Defeats at the Workplace, in the Media, and Within the New Corporate Order: The Homestead Strike, a Lost Cause for American Labor

In the mid-nineteenth century, industrial America witnessed an evolving struggle between labor and big business. Although fiercely opposed by industrialists, rising labor movements in the steel and iron industries, which had become increasingly critical to the U.S.’ modernization and emergence as a world power, experienced initial success for decades up until the early 1890s. The strongest union in the industries, the Amalgamated of Iron and Steel Workers (AAIS) was able to garner support from an increasing membership and national recognition from other labor organizations as well as from the press, and in 1892, rose to meet the challenge of the powerful Carnegie Steel Company.
As many steel workers recognized, the underlying issue of the AAIS’ legitimacy and survival proved central to the 1892 Homestead Strike, one of the bloodiest labor confrontations to date. Ultimately, despite workers’ efforts, the strike brought about the destruction of the AAIS by the Carnegie Corporation, as its outcome revealed the vulnerabilities of union organization against corporate power during the Gilded Age. Thus, due to the AAIS’ capitulation to a combination of internal and external threats to its legitimacy and authority, the Homestead Strike ultimately failed to produce enduring advancement for the cause of American labor. This decisive failure was the result of the development of technological innovations contributing to workers’ loss of control over workplace conditions, the union’s later negative association with radical Socialist and anarchist forces, and lastly, its vulnerability to the Carnegie Co.’s strategy and moves to. Hence, due to the union’s debilitating setbacks at the workplace, in the company, and in the media, the battle o...

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...ard. A Century Passing: Carnegie, Steel and the Fate of Homestead,
New York: University of America, 2004
A history of the Homestead Steel mill anpit Homestead from its founding, although focuses heavily on the 1889 and 1892 strikes. It includes many of primary sources: letters, newspaper articles.

Wolff, Leon. Lockout: A Story of the Homestead Strike of 1892: A Study of Violence, Unionism, and the Carnegie Steel Empire. New York, Harper and Row Publishers, 1965.
Wolff provides a brief account of social and technological forces affecting membership and national authority of the steel union, violence and government intervention during the strike, and the profits of Carnegie and Frick and losses of union leaders during the strike’s aftermath.

Yellin, Samuel. American Labor Struggles New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co. 1936; Reprinted New York: Arno Press, 1970.