Sooner or later everybody hears about Homestead, a dwindling Pennsylvania mill town of 5,092 souls just across the Monongahela River from Pittsburgh. It was the site of historic labor-management strife in 1892, when striking workers lost a bloody (ten dead) battle with armed, union-busting Pinkerton agents hired by the Carnegie Steel Co. More recently, after U.S. Steel (now the USX Corp.) closed a plant that had provided about 15,000 jobs, the town commanded attention as a victim of the economic tides that have sunk smokestack industries. Last week Homestead blurted into national attention yet again -- this time because of a...
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