Google Earth Community: Homestead: The workman's victory that lost a war

Though previously posted by both Dogstar7 and DKrayzie, the site of the 1892 Homestead steelmill strike – the darkest hour in American labour history – perhaps warrants a closer look, particularly because the few stark reminders remaining there do not fully tell the story of an event that to this day casts a long shadow. This is a text-heavy post, and yet there is much more to the story than space permits here.

I have taken the liberty of incorporating some of those "remnants" already posted into this 20-placemark overview, along with the New York homes of the Homestead mill's majority owners, Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick. (This doesn't stand a chance of distracting anyone from LuciaM's stunning post on the Frick Art Collection, housed in the latter's mansion.)

At least 10 men were killed outright on July 6, 1892, when 300 men hired by the company through the Pinkerton detective agency came to the factory site in Homestead, Pennsylvania, to seize control of the mill. They arrived in two barges and, in a day of savagery involving all kinds of weapons, were brutally repelled by thousands of strikers and their supporters.

The steel men handily won the battle, but lost the war. Carnegie and Frick soon after reopened the mill with non-union labour and the union was, in fact, crushed in the courts of law and public opionion.

The battle, Charles McCollester of the Pennsylvania Labor History Society wrote a few years ago, "marked a watershed in American labour relations, a defining moment, where issues that are still relevant to the organisation of work in the global economy were posed in particularly stark terms.

"The first issue was whether people could freely associate in the workplace, form organisations of their own choosing, and speak freely about the employment relationship. After the battle, free speech and association virtually disappeared in the community of Homestead, as well as on the job in the mill, for more than 40 years.

"The second issue relates to the right of workers to freely choose their own representatives in discussions and negotiations with employers, to collectively bargain over wages, hours, and working conditions without fear of retaliation.

"Finally, Homestead workers demanded the fight to participate in the process of workplace change. A key issue for the workers at Homestead, as it is for workers today, was the pace and impact of technological change ...

"Fundamental human rights to association, representation and participation in the workplace are still problematic in the US despite their assertion 50 years ago by the United Nations in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Homestead 1892 stands as an event that crystallises, in stark and dramatic expression, issues that retain their relevance for America and the world."

My account of the battle is based on a chapter in "Lockout" by Leon Wolff, which appears online at AmericanHeritage.com. Also notable is the website of the Battle of Homestead Foundation, established in 1996 by historians, artists and concerned local residents to promote the mill's rebuilt pumphouse as a "sacred site for labour". Many of the photos used here came from Ohio State University's excellent eHistory site.

For an entertaining read on the relationship between Carnegie and Frick, which melted in the heat of the Homestead strike, pick up Les Standiford's 2005 book "Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick and the Bitter Partnership That Transformed America".

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