by Alexander Berkman
From ‘Living My Life’
by Emma Goldman
“It was May 1892. News from Pittsburg announced that trouble had broken out between the Carnegie Steel Company and its employees organized in the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. It was one of the biggest and most efficient labour bodies of the country, consisting mostly of Americans, men of decision and grit, who would assert their rights. The Carnegie Company, on the other hand, was a powerful corporation, known as a hard master. It was particularly significant that Andrew Carnegie, its president, had temporarily turned over the entire management to the company chairman, Henry Clay Frick, a man known for his enmity to labour. Frick was also the owner of extensive coke fields, where unions were prohibited and the workers were ruled with an iron hand.”
“The high tariff on imported steel had greatly boomed the American steel industry. The Carnegie Company had practically a monopoly of it, and enjoyed unprecedented prosperity. Its largest mills were in Homestead, near Pittsburgh, where thousands of workers were employed, their tasks requiring long training and skill. Wages were arranged between the company and the union, according to a sliding scale based in the prevailing market price of steel products. The current agreement was about to expire, and the workers presented a new wage schedule, calling for an increase because of the higher market prices and enlarged output of the mills.”
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