Homestead Strike, The

DESCRIPTION: "We are asking one another as we pass the time of day Why men must have recourse to arms to get their proper pay." The union workers go on strike; the company hires Pinkertons to break it. The result is bloodshed
AUTHOR: J. W. Kelly?
EARLIEST DATE: 1940 (Korson-PennsylvaniaSongsAndLegends)
KEYWORDS: labor-movement fight hardtimes strike
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
July 1, 1892 - Declaration of the Homestead Strike (one of many strikes taking place about this time). The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers strikes Carnegie's Homestead Steel Works in Pennsylvania, trying to win the right to collective bargaining.
Relations between the Union and management has, until this time, been fairly good, but manager Henry Clay Frick decided the expiration of the current contract was a good opportunity to break the union. He cut wages and refused to negotiate.
July 6, 1892 - Frick brings in 300 Pinkertons (the "paid detectives" of the song) to battle the strikers and relatives (who number about 5000). Twenty people were killed in the ensuing battle, in which the Pinkertons were repelled (and, without exception, injured)
July 9, 1892 - Frick convinces Pennsylvania Governor Pattison to send in 7000 militia to break the strike
July 15, 1892 - Despite appeals from all over the world (including President Cleveland), the Homestead Mill is re-opened by scabs
Nov 14, 1892 - The Homestead workers give up their strike. They have made no real gains (except in public opinion), and many have lost their jobs to scabs
FOUND IN: US(MA)
REFERENCES (8 citations):
Korson-PennsylvaniaSongsAndLegends, pp. 443-446, "The Homestead Strike" (1 text, 1 tune)
Byington/Goldstein-TwoPennyBallads, pp. 20-21, "The Homestead Strike" (1 text, 1 tune, with another text in the notes on pp 29-30)
Peters-FolkSongsOutOfWisconsin, p. 183, "The Homestead Strike" (1 short text, 1 tune, informant and date unknown)
Grimes-StoriesFromTheAnneGrimesCollection, p. 22, "The Homestead Strike" (1 short text)
Cohen-AmericanFolkSongsARegionalEncyclopedia1, pp. 156-157, "The Homestead Strike" (1 text)
Foner-AmericanLaborSongsOfTheNineteenthCentury, p. 244, "The Homestead Strike" (1 text; there is another "Homestead Strike" on p. 243, but I would consider it a separate song)
Gilbert-LostChords, pp. 198-199, "A Fight for Home and Honor " (1 text)
DT, HOMESTD*
Roud #7744
RECORDINGS:
Pete Seeger, "Homestead Strike Song" (on PeteSeeger47)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Father Was Killed by the Pinkerton Men" (subject)
NOTES [909 words]: The Homestead Strike was one of the bitterest labor disputes in American history, as shown by both this song and "Father Was Killed by the Pinkerton Men."
A contemporary account gives this summary description (Jameson, p. 310):
Homestead Riots. On the final refusal of the workingmen's association to accept certain changes in the wage scale, the proprietors of the Carnegie Steel Mills, at Homestead, PA., closed the works July 1, 1892. The employes declared a strike about the same time. A mob prevented the sheriff from placing pickets in the mills. July 6 a body of 300 Pinkerton detectives arrived. A bloody fight between these men and the strikers immediately took place, resulting in considerable loss on both sides. The Pinkertons surrendered. The Pennsylvania militia was then ordered out and remained at Homestead to protect the mills. Many of the strikers were arrested and indictments were found against them."
Note that this description (written no later than 1894) reters to the events as "riots."
(Incidentally, we think of the Pinkerton Agency as a detective organization, and that was certainly how they initially presented themselves, but as the company expanded, it became more and more what we would now call a contract security firm -- and an armed one, which existed to do the bidding of corporate managers, the "Pinkerton Protective Patrol" (Lukas, pp. 81-83); they sound very much like the sort of private security firms the United States has used in the twentieth century in places like Iraq to substitute for the U. S. military.) The ones deployed at western mining sites were frankly pretty thuggish. This particular batch was not quite the usual crew: "Mostly rookies, the men included a number of roughneck down-and-outers, criminals running from the law, and nervous university students looking to make a few bucks from tuition. The men had been told little about the job that awaited them and were unusually green by Pinkerton standards" (Miller, p. 219).
Homestead is a town on the Monongahela River upstream from Pittsburg. The Pinkertons arrived by barge. There was a battle when they arrived at Homestead, with several casualties on each side, including Captain Frederick Heinde of the Pinkertons, hit by two bullets. The fighting continued until union organizers convinced the strikers to back off. The owners proceeded to lock out the strikers (Miller, pp. 220-221).
The Homestead Iron Works was partly owned by Andrew Carnegie but was run by Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919), who was a robber baron's robber baron. PresElections, p. 1725, describes his behavior: "The management's contract with skilled workers was to expire on June 30 [,1892]. Despite apparent national prosperity, Frock lowered the wage rates of about one-sixth of the labor force in proposed new contracts. His refusal to negotiate, or accept full unionization produced a strike and over-reaction on both sides early in July. Strikers left the building talking of violence; management locked out employees. Barbed wire, observation towers, and private guards, later including Pinkertons, protected strikebreakers."
The strike was so bitter that Nevins/Commager, p. 327, refer to "a pitched battle on the banks of the Monongahela."
Unfortunately for workers, a quirk of fate turned the public against them. On July 23, a nut named Alexander Berkman attempted to assassinate Frick. Berkman was an anarchist; he and Emma Goldman had decided to pursue Frick and kill him. Berkman would approach Frick and blow up a homemade bomb, deliberately killing them both (so that the murder would not seem like cowardice). Unfortunately, Berkman and Goldman couldn't figure out how to make a bomb. So they tried plan B: Buy a gun and a suit, get an appointment with Frick, shoot him, then have Berkman commit suicide. But they had no guy and no money. Goldman went out and tried to earn money via sex work. She couldn't bring herself to do it, but a man gave her some money, with that and some cash they borrowed, Berkman bought his gun and costume (Miller, pp. 221-222).
Berkman, incompetent to the end, injured but did not kill Frick (who would live for several more decades), and his attempt accomplished little except to bring Goldman to prominence (Miller, pp. 224-225). Worse, the public blamed the union even though Berkman was a lone wolf who had nothing to do with the Homestead laborers (PresElections, pp. 1725-1726). Frick went on to give $25,000 to the re-election campaign of President Benjamin Harrison, whose administration had refused to intervene.
The strike was doomed, especially since strikebreakers had succeeded in resuming partial production at the mill. Eventually, after months of struggle and suffering, the strikers gave in. Many lost their jobs, and the remainder had to accept Frick's pay cuts. All they had succeeded in doing was leaving a blot on people's memories which would still be remembered two generations later (Hofstadter, p. 244).
Grimes-StoriesFromTheAnneGrimesCollection has a different take on the Homestead Strike, referring it to a "mine fire stared in 1884 near New Straitsville, a town just south of Zanesville in Perry County[, Ohio]." I can see no reason in the Grimes-StoriesFromTheAnneGrimesCollection version to support this supposition, although it is not inherently impossible. I do wonder, a little, if all the songs filed under this title are actually the same; some of them have rather different forms. - RBW
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File: Gil198

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