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1891-1930 Workers' Rights Trampled

During its first 40 years, the IBEW experienced growth, progress, strife and recovery. But it didn’t exist in a vacuum. In other industries throughout the country, organized labor faced tough, brutal opposition from employers and government. Time after time trade unionists found their constitutional rights to free speech and freedom of association tossed out the window in favor of huge profits for big business.

Money was indeed power; corporate moguls were able to persuade legislators and judges to give short shrift to workers’ efforts to join together to improve their wages and working conditions. Crushing the movements to organize steelworkers, textile workers, mine workers and other laborers inevitably spawned a new “industry”—that of the industrial detective agency, which provided spies, strikebreakers and “guards” to assist in the prevention of union organization and the elimination of it wherever it achieved a foothold.

Homestead

In 1892 several strikes proved disastrous to achieving the goals of the labor movement. The strike at the Homestead steel mills owned by Andrew Carnegie was the first of these labor disasters. Carnegie and the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers had managed to renew an agreement in 1889 for three years. The owner placed Henry C. Frick in charge of the mills. The union and Frick began negotiations for a new agreement in February 1892, with the Amalgamated asking for an increase in tonnage rates since business was booming. Frick requested decreases. Talks continued for three months, then Frick issued an ultimatum—a contract would be settled in 29 days or the company would cease its dealings with the union. When the time period expired, Carnegie locked out its employees, erected barbed-wire fences around the plant and hired 300 Pinkerton “guards” to protect its property.

On the night of July 5, the Pinkertons, armed, assembled on a barge on the Ohio River below Pittsburgh and were towed up to Homestead. They were met by an army of steelworkers. In the ensuing clash, a dozen men from each side were killed; and scores were wounded. But the Pinkertons were defeated and marched through the town to the taunts of workers and workers’ families. But jubilation was short-lived. On July 10 Pennsylvania’s governor ordered several thousand National Guardsmen to patrol Homestead and two other striking plants. Recruiting agents hired strikebreakers, and the militia guarded them in their bunkhouses.

Meanwhile, with the public’s attitude on the side of the strikers, and Republican President Harrison up for reelection, the vice-presidential candidate of the party asked Carnegie to call an end to the conflict. In response, Frick declared their intention to obliterate the union “if it takes all summer... Yes, even my life itself.” The union struggled on; but a depleted treasury and court indictments against several leaders for murder, conspiracy and aggravated riot persuaded the strikers to vote to end the action on November 20. The workers returned to their jobs as nonunion men, and the steel unions were effectively wiped out in Pittsburgh mills for some time to come.

Three other 1892 labor battles demonstrated the power achieved by corporations by the late 19th century: a silver-mine strike in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, defeated by federal troops; railroad switchmen in Buffalo, busted by militia; and coal miners seeking to evict convict labor from the mines in Tracy City, Tennessee, another militia-crushed action. With the corporations holding the reins of state and local governments, and exerting strong influence over the federal government, trade unionism was hard pressed to survive, much less advance.

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1891-1930 Workers' Rights Trampled