enjoyed by that journal for giving fair treatment to
organized labor. Thomas Crawford presided over the assemblage. Mr.
Gompers made a vigorous speech, in the course of which he said:
"On a former occasion I explained the purpose underlying this
contest, but a new feature has since developed. The militia has
been withdrawn and the civil authority prevails. But we see the
judges on the bench trying to distort the laws against the
people of Homestead and against justice. Judge Paxson, holding
the most honored position on the bench of this state, recently,
in charging the grand jury regarding the men of Homestead,
impressed upon their minds that these men were guilty of
treason. When that charge was published in the press of the
country it not only shocked the laboring men, their wives and
children, but even the lawyers who could not or would not depend
on his action.
"I am not a lawyer, but I don't think it necessary to be one to
know what constitutes treason and what patriotism. Shall
patriotism be measured by the yard-stick of the Carnegie firm or
be weighed as their pig iron? Is it because these men in those
latter days like those in Boston harbor, declared they had some
rights and dared maintain them that they shall be declared
traitors? The men who lost their blood and limbs on the field of
battle to maintain and preserve this country and knock off the
shackles of millions of slaves can not be construed as traitors,
Judge Paxson's charge notwithstanding. Now some of your men are
in prison, others out on bail, but you are now out three and
one-half months on strike with your ranks practically unbroken.
I would not ask you to stand out one moment longer than your
rights demanded, but are there not some acts of the Carnegie
firm that show you that you are working in a winning cause?
Because you are here in Homestead you don't know the great
victory you have won. In all great lock-outs there are certain
inconveniences to suffer and these must be endured, but if you
were to end the struggle to-day you have won a victory. There
are employers fair and unfair, and when they think of offering a
reduction of wages to their employees in the future the fight
you have waged will have some effect in the carrying out of this
resolve. Don't you think your stand will have its effect on the
workmen of this country? Not only here, but throughout the
civilized globe, this fight will have its effect. The fraternity
of the wage-workers of the civilized world is at hand. Be true
to yourselves, one to the other, open and above board; and above
all confer with those who are leading you and have your interest
at stake and act with them jointly. No matter whether they may
appear the enemies of our constitution or our country's
institutions, it matters little. We propose to defend our
country, its flag with its stars and stripes, in the face of
those who would tear it down, for it represents our sovereign
rights. We want to maintain the rights of the people and their
manhood and we can only do this by organization--ready to stand
by one another, ready to defend our constitution, the people of
this country, the wage-workers and especially those of
Homestead."
President Sheehan and Vice-President Carney, of the Amalgamated
Association and others followed with brief addresses, declaring the
fight to be practically won by the strikers and exhorting them to stand
firm to the end. The men were much encouraged by these exhortations and
comforted themselves with the reflection that when so many competent
authorities predicted victory, the expectation of defeat must be merely
the chimera of a diseased imagination.
Towards the end of October assaults on non-unionists became very
frequent. Men were waylaid and beaten while going to and from work, and
the non-union boarding houses were bombarded with bricks and stones.
The attacking parties were seldom arrested, the deputies being rather
disposed to keep under cover than to do aggressive detective work. A
detail of coal and iron police was brought in to assist in quelling the
disorders, but without improving the state of affairs to any perceptible
extent, as many as six non-unionists being attacked with slung-shots and
other weapons in a single evening, despite the vigilance of deputies and
policemen combined.
At length Sheriff McCleary, perceiving that a dangerous crisis was
threatened, added 50 deputies to his force and thus succeeded in
checking the tendency to lawlessness. Ninety-one of the non-union
workmen were also sworn in as deputies.
The sheriff attributed the spread of insubordination mainly to the
influence of Hon. D. R. Jones, an attorney who had at one time been
president of the Miners' Union and who had served two terms in the
legislature. Mr. Jones was called in to defend James Holleran, who had
resisted arrest for disorderly conduct and been aided by a number of
strikers at whose hands the deputy sheriffs received rough usage. At
the hearing, which was held before 'Squire Oeffner, Mr. Jones said that
"the person under arrest and all others not only exercised a right but
performed a sacred duty in resisting unless the officer had a warrant
for the arrest." The defendant was held in $500 bail for court, but
his friends construed Attorney Jones' remarks as exonerating Holleran
and all others who undertook to resist a deputy venturing to make an
arrest without a warrant. In this way, the sheriff contended, the
disorderly element was incited to misconduct and Mr. Jones should be
held responsible. Application was made before Judge McClung by the
sheriff's attorney asking that Mr. Jones be summoned to explain his
action in court. An order was made accordingly and Mr. Jones in response
set up the defense that his utterances had been misrepresented and
misunderstood and that he had not aimed at kindling disaffection and
lawlessness. This explanation was accepted and the matter dismissed.
The prevalence of disorder caused a meeting of protest to be held by the
leading professional and businessmen of Homestead, and resolutions were
adopted calling upon the sheriff, in case the trouble continued and he
should be unable to suppress it, to apply to the Governor for aid. The
members of the advisory board also condemned the disposition to defy the
law and used their best efforts to put a stop to the misdeeds of the
rougher element.
William Gaches, treasurer of the strikers' organization, was kept busy,
day in and day out, receiving and disbursing funds for the relief of the
strikers, although as time wore on, the golden stream of contributions
began to dwindle unpleasantly. A goodly lift was given to the relief
fund by the celebration of "Homestead Day" in Chicago, on October 29,
when each of the 90,000 union workmen in that city was expected to
contribute a day's wages. The receipts from this source were estimated
by the newspapers at $40,000. Even that sum, however, was only a
stop-gap. A mint of money was needed to support the 4,000 idle men at
Homestead, and, however generous the subscriptions from abroad, it was
impossible that the enormous expense of maintaining this army of
unemployed persons could be kept up much longer.
Mr. Frick was a steady visitor to the works and made arrangements for
elaborate improvements. He rather surprised the strikers by removing
John A. Potter from the superintendency and substituting Charles M.
Schwab, who had been serving as manager of the Braddock mill. As Mr.
Schwab was known to be a genial and amiable gentleman, and Mr. Potter
was the reverse of popular, the strikers formed the conclusion that the
removal of the latter was intended to placate them, and perhaps to serve
as a means of hastening desertions from the Amalgamated ranks. Mr.
Potter lost nothing by the change, inasmuch as he was appointed chief
mechanical engineer of the Carnegie Company, a transfer which was
equivalent to a promotion.
The first week of November was marked by a feeling of unusual uneasiness
among the Amalgamated men. Dissatisfaction was rife among the
mechanics and desertions from their ranks began to multiply rapidly.
Superintendent Schwab labored industriously among the old hands, holding
out extraordinary inducements to tempt back to work those whose superior
skill rendered their services almost indispensable.
The Federation officials sought to buoy the men up and revive the
determined spirit which had been exhibited in the early stages of the
conflict. Mr. Gompers taxed his powers of oratory to the utmost. William
Weihe, Chris. Evans, David Lynch and others made stirring appeals; but
all without avail. Disaffection had found a lodgment and it was too late
now to prevent the stampede which every one felt was soon to come.
Such was the condition of things when election day, November 8, was
ushered in. The grand effort by which Homestead was to discard
Republicanism as a rebuke to advocates of one-sided protection was to be
the last combined effort of any kind that the workingmen of the devoted
town were to make. Hugh O'Donnell, then confined in the county jail, was
the only Homesteader of prominence that refused to go over to the
Democracy. Hugh was, of course, debarred from voting, but he made up for
this deprivation by sending out for publication a letter in which he
said: "All the enemies of the locked-out men at Homestead are Democrats
from Governor Pattison down, including General Snowden, Chief Justice
Paxson, the New York _Sun_ and other Democratic papers."
The election returns gave Homestead to the Democrats by an average
majority of 137. David Lynch, who was a candidate for the legislature,
received the highest vote, his majority being 300. The strikers were
jubilant over the result and held high carnival on the day after
election.
On Sunday, November 14, Homestead saw its last riotous demonstration.
The affair arose out of an altercation between two colored non-unionists
and a striker. The striker knocked down one of the negroes and was
joined in an instant by a crowd of men, women and children, eager to
lend a hand. The negroes drew revolvers and fled, firing into the crowd
as they ran. At City Farm Lane, six more negroes joined the fugitives,
and the whole party ran to their boarding-house and barred themselves
in. An angry mob surrounded the house, tore down the fence and was about
to burn the place, when a posse of deputies and borough officers
arrived and placed the negroes under arrest. While the prisoners were on
their way to the lock-up they were assailed with stones and clubs, and
it was only by drawing revolvers and threatening to fire that the
deputies succeeded in protecting themselves and the poor wretches in
their custody. The striker who was concerned in the beginning of the
outbreak and one of his companions were also placed under arrest. These
men, as well as most of the negroes, were pretty severely wounded.
The usual Saturday afternoon meeting on November 13 was marked by
symptoms indicating only too plainly that the end was near at hand.
William T. Roberts, fresh from a campaigning tour in the East, made an
address substantially conceding that the cause of unionism at Homestead
was on its last legs. He spoke of the desertion of the finishers from
the ranks of the Amalgamated Association as an assault on the integrity
of organized labor inspired by the Carnegie people for the purpose of
defeating the Homestead men and added, "In view of the confidence you
have placed in me, I don't propose to come here and tell you that
everything is rosy when it is not. If you think with this combined
opposition in your own ranks you can fight it out to the end, I am with
you." The men, being asked what they wished to do, shouted with one
voice, "Fight it out to the end!" There were few among them, however,
that did not comprehend the intent of Mr. Robert's words. The first
doubt of ability to go on with the strike had been openly expressed by
one of their own leaders and listened to without protest. This was the
beginning of the end.
Another circumstance showing that a crisis was at hand was the
convocation of the advisory boards of Homestead, Lawrenceville and
Beaver Falls at the Pittsburgh headquarters of the Amalgamated
Association, to consider the question whether or not the strikes at
those places should be declared off. It could not be ignored that
enthusiasm was flagging, and the flow of contributions falling off to a
degree that was positively perilous. The committeemen, nevertheless,
could not nerve themselves to face the consequences of ordering a
discontinuance. Had they done so the failure of the strikes would
undoubtedly have been charged up to their account by the majority of
their fellow-workmen, and they would be in the position of making a
thankless sacrifice.
The reader has already been informed of the manner in which the
Lawrenceville and Beaver Falls strikes came to an end. At Homestead, the
mechanics and laborers were the first to weaken. These men, to the
number of about 2000, met on the morning of Thursday, November 18, and
appointed a committee to wait upon the Amalgamated men and submit the
proposition that the strike be declared off and the mechanics and
laborers be released from further obligations. The Amalgamated men met
in the evening, with President Weihe in the chair.
The proposition of the mechanics and laborers was rejected by a vote of
106 to 75.
A ballot was then taken on the advisability of continuing the strike and
resulted in an affirmative decision by a vote of 224 to 129.
A committee was appointed to notify the mechanics and laborers that they
could act as they liked, but that the Amalgamated Association would not
be responsible for their actions.
Next morning the mechanics and laborers reconvened, received the report
of the committee of the Amalgamated Association, and agreed unanimously
to return to work, but under no circumstances to accept tonnage jobs, as
by so doing they would trespass on the rights of the Amalgamated men.
The meeting adjourned quickly, and the men proceeded at once to the mill
and put in their applications for reinstatement. More than half of the
mechanics were turned away, as the number of vacancies was limited, but
the laborers were all put to work or assured of employment in a few
days. So great was the rush of returning prodigals that two clerks were
required to make out passes for the applicants. Chairman Frick was on
hand to supervise the re-employment of the old men and enjoyed, in his
undemonstrative way, the successful culmination of his plans to break up
unionism in Homestead.
CHAPTER XVII.
[Illustration: CAPITULATION]
THE LAST MASS MEETING--STRIKERS SURRENDER UNCONDITIONALLY--COST
OF THE HOMESTEAD DISPUTE TO CAPITAL, LABOR AND THE STATE--FEW
OLD HANDS GET WORK AND POVERTY STALKS ABROAD--NOBLE SERVICE OF
RELIEF COMMITTEES--THE COMING OF SANTA CLAUS--CONGRESSIONAL
INVESTIGATIONS WIND UP WITHOUT ACCOMPLISHING ANYTHING--A BATCH
OF USELESS REPORTS--THE KEARNS ANTI-PINKERTON BILL BECOMES A
LAW IN PENNSYLVANIA.
The secession of the mechanics and laborers was all that was wanting
to complete the discouragement of the tonnage men. The usual mass
meeting was held in the rink on Saturday, November 20, but the leaders,
perceiving that a crisis was imminent, decided to exclude all who
were not members of the lodges and only about 500 strikers took part
in the secret deliberations which followed. Addresses were made by
Vice Presidents Lynch and Carney, of the Amalgamated Association.
Thomas Crawford, Chairman of the Advisory Board, was not present,
and the information was conveyed to the meeting that he had resigned
in order to take a position in a mill at Uniontown, Pa., and that
Richard Hotchkiss, Secretary of the board, had been appointed to
fill the vacancy. The discussion turned mainly on the necessity, now
self-evident, of abandoning the strike and declaring the Homestead mill
open to union men. It was manifestly the sense of the meeting that this
step should be taken, but the men recoiled from it, and, after a debate
lasting four hours, action was deferred until the following day.
It was a mournful little band that assembled in the rink on Sunday
morning. In that memorable meeting-place which had again and again
resounded with triumphant oratory and with the plaudits of sanguine
multitudes, less than 300 dispirited men now came together to register
the confirmation of their defeat. There were some who argued
passionately against capitulation. To yield, they said, would be to
hasten the disintegration of the Amalgamated Association. Better go
naked and starve than sacrifice the principles on the vindication of
which the men of Homestead had staked everything. But this reasoning was
of no avail. A standing vote was taken on the question of declaring the
mill open and the proposition was carried by 101 to 91.
There was no outburst when the result was declared. The men sat and
stared at one another for a few seconds, and then dropped out of the
hall in twos and threes, some of them giving vent to their feelings in
bitter denunciations of the action of the majority.
The news caused little excitement through the town. It was no more than
had been expected, and, for the most part, the people were glad of it,
for it had long been understood that the continuance of the unequal
struggle with the Carnegie Company meant an increased burden of debt and
poverty.
It was among the outside sympathizers that the keenest regret was felt
over the failure of the strike. Messrs. Powderly, Devlin, Wright and
other high officers of the K. of L. deplored the collapse, and here and
there K. of L. men took occasion to lay the blame on the shoulders of
Samuel Gompers and his associates in the management of the Federation.
Hugh O'Donnell gave his opinion of the ending of the strike in the
appended letter to the Pittsburgh _Leader_:
"EDITOR LEADER:--In reply to your request for an expression of
opinion concerning the action of the men at Homestead in
declaring the strike off, I can say but little at the present
time. Owing to the fact that, certain of my acts in that most
memorable struggle are _sub judice_, I am not in a position to
criticize the acts of my late associates. Great battles are
rarely, if ever, fought as planned. The world has never
witnessed before so much suffering and sacrifice for a cause.
The action of the three thousand laborers and mechanics who came
out with our men on pure principle alone is unexampled in the
history of labor struggles.
"But to the men in the Lawrenceville and Beaver Falls mills too
much praise cannot be given. Their loyalty and steadfastness to
the principles for which they were contending should never be
forgotten. Out of consideration for them I regret that the
Homestead struggle should have terminated in the manner in which
it did.
HUGH O'DONNELL.
"Allegheny county jail, November 21."
Secretary Lovejoy contented himself with assuring the newspapers that
the surrender would have no effect on the cases of the strikers under
arrest, as far as the Carnegie firm was concerned.
On Monday the Advisory board disbanded and the dissolution of the
workingmen's once great and powerful organization was complete.
The battle for the preservation of the integrity of this body had been
fought at a fearful cost. The outlay on the side of the Carnegie Company
has never been made known, but it cannot have fallen short of $250,000.
The workmen, in the course of twenty weeks of idleness, lost $850,000 in
wages, and the expense to the state of maintaining the militia at
Homestead was about $500,000. In round numbers then, the total cost of
the strike to all parties involved, allowing for the pay of deputy
sheriffs, the expense of court trials and the relief funds, may be set
down at _two million dollars_, an enormous sum to be paid for the
gratification of Mr. Frick's desire to get rid of unions and unionism.
Inasmuch, however, as but a small portion of this amount came out of the
coffers of the Carnegie Company, Mr. Frick had no reason to feel
dissatisfied. His victory was in reality, a cheap one. Had he not
precipitated a bloody conflict by shipping Pinkertons to Homestead and
in this way secured the support of the entire military force of
Pennsylvania, there is no telling how long the strike might have been
continued and how heavy the loss that might have been inflicted on the
firm by the stoppage of operations.
[Illustration: DISCUSSING THE SURRENDER.]
The last restraint having been removed, hundreds of men who had been
active among the strikers now thronged the mill office and besieged the
officials with applications for positions. Superintendent Schwab began
receiving the applicants at 9 o'clock on Monday morning. At that hour
about 500 men were in line. The men were admitted in groups of five and
those who were not black-listed as dangerous rioters received permits
authorizing them to file their applications with the superintendents of
the various departments. The line of waiting ones kept constantly
growing and it was not until 4 o'clock that Mr. Schwab and his
assistants were enabled to wind up their labors. Unfortunately the
number of vacancies was so small that but few of the old employees could
be accommodated by the superintendents, and fully 2,500 men were left to
keep the wolf from the door as best they could, without the assurance of
early employment. The prospect confronting these unfortunates was
disheartening in the extreme. Most of them were already embarrassed in
consequence of their long idleness. Rent and taxes were unpaid, the
endurance of grocers and butchers was exhausted, and with winter at hand
and no money in sight to purchase the necessaries of life, what was to
become of these destitute workingmen and their families?
The Amalgamated Association came at once to the relief of its own
members, a large number of whom were on the blacklist, by voting the
payment of $6 a week to each as long as he should be out of employment.
The ordinary financial resources of the lodges would not have justified
this step, but contributions continued to come in and the special
necessity for relief now exhibited was recognized by union workingmen
everywhere.
The events of the next two weeks after the strike was declared off
showed but little brightening of the outlook. By actual count there were
2,715 men on the pay rolls of the mill on the day when the mechanics and
laborers went back to work. Two weeks later there were 3,121 men
employed in the works, from which showing it will be seen that out of
2,200 men who had applied for reinstatement only 406 obtained
employment. Almost all of these were laborers.
At the call of Burgess Hollingshead, successor to Honest John McLuckie,
a meeting of citizens was held to consider plans for the relief of the
many cases of absolute destitution reported in the town. Dr. Purman
presided and J. H. Rose acted as secretary. David Lynch explained to
those present that the Amalgamated men would take care of themselves,
but that the suffering among those for whom the Association could not
undertake to provide was intense and demanded prompt measures for its
alleviation. A committee consisting of David Lynch, William Gaches and
Harry Bayne was appointed to investigate the immediate needs of the
people, and a fund was started on the spot by the subscription of $200
among the citizens in attendance. After a few days' work the
sub-committee reported to the general committee, and on the strength of
the information presented the following appeal was adopted:
"There are 218 families in Homestead and vicinity in a state of
destitution. This fact has been ascertained by a competent
committee, consisting of three persons, appointed at a citizens'
meeting held on Friday evening, December 2, 1892. The
undersigned committee was appointed as a result of the above
investigation to issue this appeal to the country, asking public
aid in caring for these destitute families. The strike is over,
but less than 800 of the 3,800 former workmen of the Carnegie
Steel Company have as yet secured employment in the mill, and
only a limited number elsewhere. It is highly improbable that
this vast body of unemployed men will be able to secure work for
many weeks to come. This means prolonged and increasing
distress. The people of Homestead, although liberal in their
contributions, are unable to provide for the demands of such
general want. This call is an urgent one, and the public must
assist us."
The general relief committee perfected its organization by electing
Burgess Hollingshead president, William Gaches, treasurer, and George
Hadfield, secretary. Mr. Hollingshead was authorized to receive money
contributions and turn them over to the treasurer, and to Mr. Hadfield
was assigned the duty of receiving donations of food, fuel and clothing.
One of the first subscriptions received was the sum of $25 from the
employees of Kaufman Brothers of Philadelphia, transmitted by the city
editor of the Philadelphia _Record_. Others poured in rapidly, the
business people of Pittsburgh being especially liberal in their
response to the demands upon them. The Building Trades council
appointed a committee to take charge of the Pittsburgh donations, with
Vice President Michael Sharran at the head. Mr. Sharran, assisted by Mr.
D. S. Mitchell, labored with untiring activity and these two men were
instrumental in securing thousands of dollars worth of supplies.
Among the most liberal contributors was Mrs. J. M. Gusky, head of the
great clothing firm of J. M. Gusky & Company, a lady noted for her
charities and always foremost to respond in emergencies such as that
occurring at Homestead.
Kaufmann Brothers and Eisner & Philipps gave an immense quantity of
clothing. W. M. Laird contributed a sufficient quantity of shoes for all
claimants, and the large grocery and commission firms forwarded
provisions of all kinds.
The Pittsburgh _Press_ raised a fund of $2,500 in addition to supplies
of clothing and other necessaries, and the _Dispatch_ collected over
$700, to which was added $300 from the charitable people of Washington,
D. C.
As Christmas drew near, public sympathy was more and more keenly aroused
in behalf of the Homestead sufferers. A few days before that holiday of
holidays, the children in the Homestead public schools were instructed
to write letters to Santa Claus, asking for whatever they most desired.
Nearly all the letters contained requests for shoes and other
necessaries. Many of them were published in the newspapers and spoke
volumes for the unhappy condition of the poorer class of strikers and
their families.
Santa Claus was not missing, however, when the eventful morning came,
nor were the other essentials of a merry Christmas conspicuous by their
absence. One thousand turkeys came from the kind hearted workingmen of
McKeesport and 300 from Mrs. Gusky, and the heart of every child was
gladdened by the gift of a picture book and a box of candy from Kaufmann
Bros. of Pittsburgh.
The Homestead relief committee kept up its good work until the end of
March, by which time the necessities of the people ceased to be
pressing. A report was then published showing receipts amounting to
$5,587.28, of which $4,926.79 had been expended in relieving distressed
families. A committee of three was appointed to use the unexpended
balance in relief work, and the general committee then dissolved, having
excellently discharged its mission.
Reference has already been made to the appointment of a committee of
United States senators to investigate the Homestead affair and the
postponement of action by Senator Gallinger, the Republican chairman of
that committee, until after the presidential election. Within two weeks
after election day, Senators Gallinger and Pfeffer began the inquiry at
Chicago, where a hearing was given to Pinkerton agents and authorities
on police methods, the latter submitting opinions on the best means of
coping with labor disturbances. Chief of Police McClaughrey advocated
the removal of the police force in great cities from the field of
politics and placing municipal departments under a civil service system,
and Marshal Hitchcock suggested the enactment of a law providing a
severe penalty for refusing to serve on a _posse comitatus_. On November
23, Messrs. Gallinger and Pfeffer arrived in Pittsburgh. The other
members of the committee, Messrs. Hansbrough, of North Dakota; Felton,
of California; Sanders, of Montana; White, of Louisiana, and Hill, of
New York, did not find it convenient to attend. The testimony taken was
mainly a repetition of that given before the House Committee. Captain
Rodgers repeated his tale of the adventures of the Little Bill;
Superintendent Potter told of the innocence of the purpose entertained
in the bringing in of the Pinkertonian Three Hundred; William Weihe
explained how easily the trouble could have been adjusted if the
Carnegie firm had desired an amicable settlement and condemned the
facilities afforded for the importation of cheap labor in violation of
the contract labor law; David Lynch and William G. Roberts testified to
the peaceable disposition of the Homestead men prior to the Pinkerton
invasion and their respect for the property rights of their employers;
A. C. Robertson, a politician who had formerly been a glass blower,
condemned arbitration, whether voluntary or compulsory, as a failure,
and ex-Judge Thomas Mellon declared the employment of armed guards
during strikes to be necessary because there is "too much politics" to
permit of the proper enforcement of the law.
After a visit to the Homestead mill, the committee proceeded directly to
New York where the testimony of Robert A. Pinkerton and Captain Heinde
was heard. The Pinkerton chief described the men sent to Homestead as
model citizens. It had been agreed, he said, that the guards should be
sworn in as deputy sheriffs. There had been no firing from the barges
until after the captain was shot, and then only in sheer self-defense.
Witness claimed that his agency had lost $15,000 by the Homestead
affair, owing to the seizure of 225 rifles and other property, and the
cost of caring for men hurt in the battle. He thought it doubtful that
Mr. Carnegie would reimburse the agency. Being asked if he thought that
the violence committed at Homestead was due to the strikers or to the
rabble attracted there, he said: "I think it was committed by the
strikers, their leaders and the advisory committee itself." Captain
Heinde's evidence was merely a recital of the events of July 6. With his
examination the investigation was concluded.
The report of the committee, presented to the senate on February 11,
1893, denounced the employment of Pinkertons as "an utterly vicious
system, responsible for much of the ill-feeling and bad blood displayed
by the working classes," and suggested that if Mr. Frick had carried out
the humane policy enunciated by Mr. Carnegie in his famous article in
the _Forum_, the Homestead strike might have been avoided. At the same
time, it declared that there was "no excuse for the scenes of disorder
and terrorism for which the strikers were themselves responsible," and
that "laboring men should learn the lesson that they cannot better their
condition by violating the law or resisting lawful authority." The
committee doubted the power of Congress to mend matters by legislation,
and advised arbitration as the only middle ground on which employer and
employe could meet without depreciating the rights of either.
About this time the House committee on investigation of the Homestead
strike awoke from its lethargy and Messrs. Ray and Broderick, the
Republican members, handed in a minority report, condemning the
employment of armed guards, but advising that legislation on this
question be left to the several states. In the judgment of the minority
of the committee the "present system of federal taxation" had nothing to
do with the Homestead strike, which was in reality a struggle for
supremacy between organized capital and organized labor.
The majority report was presented shortly afterwards. It held that Mr.
Frick should have united with the sheriff of Allegheny county, without
regard to the inefficiency of that officer, in an appeal to the
governor, instead of undertaking to crush the strikers on his own
account; criticized the Amalgamated Association as a body the members of
which were encouraged to become intemperate zealots, denied the right of
the Homestead men to oppose the landing of the Pinkertons, and ended by
suggesting that it be left to the several states to enact laws
regulating Pinkertonism.
Individual minority reports were presented as follows:
By Mr. Broderick, advocating the passage of a compulsory arbitration law
by the states.
By Mr. Buchanan, of New Jersey, declaring the investigation to have
acted as a boomerang against the Democrats in that it showed a high
protective tariff to be productive of high wages.
By Mr. Boatner, claiming that, under the clause of the constitution
which authorizes the inter-state commerce law, inter-state carriers can
be prevented from hiring Pinkertons.
By Mr. Stockdale, of Mississippi, claiming that the Pinkertons were
trespassers; and
By Messrs. Bynum and Layton confessing their inability to find a remedy
for conflicts between capital and labor.
All the reports cited having been duly read and filed away by the two
branches of Congress, the Homestead question was thereupon dropped by
general consent and, its political utility having vanished, was heard of
no more in the national legislature.
The Pennsylvania legislature, which assembled in January, 1893, was
obliged to meet the Pinkerton question squarely. All the members of the
lower branch of that body--the House of Representatives--and one-half of
the members of the senate came fresh from the people, having been chosen
in the November elections, and a large proportion of them stood pledged
to their constituents to aid in the passage of an anti-Pinkerton bill.
Many measures of this character were introduced, but that upon which
support was centered, by common consent, was a bill introduced by
Representative John Kearns, of Pittsburgh, a gentleman in close touch
with organized labor. The Kearns bill was entitled "An Act relative to
the appointing of special deputies, marshals, detectives or policemen by
sheriffs, mayors or other persons authorized by law to make such
appointments, and by individuals, associations or corporations
incorporated under the laws of this State or any other State of the
United States, and making it a misdemeanor for persons to exercise the
functions of an officer without authority."
The bill underwent some vicissitudes, which delayed its passage until
May, although introduced early in January and advanced on the House
calendar through Mr. Kearns' energetic efforts. At one stage in its
progress, a proviso was added requiring that any person appointed or
deputized to perform the duties of special deputy, marshal, policeman or
detective should be "of known good moral character and temperate habits"
and should give bond in a considerable sum for the faithful performance
of his duties. This provision was attacked because of its being
presumably aimed at the low class of detectives employed by the Law and
Order society of Pittsburgh, which was just then making war on Sunday
newspapers and lobbying against a bill for the protection of journals
publishing Sunday editions, and for this reason it was eliminated. The
word "detectives" was stricken out of the title and, as it was feared
that the bill might interfere with the appointment of regular policemen
in municipalities, a special proviso to prevent such a result was added
in the senate:
As finally enacted into a law, signed by the governor, and placed upon
the statute books, the measure reads as follows:
SECTION 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of
Representatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in General
Assembly met, and it is hereby enacted by the authority of the
same, That no sheriff of a county, mayor of a city, or other
person authorized by law to appoint special deputies, marshals
or policemen in this Commonwealth to preserve the public peace
and prevent or quell public disturbances, and no individuals,
association, company or corporation incorporated under the laws
of this State or of any other State of the United States and
doing business in this State, shall hereafter appoint or employ
as such special deputy, marshal or policeman any person who
shall not be a citizen of this Commonwealth.
SECTION 2. That any person who shall in this Commonwealth
without due authority pretend or hold himself out to any one as
a deputy sheriff, marshal, policeman, constable or peace
officer, shall be deemed guilty of misdemeanor.
SECTION 3. Any person or persons, company or association, or any
person in the employ of such company or association violating
any of the provisions of this act shall be guilty of a
misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be sentenced to pay a fine
not exceeding five hundred dollars, or undergo an imprisonment
not exceeding one year, or both or either at the discretion of
the court.
_Provided_, That if any company or association be convicted
under this act it shall be sentenced to pay a fine not exceeding
five thousand dollars.
_Provided further_, That the provisions of this act shall not be
construed as applying to policemen, constables or specials
appointed by municipalities for municipal purposes.
As long as the Kearns act stands--and it is safe to say that it is not
likely ever to be repealed--the Pinkerton Detective Agency is
effectually barred out of Pennsylvania.
CHAPTER XVIII.
[Illustration: THE FIRST TRIAL]
SYLVESTER CRITCHLOW ARRAIGNED--PINKERTONS ON THE STAND--THE
PROSECUTION MAKES A STRONG SHOWING--A SUSPICIOUS CARNEGIE
BANQUET--ATTORNEYS ERWIN AND ARGO TO THE RESCUE--AN ALIBI FOR
THE DEFENSE--JOHN S. ROBB ATTACKS MR. ERWIN--THE "NORTHWESTERN
WHIRLWIND'S" MAGNIFICENT ORATION--HE CAPTURES THE COURT AND
CONFOUNDS THE PROSECUTION--"NOT GUILTY"--THE BACKBONE OF THE
MURDER CHARGES BROKEN.
Sylvester Critchlow was the first of the Homestead men to be placed on
trial in the Allegheny County Criminal Court, the charge against him
being the murder of T. J. Connors.
On the morning of November 18, 1892, Critchlow was arraigned before
Judges Kennedy and McClung. A great crowd assembled in the court room,
curious to observe the opening scenes in the memorable legal battle
which was to ensue, but to the great disappointment of the throng, the
judges ordered the room to be cleared of all except members of the bar,
witnesses, jurors and reporters.
The prisoner was perfectly cool and self possessed. His wife and mother
sat near him, watching with womanly solicitude every step in the
proceedings, the issue of which meant so much to both.
The array of legal talent on both sides was formidable. The prosecution
was in the hands of District Attorney Burleigh, assisted by Messrs. D.
F. Patterson, John S. Robb, E. Y. Breck, P. C. Knox and Assistant
District Attorney Harry Goehring. Counsel for the defense were: Messrs.
W. W. Erwin and G. W. Argo, of St. Paul, Minn.; E. A. Montooth, Thomas
M. Marshall, William J. Brennen and William Reardon, of Pittsburgh, and
John F. Cox, of Homestead.
Immediately upon the opening of court, Critchlow was ordered to stand
up, and having heard the charge read, pleaded not guilty in a clear,
firm tone of voice. Attorney Brennen asked to have the indictment
quashed on the ground of an irregularity in the drawing of the grand
jury panel. The motion was overruled, and the selection of jurors began,
this process being conducted by Mr. Burleigh for the prosecution and Mr.
Marshall for the defense. Within a few hours, the following "good men
and true" were selected: Peter Roth, John Herron, James Marshall, Amos
Mashey, Chris Wiggand, C. S. Eaton, Chris A. Sende, James M. Wright, D.
J. Herlehy, W. A. Freyvogel, Burns Wadsworth and Louis Jackman.
The District Attorney, in his opening speech, after having given the
conventional explanation as to degrees of murder, asked the jury to
avoid the impression that the case on trial was one of treason or was
to be considered in connection with Homestead. "We are," he said,
"simply trying Sylvester Critchlow for the murder of T. J. Connors, who
was killed in the barges at Homestead on July 6. The barges were there
lawfully and for a peaceable purpose.... We will show that Sylvester
Critchlow was behind the barricade with a rifle, shooting down to the
barges within easy range of Connors, and firing in a direction in which
he would likely hit Connors."
"You must also remember, gentlemen, that the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania is the prosecutor and Sylvester Critchlow is the defendant.
There is no private prosecutor here. The case will be prosecuted by
public officials and no one else will be allowed to interfere. Other
counsel may appear in the case, but they will be in subordination to the
district attorney."
Dr. McKennan, Superintendent W. A. Cowan, of the West Penn hospital and
Rev. Father Leonard Lynch were the first witnesses examined. They
testified to the death of Connors and the nature of his wound.
Captain John W. Cooper, of the Pinkerton agency, followed with the
familiar story of the river expedition and the battle at the landing. He
also swore positively to the position of Connors at the time when he was
shot and the hour at which he fell.
Captain Cooper was subjected to a searching cross-examination by Mr.
Brennen, but went through the ordeal without permitting himself to
become confused. Mr. Brennen sought to show (1) that the witness was not
of good moral character and (2) that Connors was accidentally shot by
one of his own comrades.
At one point the cross-examination ran as follows:
MR. BRENNEN.--Were you not a "Hey Rube" for a circus for nine years?
MR. BURLEIGH.--What in the name of common sense is a "Hey Rube?"
JUDGE KENNEDY.--Yes, Mr. Brennen, we would like to know what you mean by
a "Hey Rube."
MR. BRENNEN.--I mean a circus fighter. The witness knows what I mean.
WITNESS.--I was detailed by the Pinkerton agency to accompany the Barnum
circus in the capacity of a detective. I was with the circus for nine
years.
W. H. Burt, also a Pinkerton detective, recounted the incidents of the
fight at the landing and described the shooting of Connors as follows:
"I knew T. J. Connors. He was on the boat. I saw him between 11 and 12
o'clock that day. That was before he was shot. He was near the bow of
the boat. Three or four minutes later I saw two men picking him up. He
had fallen about twenty-five feet from the bow of the boat. He was
placed on a table and a medical student from Chicago, who had hired as a
guard, bandaged the wound on Connors' arm."
Detectives P. J. Connors and Joseph Malley gave evidence of similar
tenor to that of the two preceding witnesses, and Captain Rodgers and
Deputy Sheriff Gray repeated their well-worn story of the Little Bill.
This stage of the proceedings was reached on the afternoon of Saturday,
November 19, at the customary hour of adjournment. The court decided to
hold a night session, and accordingly at 7 P. M. the examination of
witnesses was resumed.
J. M. Dickson, H. H. Hervey and J. H. Slocum, clerks in the employ of
the Carnegie firm, swore that on the morning of July 6 they saw
Critchlow with a gun in his hand going towards the mill gate. Each of
them positively identified the prisoner.
Charles Reese, a newspaper artist, being sworn, said that he saw
Critchlow, with a gun in his hands, occupying an exposed position in the
mill yard, near the pump house. Somebody had said to witness, "There is
Critchlow. He is a regular dare devil." Mr. Brennen elicited from the
witness the fact that he had attended a gathering of newspaper reporters
called together by Capt. E. Y. Breck, attorney for the Carnegie firm, at
the time when the Critchlow case was before the grand jury. This affair
had created no little scandal when it occurred, some of the newspapers
openly stating that Captain Breck had invited those whom he intended to
use as witnesses to a banquet for the purpose of "coaching" them. Mr.
Reese, however, denied that there had been a banquet or, that he had
received any formal invitation from Captain Breck. Nevertheless, the
evidence was regarded as establishing a reasonable presumption of the
use of unfair methods by the prosecution.
Isaac J. Jury, a constable residing in Homestead, swore that he saw
Critchlow in the mill yard and advised him to get out, but that his
warning was not heeded.
The most damaging testimony of all was given by Samuel Stewart, a clerk,
in the Homestead mill. He said:
"I know Sylvester Critchlow; saw him near the Company office
between 8 and 9 o'clock on the morning of July 6; next saw him
back of the barricades, near the pump house on the river bank;
he was kneeling back of the barricade, a gun in his hands; the
gun projected through the barricade between the second and third
beams; the barricade was built of steel 'I' beams; his gun was
pointed toward the barges; the bows of the barges were nearest
to the barricades; you could see into the boats from where
Critchlow was kneeling; the door of the outer barge was open; I
saw Critchlow fire once in the direction of the barge; saw him
aim carefully and pull the trigger; I remained there about 20
minutes; Critchlow was there when I arrived, and was still there
when I left; I cannot tell the kind of gun Critchlow had, except
that it was a single barrel."
On cross-examination witness stated that he also saw Anthony Flaherty,
Joseph A. Hall and James Flannagan shoot from behind the barricade. He
stuck firmly to his story in the face of Mr. Brennen's questioning.
Stewart's examination ended the Saturday night session.
When the trial was resumed on Monday morning, Detective Malley was again
placed on the stand and swore to having seen Critchlow on the river bank
with a gun in his hands and to have heard him called by name.
Photographs of the burning barges, the barricades and the mill yard,
taken by order of the Carnegie Company on July 6, were put in evidence,
and here the commonwealth rested.
Attorney George W. Argo made the opening speech for the defense. He
explained that he and his colleague, Mr. Irwin, had been sent by the
laboring element of the Northwest to assist in the defense of the
Homestead men. "As far as I am concerned," he said, "I was not selected
on account of any extraordinary ability, but because for years I have
been in touch with labor. At one time I was a barge builder near this
city. My parents resided in Washington County."
In setting forth the reasons for demanding an acquittal, Mr. Argo
enlarged upon the enlistment of armed men to invade Homestead "within
two days of the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of
Independence" and, after describing the expedition of the Pinkertons
went on to say:
"These men were not laboring men. It was an invasion of armed
men employed by a man named Frick; it was an assault upon this
grand old commonwealth; it was an assault upon the state in
which the Declaration of Independence was signed; this armed
body of men who invaded this state and trampled upon the soil
made sacred by the feet of Washington; these men were not under
the command of any regular officer of this county; they were men
who could not be sworn in as deputies or special officers. Under
the evidence in this case these men made an attack upon the
people of Homestead; there is not any evidence that Frick owned
one dollar's worth of property in Homestead. These men sneaked
in on a dark, foggy night; they were met, not by strikers, for
there is no evidence that there was a strike, but by the good
people of the town, who, when the armed foe attempted to land
told the latter not to come ashore; begged of them not to
interfere with their rights, begged of them not to attempt to
land. Not a particle of evidence has been given that these
foreign emissaries had any right there. The men, the peaceable
citizens, attempted to defend their rights. A young man named
Foy went down to the gang-plank to plead with the men not to
come ashore. He was met by a lot of armed men. Becoming alarmed
he turned to go back, when he slipped and fell across the plank.
As he fell he was shot in the back by some one on the barges.
That was the beginning of the terrible battle. It will appear in
evidence in this case that the first shots were fired from the
barges and not by the people on shore. We will show you that
preparations had been made for this trouble one month before it
occurred. We will show that a stockade or high fence had been
built around the works, a fence like that built in the west to
repel Indian attacks. This fence was full of portholes, and
resembled the outer wall of a fort. There is no evidence that
the people who were on the banks on the morning of the invasion
were strikers. They were peaceable citizens of Homestead. Every
man in that crowd had a right to defend himself with arms; the
law gives to every man the right to defend himself, to defend
his family; to defend his neighbors and his friends; this right
is given every man by a power higher than the law of man. The
people were attacked by an armed foe and they had the right to
use weapons in self-defense. The evidence shows that the men on
the barges were in command of officers whose names are known,
who have testified in this case, yet your honorable district
attorney has made no effort to bring these men to justice. Thus
he becomes a defender of these armed invaders of your county."
Mr. Argo further outlined the plan of defense as showing that the
Critchlow who was seen behind the barricades was another Critchlow and
that the prisoner was not present when Connors met his death.
W. M. Erwin followed with a spirited address in which he said that the
prosecution rested entirely on the theory that there had been a riot,
which he characterized as a "doubly damned fiction." "Is there," he
asked, "another such hard-hearted, villainous man within the limits of
the land as this man Frick, whom we find hob-nobbing with the leaders of
the Republic. This man Frick, whose name will be more notorious than
that of the man who fired the Ephesian dome, did not apply to your
courts or your legislature, but violated the agreement with his men, and
assumed, like a tyrant, to act as arbiter; this most brutal tyrant of
all tyrants tried to force his men to bow to his will by an armed force
of invaders. Thus have these scoundrels defied the laws of the
commonwealth. Carnegie bent the eternal laws of God and the poorer
imitations by man. We will show that the defendants only tried to
straighten these laws. If there is no Judas Iscariot among you,
gentlemen of the jury, you will plant the flag of independence on your
hills."
Captain O. C. Coon, of Homestead, was the first witness called by the
defense. He testified that he was at the mill landing when the Pinkerton
barges arrived, and described the opening of the battle as follows:
"When the plank was thrown out my attention was called to a man
on the barge; he had a gun in his hand; there was a boy on the
shore; he was tantalizing the man; the latter raised his gun to
shoot the boy; I said to him: 'For God's sake don't shoot that
boy, for he is only a boy.' I asked him if he was a deputy
sheriff, he said no; I asked him if he was a guardsman, he said
no; I then said 'you are a Pinkerton'; he replied that he was,
and, holding up his gun, said his party was going to enter the
mill in fifteen minutes; the boy on shore continued to call the
man on the barge; the latter raised his gun and aimed at the
boy, but someone pushed his gun down; when he raised it again he
had it drawn on me; about that time a boy came running down to
where we were, slipped and fell across the gang plank; a minute
later there was a shot from the barge, and I heard afterward
that the boy on the plank was shot in the side; the first shot
fired after the landing was fired by either the second or third
man on the plank; I do not know who he was; I went there to try
and preserve order; I never saw Critchlow to know him until I
saw him in court to-day."
Charles Mansfield, of Homestead, effectually offset the evidence of
Charles Reese. He swore that he had been in the mill yard and conversed
with Reese. Asked as to the nature of the conversation, he said:
"I was in a cupola with Mr. Reese. I saw a man named Critchlow go into
the pump-house. I said to Reese, 'There goes Critchlow into the place
where Morris was killed. He will be killed sure. You had better get a
good sketch of him.'"
MR. BRENNEN--"Was the man you pointed out to Reese the defendant?"
"No, sir."
"Who was the man?"
"I do not wish to state."
"Was his name Critchlow?"
"It was."
Numerous witnesses were then introduced to prove an alibi for the
defendant. Samuel Rothrauff, J. Miller Colgan and J. J. Baird testified
that they saw Critchlow in Braddock before 10 A. M. on July 6. Mrs.
Bridget Coyle said that she saw him at 3 P. M. a mile distant from the
mill on his way home. "There's no lie about it," exclaimed Mrs. Coyle,
in answer to Attorney Patterson's questions, "but you're trying to make
me tell a lie, and I wouldn't do it for all the money Carnegie has."
Three witnesses corroborated Mrs. Coyle's statement and a half-dozen
others accounted for Critchlow's movements in the evening.
The taking of all this testimony occupied the court throughout a second
night session.
On Tuesday, the fourth day of the trial, the defendant testified in his
own behalf, denying that he had been on the Carnegie Company's grounds
at any time on the day of the battle. A light suit of clothes which he
claimed to have worn on that day was exhibited as an offset to the
evidence of witnesses for the prosecution who coincided in the statement
that the Critchlow whom they had seen wore dark clothing.
Critchlow's wife was sworn and said that at 4 P. M. on July 6, at which
hour, it was alleged, defendant had been behind the barricades, he was
at home sleeping.
This closed the case for the defense.
Only one witness was called by the commonwealth in rebuttal, and his
evidence was valueless.
Mr. Marshall, for the defense, submitted a number of points, among which
was the contention that, when it is certain that one or more persons
committed a crime, but it is uncertain which, all must be acquitted.
Mr. D. F. Patterson responded for the prosecution, taking special
exception to the plea against individual liability.
Four hours were allowed to each side for the closing arguments.
Mr. Robb, for the commonwealth, arraigned the defense in scathing
language for seeking to belittle the laws of the commonwealth in the
eyes of the jury. "There is, gentlemen," he said "some mysterious power
that comes from the blue sky above the clouds that leads us away from
the law; we have been told this by an attorney from the other side. Has
it come to this, as we are told, that there is not law enough in
Allegheny county or Pennsylvania for a plain cause? We have been told,
but thank God those who made the statement are not citizens of our
state, that we are all, from the man who sits on the supreme bench to
the district attorney, corrupt. We have been told that in their cause
there has been a mysterious, swimming atmosphere, something that would
develop in this cause. But when you hear his honor you will know how
plain is your duty and how plain is the law."
And again:
"The Carnegie company may have done wrong; we all do wrong, but
is that any reason why our laws and our great flag, which was
referred to so eloquently by the gentleman on the other side in
his opening address should be trampled underfoot by rioters? My
forefathers were not so high as the forefathers of the gentleman
who addressed you yesterday; mine were only privates; his were
away-up officers. But if I were not a better citizen of
Allegheny county than to advise a jury to disregard its solemn
oath I should hope that I should be stricken dead."
Mr. Erwin, who, since the delivery of his fiery speech of Monday, had
come to be known among the members of the bar as the "Northwestern
Whirlwind," followed Mr. Robb. There was dead silence in the court-room
when he began. Surely he would respond in kind to Mr. Robb's virulent
attack on him! But no. The Westerner was too shrewd to let himself be
drawn off into the mere by-ways of argument, and with but a passing
contemptuous allusion to Mr. Robb's onslaught, he proceeded calmly and
impressively with the discussion of the main issue. As one of the
newspapers put it, "The strategy of the prosecution to lead into a
by-path had failed, and he stuck to the high road and tramped defiantly
along the highest part of it."
After a few preparatory remarks, including his brief reference to Mr.
Robb's speech, which he characterized as a "gauzy affair," Mr. Erwin
plunged into his subject as follows:
"Unhappily for you, and I think for the county, the propelling
causes that led to the riots at Homestead are not shown in
evidence. Under your oaths you cannot merely presume on them. I
think that is unfortunate for the country, the state and the
city. After the news of the battle flashed over the wires calm
minds awaited the result of the investigation. That it has not
been touched is a matter of sincere regret. You are now put in
an iron vest by your oaths, and you can presume nothing except
such presumptions as are legal and presumable. We of the defense
are in no way responsible for this. A man has the right to rebut
only the testimony addressed against him, and that is so strong
that if you committed the murder you would not have a chance to
prove I did it. And thus we are bound hand and foot, and our
mouths are open to receive what the prosecution presents."
Mr. Erwin defined indictments as mere accusations, and said that the
law's presumption of innocence was as a shield on which the prosecution
must pile evidence until the weight is so heavy that it breaks the
prisoner down. The speaker referred to the important part that intuition
plays in law cases, and said in that respect women often possessed it
more acutely because they were nearer like the angels. Going further, he
adverted to the exclusion of any evidence that there was a strike at
Homestead or that Mr. Frick had hired an armed body there. The
constitution, he said, still gives the people right to bear arms in
their defense.
"The cloven foot of the power that invoked this invasion of Pennsylvania
has been hidden from you," continued he. "I know not whether
accidentally, but it has been concealed. You know, though, that it was
Frick, the blackest name there ever was; you know that Frick, whoever he
may be, put on board the Little Bill arms and men for this invasion of
Pennsylvania.
"And, therefore, you are bound to presume that if the proceeding had a
just excuse it should be shown, and the absence of it is favorable to
the prisoner. What was there that even justified Frick in arming men
like that? You do not know. I cannot but presume that it is so black he
dare not show it in this open forum before the republic. The great
question with you, gentlemen, is, under the evidence we have before us,
was this battle at Homestead a riot or an authorized invasion? That's
the first question. If you answer it was an invasion that's the end of
it. It requires no proclamation of the governor to resist an invasion. I
do not see how under the evidence you can see anything else than an
invasion. I would like to have shown you what an irresponsible
constabulary the Pinkertons are, but that is denied us."
Mr. Erwin sarcastically said that Mr. Robb in his endeavor to carry them
by storm became the personification of a rioter, and forgot to tell them
that if Mr. Frick had not sent the Pinkertons to Homestead there would
never have been a battle. There may have seemed a reason to Frick, but
the state had not shown anything of that. People for self-aggrandizement
may often do things that, if shown in court, might convict them of what
they charge against others, and that is murder.
"If you find there is no excuse for that invasion the people of
Homestead should have pursued and shot the Pinkertons even at God's
altar, and further still have gone across the line that separates the
dead from life and shot them while they lay on the bosom of the prince
of hell," shouted Erwin in a particularly passionate outburst that
seemed to appal the court. "If there was no invasion, you must ask
yourselves was the riot such as to make the people on the shore
responsible for that tumult. Who were on those boats? Three hundred men
from the slums of Philadelphia and Chicago, armed with 150 Winchesters,
and revolvers and maces. And they were under captains and had waived
their right to think for themselves; had sworn to obey their captain
when he told them to kill the people at Homestead. This shows you the
abandonment of individuality and concentration of power under one
executive head; and that is the primary principle that constitutes war.
Were the people on the mill shore who had fired on the Pinkertons down
the river? Not one of them. Is there any evidence that the people on
shore were responsible for that firing down on the shore? Not a
particle. Perhaps the prosecution did not go into it for fear they might
show that Frick was guilty of murder. The evidence has not been put to
you to show that the people on shore were there to repel any but
'scabs.' If you cannot determine these points you should acquit the
defendant."
Mr. Erwin then went into an analysis of the testimony of the Pinkerton
witnesses for the prosecution; and defined detectives as men who could
not make a living at any honorable pursuit, and preferred to hunt men
instead of serving the Almighty by working by the sweat of their brows.
He said it was hardly possible the jury could like a human hyena. Had
the Pinkertons been honorable men the district attorney would have shown
the jury evidence of such and thus helped to strengthen their
statements. The speaker justified burning oil and dynamite and anything
else that could be thought of if used against the Pinkertons. There was
no intent in the gathering of the crowd on shore; and, therefore, the
individual up for justice could not be held guilty for what happened.
Erwin held that if Critchlow was on the scene of battle he had a perfect
right to be there. It was a point of law older than Rome, copied by
Cicero, that when arms are used all political laws are set at naught.
The resistance of the Homestead people was a "majestic" performance.
Were not three hundred rifles cowed by eight behind the barricade?
Stewart, "that magnificent volunteer witness," was a preposterous liar
and a "squirt" who was eyeing the fighters.
Here the orator asked his colleagues how long he had to speak and was
told to go on without regard to time. Taking up a synopsis of the
testimony he proceeded to analyze the statements of witnesses for the
commonwealth with telling effect. His sarcastic commentaries set the
court-room in a roar, even the tipstaves being so amused that they
forgot to cry order until Judge Kennedy aroused them.
The witnesses for the defense, Mr. Erwin said, were all reputable
citizens of Homestead. He thought it impossible to construct a better
alibi than had been proven for Critchlow. No machinations of testimony
could make such an excellent alibi as the one presented. In view of it
all, he could not look for any decision other than in favor of
acquittal, even though the district attorney had so artfully presented
the testimony as almost to compel the jury to decide for the
commonwealth against their consciences.
In conclusion the speaker pictured the misery that would be inflicted on
Critchlow's family, if the bread winner were snatched away.
"That is the greatest speech ever delivered in this court house,"
remarked the veteran, Thomas M. Marshall, when Mr. Erwin had finished.
"I want to retire from the bar now, for I have been snuffed out."
On Wednesday morning Mr. Marshall spoke. He laid much stress on the
surreptitious entry of the Pinkertons and the assumption that somebody
had authority to give these private hirelings orders to shoot. "The
order from Captain Cooper and Captain Heinde to shoot entitled them to
be shot," said the speaker vehemently. "When there is war," he
continued, "the man that arrives first on the battlefield has the right
to shoot first. But why did the Pinkertons come down upon Homestead like
thieves in the night? Who is it that likes darkness? Why did not Mr.
Frick say he was bringing these men here to protect his property and not
to intimidate people? Why did they steal into Homestead with guns that
shot sixteen times?"
Mr. Marshall attacked the evidence for the prosecution, and especially
the identification of Critchlow by the Pinkertons, who could only have
seen the man once or twice, if they had seen him at all, and were,
therefore, not qualified to swear to his identity. He held that the
district attorney had no right to throw the weight of his talents and
influence against the defendant. That officer's client was the
commonwealth, and yet Mr. Robb spoke of "our clients" as if Frick and
the commonwealth were identical. "I don't believe," said Mr. Marshall
ironically, "that H. Clay Frick had anything to do with this
prosecution, oh, no! I don't believe that anybody connected with the
Carnegie Company had anything to do with the attempt to take away the
lives of these Homestead men. And this man Lovejoy who made these
informations, he had nothing to do with the Carnegie interests; oh, no!
Love--joy! L-o-v-e-j-o-y! I don't say his name should be Loveblood; but
I do say that there are several people in the Carnegie Company who
should have their names changed."
In concluding his address, Mr. Marshall said: "The real capitalist is
the workingman, the producer, who has nothing but his paltry $3 a day,
while the lordlings, the so-called manufacturers, walk abroad as social
gods and revel in the luxury made by the sweat of the workingman's
brow."
District Attorney Burleigh, in his speech closing the case for the
commonwealth, volunteered the statement that he was in the pay of no man
but was there solely to plead for justice in the name of the
commonwealth. He taxed the defense with relying mainly on artifice and
meretricious oratory; scouted the idea that the Pinkertons were
"invaders," and declared that Mr. Erwin's defense of the right "to
shoot down on the very bosom of the prince of hell," three hundred men
"caged like rats in those barges," was anarchy-red, rampant anarchy!
Mr. Burleigh contended that the Carnegie Company in massing and
attempting to land the Pinkertons with the permission of the Sheriff,
acted within its legal rights. The landing had been attempted at night
because it was desired to avoid a breach of the peace.
The closing portion of the address was given up to an endeavor to
discredit the testimony adduced to establish an alibi for the defendant.
Judge Kennedy occupied only forty minutes in charging the jury. He held
that a man mixing with a riotous crowd and not helping to quell the
disturbance was as guilty as the active participants. The Carnegie
Company had a lawful right to protect its property, even with Pinkerton
detectives, no matter whence the guards came, and the people on the
shore had no right to shoot down the men on the barges.
After one hour's deliberation the jury returned a verdict of "Not
Guilty," to the surprise of the court and the delight of Critchlow's
weeping wife, who remained near him to the last.
The news of the acquittal spread rapidly, and at Homestead an
enthusiastic crowd watched every train from Pittsburgh in the hope of
meeting Critchlow with an appropriate demonstration. The people were
disappointed, however, for the lion of the occasion was doomed to remain
a caged lion, being remanded to jail on additional charges--two of
murder, two of riot and one of conspiracy.
At the same time the public made up its mind from the turn which affairs
had taken in the Critchlow case that a conviction could not be secured
against any of the Homestead men. The officials of the Amalgamated
Association were jubilant and gave vent to their satisfaction by waiting
in a body upon Attorney Erwin at the Monongahela House and formally
congratulating him on the success which he had achieved President
Garland acting as spokesman.
On the Carnegie Company's side there was a corresponding feeling of
disappointment and three months were allowed to elapse before the trial
of the Homestead cases proper--that is to say, those based on the battle
with the Pinkertons--was resumed.
[Illustration: THE WORKMEN'S DISPATCH BOAT.]
CHAPTER XIX.
[Illustration: WEAVING NEW TOILS.]
AN EPIDEMIC INVESTIGATED--DETECTIVES CHARGE POISONING AND
ARRESTS ARE MADE--GALLAGHER AND DAVIDSON TURN
INFORMERS--DEMPSEY AND BEATTY ARE INDICTED--HEARINGS AND
TRIALS--A TANGLED MASS OF MEDICAL TESTIMONY--MR. BRENNEN'S
LITTLE HIBERNICISM--DEFENDANTS ARE CONVICTED AND HEAVY
SENTENCES IMPOSED--GALLAGHER RECANTS AND THEN
RECONSIDERS--CLEMENCY REFUSED BY THE PARDON BOARD.
The prevalence of disease among the non-union men in the Carnegie mill,
and the alarming increase of mortality in the months of September and
October were touched upon in an earlier chapter. It was not until
December that the first intimation of the existence of a criminal cause
for the species of epidemic which struck down man after man and baffled
expert physicians and chemists reached the public. The Carnegie Company
had concealed the truth as far as possible, endeavoring from the first
to counteract the statements sent abroad by the Amalgamated Association
to the effect that bad food, bad water, and bad sanitary arrangements
were killing off the "blacksheep" like cattle stricken with a murrain.
The malady was a virulent form of diarrhoea or cholera morbus, for which
the medical men employed to treat the sufferers were unable to account.
All sorts of remedial measures were tried by the firm. Only the purest
food was used. Notices were posted warning the men not to drink from the
water plugs ordinarily serving as a source of supply, and chemically
pure water was provided. Still the plague did not abate. Suspecting foul
play, the firm set Pinkerton detectives to work, distributing them among
the cooks and waiters as assistants, and in this way evidence was
secured of a wholesale poisoning conspiracy, and the identity of the
conspirators was believed to be established by confessions obtained from
two accessories.
On December 5, J. H. Ford, a Pinkerton detective, made information
before Alderman McMasters against Robert J. Beatty, a cook in the mill,
on a charge of felonious assault and battery, in administering poison to
the non-union men at Homestead. It was learned that Beatty was about to
start for Cincinnati on the steamboat Nellie Hudson and an officer
boarded the boat to apprehend him, but was not permitted to make the
arrest. Beatty was subsequently arrested in Louisville and brought back
to Pittsburgh on requisition papers issued by Governor Pattison.
The confession on which the Carnegie Company based its charge against
Beatty was made by Patrick Gallagher, a cook in restaurant No. 1 in the
Homestead mill. Its publication, which followed immediately on the
arrest of Beatty, caused a tremendous sensation, inasmuch as it named
as the arch-conspirator, the designer and executive head of the plot, no
less a personage than Hugh F. Dempsey, master workman of D. A. 3, K. of
L.
Gallagher deposed that late in August, he was approached by Beatty with
a proposition to put in the tea and coffee made by him for the Carnegie
Company's men, something which would render the men sick and unfit for
work; that Beatty took him, in company with J. M. Davidson, to see Hugh
F. Dempsey, who was to furnish the preparation to be used; that about
the 7th or 8th of September affiant received from Dempsey a bottle
containing a yellow powder, which, Dempsey said, contained three doses,
each being sufficient for a pot of tea or coffee containing thirty
gallons; that affiant used the powder with the result of making workmen
sick and unable to work; that additional powders were given him by
Dempsey and Beatty and administered by him to the workmen, and that
affiant received for his services $3 from Beatty and $25 from Dempsey,
with the assurance of $23.85 more from the latter.
Despite the plausibility and coherency of the charges and the _prima
facie_ evidence in support of them, the Amalgamated men unanimously set
down this new move of the company as a scheme devised in order to
prejudice their cause. It was urged, in particular, that the relations
between the Association and the K. of L. were not such as to render it
probable that Dempsey would jeopardize his liberty and perhaps his life
by engaging in a villainous plot in the interest of the former. Dempsey
himself stoutly denied the charges, and his denial was supported by
Beatty.
At the hearing before Alderman McMasters, Beatty was defended by
William J. Brennen, Esq. Captain Breck appeared for the prosecution. J.
M. Davidson was the first witness examined. A summary of his testimony
is appended:
"I am 50 years of age, reside in the Seventeenth ward,
Pittsburgh, and have been a river cook nearly all my life. I
have known Beatty two or three years. In the latter part of
August, Patrick Gallagher and I met Beatty on Wood street, and
Beatty recognized me as "Jimmy" Davidson. I have known Gallagher
for fifteen years. It was understood that we were all to go to
Homestead as cooks and that we were to take something with us to
put in the food given the non-union men in order to make them
sick and unfit for work. When we met Beatty he took us to the
office of the K. of L., on Third Avenue. There we met Hugh
Dempsey, who, I understand, is master workman for this district.
I am not a member of the K. of L. While we were in the office,
Gallagher and Dempsey did most of the talking. Beatty suggested
that it would be well for us to dose the men at Homestead with
croton oil. He said croton oil could be used safely; that we
could carry bottles of it in our pockets and when we were at
work in the cook-houses we could put it on our fingers and rub
it on the inside of the soup bowls and coffee cups. I objected
to the use of croton oil on the ground that it was a deadly
drug, and I did not want to run the risk of killing any one.
Dempsey said he could furnish us with powders that would do the
work effectively and safely; that the powders had been used on
non-union men in Chicago, and that by their use a strike had
been broken in four days. He said that while it would make the
men sick, it was not dangerous. Dempsey said that if we would go
to Homestead and administer these powders he would guarantee us
$50 each and our expenses. We did not get any powders from
Dempsey that day. Gallagher, Beatty and myself then left
Dempsey's office. We took a walk about town discussing our plans
and the contract we had undertaken. Beatty told us that if we
did the work well there would be a gold watch and chain in it
for each of us in addition to the money we were to receive. I
did not go to Homestead until September 30. Gallagher, who had
been there for some time, left the day before I arrived. Two
days later he returned and worked about the restaurant in the
mill. Before Gallagher went to Homestead the first time we
called on Mr. Dempsey. He gave us a small jar of some kind of
powder. He said there was enough of the stuff in the jar for
three powders, each one sufficient to 'fix' thirty gallons of
tea or coffee. I suppose there was nine or ten teaspoonsful of
the stuff in the bottle. Dempsey told Gallagher to divide it
into three equal parts. This Gallagher took with him to
Homestead. The day before I went to Homestead Beatty gave me
some powders to deliver to Gallagher. This was in Dempsey's
office, or K. of L. hall. I met Gallagher on the street and gave
him the package. He opened it and told me there were nine
powders in the package. The bottle containing some of the stuff
was given to Gallagher by Dempsey in my presence. This was in K.
of L. hall and Beatty was present. Gallagher was to use his own
discretion whether he put it in the tea or coffee. I next saw
Beatty about September 30.
"Some time in September Gallagher came back, and Beatty and I
went to the K. of L. hall. Dempsey asked him how the powders
worked. He said successfully, and wanted more and Dempsey said
he would get more. After I came back I again met Beatty. We
talked about the success the powders had, and Beatty seemed
pleased. I had quit work on October 15. About December 1, I met
Beatty at Cavanaugh's saloon. Gallagher was with us and we then
went to Gallagher's room, where we discussed the powders, and I
asked Beatty what was in the powders. He said rhubarb and snuff
and other things. He didn't say who furnished them. While we
were talking he mentioned Lynch, Crawford and Dr. Purman.
Gallagher presented his bill of expenses to Dempsey and he asked
me where mine was, and I made it out and gave it to Dempsey.
Dempsey said the money was exhausted and we would have to wait.
Beatty said the powders didn't seem to be a success. Gallagher
told Dempsey that the powders had been used in cook house No. 1.
I saw Beatty again two weeks later on Wood street. We talked
over Gallagher's success in administering the powders. Met him
again a week later; that was after I had quit work in
Homestead."
On cross-examination witness said that Beatty gave him $2 and Dempsey
$12. Mr. Brennen was unable to shake his testimony.
Pinkerton Detective Ford deposed to having overheard a conversation
carried on by Beatty, Gallagher and Davidson concerning the powders used
at Homestead. Witness hired adjoining rooms for Gallagher and himself,
and induced Gallagher to entertain the other two men in his quarters, he
(Ford) furnishing liquor for the party. He kept a man stationed in the
room next Gallagher's and received daily reports of what took place. On
confronting Davidson with proof of his guilt, Davidson made a full
confession.
Louis Wolfe, of Anapolis, Md., said that he had served as steward of
restaurants Nos 1, 4 and 5 in the Carnegie mill. Witness hired Gallagher
as cook and had seen Beatty in the mill. On September 7, witness' wife
came on from Anapolis and he invited thirty or forty friends to supper
in honor of her arrival. Many of the guests were taken ill and Mrs.
Wolfe suffered terribly from cramps and vomited a great deal. Her weight
was soon reduced from 120 to 66 pounds. Witness himself fell ill and
lost 38 pounds.
J. O. Nesbitt swore that he had attended the supper given by Wolfe, fell
ill immediately afterwards, was in bed five weeks and had not yet fully
recovered.
W. E. Bullock, pay roll clerk in the Carnegie office at Homestead, had
also been at the supper, sickened, lost sixteen pounds in eight days and
was still ailing.
Mr. Brennen made a long argument for his client, alleging that the two
informers were "miserable, contemptible rascals who had put up a job on
an innocent man in order to shield themselves." The magistrate, however,
believing a good _prima facie_ case to have been made out, held Beatty
for court in $5,000 bail.
As if to accentuate the force of the poisoning charge several more
deaths from sickness contracted in the mill now occurred, the symptoms
being identical in all cases.
District Attorney Burleigh proceeded without loss of time against
Dempsey and Davidson, the information against the men being lodged by
County Detective Beltzhoover. Dempsey surrendered himself and was
released on $2,500 bail. Gallagher, against whom an information had been
made by William E. Griffith, one of the workmen who had been poisoned,
was arrested and sent to jail in default of $5,000 bail. Davidson was
also arrested, but was released on $3,000 bail.
Hugh F. Dempsey was the first of the accused men to stand trial, being
arraigned before Judge Stowe on January 12, 1893. The indictment against
him contained four counts, 2 charging felonious assault and battery with
intent to murder, and two felonious assault and battery with intent to
"make sick." The defendant was represented by Messrs. Marshall,
Montooth, Brennen and L. K. Porter. District Attorney Burleigh, Captain
Breck and John S. Robb appeared for the Commonwealth. The jury selected
was composed as follows: Harry T. Anderson, L. P. Boyer, Michael Brown,
David Duff, Charles H. Kretzer and William G. Murray, all farmers;
Daniel Bohannon, painter; Louis Blumenschein, gardener; David C.
Brickell, gent; Alex. D. Guy, merchant; Edward Letzkus, clerk, and John
H. Wilson, manufacturer.
Captain Breck, in his opening speech, admitted that no man could be
convicted of crime on the evidence of an accomplice, but promised to
furnish ample testimony corroborative of the confessions made by
Gallagher and Davidson. He laid special stress on the reports of the
physicians who had treated the men supposed to have been poisoned at
Homestead.
A numerous array of witnesses was brought forward by the prosecution.
Attorney L. K. Porter conducted most of the cross-examinations for the
defense.
Dr. Weible, surgeon for the Carnegie Company, submitted a tabulated
report of the cases treated by him in the mill.
Louis Wolfe repeated the testimony which he gave at the Beatty hearing.
George W. Amy, Henry P. Thompson and Louis H. Craig, all of Chicora,
Butler County, deposed to having worked in the Homestead mill and being
stricken with disease, from which none of them had fully recovered. Dr.
J. L. Campbell, of Chicora, had treated these men and described their
symptoms, which, he said, he had ascribed to mineral poisoning. He was
certain that antimony had been given.
Stephen Loveless, of Butler, William H. Johnston, a watchman in the
mill; Benjamin Weaver, a steelworker residing at Homestead, and Wilmot
Herr, a watchman, deposed to having been attacked by the prevailing
malady.
Dr. McGeary, of Homestead, had treated William H. Johnston and was
convinced that his patient suffered from arsenical poisoning. In his
opinion, impure water, spoiled meat or climatic conditions could not
have caused the sickness which occurred in the mill.
Charles H. Smith, an engineer in the Carnegie works, said that he had
fallen ill twice and lost 55 pounds. Three doctors were unable to
restore his health fully.
William E. Griffith, the man named in the indictment as the victim of
the poisoning plot, said that he had been serving in restaurant No. 6 as
head waiter. On September 11 or 12, after eating supper in the
restaurant, he was seized with diarrhoea and vomiting and was then laid
up for a week. On October 6, after drinking some coffee, witness took
sick again. This time he was prostrated for eight weeks. Dr. A. P.
Vogleman, of Homestead, had treated Griffith and thought that the
patient might have been made ill by drinking bad water.
Dr. McGeary (recalled) and Dr. E. W. Dean testified to the conditions
attending the case of J. W. Van Winkle, who had died at the Homeopathic
Hospital. They thought it safe to pronounce his death due to arsenical
poisoning.
Numerous other witnesses gave testimony similar to the foregoing,
nearly a week being occupied in listening to the stories of those who
had been poisoned and to the diagnoses learnedly set forth by medical
men.
On the fifth day of the trial, Gallagher, the informer, was placed on
the witness stand and repeated the narrative embodied in his previously
published confession, with some new embellishments. In describing his
first interview with Dempsey, Gallagher said:
"When we entered Dempsey's office a lady who was present
retired; the door was then locked; we sat down; Beatty said to
Dempsey: 'These are the two men;' we talked about the weather
for a few minutes after which Dempsey said to me and Mr.
Davidson: 'I suppose you know what we want?' We said we knew a
little about it. Dempsey then said: 'Well, we want to get the
men in the Homestead mill on the trot.' Beatty then spoke about
using croton oil. Davidson and I said we wouldn't use it.
Dempsey then spoke about breaking a street car strike in
Chicago--the State street strike. He said powders had been used;
that if we would use these powders in the Homestead mill it
would make the men sick and that we could break the strike in
about ten days."
Gallagher also swore that Beatty's trip to Cincinnati was for the
purpose of getting two more cooks to finish the poisoning job. Dempsey
had subsequently shown him a dispatch from Cincinnati, which read, "Two
good agents on the road." When witness went to work in the mill the
second time two cooks came from Cincinnati. They were Tony Gilfoil and
William Coleman. Witness took them to a hotel and paid their bills; but
was warned by Dempsey not to let the new comers know of his (Dempsey's)
connection with the plot.
Gallagher further deposed that, after leaving the mill finally, he had,
in the presence of Davidson, presented a bill to Dempsey, which the
latter O.K'd. He had also signed a receipt for $25, which Dempsey gave
him in the dispatcher's office of the Citizens' Traction Line. The bill
marked "O.K." was identified and offered in evidence.
Attorney Marshall subjected Gallagher to a trying cross-examination but
without impairing his testimony.
J. M. Davidson repeated in court the evidence given by him at the Beatty
hearing.
George W. Crail, dispatcher of the Citizens' Traction Line, corroborated
Gallagher's statement as to the receipt of $25 from Dempsey. Dempsey,
the witness claimed, came into his office and said: "Crail, if a man
comes in here and asks if I left anything for him, give him this money."
The death of L. B. Hebron from sickness contracted in the mill was
attested by the mother and brother of the deceased, and Captain A. E.
Hunt, of the Pittsburgh Testing Laboratory, then stated the result of an
analysis of sick bed accumulations furnished him by Mrs. Hebron. The
analysis showed the presence of croton oil and arsenic.
J. D. Flynn, manager of the Western Union Telegraph Company in
Pittsburgh, produced a copy of a telegram sent to Dempsey from
Cincinnati, on September 26. It read: "Send me $20; in a pinch; two good
agents on the road.--BEATTY." It was shown by a messenger boy that the
telegram was delivered to a man in Dempsey's office, who signed for it.
Thomas M. Marshall, Esq., made the opening speech for the defense, the
principal points set forth in which were, (1) That the sickness in the
Homestead mill was merely incident to an epidemic from which soldiers
and others outside the mill were suffering, and (2) That the men sent
into the mill by Dempsey and paid for their services were detailed by
Dempsey as scouts.
Dr. George T. McCord, being sworn, stated that the conditions of life
among the non-union men in the Homestead mill were very favorable to the
development of diarrhoea, dysentery and kindred complaints. He had
treated one man who was taken sick with diarrhoea in the mill and cured
him.
Dr. John Purman, of Homestead, told of the filthy condition of City Farm
lane, and said he had under treatment numerous cases of diarrhoea and
dysentery not incurred in the mill.
Nine members of Battery B, Eighteenth regiment, N. G. P., swore that
they were afflicted with precisely the same complaint that attacked the
non-union workmen.
Other witnesses testified as to the impurity of the water supply in the
mill and the invariable prevalence of diarrhoea and kindred diseases
among the millworkers during the hot season.
E. W. Robertson, who occupied the cell next to Gallagher's in the county
jail, said that Gallagher had told him that Dempsey was an innocent man.
Hugh F. Dempsey, being sworn in his own defense, stated that he had
employed Gallagher and Davidson, on Beatty's recommendation, to get work
in the Homestead mill and report to him how things were running. Nothing
had ever been said about putting poison in food, and witness knew
nothing of a poison plot. The $25 paid by him to Gallagher was a loan.
[Illustration: RELIEF COMMITTEE OF BUILDING TRADES, PITTSBURGH, PA.]
On cross-examination, Dempsey stated that it was through the Knights of
Labor in New York, who were striving to procure a settlement of the
Homestead trouble, that he became interested in the affair. He gave a
synopsis of one of Davidson's reports to him on the number of men
employed and the output, and said that Gallagher made reports of like
tenor.
While Dempsey was giving his testimony, resolutions affirming implicit
faith in his honesty and innocence of wrong-doing were being adopted by
District Assembly No. 3, and on the evening of the same day he was
reelected to the position of master workman by acclamation. This strong
expression of confidence on the part of his fellow workmen might, it was
thought, have some influence for good on the determination of Dempsey's
case.
With the exception of Prof. George Hay, a chemist, who swore that
Captain Hunt could not possibly have discovered traces of croton oil in
nine drops of oleaginous liquid, all the remaining witnesses for the
defense were called to prove Dempsey's good character.
Attorney L. K. Porter made the opening argument for the defense. He
charged the prosecution with unfairness in having a chemical examination
made without permitting the attendance of an expert on the part of the
defense and dilated upon the reasons for presuming that an epidemic of
stomach troubles would naturally occur in an establishment where 2,678
men were lodged and fed in close quarters and practically without
outdoor exercise. The doctors disagreed and most of them had never
treated poison cases. How could a man be convicted on such testimony?
The men who claimed to have been poisoned had, for the most part,
admitted that they had suffered from diarrhoea and vomiting before and
why should it be surmised that the attacks which beset them in the mill
arose from other than natural causes? The majority of the non-union men
came from distant points and were liable to be affected by change of
climate.
Gallagher, Mr. Porter said, being a self-confessed accomplice, was
unworthy of credit. He was a spy, procured by Pinkerton Detective Ford,
and the fact that he was left at large for five weeks after his
confession indicated in what a questionable relation he stood to the
prime movers in the prosecution of Dempsey. Dempsey, the speaker said,
was the honored choice of 600,000 men for the chieftanship of the K. of
L. in the Pittsburgh district. He was a frank and generous man, to whose
kind heart no one ever appealed in vain. Was it humanly probable that
this man would have bribed Gallagher to poison men? Would he, if such
had been his purpose, have conferred with Gallagher and have given him
money in broad daylight? The issue was between Gallagher, the hired
informer, and Dempsey, the honorable citizen, whom it was proposed to
take away from his wife and home on the testimony of strangers without
title to belief.
Attorney Marshall followed his colleague with a telling analysis of the
evidence for the commonwealth. He read from the report of the mill
physician, Dr. Weible, figures showing that there was actually more
sickness in the mill, in proportion to the number of men employed,
before Gallagher went there than at any time afterwards. He also showed
by Gallagher's testimony that on the day of the Wolfe family's supper,
the coffee which Gallagher claimed to have dosed was all used up at
dinner time and, as there was none left over, where, Mr. Marshall asked,
did the poison come from by which the Wolfes' claimed to have been
sickened. After commenting on the improbability of Dempsey's employing
strangers to aid him in a poisoning plot, Mr. Marshall said in
conclusion: "We ask you to put the stamp of your disapproval on these
corruptionists and send Hugh Dempsey home to those who love him, a free
man, with a character as spotless as it was before these two worthless,
degraded creatures tried to ruin it."
Mr. Robb closed for the prosecution. His strongest point consisted in
ridiculing the idea that if Dempsey wanted reports on the operations of
the mill he would have sent cooks instead of steelworkers to secure
them.
Judge Stowe charged the jury in a perfectly dispassionate and unbiased
manner. This was on the morning of Friday, January 20, the seventh day
of the trial. The jury remained out less than three hours and brought in
a verdict of "Guilty as indicted." A demand for a new trial was promptly
made and, pending the hearing of the application, Dempsey was liberated
on $2,500 bail.
On January 24, Robert W. Beatty was placed on trial, charged with
"felonious assault in administering, or employing persons to administer,
poison" to the non-union men in the Carnegie steel plant. The same
counsel appeared on both sides that figured in the Dempsey case, with
the exception of District Attorney Burleigh, whose place was taken by
his assistant, Harry Goehring. William M. Erwin, the "Western Cyclone"
also appeared in court and joined the attorneys for the defense.
Captain Breck opened the case for the commonwealth by reading the
testimony brought out on his side in the Dempsey case. There were 67,000
words of this matter and, before the reading was concluded, most of the
Captain's auditors sank into a gentle slumber. The array of medical men
and diarrhoea victims previously examined was then marshaled into court
and re-examined and cross-examined for the benefit of the jury which was
supposed not to be cognizant of the evidence submitted when Dempsey was
on trial. Not until Charles McKinnie was put on the stand was an element
of interest infused into the proceedings. McKinnie said that he was a
riverman, knew Beatty well, and had been approached by the prisoner with
a proposition to go to Homestead and dose the men with croton oil. He
had refused to have anything to do with such contemptible work. The
witness testified in a straightforward manner and made a visible
impression on the jury.
Gallagher and Davidson repeated their former testimony with some
variations, Davidson in his efforts to shield himself managing to
contradict Gallagher in many points.
Charles C. Comstock swore that he had met Beatty in the mill and been
advised by the latter to get out or the powders would fix him.
Many other witnesses were called to bear testimony to having seen Beatty
in the mill at various times.
Attorney Brennen opened the case for the defense and at one point in his
address amazed his auditory by stating his ability to prove, with
reference to the supper at Wolfe's house, that "_the tea that was drank
at this banquet was all consumed at the dinner the day before_." Mr.
Brennen's slip of the tongue was much enjoyed. Undismayed by the effect
of his inadvertent Hibernicism, the doughty little attorney proceeded to
set forth the strong points of the case for the defendant, laying
special emphasis on the declaration that there was nothing suspicious in
the employment of cooks as detectives, inasmuch as the cookhouses were
the most convenient headquarters for the kind of espionage which Dempsey
had instituted.
Many witnesses were called to testify to the occurrence among the
soldiers of a similar epidemic to that which beset the non-union
steelworkers, and to prove the bad character of Gallagher and Davidson.
Borough officials from Homestead swore that City Farm lane, which is
close to the Carnegie works, was in a filthy, disease-breeding condition
and physicians corroborated this evidence and showed that much sickness
resulted from this cause.
Hugh F. Dempsey was summoned to the stand and told his story in about
the same terms as were used by him when he testified on his own trial.
He explained that nobody had authorized or requested him to send
spies to Homestead. He had acted simply "in the interest of labor
organizations."
Professor Hay again rebutted Captain Hunt's claim of having detected
traces of croton oil in material furnished him by the mother of L. B.
Hebron, and Dr. C. C. Wiley, surgeon of the Eighteenth regiment, stated
that the conditions at Homestead conduced strongly to the spread of
diarrhoea, cholera morbus and kindred complaints.
Robert J. Beatty, being sworn in his own defense, said that he had
worked in the water house and pump house at the Carnegie mills for
nearly a year prior to the lock-out. He was a member of Boxmakers' Lodge
No. 52, K. of L. Witness denied all parts of the testimony of Gallagher
and Davidson which tended to incriminate him. His telegram concerning
"two good agents on the road," referred, he said, to two men supplied by
a labor organization in Cincinnati, of whom he knew no more than this.
He had received for expenses $33 from Dempsey and some money from David
Lynch, Thomas Crawford and other Homestead men.
The closing speeches on both sides and the judge's charge, being
substantially identical with those delivered in the Dempsey case, need
not be outlined here.
The jury evidently had its mind made up before withdrawing. After only
nine minutes' consideration, a verdict of "guilty as indicted" was
agreed upon.
A strong fight was made to secure a new trial for Dempsey, but without
success, and on February 21, the convicted men were called up for
sentence. Dempsey and Beatty were each sentenced to seven years'
imprisonment in the penitentiary, and Gallagher and Davidson, who had
pleaded guilty, were sentenced respectively to five and three years'
imprisonment.
Dempsey's attorneys took an appeal to the supreme court, which was
negatived, and later applied for a pardon for their client on the
strength of a recantation made by Gallagher, but subsequently repudiated
by him. Gallagher made affidavit that the story told by him in court was
false and that he had been suborned to commit perjury by detectives and
others in the service of the Carnegie Company. Hardly was the ink on
the affidavit dry, however, until this paragon of mendacity made a
third "confession," reaffirming his original testimony. The pardon board
denied the application on Dempsey's behalf, and the ex-master workman
was thus deprived of his last hope and doomed to serve his full term in
prison.
[Illustration: OFFICES IN THE MILL YARD.]
CHAPTER XX.
[Illustration: The Denouement.]
CLIFFORD TRIED FOR HIS LIFE--ALIBI TESTIMONY--ATTORNEYS ERWIN
AND ANDERSON WIN NEW LAURELS--"NOT GUILTY"--HUGH O'DONNELL AT
THE BAR--THE HOMESTEAD LEADER AS A REPORTER AND
PEACEMAKER--WEAK TESTIMONY FOR THE PROSECUTION--MAJOR MONTOOTH
RIDICULES THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S SUBSTITUTE--O'DONNELL
ACQUITTED--THE CARNEGIE LAWYERS ABANDON THE FIELD--BERKMAN'S
ACCOMPLICES DISPOSED OF.
On February 2, 1893, Jack Clifford was put on trial before Judge Stowe,
on an indictment charging him, jointly with Hugh Ross, Hugh O'Donnell,
Burgess McLuckie and others, with the murder of Detective T. J. Connors.
The counsel on both sides were the same that appeared in the Critchlow
case, with the exception that W. S. Anderson, an eminent criminal lawyer
of Youngstown, Ohio, was added to the side of the defense. The jury
selected was as follows: John Erichson, J. L. Hammitt, Andrew Hepp, Jr.,
W. G. Bigham, Henry Lloyd, H. A. Price, John Stauffer, D. C. Mayer,
Andrew Donnelly, T. C. Rafferty, John M. Hamilton and Patrick Kearney.
Early in the proceedings, Judge Stowe served notice on the defense that
he would not permit any line of argument or cross-examination tending to
justify the killing of the Pinkertons. No matter who the invaders were
or what their purpose, the court held, the killing was not justified.
Mr. Erwin engaged in a tilt with the court over this ruling, citing the
mode of procedure in the Critchlow case as precedent, but was summarily
silenced.
The testimony offered by the prosecution differed little from that given
against Critchlow. Pinkerton detectives identified Clifford and swore to
having seen him in the forefront of the crowd that gathered to prevent
the landing of the Pinkerton forces in the mill yard. Clifford was armed
with a pistol, they said, and was active in building barricades and
later in arranging the surrender. It was he that waved the white flag
from the river bank and, in company with O'Donnell and others,
guaranteed protection to the Pinkertons, if they would lay down their
arms and come on shore. He had also aided in caring for the wounded and
getting them off the barges.
George L. Johnson, a mill-worker, testified to having seen Clifford
carry what appeared to him to be a powder canister in the direction of
the brass cannon which was mounted in the gas house. Witness admitted
that he had been employed by the Carnegie Company and had gone out on
strike, but returned to work at his old job on July 5. He took no part
in the fight with the Pinkertons, but was merely a spectator. This
colloquy followed:
MR. BRENNEN.--"You made no effort to stop it?"
"No, sir."
"You were there considerable time and did not attempt to spike the
cannon?
"No, sir; I did not."
An objection to such cross-examination was raised by the prosecution and
sustained by the court.
MR. ERWIN.--"Your honor, I think if this witness did not withdraw from
the scene of the disturbance he too was a rioter and an accomplice, and
as such his evidence would have to be corroborated?"
THE COURT.--"No, it would have been unhealthy for him to have interfered
and the objection is overruled."
Robert Pollock swore that he saw Clifford at the pump house throwing
bottles filled with ignited oil at the barges, and also at the fire
engine pumping oil through hose while other men were throwing lighted
waste in the stream of oil flowing towards the barges.
C. S. Capehart, a clerk, had seen Clifford throwing dynamite, and
William J. Henderson had seen him distributing stick dynamite to men who
walked to the bank and threw the missiles at the barges.
As in the Critchlow trial, the defense set up for Clifford rested
entirely on alibi testimony, his counsel undertaking to show that he was
asleep and knew nothing of the fight until after Connors was shot, and
that his part in the trouble of July 6 was confined to an attempt to
save the Pinkertons at the risk of his own life.
Captain O. C. Coon, Charles Mansfield, of the _Homestead Local News_,
Andrew Soulier and others, stated that they had witnessed the opening of
the conflict between the Pinkertons and the workmen and that Clifford
was not among the combatants.
Mrs. Annie Malloy, a widow residing in Mifflin township about two miles
from the scene of the disturbance, swore that Clifford slept at her
house on the night before July 6, and that she did not waken him until
about 11.15 A. M. on that day. Her statements were corroborated by her
daughters Maggie and Dora, the former of whom was said to be Clifford's
sweetheart. Additional evidence sustaining the alibi was given by Mrs.
Riley, with whom Clifford boarded, Constable Charles Stewart, President
Garland, of the Amalgamated Association and P. H. McEvey, Vice-President
of the Association.
Determined efforts were made by Attorney Erwin to show by witnesses that
the crowd which gathered on the river bank to meet the Pinkertons was
there for a peaceable purpose and that the Pinkertons were the actual
rioters, but the prosecution objected to testimony of this character and
its objections were sustained.
The closing speeches for the defense, delivered by Messrs. Erwin and
Anderson, were masterpieces of forensic eloquence, and they were heard
by a gathering such as has rarely assembled in a Pennsylvania court
room. Legal practitioners, young and old, were there to watch the climax
in this struggle of legal giants. Labor leaders sat side by side with
capitalists. The classes and the masses were alike represented, and
observed with equally keen interest the closing scene of the drama
which, for all they knew, was to end in a tragedy. The prisoner himself
was perhaps the coolest person in the throng. His nerve remained
unshaken to the last.
After Mr. Robb had made his address for the prosecution, in the course
of which he characterized the battle at Homestead as "the most fanatical
piece of barbarity ever witnessed," Mr. Erwin spoke. He said, in part:
"At this time a grave responsibility rests upon me, for it now
becomes my duty to address your conscience. It is a serious
duty, your honor, (turning to the bench) to judge your fellow
men's conscience. I am a stranger among you, but I do not fear
your crowd, your array of lawyers or your judge, but I do fear
my God. I am an officer of the court. I must obey it. I will
obey it. I will walk in the line which it sets. We are here to
try a citizen of Pennsylvania, born here, for taking the life of
a man who, twenty-four hours after landing on your soil, was
carried wounded from the boat with his smoking rifle in his
hands. Your citizens ask me to ask you if you will believe these
men who shot down McCoy and others of your citizens, or those
self-confessed red-handed murderers. I stand here, and by the
spirits of your dead citizens shot from your mills, I appeal to
you for justice. I stand before a jury of Pennsylvania kings;
there are no kings in Pennsylvania but the jury. There is no
just adjudication but the jury box. It was the discovery of
ages--to find some body wherein the conscience should be free.
* * * * *
"Now the duty of the commonwealth is plain in this case. It must
convince your minds and your consciences that the defendant is
guilty. Who says this Pennsylvania boy killed Connors? Nobody.
They want to say and want you to say a great riot was in
progress. I deny it. A riot is some act done by several persons
unlawful in its character. I deny that there was any riot on the
shore that day; the state does not prove that the defendant had
a gun in his hand that day. They do try to prove by one witness
that he had a revolver in his hand. The doctor testified that
the wound that killed Connors was a rifle bullet. Then how can
they accuse the defendant of the crime? They first (the state)
must prove to you that there was a riot there that day and that
Clifford was there, participating in that riotous proceeding,
either aiding or abetting. They offer us Pinkertons--Pinkertons
to a Pennsylvania jury, gentlemen--who came into this state with
guns, who are murderers of your citizens, making their children
orphans. One of the attorneys for the prosecution, in his fervid
manner, stigmatized that gathering of Homestead people as
anarchy. I say that invasion of the Pinkertons was the highest
evidence of anarchy. You saw these little Carnegie clerks come
here and testify that they had gone behind these barricades
spying around, while bullets, as they say, were flying fast and
furious. That is simply absurd. It would have been the highest
act of bravery. It might be so, but it is not reasonable and I
would stigmatize it as a lie. It is a tenet of the law that it
is better that ninety-nine guilty persons should escape than
that one innocent man should suffer. Will you believe the
sheriff who would try to pull the wool over your eyes and
endeavor to launch this defendant into eternity? Will you
believe the testimony of the defendant or this red-handed
Pinkerton? No, this is not a question between labor and capital,
and it amused me to have the learned counsel on the other side
assert it. It is claimed by the prosecution that Clifford was at
the landing firing at these men when they landed; that there was
a cessation for four hours after. I deny this, for witness after
witness for the prosecution went upon the stand and swore to the
contrary. What is the purpose of this move by the prosecution?
It is simply a trick; a pure trick of the law to show that there
was a cessation of firing which would permit the people of
Homestead to withdraw. There was no cessation, but these Pinks
poured out a continuous fire upon these defenseless people on
the hillside from port-holes cut in the barges. Self-defense is
a cardinal principle not depending upon the law of the state,
but upon God. It does not depend upon man. Oh! how weak is that
attempt of man to try to prove wrong that which God has
implanted in every man. That old doctrine that a man must
retreat from a man with a sword or a stone in order to preserve
the peace, has been swept away by the introduction of the
Winchester rifle. Can you show me a man who can retreat from a
fire of 300 rifles? Just so long as you can show me that there
is no possibility for them to escape from that deadly fire, just
so long do I contend they had a right to return that fire. There
is another point of the prosecution to prove as an evidence of
riot the fact that these people were on the Carnegie property
and were using vile language. I deny that this can be shown as
riot."
ATTORNEY BURLEIGH--We don't attempt to show it.
MR. ERWIN--I don't know what you don't attempt to show.
Attorney Erwin then read the law in definition of riot.
Continuing he said: "There is no proof here that they were assembled as
riotors; not the least scintilla of such a gathering. But on the other
side I will show a riotous gathering."
MR. BURLEIGH--We object. Your honor has already ruled against such
proceedings.
COURT--Yes.
MR. ERWIN--I know your honor has, and I therefore offer an exception
that you will not permit me to speak of it. I will not speak of it. As I
understand, Justice is represented blindfolded, with a scale in her hand
equally weighing in both pans and with a sword in her hand. It is a sad
thing that one of her exponents should----
COURT--Stop that. I won't allow any such line of argument.
MR. ERWIN--I am limited by the court and can't discuss the material
necessary to be introduced in this case, but I will say that, through
the objections of the district attorney, we have been denied a fair
trial for our client.
Attorney Anderson followed Mr. Erwin. After outlining the case in a few
graphic words, he said:
"Mr. Robb has attempted to tell you while he depicted that
horrible act of the people on the bank that there was another
side to that story. He forgot to tell you that a man from a
foreign state raised and leveled his rifle and in spite of
earnest pleadings shot a young man down. He forgot to tell you
that not a shot was fired from the river bank until that young
man lay weltering in his life blood. I will try to show you that
the trouble did not come from the men on the shore, but from the
men in the barges sent there. I want to see, and so do you, what
the commonwealth of Pennsylvania wants to prove. It does not
claim, because there is no evidence to prove it, that Jack
Clifford fired that shot that killed Connors. Because Clifford
was there they want to hold him responsible for an act committed
by another party. Before they do it they must prove that he was
acting and assisting those men to acts of violence. It matters
not what was done after 12 o'clock. It matters not if he threw
that dynamite or the can of powder. Because before that you must
be convinced that Jack Clifford was there when Connors was shot.
You might wonder at that; that it is not a crime to throw
burning oil or dynamite, but the prosecution specifies a
particular charge against Jack Clifford. They claim that he was
on the bank of the river in the forenoon when Connors was
killed. How have they proved it. Let us look at the forenoon.
They prove it by three detectives and three persons residing
around Homestead--but six witnesses; purely identification.
Three of these men saw Clifford before that morning. It is well
for the jury to consider these men and the prisoner. Men
gathered from the slums of the cities of New York, Chicago and
Philadelphia; men without employment, men without character, men
who can be impeached by their testimony. Suppose a difficulty
arose in Chicago and a person came here to employ a body of men
to go there and suppress it, what sort of men would go there?
Would a lawyer have the cinch? Oh, no. Would the banker leave
his duties? Oh, no. Would the business man? Oh, no. But the
idlers--the scrub of your city--would be the ones who would go.
Then I say to you is this not sufficient to show the character
of these people who invaded your state and are attempting to
swear away the life of Jack Clifford? Upon whose testimony is
this crime to be fixed upon Clifford? By three Pinkertons who,
in the excitement of that battle and having never seen him
before, swear that they saw him there. How do they prove it? By,
as they say, a pink shirt on Clifford. Think of it, looking out
in a crowd of 500 people and picking out a man with his coat
buttoned up, could they be so collected in their thoughts as to
distinguish him by a small portion of a pink shirt visible? I
say they never did identify him there. But they did not fix this
point of identification until brave Jack Clifford, in spite of
the hail of bullets, went down and saved these men's lives. It
was then, if at all, this pink shirt identification was fixed in
their minds. These brave, true, honest men of your community
with as keen perceptions as these Pinkertons, were in that boat,
and yet they come on the stand and swear they did not see
Clifford there. Captain Coon, who knew Clifford for years and
was standing at the gangway watching what was going on, swears
that Jack Clifford was not there. Then again, there is the old
man Gray, a watchman at that mill, with an eye as keen as any
Pinkerton's, who swears that Jack Clifford was not there that
morning. Then, I say, is it just in this commonwealth where a
man is on trial for his liberty and his life, that the
testimony of reputable witnesses of your state is of no more
weight than that of the Pinkertons? I know not what effect the
testimony of these employees may have upon you; but I do know
that the employer has held the lash over his employees and
forced them to testify in their interest. I do not know whether
it has been done in this case."
Here the speaker discussed at length the testimony offered to establish
an alibi for the prisoner and begged the jury to weigh carefully in the
balance the statements of the opposing witnesses bearing on the subject.
In conclusion he said:
"The life and liberty of Jack Clifford are as dear to him as
yours are to you. There may be some one who looks to him with an
interest. There may be a gray-haired mother depending upon him,
and there is no love like a mother's. That mother is waiting for
your verdict. It is better that ninety-nine guilty escape than
one innocent shall suffer. I ask at your hands justice for Jack
Clifford. I ask it upon the oath you have sworn faithfully to
fulfill and I ask it in the tears of his mother. Gentlemen, I
leave Jack Clifford in your hands."
Judge Stowe's charge was a plain statement of the law in the case,
without the least tincture of bias one way or the other.
The jury occupied less than two hours in deliberation and brought in a
verdict of acquittal. Clifford was then remanded to jail to await trial
on the other indictments found against him.
[Illustration: PROPOSED MONUMENT TO THE HEROES OF HOMESTEAD.]
The import of the verdict was unmistakable. It meant that, for the
second time, the people of Allegheny County, speaking through their
representatives in the jury box, refused to be governed by the letter of
the law in the matter of punishing the men of Homestead as rioters and
murderers, and that the continuance of the prosecutions would be a waste
of time, energy and money. Such was the construction generally put upon
it, and most probably the Carnegie Company and its counsel formed the
same judgment. Nevertheless, the district attorney announced that every
one of the Homestead cases would be brought to trial and as an earnest
of sincerity, Hugh O'Donnell was brought forward to face a jury of his
peers on February 13, the fifth day after Clifford's safe deliverance.
The young leader looked pale and thin as a result of his imprisonment,
but his eye was as clear and his voice as firm as on the day when he
marshaled the fighting men at the barricades, and there was no sign of
flinching in his demeanor as he stood up to enter his plea of "not
guilty."
The attorneys engaged in the case were the same that served in the
preceding trials, excepting that Major E. A. Montooth and Mr. John F.
Cox relieved the counsel who had previously taken the most active part
for the defense. The following jurors were selected: Fred Vogel, William
Richardson, Charles Beuchler, John Sproul, M. J. Byrne, Henry Brooker,
A. C. Flood, Henry Eisenhauer, John McGann, John Geisler, Peter Stragen
and William Dramble.
The case for the prosecution differed little from that advanced against
Clifford and Critchlow. Pinkerton detectives, sheriff's deputies, mill
clerks and reporters repeated the old, old story of the events of July
6, while Mr. D. F. Patterson, who conducted the direct examination as a
substitute for the district attorney, elicited from each statements
showing O'Donnell's ostensible participation in the battle.
The line of cross-examination pursued by the defense showed that the
intention was to prove that O'Donnell was present at the battle as a
newspaper correspondent, and that, when he interfered actively, it was
in the capacity of a peacemaker. Several newspaper men testified that
the defendant was known as a correspondent of the Tri-State News Bureau
and of various daily papers, and that, in a spirit of professional
fraternity, he had taken care of the reporters during the fight and
secured for them a convenient headquarters of observation in the cupola
of the mill. Only one out of a dozen reporters examined specifically
incriminated O'Donnell, and the evidence of that one was vitiated by the
knowledge that he had sold out to the Carnegie Company at the beginning
of the Homestead trouble and had acted throughout as a spy.
The prosecution could not have made a weaker showing, all things
considered, and the work of the other side was, therefore, comparatively
easy.
Captain O. C. Coon, who accompanied O'Donnell to the river bank on the
morning of July 6, was the star witness for the defense. O'Donnell, he
said, went to the scene of the trouble for the express purpose of
preventing bloodshed, and used every effort to check the combatants even
to the extent of pushing angry men back from the water's edge after the
firing had started. The witness had also seen O'Donnell, on the day
after the surrender, rescue from the hands of a mob of strikers a poor
wretch who was supposed to be a straggler from the Pinkerton forces.
Dr. John Purman testified in the same strain. He swore that O'Donnell
came to his office with three wounded men on the morning of July 6. A
crowd gathered on the street without, and O'Donnell exhorted them to go
peaceably to their homes and avoid going to the mill-yard. Later in the
day, witness met O'Donnell on the street. A crowd surrounded the young
leader, cursing him, and some one said, "You are a ---- of a leader,
staying away from the mill." O'Donnell answered, "There are no leaders;
everyone acts for himself. If you want to do me a favor you will stop
this and go to your homes."
Numerous other witnesses gave testimony corroborative of the assumption
that the defendant had taken no part in the riot other than as a
law-abiding citizen anxious to preserve the peace. O'Donnell's wife was
placed on the stand, but her evidence was unimportant.
After the attorneys for the defense had practically won their case, it
was decided to let O'Donnell testify in his own behalf. There was some
doubt about the prudence of this move, and that it was not without
foundation was shown by the difficulty which O'Donnell experienced in
escaping damaging admissions.
In his direct examination by Mr. Brennen, O'Donnell told a
straightforward and impressive story. He told of his residence of seven
or eight years in Homestead, his newspaper correspondence and other
personal matters, and then went on to describe, in graphic terms, his
doings on the day of the riot. On that eventful morning, he said he had
gone to the river bank, arriving just when the gang-plank was being run
out from the barges. He begged the Pinkertons not to land and not to
shoot, reminding them of the presence of women and children and the
certainty of wholesale loss of life if violence should be resorted to.
After the first skirmish, he had gone to the Postal Telegraph offices
and notified the Mercy and South Side Hospitals to send ambulances. If
he had had only a few minutes more time to gain the bow of the barges
before the fighting began, not a shot would have been fired. In no
manner had he aided or abetted the trouble which occurred that day, nor
did he at any time encourage the use of violence in preventing the
introduction of non-union men into the Homestead mill.
Mr. Patterson, in his cross-examination, tried to extract from
O'Donnell the admission that the workmen maintained an armed military
organization, but was unsuccessful. He managed, however to force the
defendant to name some of the men who were among the combatants on the
river bank.
Attorney Robb closed for the prosecution, in an address which was mainly
devoted to picturing the trouble at Homestead as a revolution conducted
by a band of assassins, thirsting for Pinkerton blood. He referred to
Hugh O'Donnell as having been summoned by a whistle signal to "marshal
his standing army and begin a battle to the death."
Major Montooth closed for the defense. He contended that the
substitution of Mr. Patterson, the attorney hired by the Carnegie
Company, in the place of the public prosecutor was sufficient reason
why Hugh O'Donnell should be acquitted. Mr. Robb interrupted to ask
the court if this was good law. Judge Stowe answered in the negative.
Nevertheless, the shaft had been too well aimed to miss its mark
because of this interference, and the point made by Major Montooth was
undoubtedly appreciated by the jury.
Judge Stowe charged the jury briefly and to the same effect as in the
Clifford case. The jurors stayed out from 7 o'clock in the evening until
9:30 o'clock on the next morning. When they filed into court there was
nothing in their faces to indicate whether they brought good or bad news
for the defendant. O'Donnell was quite cool and collected, nodding
pleasantly to his wife and niece when he was brought in from the jail,
and betraying no sign of emotion except a slight heaving of the chest at
the moment when the foreman of the jury drew the sealed verdict from his
pocket. "We find the prisoner not guilty," were the words that rang out
upon the death-like stillness of the court-room--welcome words to almost
everybody present. A murmur of approval was heard, but was hushed when
the court officials rapped for order. The jury was dismissed without
comment. Then O'Donnell, with tears of joy coursing down his cheeks,
turned to his faithful wife and embraced her tenderly, while friends
thronged around to proffer their congratulations. O'Donnell was
recommitted to jail, pending a hearing on the remaining charges against
him, but was shortly afterward released on bail. His was the last of the
Homestead cases brought to trial. Realizing that it was impossible to
obtain the conviction of any of the Homestead men, the attorneys for the
Carnegie Company made overtures to their opponents which resulted in the
dropping of all prosecutions on both sides. Ex-Burgess McLuckie
protested vigorously against abandoning the case against H. C. Frick, in
which he himself was the principal prosecutor, but his protest was
overruled and, aside from the trials of Dempsey and Beatty, Homestead
was heard of no more in the criminal court.
The anarchists, Carl Knold and Henry Bauer, whose arrest in connection
with Berkman's attempt on the life of Mr. Frick was mentioned in an
earlier chapter, were brought to trial a few days before Hugh O'Donnell
on indictments charging them with conspiracy and with being accessories
to Berkman's crime. It was shown that Berkman was harbored by Knold at
the residence of Paul Eckert, in Allegheny City, a rendezvous for
anarchists; that the anarchist circulars distributed at Homestead were
printed at Eckert's and taken to Homestead by Bauer and Knold, and that
the two defendants had counseled and guided Berkman in his assault on
the Carnegie chairman. Berkman was brought in from the penitentiary to
testify, but proved a recalcitrant witness. The solitary sensational
feature of the trial was a speech delivered by Colonel W. D. Moore,
counsel for the defense, in which he lauded the doctrine of anarchy and
traced its origin back to the Redeemer of Mankind. Judge Slagle, in his
charge to the jury, expressed profound regret at the enunciation of such
objectionable views by a member of the legal profession. Bauer and Knold
were found guilty on both indictments and sentenced five years to the
penitentiary. At the same time the rioters arrested at Duquesne during
the strike at that place were sentenced to the work-house for terms
ranging from two to six months.
CONCLUSION.
Although ignobly routed in the courts, the Carnegie Company lost not a
foot of the ground gained at Homestead. On the contrary, it has since
doubly re-inforced itself, for not only is the spirit of unionism
stamped out among the employees of the firm, but fully three-fourths of
the former union men are now working, most of them at their old jobs,
without exhibiting a trace of the independence which was once their
pride, or making any pretensions to a voice in the determination of
their wages.
The re-employment of so many of the old hands was one of the fruits of
the substitution of Mr. Schwab for Mr. Potter as general superintendent.
Mr. Potter, having received the non-union men who came in during the
strike and guaranteed them permanent work, would have become a
stumbling-block when the time arrived for treating with the defeated
union men and was, therefore, removed just before the crisis came. Mr.
Schwab was bound by no pledges of his own and refused to recognize those
made by his predecessor. Hence but a short time elapsed after the
collapse of the strike until most of the green hands were discharged and
their places filled by ex-strikers, whose experience rendered their
services almost indispensable.
The active leaders of the strike were, of course, excluded from the
amnesty, and few of them have since been able to secure employment at
their trade. They are the victims of a form of ostracism; blacklisted
as dangerous agitators in every steel and iron mill in the country.
Hugh O'Donnell left Homestead to travel as manager of a concert company
and subsequently became connected with a weekly journal published in
Chicago.
Honest John McLuckie tried his hand in sundry small ventures, lectured a
little, took the stump in the campaign of November, '93, and otherwise
managed to keep his head above water, but always under the handicap of a
lost cause and the diversion of energy from the familiar pursuits of a
lifetime into new and untried fields.
William T. Roberts turned his attention exclusively to speechmaking and
politics.
Thomas Crawford worked for a time for the Uniontown Steel Company, and
on the suspension of that firm, went into business with Jack Clifford
alternately as politician and book agent.
David Lynch obtained a position as agent for a liquor firm.
Hugh Ross visited his birth-place in Scotland and has been idle since
his return.
William H. Gaches carried on a successful business enterprise in Chicago
during the World's Fair, but has since been idle.
Eddie Burke, known as "Rioter Burke," was stricken with an affection of
the eyes which prevented his working even if he could have found a
place. The Amalgamated Association, at the '93 convention, voted an
appropriation sufficient to pay for his treatment at an eastern
hospital.
Of the Amalgamated lodges in Homestead nothing remains but the charters
which have never been surrendered, and under which a reorganization may
be effected if the men should hereafter find themselves in a condition
to return to union principles and practice. There is, however, nothing
to indicate a future revival of the old-time order of things. If there
are grievances to be suffered the men must simply be contented to suffer
them in silence rather than invite a repetition of the calamitous
consequences of their first and only encounter with Chairman Frick.
Of the rates of wages now paid, no more is known by outsiders than that
they are even lower than was contemplated by the firm when the lock-out
was ordered and that they promise to fall lower still. The firm refuses
to publish its scale rates on the pretext that, by so doing, it would be
playing into the hands of competitors. Rival manufacturers have
endeavored to secure the Homestead schedules and so, too, has the
Amalgamated Association, but without success. The Amalgamated officials
made their last fruitless effort in this direction during the
scale-making period in June, 1893.
As an additional protection against surprises of any description, the
fortifications of the Homestead mills have been strengthened and no one
can enter otherwise than through the offices, from which a bridge leads
to the workshops. Mr. Frick is evidently determined to be always ready,
hereafter, for battles, sieges or stolen marches.
There is one means of defense, however, which, having weighed it in the
balance and found it wanting, the Carnegie chairman is not likely to try
a second time. He will never again undertake to capture his own
territory with a posse of Pinkerton Guards.
EVERY WISE HOUSEWIFE SHOULD USE
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Transcriber's Notes:
Simple typographical errors were corrected.
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
This book uses both "secrecy" and "secresy", "employe" and "employee",
"fulfil" and "fulfill".
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Homestead - A Complete History of the Struggle of July, 1892, between the Carnegie-Steel Company, Limited, and the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers" ***
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