“A man’ll do most anything to live,” remarked another, lamenting only the length of the work shift and not what was done within it. “A man could stand this for six hours,” he said, and others readily agreed. If six hours a day in Hell would afford them a living, then that was a bargain that all agreed would be fair.
Unfortunately, their employers did not see it their way, and nothing in the legacy of the strike seemed to change matters in any significant way. It is true that Carnegie and Frick had been personally vilified by the press, and any number of congressmen and their committees published denunciations and reports that excoriated capital and sympathized with labor. And in the aftermath of Homestead, more than half the states enacted laws that prohibited the employment of private police for use during labor disputes.
But the most profound effect of the unwinding at Homestead was to put an ignominious end to unionization within the industry. When contracts with management expired at the great Jones & Laughlin and Illinois Steel works later in the 1890s, the Amalgamated gave in without protest; and when the mighty U.S. Steel was formed in 1901, efforts to rally workers under the banner of the AAISW were summarily crushed. According to historian John A. Fitch, the last union lodge within a U.S. steel plant surrendered its charter in 1903. None would exist again until 1937, thirty-four years later.
As for men such as Hugh O’Donnell and John McLuckie, they may have escaped prison sentences, but their lives within steel, and as they had known them, were ended forever. They and other leaders were not only denied reemployment with Carnegie Steel, but were blacklisted throughout the entire industry. McLuckie lost his home, said to be worth $30,000, and soon after, his wife died of illness exacerbated by her sorrow.
In 1900, a friend of Carnegie’s, a Rutgers professor visiting a shooting ranch in the Sonoran Mountains of northern Mexico, reportedly ran across McLuckie, who had made his way there in desperation, seeking work in the nearby mines. Down to his last pennies, McLuckie related his travails to Professor John C. Van Dyke, who listened with sympathy and fascination.
Upon his return to the States, Van Dyke got in touch with Carnegie, who asked that the professor offer McLuckie whatever funds he needed to get back on his feet, with one condition: under no circumstances was he to divulge Carnegie’s name. Van Dyke wrote to offer McLuckie help, but though the proud former burgess thanked him for the offer, he declined. No handouts would be needed. He would make his own way, somehow.
Van Dyke then got in touch with another friend, the superintendent of the Sonoran Railway, who offered McLuckie a job. This time, McLuckie accepted and, according to Van Dyke, went on to prosper in Mexico, advancing within the new company and remarrying. As the story goes, when Van Dyke visited McLuckie sometime later, he felt he could at last let the former Homestead burgess know who his original benefactor had been.
Told the news, McLuckie stared at Van Dyke in astonishment. “Well,” he told Van Dyke finally. “That was damned white of Andy, wasn’t it?”
While some historians doubt the veracity of the Van Dyke report, it was a story that Carnegie was fond of repeating. He even went so far as to suggest that McLuckie’s words be carved upon his tombstone as proof that he had been kind to at least one of his workmen.
It was a comment by Carnegie to British prime minister William Gladstone, however, that seemed chiseled permanently upon his unconscious when it came to Homestead: “The pain I suffer increases daily.”
22
DEATH DO US PART
IF THE HOMESTEAD DEBACLE SET BACK efforts to organize American industrial labor for some forty years, as most agree, it also opened up a rift between Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick. In some ways, what happened between them is as fascinating and consequential as the events of those fateful days in 1892.
On the day of the union’s formal capitulation, Frick wrote to Carnegie, crowing, “Our victory is now complete and most gratifying. Do not think we will ever have any serious labor trouble again.” When Carnegie suggested that the victory had not exactly come cheap, Frick followed up on November 28 with grudging agreement that the cost might have been a bit high, but that “we had to teach our employees a lesson and we have taught them one they will never forget.”
To Frick, still smarting from Whitelaw Reid’s attempts to invoke President Harrison’s influence, the implication that he had acted at all improperly was outrageous. In the days following his return to his office in August, Frick had written to Carnegie more than once to complain that a more forceful posture with Reid would have aided the company’s position with the union and the public. There had been no good to come of Carnegie’s apparent kowtowing to Reid. The fact that the Republicans had gone on to lose the election was simply proof that Reid and his cronies were out of touch with the mood of the country.
While Carnegie was not yet ready to rebuke Frick openly, he was nonetheless writing friends outside his business circles to insist that what had happened at Homestead was nothing he had sanctioned or would ever have condoned. He insisted to Gladstone that he would have simply closed the mill and waited for the men to return, and went so far as to say he had sent such orders to Frick, only to have the letter go astray.
It seemed that word of Carnegie’s damage-control campaign was getting back to Frick, who fought to rally his chief stockholder. On October 12 he wrote to Carnegie to insist that victory was nearly upon them. “If we had adopted the policy of sitting down and waiting,” Frick added, “we would have still been sitting, waiting, and the fight would yet have to be made, and then we would have been accused of trying to starve our men into submission.”
As Charles Schwab would characterize his old mentor some years later, Frick was a fighter, and when war loomed, he prepared himself for it. In Frick’s mind, the fact that shooting had started at Homestead was the fault of the union; if the men had listened to reason and behaved in a law-abiding fashion, there would have been no violence. And the end result would have been the same. Frick saw his own approach as direct and at least honest, if brutal. He viewed Carnegie’s tactics as underhanded by comparison.
From all appearances, Frick was sincere in his beliefs—though, as Carnegie’s old secretary James Bridge would later contend, he was not immune to the stresses associated with Homestead. In a matter of months, Bridge noted, Frick’s full brown beard had gone nearly as white as Carnegie’s.
Upon his receipt of Frick’s October 12 letter, Carnegie wrote back a letter that was characteristically paternal in tone—calculated, apparently, to further the perception that it was Frick who was solely responsible for the company’s situation.
While Carnegie was not without sympathy for his manager, one could be forgiven for wondering about his true motives for offering his condolences: “This fight is too much against our Chairman,” Carnegie wrote Frick, “[and] partakes of personal issue. It is very bad indeed for you—very, and also bad for the interests of the firm. . . . There is another point which troubles me on your account, the danger that the public, and hence all our men, get the impression that it is all Frick. . . . You don’t deserve a bad name, but then one is sometimes wrongfully got. Your partners should be as much identified with this struggle as you. Think over this counsel. It is from a very wise man, as you know, and a true friend.”
Frick’s response, in which he was quick to apologize lest any action of his seem to reflect badly on the firm, apparently missed the essential thrust of Carnegie’s self-serving “advice” altogether. Instead of pointing out that Carnegie was the chief “partner” who had condoned everything and anything from the beginning, Frick seemed to think Carnegie was questioning his ability to buck up his subordinates. “I am not naturally inclined to push myself into prominence under any circumstances,” Frick wrote back. “It seems to me wherever it was possible to put any of our people forward I have not let the opportunity go by.”
Whatever Carnegie thought of that reply, it did not deter him from continuing his practice of sending generally supportive
messages to his chairman while hedging his bets with others outside the company. After his late January visit to Homestead, Carnegie wrote to Whitelaw Reid, “I have been in misery since July, but I am reconciled somewhat since I have visited Homestead. . . . No one knows the virtues, the noble traits of the working-man who has not lived with them, as I have, and there’s one consolation in all my sorrow; not one of them but said, ‘Ah, Mr. Carnegie, if you had only been here it never would have happened.’ ”
For his part, Frick had already embarked upon what he felt was a necessary development for the good of Carnegie Steel occasioned by the lessons of Homestead—namely, the removal of John Potter as plant superintendent. While Frick had made noises to other Carnegie partners about Potter early in the strike, he wisely bided his time, believing that any such change during the actual conflict would be perceived as a sign of weakness by the men.
Once the union was clearly broken, however, Frick went swiftly to work. In mid-October he met with Charles Schwab, who had proven his abilities as both an able manager and a devoted company man at the Edgar Thomson works, and told him what he had in mind. While Schwab was a bit uncomfortable with the prospect of displacing Potter, he was not too uncomfortable to be persuaded by Frick’s assurances that Potter would be well taken care of. So, on October 18, it was announced that Potter was being “promoted” to a newly created position as superintendent of general engineering for all Carnegie Steel operations. Taking Potter’s place as plant superintendent at Homestead was that thirty-year-old legend-to-be, Charles Schwab.
When he got the news, Carnegie cabled Frick back immediately: “Delighted at content. Await results. You are wonderful at surgical operations without pain.”
An eager young man who had pulled himself up by his bootstraps, Schwab was in many ways the mirror image of Frick, especially in energy, devotion to duty, and attention to detail; nor were his abundant good humor and distinct eagerness to please a handicap. If there was anyone who might rally the troops at downtrodden Homestead, it was Schwab, who had long been a favorite of Carnegie’s.
When the new superintendent arrived at the plant and took up residence in one of the executive homes built on the grounds, the first thing he did was write Frick a letter begging for advice and suggesting that Frick come out to the plant and show him the ropes. Frick declined, however, pointing out that such a visit might undermine Schwab’s authority.
Schwab dutifully returned to his rounds, but soon wrote to Frick again, lamenting that the workforce was utterly demoralized. During one morning in which Schwab went out with a pair of foremen to try to ratchet up production on a line, he watched in dismay as the entire department’s labor gang simply quit, leaving two of the old-timers to stare back at him with expressions that said, “What did you expect?”
Furthermore, the problem was not limited to the ranks of laborers. As Schwab wrote to Frick, “All our Foremen and Superintendents here lack energy, vitality, and it seems impossible to get them started up, in fact, the men seem completely worked out.” Again he appealed to Frick for a visit.
If he had been expecting miracles from Schwab, the patient reply that Frick sent did not suggest so. “You must not allow anything to discourage you in the least,” he wrote Schwab, “even if things do not go well for some time to come, or even if they should get much worse. . . . [J]ust keep at it, doing the best you can, and as I said to you before, do not allow the fact that you are not getting along as well as you would like, to lead you to put yourself in a compromising position with any of the old employees.”
Bolstered by such words, Schwab set aside his dismay at the abysmal level of morale, and turned his attention to the physical plant at Homestead. Within days he had analyzed any number of problems with the construction and layout of the mill, and was writing Frick detailed proposals for the upgrading of facilities and the resultant savings and increased outputs to be gained as a result. Before long, Schwab was on his way to Scotland to secure Carnegie’s blessings for the improvements as well. In this regard, Schwab was talking with kindred spirits, for when it came to increased efficiency, there were no more ready ears than those of Frick and Carnegie.
Within five years, Schwab raised production at the plant more than 25 percent above its highest previous levels, and by the turn of the twentieth century, the Homestead works were far and away the largest steel manufacturing facility in the world. The fact that he was able to do this without any significant progress on the labor relations front is a testimony to his organizational and cost-accounting skills.
Although Frick had been patient and supportive with Schwab from the outset, there was one subject he refused to discuss, and that was the matter of labor organization within the plant. “I like the way you are going about this matter,” Frick said, “treating the men kindly, and considerately, but at the same time keeping in view that, as the Democrats have been overwhelmingly successful on a platform plainly against a tariff for protection, we must expect a great reduction in the tariff on the article we make, and of course in order to live, we must manufacture at very much less cost than heretofore.”
In other words, they would have to keep labor costs under strict control, and any negotiations or agitation among the ranks would only interfere with the goal of getting the last ounce of value for the cost expended, in men as well as matériel. To this end, Frick encouraged Schwab to dismiss inefficient men—new employees as well as old—and to keep his ear to the ground for any news of resurgent organizing activity among those strikers who had been permitted to return to work.
Apparently Schwab took heed, and despite his reputation as a good-humored sort, did not hesitate to “nip trouble in the bud,” as Frick put it. In a letter he wrote to Frick in May 1893, he told of hearing that one of the original skilled employees, a shearer who had returned to his duties in the Plate Mill, had called one of the new hires a “scab.” Schwab called the two men together and asked if the charge was true. The shearer glanced at the hire, then back at Schwab. It was true, he admitted. He had called the man a scab. “Then you’re discharged,” Schwab replied.
As the shearer strode away, Schwab turned to the men who’d been watching and announced the reasons for the firing in no uncertain terms. Anyone who behaved similarly would meet the same summary fate.
Schwab’s zeal apparently went beyond the limits of plant grounds. Told by a new hire that certain of the old employees had been known to parade past his house, shouting threats and imprecations, Schwab ordered that a Homestead constable hide himself behind the new hire’s fence. The next time the troublemakers showed up to make a ruckus, the policeman darted from his hiding place to arrest them. “They were fined and discharged from our employ,” a proud Schwab reported to his chairman. “The labor situation could not be in better shape . . . and men are working in greater harmony than ever before.”
Whether or not Frick believed such sanguine proclamations, he was happy with Schwab’s comportment and with the increased level of production. It seemed that Schwab had repaid his confidence every bit as richly as he had imagined.
As the anniversary of the strike neared, Frick determined that 46 percent of the men employed at Homestead were new hires, and 54 percent had been employed before the strike. Only 18 percent of the latter were still in their former positions, however, suggesting that the company exercised near-complete control over the disposition of the labor force.
Frick was ever alert to threat, however, and as the summer of 1893 approached, he urged that Schwab gather whatever information he could concerning the rumored organizing of a “picnic” to commemorate the strike. When it was discovered that the man spearheading the proposed event was still under indictment for riot, Frick had the information passed along to local reporters. Whether Frick also suggested headlines for the stories he envisioned—FORMER RIOTER PLANS PICNIC—is not clear. In any case, word got around and the anniversary date came and went, without picnic and without incident.
A year later, when the Haml
in Garland piece appeared in McClure’s, Frick was outraged. He wrote an angry letter to Schwab, demanding to know how such a man—along with an illustrator, no less—had managed to gain access to the plant.
Despite such occasional distractions, however, matters at Homestead seemed “all well and getting better.” Between 1892 and 1897, Schwab managed to reduce the labor force at Homestead by 25 percent, even as production rose to record levels. In 1897 alone, the plant made 28 percent more steel than in 1896, and yet Schwab had cut his payroll by nearly $500,000 in the process.
Even with such gains, and despite the fact that net profits for Carnegie Steel in 1896 totaled more than $6 million, the demand to cut costs was constant. While some of the gains were attributable to better plant design and more efficient machinery, Schwab lamented to Frick in an 1897 memo that some of the tonnage men continued to be paid at rates he considered outlandish. If he could just reduce the daily wages of plate rollers from $15 to $9 and those of beam mill workers from $12 to $6, as he believed was just and possible, he could save the company $20,000 to $25,000 a month, he reported. The reply he got from Frick was a hearty “Godspeed!”
Schwab stayed in contact with Carnegie as well as Frick, of course, and with the former he was apt to discuss his attempts to keep their men reasonably contented. “Homestead shall never again have strikes, if I can avoid it,” he told Carnegie in an 1896 letter, “and I think I can.”
It was music to Carnegie, who was watching his empire grow to become the largest employer in the state, with the exception of the great railroad where he had gotten his start. Carnegie took pride in the fact that he was paying his laborers an average of $1.40 a day at a time when the average for the area was $1.35. He also took great satisfaction in a report published by Iron Age that in 1898 he had paid out a total of $13.5 million in wages; the fact that profits for Carnegie Steel were said to be $11.5 million for the same period probably did not please him any less.
Meet You in Hell Page 23
