His darkest hours

Published on Tuesday 3 December 2002 00:00

CARNEGIE’S pledge to retire aged 35 is put aside; he has realised the potential of steel, opening his first plant in 1875.

The year 1892 started pleasantly enough for Andrew Carnegie; he and his wife Louise, and a party made a month-long tour of California and Mexico by private railcars. Planning the mid-February to mid-March trip himself, Carnegie relied on his railroad friends to accommodate his private train clear from New York to San Francisco, with George Pullman personally handling Carnegie’s travel on the Southern Pacific.

Back in Pittsburgh, Carnegie’s business partner Henry Clay Frick was pushing to consolidate various companies and mills under one organisation to realise greater efficiencies. Carnegie and Frick planned for the reorganisation to take effect on July 1, the day after the company’s contract expired with the Amalgamated [union] men at Homestead and the day Carnegie expected to have a new agreement in place.

The Amalgamated insisted on having a certain amount of skilled men in particular departments, more than were necessary, adding to costs and infuriating the chieftains. And there was the Amalgamated’s Memorandum of Agreement for the Homestead Works, which included 58 pages of “footnotes” with rules of work for the union men. Union leaders wielded their power at times just for the sake of it by making unfounded grievances.

The Amalgamated, which had reached its apex of power with over 24,000 members, had also been making plans, plans stumbled upon by AC Buell, a government inspector at Homestead’s armour mill. When an Amalgamated member, JW Allen, posing as a reporter from the United Press, tried to elicit information from Buell about government armour contracts to use in the upcoming negotiations with Carnegie, Buell recognised him, but didn’t let on, and then reported their subsequent conversation to a fellow Navy Department official. Allen told him that the mill men knew there was “a bonanza in armour contracts” and wanted their share of it.

They were also tired of hearing about jobs lost to new machinery, about wage cuts due to higher productivity. They were tired of the surrounding squalor. They were tired of hearing about Carnegie’s great benefactions and tours of Europe. In fact, confident the Homestead negotiations would conclude satisfactorily with Frick in charge instead of Abbott, Carnegie had already made plans for his annual sojourn to Scotland.

Louise and he were to sail on 13 April, stay at Coworth Park, a lovely estate in southern England, and then head for Scotland. As Carnegie’s departure date approached, Frick left his pregnant wife and their plush Homewood residence for yet another meeting at Carnegie’s home in New York. As a soft spring light filtered through the windows, they tackled the prickly issue of how to handle a strike if, in the unlikely case, the men walked out. Carnegie was in favour of shutting down the works and letting the men vote on the new scale by secret ballot as they had done at Edgar Thomson in 1888.

Back then the union had been expelled from the works and the same result, he concluded, could be had at Homestead. The more he mulled over the power the Amalgamated wielded, the more convinced he was that the union had to be vanquished. Therefore, to support Frick’s impending hard-knuckled negotiations, Carnegie drafted a memo signed by himself to be posted if necessary. In complete opposition to his righteous 1886 labour essay proclaiming the right of men to organise, he now declared Homestead must run non-union: “This action is not taken in any spirit of hostility to labour organisations, but every man will see that the firm cannot run Union and Non-union. It must be either one or the other.”

Not only was the Amalgamated a hindrance to efficiency, he reasoned, but it wasn’t a true union because it admitted only a small group of skilled workers. It was in its own way an elitist, discriminatory organisation that was not worthy of the Republic. During the crossing to Britain, Carnegie decided the memorandum was too self-condemning, however, and so, fearing for his already tainted reputation as a progressive employer, he gave Frick revised instructions. Instead, he was to post a sign stating that with “a consolidation having taken place, we must introduce the same system in our works; we do not care whether a man belongs to as many Unions or organisations as he chooses, but he must conform to the system in our other works.”

Frick ordered the construction of a three-mile-long fence along the Homestead perimeter. Spaced at regular intervals were portholes five to six inches in diameter, allegedly for lookouts but suitable for putting a rifle through. Barbed wire was strung across the top, and the rumour in town was that it could be charged with electricity at a moment’s notice. Within the compound, platforms were built and equipped with searchlights. The Homestead men were surprised by the conversion of the works into a very military-looking, turreted complex and quickly dubbed it Fort Frick.

Tension mounted not just between the union men and Carnegie management, but between all the men coming to work inside the “Fort” and management. Such an aggressive posture was hard to explain. Only 325 men were to be affected by the new wage scale; why was Frick apparently picking a fight with all 3,800 men? Because he feared another rampage like the one at Edgar Thomson.

One week before the Homestead contract expired, Carnegie departed Coworth Park for Aberdeen, where he was to dedicate a library and receive the city’s Freedom, the festivities to be held on 5 and 6 July. Then it would be on to Sir Robert Menzies’ Rannoch Lodge, a picturesque country home on Loch Rannoch in the Highlands, where the Carnegies were to spend the summer while Cluny Castle was being refurbished.

That same day Frick met the Amalgamated’s national president, William Weihe, and a committee of some 25 Homestead men led by Hugh O’Donnell. Frick had promised, and Carnegie expected, that the two sides would no longer confer, but demonstrating uncertainty, Frick had decided to meet he enemy. For his part, Frick conceded $1 in per ton wages, offering $23 as a minimum versus $22, but the Amalgamated wouldn’t accept anything less than $24, leaving Frick to advise Carnegie, “We are now preparing for a struggle”. Those preparations included Frick hiring a force of 300 Pinkertons – considered “capital’s assassins” to protect the company’s property. He instructed them to be prepared, equipped, and assembled on 5 July in Pittsburgh, from where they would boat to the Homestead works.

The union also prepared for a fight and created an Advisory Committee of 40 men to direct their battle. The committee set up headquarters in a three-story brick building in Homestead proper, a conspicuous American flag hanging over the dirt street, and two men assumed prominent roles: Hugh O’Donnell, who was elected chairman of the committee, and Homestead mayor John McLuckie.

O’Donnell and McLuckie issued a brazen declaration: “The committee has, after mature deliberation, decided to organise their forces on a truly military basis.” The 4,000 men were divided into three divisions, or watches, to guard against strike-breakers. They posted sentries at all mill entrances, set up a spy network extending to Pittsburgh, and chartered a steamboat to patrol the Monongahela.

A grinning, immaculate Carnegie was looking quite regal when he presented the library to Aberdeen and received the city’s Freedom on 5 July. Louise stood next to him proudly. About the time the Carnegies were preparing for a second day of festivities on 6 July, the 300 Pinkerton guards boarded two customised barges at Bellevue, Pennsylvania, about five miles down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh.

Their supplies included enough food to last several weeks and boxes of firearms – 300 pistols and 250 rifles – which were not to be opened until the men were on mill grounds. The barges were to be pulled to Pittsburgh and then up the Monongahela to Homestead, where the guards would disembark and secure the steelworks. Closely monitoring the activity, a spy cabled the union’s Homestead headquarters that the barges were on the move. At about 4am, the flotilla was sighted about a mile below the mill. The Homestead men’s steamboat blasted a warning whistle and someone launched fireworks; flashing across the water and glowing in the river mist, hissing and exploding in the air, they made for a surreal scene. A crowd rushed to the river’s edge to greet the steamboat and the two enclosed barges, which looked much like the low-profile packet boat Carnegie had taken on the Erie Canal exactly 44 years earlier; there was no deck and but a few portholes, allowing only a handful of Pinkertons to see what was happening.

They witnessed ruddy-faced workmen in slouch hats or bowlers, frayed coloured shirts and trousers held up with braces, and women in blouses and bustle-supported skirts carrying guns and babies, race along the railroad tracks that paralleled the river. Men, women, and children hurled insults and rocks at the Pinkertons, so spiffy in their banded slouch hats, white blouses, and dark blue trousers with navy stripes. Of course, O’Donnell and his lieutenants immediately lost control of the mob and gunshots were traded as the flotilla neared the Homestead wharf. The riverbank crowd, suddenly realising they had to beat the boat to the dock to prevent the Pinkerton guards from taking the property, ran ahead and broke through Frick’s stockade fence, which extended several feet into the water. They gathered on the bluff above the landing, a much better position than that of the Pinkerton men who were now trapped on their barges.

Still, they attempted to establish a beachhead, and in the ensuing gunfight it appeared as though they would succeed, but the Homestead army rallied and pinned their quarry in the barges. Six Pinkerton guards were wounded and required treatment, so the tugboat left the barges for a dock downstream where the wounded could be put on a train for Pittsburgh. As the early morning mist burned off, the challenge the Pinkertons faced fully revealed itself: a force now 5,000 strong was entrenched in Fort Frick, a massive complex of looming mill buildings and smokestacks, stark against the sky.

At 8am, the Pinkertons again attempted to establish a beachhead only to be repulsed, although four Homestead men were killed. The cry of revenge ran through the crowd and, between exchanges of gunfire, the Pinkertons watched horrified as the Homestead men diligently attempted to annihilate every last one of them. Completely succumbing to their thirst for blood, the workers sent a burning raft downriver, hoping it would crash into the barges and ignite them; but the fire went out before reaching the target. Next the men sent a railroad car loaded with burning barrels of oil at the barges; it stopped short. Undeterred, they pumped oil onto the surface of the river and then attempted to light the slick encircling the barges; it was lubricant oil and would not light. An old cannon was brought up; it kept firing high because it couldn’t be sighted downward any further.

Dynamite, or “stuff” as the men called it, was the next weapon of choice. The feverish labourers hurled it onto the barge roofs, slowly blowing away sections, until they ran out of stuff. It was a comedy of errors, an entertaining show noir for the audience that had been arriving all morning from surrounding towns. A morbid carnival atmosphere prevailed. By late morning, two Pinkertons had been killed and they raised a white flag – it was ripped with bullets.

Later in the day, O’Donnell regained some control of the men and at 5pm accepted the Pinkertons’ surrender. As the Homestead union men herded the Pinkertons, their uniforms dishevelled and sweat-stained, through the mill, groups of workers, women, and children rushed forward to throw more insults and rocks, and the Pinkertons suddenly found themselves running a 600-yard gauntlet. Cries went up to “kill the murderers” and the most upright citizens were said to have become a bloodthirsty pack of wolves, clubbing and stabbing the would-be guards – one of whom was clubbed to death.

Just before starting for Rannoch Lodge, Carnegie wired Frick: “Never employ one of these rioters. Let grass grow over works. Must not fail now.” His position was clear and yet it wasn’t: he didn’t want to employ any of the rioters, which could include every Homestead man; but he also didn’t want to bring in strike-breakers, preferring to let the works stand idle.

The lack of definitive guidance left Frick to pursue his own means. While Carnegie claimed all anxiety was gone, when an enterprising reporter tracked him down at Rannoch Lodge on 8 July and peppered him with questions, Carnegie became so agitated that Louise thought he was going to have a seizure and was forced to lead him away. The next day, a New York Herald reporter tried his luck. Carnegie, having realised he was facing a public relations disaster, made a statement in which he expressed some remorse, heartfelt or otherwise: “The strike is most deplorable, and the news of the disaster, which reached me at Aberdeen, grieved me more than I can tell you. It came on me like a thunderbolt in a clear sky. I must positively decline to enter into any discussion as to the merits or demerits of the case. All I will say is that the strike did not take place in the old Carnegie works, but the difficulty has been entirely in the recently acquired works.”

The “recently acquired works,” however, had been under the Carnegie umbrella since 1883; and the strike was hardly an unexpected thunderbolt, considering Frick and he had been plotting strategy since the beginning of the year. The number of fatalities was the unfortunate surprise. One or two would have passed without notice as they had at Edgar Thomson during the Hungarian rampage, but as many as 20 dead? It was unthinkable. On both sides of the Atlantic, radical proletarian papers were quick to fiercely condemn Carnegie, as did some of the mainstream publications.

On 11 July, Homestead knew state troops were on the way, but as to when and where they would arrive was a highly guarded secret. Few slept easily that night. “Morning broke grey and sombre,” the Harper’s Weekly correspondent wrote, “and still there was no news. A great red sun rising over the eastern hills was partially concealed by the mist that hung over the limpid waters of the Monongahela.” Within a few hours, the rhythmic rumbling of a train could be heard as 8,000 members of the militia arrived in 95 cars. The soldiers were impressive in their blue uniforms, guns and knapsacks slung over their shoulders, bayonets flashing, polished boots reflecting the sun as they marched in time, followed by horse-drawn artillery. McLuckie strode down to the tracks to meet them, but he was brushed aside.

The townspeople meekly watched as the soldiers pitched their white tents on the side of a black hill overlooking the area and strategically positioned their cannons. The Amalgamated serenely surrendered the town and works, but the union was resolute in forcing a prolonged strike. Rumours of sympathy strikes soon circulated. Throughout, Frick was unbreakable; he pushed ahead with plans to reopen Homestead as soon as possible. He also invited all old employees to reapply for their jobs, giving them until 21 July, or they would be replaced.

It was a strong-arm tactic with mixed results: by 17 July, only 487 men had returned. Amazingly, Carnegie managed to maintain public silence and supported Frick, but what he said behind Frick’s back was another matter. On 17 July, dressed in tweeds after some early morning angling, Carnegie sat down to write a letter. It was a tired, resigned letter in which he criticised Frick’s management of the tragedy for the first time. “Matters at home bad – such a fiasco trying to send guards by Boat and then leaving space between River & fences for the men to get opposite landing and fire – still we must keep quiet & do all we can to support Frick & those at Seat of War.” It wasn’t the fence that was the issue; it was the space allowing the Homestead men a strategic position. It was an error for which Frick was to blame, and a rift would open between him and Carnegie.

What should have been a simple stand-off, perhaps the shutting down of the works for a few months until the men came to their senses, was spinning out of control. A darkness descended on Carnegie, and his debilitated mental state was reflected in a disjointed cable: “Early anxiety his recovery … Close all works until recovery complete. We regard it is necessary something must be done to save Frick anxiety – his recovery before all – if others are willing we can close. Can you see daylight?” His wanting to close all the works was extreme, his reasoning imbalanced almost to a point of insanity.

As September came to a close there was still no major break in the strike. To ratchet up the pressure on the Amalgamated, in early October the company’s lawyer, Philander Knox, consulted with Chief Justice Edward Paxson of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and decided it was possible to bring charges of treason against members of the union’s Advisory Committee. In an unprecedented move, Paxson himself brought the charges, the first time such charges had been brought against those allegedly inciting labour violence – thus inviting heated criticism from legal scholars and suggesting Carnegie had bought the judiciary.

On October 13, Carnegie arrived in London and made a statement to the Associated Press, which was summarised in the New York Daily Tribune: “He informed the Associated Press representative that he had been busily engaged all during the spring and summer in preparing a new book treating of the industrial problems of the day.” The newspaper also reported that Carnegie stated “he had not heard of the outbreak at Homestead until two days after it occurred, and then meagrely. Since those deplorable occurrences, which had burst upon him like a thunderbolt from a clear sky, he had been unable to work much. They had such a depressing effect upon him that he had perforce to lay his book aside and resort to the lochs and moors, fishing daily from morning to night … For all the deplorable incidents of the Homestead strike his chief regret was that so many of the old men had allowed their places to be filled.”

It was difficult to pity the fisherman, who was diligently refining his story so as to appear uninvolved and uninformed. And the old men had not simply allowed their places to be filled, but it was so easy for Carnegie to shift the blame to them. Carnegie was never at fault; still, he decided it was best not to return to the United States that fall. He wrote to a friend that he was extending his overseas stay and proceeded to the Mediterranean.

Not until four months after the bloody fight, on 17 November, did the workers return en masse and the Amalgamated then called it quits at Homestead. Those returning were emasculated, forced to sign a pledge of loyalty and a statement declaring that the applicant had not been on company grounds, had not participated in the rioting, and did not know anyone who did. “Our victory is now complete and most gratifying,” Frick wrote in a celebratory note to Carnegie, who crowed from Italy, “Life worth living again – Cables received – first happy morning since July.”

Life may have been worth living again, but after reflecting on the entire experience, Carnegie realised life would never be the same. Writing to Frick from Rome shortly thereafter, he was quite subdued: “Think I’m about ten years older than when with you last. Europe has rung with Homestead, Homestead, until we are sick of the name, but it is all over now.”

Letters of support came from many quarters throughout and after the strike, and friends were quick to absolve Carnegie of any responsibility. Of all, Carnegie most appreciated one from William Gladstone. When the 82-year-old became prime minister for a fourth time and formed his cabinet in August 1892, Carnegie congratulated him, dubbing him William the Fourth.

Responding in September, Gladstone thanked him and offered his sympathy: “I wish to do the little, the very little, that is in my power, which is simply to say how sure I am that no one who knows you will be prompted by the unfortunate occurrences across the water (of which manifestly we cannot know the exact merits) to qualify in the slightest degree either his confidence in your generous views of his admiration of the good and great work you have already done. Wealth is at present like a monster threatening to swallow up the moral life of man; you by precept and by example have been teaching him to disgorge. I for one thank you.”

The venerable prime minister touched on three themes that marked the letters of support: authors tended to point out they did not know the merits of the case, therefore not completely absolving Carnegie; the press was criticised and held partly responsible for inciting the violence; and Carnegie’s philanthropic ventures were noted to strike a positive chord amid the dark times. Within days of receiving Gladstone’s supportive letter, a grateful Carnegie earnestly wrote back as though at confession, although he continued to revise his story: “This is the trial of my life (death’s hand excepted). Such a foolish step – contrary to my ideas, repugnant to every feeling of my nature. Our firm offered all it could offer, even generous terms. Our other men had gratefully accepted them. They went as far as I could have wished, but the false step was made in trying to run the Homestead Works with new men. It is a test to which workingmen should not be subjected. It is expecting too much of poor men to stand by and see their work taken by others. Their daily bread … Feelings had been aroused, the Sheriff’s aid had been called in and his Deputies hooted. Then other guards sent for with Sheriff’s approval. These were attacked and then the military. All this time I heard nothing until days had elapsed and, as the way easiest to peace, going on was then best-returning being impossible, for the State of Pennsylvania could not retire troops until they had established and vindicated Law. The pain I suffer increases daily. The Works are not worth one drop of human blood. I wish they had sunk. I write this to you freely; to no one else have I written so. I must be silent and suffer but after a time I hope to be able to do something to restore good feeling between my young and rather too rash partner and them over at Homestead … Look at me! – hitherto Master, now condemned to inaction yet knowing the right, and anxious to carry it … I have one comfort, self-approval & a second – the support of a wife who is as strong & as wise as she is gentle & devoted – so I shall sail on & let the tempest howl.

The howling tempest alluded to Shakespeare’s King Lear. The mad King Lear rages, “Thou think’st ’tis much that this contentious storm/Invades us to the skin … Pour on; I will endure.” In King Lear, Shakespeare played with several themes, including, in part: the universe is indifferent; man is but an animal; life is brutal and meaningless; the contrasting of an unappreciated child and the unwanted ageing parent; and, of course, the perilous nature of power. Certainly, Carnegie must have felt as though he was fighting an indifferent storm, fraught with brutality. But more important, he was like Lear, a ruler who “hath ever but slenderly known himself,” in that Carnegie deluded himself.

In 1886, Carnegie had written, “It is the chairman, situated hundreds of miles away from his men, who only pays a flying visit to the works and perhaps finds time to walk through the mill or mine once or twice a year, that is chiefly responsible for the disputes which break out at intervals.”

What he now failed to recognise was that he had become just such a chairman. He was also deluding himself as to his role in the Homestead tragedy. He claimed he had been retired for several years, but in truth he and Frick were the masterminds behind the campaign to expel the union; he believed he was receiving Homestead information too late to act upon it, but in fact he was in almost continuous contact with Frick via cable; and he believed he did not know Frick was planning to hire strike-breakers, but considering that Carnegie Steel agents were out recruiting men before the violence, word must have reached Carnegie, especially since the agents were recruiting north, south, east, and west. He was starting to believe his version of the events.

Carnegie had lost a realistic perspective on power, as had King Lear. By handing Frick the chairmanship and abdicating the throne; by taking extensive European sojourns, but keeping the title of king, Carnegie was setting himself up for betrayal. Frick was the unappreciated child with restive ambitions, and Carnegie the unwanted parent whom Frick wanted out of the way and kept quiet. King Lear proclaimed, “I am a man/More sinn’d against than sinning,” but he brought it upon himself by failing to maintain his full authority; so had Carnegie. The abuse of power and the resulting unnecessary deaths at Homestead made for a gripping Shakespearean tragedy.

Comfortably resettled in his 51st Street home, Carnegie brooded over Homestead. What was done was done; now what could polish the tarnish? Although Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan, and other titans would never admit they used their philanthropy to improve their image, in 1893 Carnegie most certainly did, only he would take a different tactic. He knew a sudden announcement of a new initiative would have the cynics jumping down his throat; therefore, he opted for a more subdued and charitable course as he continued to cleanse himself of the Homestead sin. At a notably increased rate, Carnegie gave money to strangers with hard-luck cases, passing acquaintances, old friends, and family.

He aided a mechanic’s wife who was sick and overwhelmed with doctor bills; he sent $150 to a woman whose husband was out of work and had all her furniture taken except her wedding presents; and he spent $99.80 to purchase and ship a loom to one Alice Burns. He sent a cheque to a Mrs Henderson whose husband, an inventor, had died, because the family couldn’t live off the royalties from his inventions as he had promised. When Sarah Kerr Heistand, a retired telegraph operator who remembered Carnegie when he was at Altoona, wrote to say she was raising money for a new rectory for her church, Carnegie promptly contributed. The non-churchgoer, perhaps seeking absolution, became very active in giving Farrand & Votey Pipe – Organs, at approximately $5,000 apiece, to various churches. He gave money to his friend William Clark for a soldiers’ monument.

Carnegie sent $500 to another old friend, William Curtiss, who was unable to work after the untimely death of his daughter. As for the more fortunate, he kindly invested $5,000 for his New York friend Mrs Alexander King. Carnegie’s blood relatives experienced a windfall in the year after Homestead. He gave money to his cousin William Carnegie, who was out of work, and an allowance to cousin Charlotte Carnegie. For his cousin Delia Morris, he invested $6,000, promising a handsome return of 12 percent per year, to be paid bi-annually. Late in 1893, Carnegie donated $125,000 to a Pittsburgh relief fund managed by his friend Robert Pitcairn to aid the poor during a bitter economic downturn.

Extracted with permission of the publisher John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. from Carnegie 2003 by Peter Krass. This book is available at all bookstores, online booksellers and from the Wiley website at www.wileyeurope.com

Tomorrow: Carnegie’s love affair with the Highlands.