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Our History
A Union is Born
The Turbulent Years
The Conspiracy Trials
The Beginning of the
Morrin Era
The Depression and a New
Deal For Labor
World War II
Ironworkers Grow in the
1950's Part Two Part Three
John H. Lyons Jr.
Elected President
The Tradition Continues
Pathways to the 21st
Century Under The Leadership of General President Jake West
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Part Two Two years later the Haymarket Affair would take on world-wide dimensions. In Paris, France in July of 1889, Samuel Gompers and the American Federation of Labor sent a delegate to the World's Fair held in that city to celebrate the centennial of the French Revolution. It was at that time that the 934 foot Eiffel Tower was built, proving the possibilities for iron and steel construction. The A. F. of L. delegate recommended that a day be set aside to honor the Haymarket Martyrs, and the day that was selected was May 1st. Today, almost all the major industrial nationa of the world, including Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Norway, Israel and all the nations of Central and South America have May 1st as their "Labor Day". Only in the United States and in English speaking Canada is this day not honored on May 1st. After the Haymarket Affair,
unions throughout the country found themselves under attack.
Management used the Haymarket bombing to stereotype all union members as
wild-eyed bomb throwers. Although the Knights of Labor continued, its days were numbered. The fact that Terence Powderly had turned his back on the Haymarket Martyrs, and failed to support the "Eight-Hour-Day Movement" had disillusioned many workers with that organization. And the fact that Gompers had come to Springfield, llinois to plead with Governor Ogelsby for the lives of the Martyrs, gave great credibility to the craft unions and the new American Federation of Labor. THE HOMESTEAD STRIKE OF 1892 Five years after the execution of the Haymarket Martyrs, another event took place in the Pittsburgh area only four years before the founding of our union ..... The "Battle of Homestead". Ironically, the same steel companies that would later try to break our union were involved in the the destruction of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers (AAISW), which had organized many of the workers in Andrew Carnegies Homestead Mills.
Both Andrew Carnegie and his business partner and chief lieutenant, Henry Clay Frick, wanted to get rid of unions in all their steel plants. Although Carnegie had allowed the union to exist at Homestead for many years, he now gave the go ahead to frick to lock out all the union workers on une 29, 1892, one day before the union contract expired. The men were paid by the tonnage produced. Frick demanded that the price be set at $22 dollars a ton and not the $25 that the union requested. Although the company claimed that workers earned as much as $12 to $14 dollars a day, in reality at the time of the strike 1,177 workers averaged $1.68 to $2.50 a day and another 1,625 averaged $1.40 or less a day. The company claimed they had the right to make an additional 15% profit, and they should get a greater profit based on the new machinery that they had installed. Frick feared that the workers might storm the plant and take it over, so he erected a three mile long wooden fence topped with barbed wire around the plant. He also built sentry towers at strategic points for sharp-shooters. Frick contacted the Pinkerton Detective agency in Chicago for 300 private guards. Ironically, a number of students at Northwestern University just north of Chicago, saw Pinkerton's newspaper ad for summer jobs and signed up not realizing what was in store for them! The 300 Pinkertons armed with Winchester rifles, were taken by train to McKees Rocks on the Ohio River just below Pittsburgh. On July 5th, they were put on two steel company barges and floated up the Ohio River, then to the Monongahela River, and on to Homestead. Aware of their coming, a crowd of about 5000 including Hugh O'Donnell, one of the union leaders, and even John McLuckie, the Mayor of Homestead, took over the plant. Then they gathered along the river bank as the barges approached early on the morning of July 6. A battle took place and by 5:00 p.m. thirteen had been mortally wounded. The Pinkertons finally displayed a white flag agreeing to surrender their weapons in exchange for safe passage. However the feeling of the crowd of men and women of Homestead was bitter because of the death of seven men. As the Pinkertons came ashore they had to walk up the hill to the railroad station through a gauntlet of townspeople. Women and children armed with sticks, umbrellas, and rocks attacked the Pinkertons. Some children threw mud. Some of the Pinkertons later stated that this gauntlet was more terrifying than the earlier battle. The workers were now in control of both the plant and their town. However, six days later Frick convinced the Governor of Pennsylvania to declare martial law and send in the state militia. Union leaders were brought to trial because of the attack on the Pinkertons. Scabs were brought in, and the plant was reopened with military protection. By the end of 1892, 2000 strikebreakers had been hired, the union had been destroyed, and only 800 of the original 3,800 employees were rehired. The Homestead Strike ended unionism in the steel industry for the next 44 years. Although our union would try again and again to organize workers in steel plants, it would not be until Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930's and the passage of the Wagner Act that steelworkers in the mills would finally organize under the C. I. O.
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Even the meaning of the word "anarchist" was changed from the
original ideas of Plato and Socrates, of a world without armies, or police
....a kind of "Utopia." The new meaning came to be
"someone who wanted to destroy everything through violence.
The
Amalgamated Association was founded in August of 1876 by the merger of
three existing unions: The United Sons of Vulcan, that were iron puddlers;
the Associated Brotherhood of Iron and Steel Heaters, Rollers and Roughers;
and the Iron and Steel Roll Hands of the United States. When they
were founded, they only had 3,775 members, but by 1891 they had grown to
25,000 members in 290 lodges, making them one of the most powerful unions
in the country.