The Pinkertons were unable to come ashore. No one knows who fired the first shot, however fighting broke out, with men firing on both sides. As word spread that the Pinkertons were coming, thousands of striking workers and their supporters broke through the fences at the mill and met the barges at the dock. The barges and their tugboat, the “Little Bill,” docked at the river’s edge below the main pumping station for the mill. The Amalgamated had sentries tracking the barges movement towards the mill.

The goal was to dock on mill property so that any interference by the striking workers would be considered illegal trespass. On the morning of July 6, the Pinkerton agent set sail from Davis Island on the Ohio River and headed down the Monongahela River towards Homestead.

July 6 1892: The Battle of Homestead The Pinkertons Are Coming Unwilling to negotiate further or wait for outside aid, Frick hired the services of the Pinkerton Detective Agency and arranged for 300 armed Pinkertons to cordon off the mill, and reopen it. In return, the now striking workers vowed to keep the mill closed, and posted men outside to prevent people from entering.įrick’s attempts to use scab (black sheep) labor to break the strike failed as the union, with the aid of the people of Homestead, had established patrols and town wide rules to limit access by outsiders and run off any strikebreakers.Īccess to “Fort Frick” was cut off, unable to be opened even by Homestead’s sheriff, who was rebuffed by the strikers. In anticipation of the events, Frick had the mill property fortified with barbed wire fence, water cannons, and sniper towers in a structure that came to be popularly known as Fort Frick. Negotiations broke down as Frick purposefully refused to grant meaningful concessions in hopes of forcing a conflict, and in late June Frick locked the union out of the mill. Frick responded by proposing sweeping cuts to wages-based upon the ideal of the sliding scale, where wages were tied to the price of steel on the open market-and union positions at the mill. In particular, they looked to maintain a high wage tied into total tonnage of steel produced. The AAISW, which represented about 300 skilled workers in the plant, sought wage changes and protections for their jobs, which they felt, were potentially threatened by an influx of unskilled labor and encroachment of technological advances. With the collective bargaining agreement due to expire June 30, 1892, Frick and the AA entered into negotiations in February. While Carnegie publicly accepted the presence of unions, he privately conspired with Henry Clay Frick to reduce the Amalgamated’s power in Homestead. Following this strike, the balance of power shifted toward the workers, with company leaders begrudgingly admitting that the bylaws in the union’s contract essentially dictated work rules and production. Tension between Carnegie Steel and the union escalated in the early 1880s, and did not diminish after the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steelworkers (AAISW) made significant gains with a successful strike at Homestead in 1889. Student Programs at the Carrie Blast Furnaces.Student Programs on the Explorer Riverboat.Birdwatching Cruise with the National Aviary.Arts & Grounds Tour of the Carrie Blast Furnaces.The Black Experience at the Carrie Furnaces.Industrial Tour of the Carrie Blast Furnaces.

Homestead strike date and location