What was the main reason for the homestead strike?
Carnegie's absence from the United States was a large factor in the Homestead mill strike of 1892. In 1889, a strike had won the steelworkers a favorable three-year contract, but by 1892 Andrew Carnegie was determined to break up the union, the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. New plants and equipment, increased production, and automated many of the mill's operations, cutting down the number of workers that were needed, Carnegie's plant manager, Henry Clay Frick, stepped up production demands, and when the union refused to accept the new conditions, Frick began locking the workers out of the plant.
On July 2 all were discharged. The union, limited to skilled tradesmen, represented less than one-fifth of the thirty-eight hundred workers at the plant, but the rest voted overwhelmingly to join the strike. An advisory committee was formed, which directed the strike and soon took over the company town as well. Frick sent for three hundred Pinkerton guards, but when they arrived by barge on July 6 they were met by ten thousand strikers, many of them armed. After an all-day battle, the Pinkertons surrendered and were forced to run a gauntlet through the crowd. In all, nine strikers and seven Pinkertons were killed; many strikers and most of the remaining Pinkertons were injured, some seriously.
