(2 of 3)
In 1892 the now impotent Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel & Tin Workers, on whose bones John Lewis is attempting to put robust flesh, was one of the strong est unions in the land. As its local's three-year contract with great Carnegie Steel Co. in Homestead, Pa., seven miles below Pittsburgh, drew toward a close, the company proposed that the new contract include a wage cut. The union refused. Famed for his humanitarian statements on the subject of Labor's rights, Andrew Carnegie skipped off to Scotland, left his mills in charge of hardbitten, union-hating Henry Clay Frick.
Refusing to negotiate, Steelman Frick tossed up a board & barbed-wire fence around the plant, locked his workers out. When the men surrounded "Fort Frick," barring entrance to scabs, Frick sent to New York for 300 Pinkerton detectives.
Towed stealthily up the Monongahela aboard two barges, they arrived at Home stead at 4 a. m. on July 6. The workers, massed along the river with their women & children, were ready for them. As the first detectives stepped ashore, someone banged a gun. At that the Pinkerton army fired a volley into the crowd and one of the bloodiest battles in U. S. Labor history was on. It lasted until 5 o'clock that afternoon. When it was over three detectives, seven workers lay dead.
Few days later Pennsylvania militia took over the town and by November the workers were starved out, their union crushed. Last week some 4,000 steelworkers, solemn in shirtsleeves, massed on and around a hilltop playground for grimy Homestead's first union rally in 18 years.
On the platform stood a huge sign urging "Join Now — No Initiation Fee — One Union for All Workers!" Four green-rib boned wreaths were inscribed: "In Memoriam. The Spirit of 1892 Lives On." Chief speaker was red-faced Thomas Kennedy, Secretary-Treasurer of United Mine Workers and Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania.
Out struck this oldtime Debsian Socialist against the two great enemies of militant Labor: police and hunger. "The Governor of this State. George H. Earle." barked he, ''is an honest and courageous man. and as chief of the armed and police forces of this State he will see that the workers are given their constitutional rights to organize. . . . This is a peace ful organization drive; no trouble is looked for. If the steel magnates throw the people into the streets, then the Pennsylvania Emergency Relief Board will find that these people are entitled to relief under the law." Straight from his steel-furnace job arrived Charles Scharbo to stumble in broken English through a Steel Workers' Declaration of Independence, paraphrasing the words of Thomas Jefferson at Philadelphia in 1776, and those of Franklin Roosevelt at Philadelphia in 1936: