A short history of Pittsburgh : 1758-1908Church, Samuel Harden
History
A short history of Pittsburgh : 1758-1908
Church, Samuel Harden
Pittsburgh (Pa.) -- History
The company made an effort to employ their old workmen and fixed a time
for receiving applications for employment from them. When the time had
expired, however, which was on July 21st, not one participant in the
strike had returned. At a later period many of the old employees
returned to work. By the close of July, nearly a thousand men were at
work at Homestead. On July 23d Mr. Frick was shot in his office by
Alexander Berkman, an anarchist, who was not, and never had been, an
employee. The chairman recovered from his wounds and his assailant was
sent to the penitentiary.
The last of the troops were not withdrawn until October 13th. At that
time the mill was in full operation with non-union men.
Though the strike was ended in October, its formal termination by the
Amalgamated Association was not declared until November 20th, when the
disposition of the strikers to return to work was very general. Assuming
that the strike lasted nearly five months, as the monthly pay-roll of
the mill was about $250,000, the loss to the striking employees for that
period was not far from $1,250,000. No estimate of the loss sustained by
the company has been published. The cost to the State in sending and
maintaining the National Guard at Homestead was $440,256.31.
INDUSTRIAL
I
Pittsburgh has thus passed through many battles, trials, afflictions,
and adversities, and has grown in the strength of giants until it now
embraces in the limits of the county a population rapidly approaching
one million. This seems a proper moment, therefore, turning away from
the romantic perspective of history, to attempt a brief description of
Pittsburgh as we see her to-day. In order to give value to the record it
will be necessary to employ certain statistics, but the effort will be
to make these figures as little wearisome as possible. The present
population after the annexation of Allegheny (December 6, 1907) is
estimated at 550,000, and if we were to add McKeesport with its tube
mills, Homestead with its Carnegie works, and East Pittsburgh with its
Westinghouse plants, all of which lie just outside of the present
corporate limits, the population would be 700,000. In 1900 we can give
the population definitely (omitting Allegheny) at 321,616, of whom
85,032 were foreign born and 17,040 were negroes. Of these foreign born
21,222 were natives of Germany, 18,620 of Ireland, 8,902 of England,
6,243 of Russian Poland, 5,709 of Italy, 4,107 of Russia, 3,553 of
Austria, 3,515 of German Poland, 2,539 of Wales, 2,264 of Scotland,
2,124 of Hungary, 1,072 of Sweden, 1,025 of Austrian Poland, and 154
Chinese.
[Illustration: Pittsburgh, showing the junction of the Allegheny and
Monongahela Rivers]
II
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account