total-todd-review reblogged
Striking workers and Pinkerton strike-breakers on the Monongahela River. National Police Gazette. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (via)
On This Day in Pittsburgh History: July 6, 1892
Three hundred Pinkerton men were engaged by millworkers in a pitched battle at the Homestead works after arriving via the Monongahela River on two barges; 16 men were killed and many more wounded. [Historic Pittsburgh]
Related: “Strike at Homestead Hill,” from the PBS series American Experience:
When 300 Pinkerton Detectives came ashore at Andrew Carnegie’s Homestead mill on July 6, 1892, they had no idea of the extreme violence with which locked-out steelworkers would greet them. A hail of stones, then bullets, ripped the air. Steelworker William Foy and the captain of the Pinkertons fell wounded. What had begun as a simple disagreement over wages between the nations largest steelmaker and its largest craft union, the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, had taken a decidedly savage turn. Before the struggle ended, Amalgamated would be humbled, Carnegie’s control of his labor force complete. (more)
