Homestead Strike

“ Again, although all violence is injurious to individuals, the violence to which unorganized workingmen resort in local disputes with their employers, however injurious to local interests, tends to be essentially temporary and does not tend to overthrow economic or social institutions. The effect of organization, however, expresses itself in the magnitude of the conflicts to which it gives rise; as for example, the Homestead strike in 1892, the Pullman strike in 1894, and what was practically equivalent to a civil war in Colorado during 1903. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Let us consider some of the most important Anarchist acts within the last two decades. Strange as it may seem, one of the most significant deeds of political violence occurred here in America, in connection with the Homestead strike of 1892.
During that memorable time the Carnegie Steel Company organized a conspiracy to crush the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. Henry Clay Frick, then Chairman of the Company, was intrusted with that democratic task. ”

“ However some may condemn my act, the workers could not be blind to the actual situation, and the practical effects of Frick's death. But his recovery....
Yet, who can tell? It may perhaps have the same results. If not, the strike was virtually lost when the steel-workers permitted the militia to take possession of Homestead. It afforded the Company an opportunity to fill the mills with scabs. But even if the strike be lost,-our propaganda is the chief consideration. The Homestead workers are but a very small part of the American working class. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Small business men accepted deputy sheriffs' commissions, put revolvers in their belts and talked loudly about the merits of a firing squad as a remedy for industrial unrest.
For twenty or more years in the mill towns along the Monongahela—since 1892 in Homestead—the working men have lived in an atmosphere of espionage and repression. The deadening influence of an overwhelming power, capable of crushing whatever does not bend to its will, has in these towns stifled individual initiative and robbed citizenship of its virility. ”

“ Although the complete solution of the use of the state and the employers' private forces against the workers awaits conquest of power by the latter, nevertheless much can be done under present conditions to ward off, counter, prevent, and weaken such attacks of the employers. The strike strategist must learn to move courageously and intelligently in this most crucial matter. The history of the American labor movement is replete with the militant defense made by workers driven desperate by fierce employers' attacks, such as in Homestead, Colorado, West Virginia, McKees Rocks, Herrin, etc. ”

“ In the old days these highly skilled workers took the initiative in the struggle for human rights in the steel industry—the mechanical trades and unskilled workers playing a very minor part. Homestead was one of their great battles, only 752 of the 3800 men employed being union members in good-standing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As a strike measure the Lackawanna Steel Company evicted many strikers from the company houses. In Braddock, Rankin, Homestead, Butler, Wierton, Natrona, Bethlehem and many other places, the companies put similar pressure upon their men, either evicting them or foreclosing the mortgages on their half-paid-for houses. Threats of such action drove thousands back to work, it being peculiarly terrifying to workers to find themselves deprived of their homes in winter time. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Good strike dramatization is closely related to militant fighting on the offensive. Classical examples of dramatic strikes were those of the steel workers in Homestead in 1892, of the Colorado coal miners and Lawrence Textile workers in 1912, and the present struggle in Passaic. ”

“ 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 ”

“ On the same day that the militia arrived at Homestead, a more bloody and destructive conflict occurred in the Coeur d'Alene district of Idaho, where the workers in the silver mines were on strike. Nonunion men were imported and put into some of the mines. The strikers, armed with rifles and dynamite, thereupon attacked the nonunion men and drove them off, but many lives were lost in the struggle and much property was destroyed. ”

“ Likewise, in great strikes of workers in basic and key industries, such as the railroads, coal mining, etc., partial settlements are usually unwise and often disastrous. They destroy the political effect of such strikes. They are a confession of weakness, of failure to achieve the original aim of the strike, which was to defeat the government, or, the whole body of employers. ”

“ They believe that the normal relationship between employers and workers is one of harmony and collaboration. They look upon strikes as deplorable misunderstandings. Hence, they consider strike settlements as real settlements. Thus they disarm the workers for the intense struggle that goes on in many forms after the settlements. ”

“ The workers, however, when aroused to struggle in strikes, often take little account of capitalist-made legal "rights," and American labor history is filled with instances of militant action of strikers. More than in any other country, perhaps, has sabotage been used by American strikers in their bitter battles with the employers.
↑ Strikes of related groups of unions present many difficult problems which must be studied and borne in mind in our strike strategy. ”

“ In strike settlements it is necessary to guard against the right danger of grossly over-estimating the employers' strength and consequently of weakly abandoning the struggle, and also against the ultra-leftist danger of over-estimating the workers' forces and thus leading them into hopeless struggle when much could be saved by a settlement. ”

“ For many years it had scoured the countries of Eastern and Southern Europe, and packed its mills with poor, dispirited, ignorant immigrants of three score nationalities, in the hope that it was finally supplanting its original crew of independent American and Western European workmen by a race of submissive, unorganizable slaves. And for a long time this shameful policy worked well. Wages sank to nowhere; conditions became unspeakably wretched; every strike of the old-time, organized workers was smothered by an avalanche of job-hungry immigrants. ”

“ IN THE STRIKE STRUGGLE.
UNDER present conditions in the United States strikes are the very heart of the class struggle. They are brutal and open fights between exploiters and exploited. It is in strikes that the conflicting interests of the two classes are most manifest. The employer in his limitless greed and desire to exploit the workers even more intensely than the present unexampled rate, seeks to break their spirit and to force them to work upon his terms. ”

“ When partial settlements serve the general strategical aim of splitting the ranks of the employers and enable the workers to play off one section of them against the others they are tactically advisable. Then it is a case of making one group of capitalists scab on the rest. But when these settlements weaken or divide the workers' ranks, or compromise the political purposes of a great strike they must be rigidly avoided. ”

“ Conservative labor leaders habitually follow the wrong policy of surrendering the initiative to the employers and of backing up before their attacks. They fight on the defensive. Their cowardly retreat in the British general strike was a classical example of this false strategy. A real strike strategy must pursue the policy of the offensive. When the employers take the initiative from us we must take it back with a counter-offensive. If they force a lock-out upon us we must turn it into a strike, placing counter-demands and involving more workers. ”

“ Usually the leaders of the unions are conservative and deprecate violence. But a strike by its very nature offers an opportunity to the lawless. The destruction of property and the coercion of workmen have been so prevalent in the past that, in the public mind, violence has become universally associated with strikes. Judge Jenkins, of the United States Circuit Court, declared, in a leading case, that “a strike without violence would equal the representation of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet omitted.” ”

“ But when workmen threaten to inaugurate sympathetic strikes of the third, fourth, or fifth degree, which can only affect the person against whom the direct strike is waged in an indirect way, if it affects him at all, they threaten to inaugurate movements which contain within themselves the germs of suicide. How absurd it is to inaugurate a strike among the journeymen tailors, because their employer furnishes clothes to the man who sells groceries to the person who operates mines which supply coal to the railroad companies that use Pullman cars. ”

“ If the employer expects his men to work he must guarantee them full protection in case of [Pg 141] interference. But more than all things he must guarantee his employe that he will never be displaced in consequence of any future compromise with any labor organization. If the master masons have faith in the stand they have taken, and mean to maintain it at all hazards, they will get all the help they want. If they have any idea that a strike is on their hands to be settled by compromise with any body of men, they may as well surrender to the union at once. ”

“ In order to defeat the workers of a branch or a factory, the united employers do not hesitate to lock out innocent working men, in order to force the strikers to go back to work, and in this manner destroy their organisation. ”

“ It will be marvellous, indeed, if some day the State Constabulary, with their policy of deliberate intimidation, are not the means of causing riots such as this country has not yet experienced in labor disputes. Not always will the unions be able to hold their men as steady in the face of brutal provocation as they did in the recent steel strike. ”