Clifford Tried For His Life--Alibi Testimony--Attorneys Erwin and Anderson Win New Laurels--"Not Guilty"--Hugh O'Donnell at the Bar--The Homestead Leader as a Reporter and Peacemaker--Weak Testimony for the Prosecution--Major Montooth Ridicules the District Attorney's Substitute--O'Donnell Acquitted--The Carnegie Lawyers Abandon the Field--Berkman's Accomplices Disposed Of 280-295 CONCLUSION 296-298 [Illustration: ANDREW CARNEGIE.] CHAPTER I. [Illustration: CAPITAL IN ITS STRONGHOLD] HOMESTEAD AND ITS MILLS--THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE CARNEGIE FIRM--HOW THE "STAR-SPANGLED SCOTCHMAN" MADE HIS FORTUNE--HE LABORS FOR YEARS AND THEN LAPSES INTO LUXURY--H. C. FRICK'S CAREER AS COKE KING AND IRON MASTER--THE FINE ART OF CRUSHING STRIKES--CARNEGIE AND FRICK JOIN HANDS AND THE LATTER BECOMES THE MASTER-SPIRIT--CONDITION OF ORGANIZED LABOR AT HOMESTEAD. In a bend of the south bank of the Monongahela River, eight miles from Pittsburgh, nestles the thriving town of Homestead, a place of about 12,000 inhabitants, built up by the wealth and enterprise of the Carnegie Steel Company and the thrift of the artisans employed by that great manufacturing corporation. Without the Carnegie mills there would be no Homestead. Like the mushroom towns that sprang up along the Northern Pacific Railroad while the line was in process of construction and that died out as fast as the base of operations was shifted, so Homestead sprang into being when the site now occupied by the town was picked out by Andrew Carnegie as a producing center, and so, too, if the Carnegie firm were to move its works to-morrow, would Homestead be blotted off the map, or, at best, reduced to the rank of an insignificant village. The interdependence of the works and the town is absolute. The mill property covers 600 acres, bordering on the river, and includes thirty-seven acres under roof. The products comprise boiler and armor plates, beams and structural iron of various kinds. The manufacture of armor-plate for the United States Navy is conducted on a scale of unparalleled magnitude. From the huge hydraulic cranes lifting and carrying from place to place a weight of 200 tons, yet operated easily by one man, down to the delicate machinery in the finishing department, the equipment of the armor-plate mill is a marvel of mechanical perfection. The great beam and structural mills, the Bessemer department and the bloom and billet mills are also magnificently equipped and are conducted on a mammoth scale, in comparison with which the operations of other American steel mills are almost insignificant. [Illustration]