Editing Andrew Carnegie (section)

===1892: Homestead Strike===
[[File:Homestead Strike - Mob attacking Pinkerton men.jpg|thumb|The Homestead Strike]]
{{Main|Homestead Strike}}
The [[Homestead Strike]] was a bloody labor confrontation lasting 143 days in 1892, one of the most serious in U.S. history. The conflict was centered on Carnegie Steel's main plant in [[Homestead, Pennsylvania]], and grew out of a labor dispute between the [[Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers]] (AA) and the [[Carnegie Steel Company]].

Carnegie left on a trip to Scotland before the unrest peaked.<ref name="Carnegie, Andrew 1920">''[[#Biography|Autobiography]]'', Ch. 17.</ref> In doing so, Carnegie left mediation of the dispute in the hands of his associate and partner [[Henry Clay Frick]]. Frick was well known in industrial circles for maintaining staunch anti-union sentiment. With the collective bargaining agreement between the union and company expiring at the end of June, Frick and the leaders of the local AA union entered into negotiations in February. With the steel industry doing well and prices higher, the AA asked for a wage increase; the AA represented about 800 of the 3,800 workers at the plant. Frick immediately countered with an average 22% wage decrease that would affect nearly half the union's membership and remove a number of positions from the bargaining unit.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NZY8mAT222EC |title=History of the Labor Movement in the United States: Volume Two: From the Founding of the American Federation of Labor to the Emergence of American Imperialism |last=Foner |first=Philip Sheldon |date=1975 |publisher=International Pub |isbn=9780717803880 |language=en}}</ref>

[[File:Frick to Carnegie letter about the arming of the Pinkertons.jpg|thumb|left|Frick's letter to Carnegie describing the plans and munitions that will be on the barges when the Pinkertons arrive to confront the strikers in Homestead]]
The union and company failed to come to an agreement, and management locked the union out. Workers considered the stoppage a "[[lockout (industry)|lockout]]" by management and not a "strike" by workers. As such, the workers would have been well within their rights to protest, and subsequent government action would have been a set of criminal procedures designed to crush what was seen as a pivotal demonstration of the growing [[Labor history of the United States|labor rights movement]], strongly opposed by management. Frick brought in thousands of strikebreakers to work the steel mills and [[Pinkerton National Detective Agency|Pinkerton]] agents to safeguard them.

On July 6, the arrival of a force of 300 Pinkerton agents from New York City and Chicago resulted in a fight in which 10 men — seven strikers and three Pinkertons — were killed and hundreds were injured. Pennsylvania Governor [[Robert E. Pattison|Robert Pattison]] ordered two brigades of the state militia to the strike site. Then allegedly in response to the fight between the striking workers and the Pinkertons, [[Anarchism|anarchist]] [[Alexander Berkman]] shot at Frick in an attempted assassination, wounding him. While not directly connected to the strike, Berkman was tied in for the assassination attempt. According to Berkman, "...{{nbsp}}with the elimination of Frick, responsibility for Homestead conditions would rest with Carnegie."<ref>Berkman, Alexander (1912) [https://archive.org/details/prisonmemoirsan01berkgoog ''Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist'']. Mother Earth Publishing Association. p. 67.</ref> Afterwards, the company successfully resumed operations with non-union immigrant employees in place of the Homestead plant workers, and Carnegie returned to the United States.<ref name="Carnegie, Andrew 1920"/> However, Carnegie's reputation was permanently damaged by the Homestead events.