Homestead : $b A complete history of the struggle of July, 1892, between the Carnegie-Steel Company, Limited, and the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel WorkersBurgoyne, Arthur Gordon
History
Homestead : $b A complete history of the struggle of July, 1892, between the Carnegie-Steel Company, Limited, and the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers
Burgoyne, Arthur Gordon
Homestead Strike, Homestead, Pa., 1892
The examination of the Carnegie chairman was not completed when the
committee adjourned, after a two hours' session, and on the resumption
of the hearing next morning, he was again placed on the stand.
Congressman Boatner opened the ball by endeavoring to ascertain whether
or not there had been an agreement between Mr. Frick and the Pinkerton
agency prior to June 25, a point on which it appeared, Mr. Frick's
memory was defective. Neither could a direct answer be obtained as to
the time when it was deemed advisable to arm the guards. The question of
wages was taken up again, Mr. Frick stating that the rates at Homestead
were higher than at any other mills, that the proposed reduction
averaged 15 per cent. and yet the men would make still more money from
month to month under the new terms than they made under the old. The
examination of the Carnegie Chairman ended with the reading of a
schedule of wages paid to tonnage men under the old scale.
Captain Rodgers, of the Little Bill, was the next witness. He told the
story of the arrival of the Pinkertons, the trip of the barges up the
river and the fight at the mill landing substantially as it has been
related in the preceding pages of this volume.
Sheriff McCleary followed and was closely catechized as to his supposed
official sponsorship for the Pinkertons. The Sheriff denied that he had
promised to deputize the Pinkertons. Having been informed by Messrs.
Knox & Reed, the Carnegie Company's attorneys, that the Pinkertons would
be sent up and that a deputy would be needed to aid in preserving the
peace, he had, he said, ordered Colonel Gray to go and that "if there
was much opposition to their landing he should order the captain and
the Pinkertons to come away." No amount of cross-examining could shake
Mr. McCleary's assertion that the Pinkertons were not deputized and that
Colonel Grey was not authorised to deputize them.
President Weihe, of the Amalgamated Association, explained the sliding
scale system, the propositions submitted by the Carnegie Company, and
the workmen's reasons for rejecting those propositions. The reductions
in wages resulting from the acceptance of the firm's terms would range,
he said, from 10 to 30 per cent. As to improvements, the Association
always made allowances for these, and no objection was offered if jobs
were done away with. The change proposed in the scale-signing date would
have set an example which other mills throughout the country would have
been sure to follow.
Mr. Weihe was asked to state his views on arbitration. He declined to
speak for the Association, but gave it as his individual opinion that
arbitration, whether compulsory or by voluntary tribunals was an
unsatisfactory resort, the issue being almost invariably against the
workingman. The trouble in estimating wages resided in the fact that the
firms could not be persuaded to tell the exact cost of production.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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