by Peter Krass
Although Carnegie offered his men some assistance, he remained an avid disciple of Spencer and was comfortable with the existing situation, convinced the conditions would evolve on their own at the appropriate rate. “The ideologists of capitalism included clergymen as well as tycoons and corporation lawyers. All commonly rested their case on ‘laws,’ natural and divine,” historian Page Smith summed up the time’s pervasive attitude. “Darwinism provided them with the model of ruthless competition in which only the ‘fittest’ survived. It thus followed logically that the richest entrepreneurs were the fittest.”31 All other men, as far as Carnegie was concerned, had an equal chance to become a rich entrepreneur, just as he had, and if they could not they deserved what they had. Yes, it was true, Carnegie could always claim he rose up from the factory floor. Yes, he was once a bobbin boy making a mere $1.20 a week. Yes, his family suffered. But Carnegie lived a factory life for only two years, not a lifetime with no prospects; and however disagreeable his work was firing the boiler or coating the bobbins in a vat of oil, it was not physically brutal work like that in the steel mills. Once plucked by Thomas Scott, he lived a dream as one of Calvin’s chosen ones.
When considering the reality of the worker’s conditions, Carnegie was patronizing them with his rhetoric. Meanwhile, his two labor essays gave other capitalists fits. To explain the position he had put them in, Dod told Carnegie a parable: A man was hit by a streetcar, leaving his features unrecognizable. But after the undertaker tidied him up and placed him on display for identification, a woman claimed him as her husband. She ordered a grand funeral for him and the undertaker’s eyes filled with dollar signs, but just as the woman turned to leave, the dead man’s mouth fell open, exposing a gold tooth. The woman immediately realized the corpse was not her husband and canceled the affair. Severely disappointed, the undertaker chastised the deceased, “What kind of an idiot are you anyway? If you’d only known enough to keep your mouth shut!”32 While Carnegie understood Dod’s message, keeping his mouth shut was a near impossibility as long as he was breathing.
Now two questions remained to be answered: Could Carnegie be a hero to the working class while he continued his relentless drive for profits? And would his words come back to haunt him?
The first to suffer at the pen of Carnegie was Frick. Like cousin Dod, he wished Carnegie knew when to keep his mouth shut about labor issues, but it was too late for that—and tensions were already running high between Carnegie and Frick, anyway. The latest trouble between the two men had originated just months prior to the publication of Carnegie’s “An Employer’s View of the Labor Question” in April 1886, when Frick pushed Tom Carnegie to give him a share in Carnegie Brothers in exchange for more Frick stock. Before dashing off to Cumberland Island for vacation, Tom replied in a quick pencil note in his self-deprecating style: “I am somewhat tenacious of my opinions—no doubt they are often wrong. I do confess so much. In the matter of your prospective interest with CB and Co. I cannot help but think that you should become a manager—I know that you have weighty arguments against it and . . . I wish you to reconsider and submit the matter to AC.”33 Tom was willing to give Frick an interest if Frick took on some management duties; however, to date Frick had not been interested in a formal job with Carnegie Brothers, a position to reconsider if it was indeed the only way to win a stake.
Following Tom’s advice, he wrote to Carnegie to request a more definitive role in Carnegie Brothers as well as a partnership, again offering to trade Frick Company stock, which would reduce his own holdings to a paltry 4 percent. Carnegie mulled over the matter, waffling at times, but then wrote Frick a letter that was a slap in the face:
Excuse me for saying that in my opinion you propose what would be the mistake of your life. Your career must be identified with the Frick Coke Co. You never could become the Creator of CB and Co. Twenty years from now you might be a large owner in it, perhaps the principal, still the concern would not be your work and you could not be proud of it. . . . I cannot imagine how your pride permitted you to think for one moment of sinking to an insignificant holder of 4 percent in your own Creation. To think that you could ever be influential in its councils with such a petty interest is absurd. You would merely be the agent of the real men in the concern— . . . officials and the business community generally would look upon you with suppressed contempt. The idea is suicidal.
He advised Frick to put every penny into the Frick Coke Company, to buy out the deadwood, to concentrate his energies, and thus make millions. “File this for future reference,” concluded Carnegie haughtily.34
The next year tension only increased between the two men when Frick’s coal miners, along with the support of the Knights of Labor and the Amalgamated Association of Miners and Mine Laborers, started agitating for a wage increase, some men demanding as much as a 20 percent increase. An arbitrator was brought in, just as Carnegie espoused, and Frick and the national labor officials agreed to a negotiated increase of about 10 percent; however, the local union lodges refused to accept the lower increase and struck on May 7, 1887, as did laborers at other coal companies, many of them Hungarians. The usual shenanigans followed: rallies, more negotiations, imported strikebreakers, scab-related violence, and the hiring of Pinkertons.
At the time, Frick Coke controlled five thousand acres of coal land yielding six thousand tons of coke a day, and when that prodigious supply was suddenly choked off, Carnegie’s steelworks were instantly affected.35 Within days of the strike the mills were faced with having to bank the furnaces and shut down, and just as Carnegie had predicted in his letter, Frick’s reputation was questioned by customers and comrades alike. Jay Morse, president of Union Steel and a coke customer, condemned Frick for the labor troubles: “I think that the trouble you are having is largely due to the fact that the men have not been used honestly in times past—and the sooner you get on an honest basis the better.”36 Fellow coke operator Colonel J. N. Schoonmaker accused him of becoming a Carnegie puppet and warned him not to submit to the unions’ demands—his manhood depended on it.37 Schoonmaker’s fears were on the mark.
Carnegie was insisting that Frick, who was trapped in a very tight position, acquiesce to the workers’ demands. But it wasn’t just as simple as wanting to ensure his furnaces received their daily dose of coke; complicating the situation were the haunting words from his labor essays, in particular these: “A strike or lockout is, in itself, a ridiculous affair” and “There is an unwritten law among the best workmen: ‘Thou shalt not take thy neighbor’s job.’” Now that Carnegie personally owned more than 50 percent of the Frick Coke Company, this strike was his first test in applying those declared principles, only Frick wasn’t interested in playing along. He had tried arbitration, which failed, and now he wasn’t going to listen to any more of Carnegie’s blather, especially if it was going to cost his company money. In fact, the conservative press was calling for the cleansing of Hungarians from the coalfields. Frick, an antilabor zealot from the days of the Molly Maguires, concurred.
His reputation as a progressive capitalist at stake and with little patience, Carnegie, who was vacationing at the Kilgraston, a country estate in Scotland, at the time, again demanded Frick settle with the strikers. On May 13, unwilling to capitulate to either Carnegie or to labor, Frick took the only possible course: he submitted his resignation, declaring his own honor was at stake. With the furnaces cold, Carnegie had no choice but to accept Frick’s resignation and then settle with the union. In a biting last letter, Frick protested settling the strike and warned it would “only lead to still more unreasonable demands in the near future.” After thoroughly objecting to the prostitution of his company, he concluded, “Whilst a majority of the stock entitles you to control, I deny that it confers the right to manage so as to benefit your interest in other concerns at the loss and injury of the coke company in which I am interested.”38 An embittered Frick had lost control of his company. And Carnegie, even though he earned dividends from the coke company
, clearly demonstrated that his iron and steel mills would flourish at any cost, including to the detriment of supposed allies.
A dramatic headline splashed across the June 11 issue of the Pennsylvania Press: “Coke Men Crushed. Carnegie Thunders from His Castle in the Scottish Highlands. His Bolt Wrecks the Syndicate. Millionaire Operators Mourn and Hungry Hungarians Dance with Glee. President Frick, Overpowered, Resigns.”39 As Phipps now took control and settled with the workers, agreeing to a 12 percent raise (a small sacrifice), the other coke companies’ positions— that is, the syndicate’s—immediately weakened, and by the end of August they were ready to capitulate. In this first test, Carnegie had made himself some enemies, but his mills were running and he hadn’t reneged on the vulnerable principles set forth in his labor essays.
A humiliated Frick put on a brave face, pretending he had better things to do than wallow in self-pity. On July 20, his wife and he left New York City for Bremen, Germany, for a tour of the Continent and then Great Britain. Meanwhile, Carnegie couldn’t tolerate having a bereaved partner—especially one of whom he said, “The man had a positive genius for management”—so he summoned Frick for a détente in Scotland.40 The volatile men smoothed over their differences and on November 5, 1887, Frick was reelected president of the Frick Coke Company. Nevertheless, scars would remain. Frick’s influence in the coke industry was diminished, he was constrained by the confounded labor essays, and, due to such ulterior agendas, he knew he could never wholly trust his pard Carnegie.
Lack of faith in Andy was nothing new to Captain Jones, an enduring character in Carnegie’s Shakespearean drama. In evaluating Frick and Carnegie, Jones said, “I don’t particularly like Frick, nor do I admire him,” but at least “you always know where you stand. . . . with Carnegie, it is a different matter, he is a sidestepper.”41 To protect himself, Jones, who was forever tinkering with the mechanics of the plant, began to file patents for his inventions. By the late 1880s, he had more than fifty secured, giving himself a few aces to play if ever his relationship with Carnegie soured beyond salvage. The importance of Jones’s innovations could not be overstated, according to James Gayley, who was the superintendent of E.T.’s furnaces under Jones and considered his boss’s contributions to steelmaking on par with Bessemer’s.42 Most of them involved laborsaving devices, but one of Jones’s greatest inventions was what came to be called the Jones Mixer—literally a metal mixer made from firebrick positioned between E.T.’s blast furnaces that were turning out pig iron and the converters that made steel from the pig iron. The Mixer temporarily held and mixed up to one hundred tons of molten pig iron, from which smaller portions of pig iron were tapped into the converters, making for more uniform steel while allowing a continuous, highly efficient operation.
Carnegie’s labor treatise was more severely tested in late 1887 and early 1888. At Edgar Thomson, Jones was again refurbishing his mill and installing new machinery, and as of December 17, 1887, the plant was closed, throwing almost two thousand men out of work.43 Shutting down in the heart of winter made sense—business was slow because frozen rivers and snowstorms hindered shipments of resources and finished products—but there was also another more devious reason: the loss of work hit the men hardest then. It was difficult for them to find jobs elsewhere in these dull months and there was the added cost of heating fuel, which gave Carnegie leverage when it came time to rehire the discharged men. He would need the leverage because he was planning to demand a 10 percent wage reduction in all departments and institute a new sliding scale for wages based on the prices of steel rails.
This preemptive strategy worked perfectly in his mind: he discharged the workers because of repairs, and then, if they refused to return at lower wages, he could hire outside help to replace them. Because the mills were closed to begin with, there could never be a strike, or a lockout, or scabs; therefore, he could remain in accordance with his labor principles. In essence, it was a matter of semantics, but it enabled Carnegie to justify his actions and soothe his conscience, however twisted his logic. He set the rules for the game and then bent them to the point of breaking, but not quite—that would come later. Meanwhile, the men received quite a Christmas present: summary dismissal.
Less than two weeks after the shutdown, the Knights of Labor, which still had members in E.T, offered a new wage scale effective January 1, but the company simply didn’t respond for six weeks, letting the noose tighten. Only now did the union realize this shutdown involved more than repairs. Finally, Carnegie made his demand for a 10 percent wage reduction, which was immediately rejected. Jones volunteered to arbitrate, which the men were open to if it was for an agreement to end June 30, a kinder season to be negotiating in. Jones refused such a demand and talks ended before they started, but at least Carnegie could say he had offered arbitration, however halfhearted the token effort was. As the days progressed, he hardened his position: not only would wages be reduced, but he became determined to introduce a sliding wage scale based on the price of steel, as outlined in his April 1886 essay, and to have the men return to the twelve-hour day. It was to be a three-year deal, and he wanted it ratified by at least two-thirds of the Edgar Thomson men in a vote—ah, democracy at work. To compete with the other mills that had always been running on two twelve-hour shifts, the change had to be made, Carnegie reasoned.
Cold and hungry, the laborers sent a committee to New York City to meet with Carnegie in March, but neither side would budge. Carnegie did, however, confirm his position taken in the August Forum article, telling the committee, “We will never try to fill our works with new men, for two reasons: first, we could never get such good men as you are. It is scalawags that are idle and looking for work when there is a strike. Do not be alarmed. No one will ever have your places here. We like you too much.”44 He then took his case public, striking a very resolute posture in an interview with the Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette. “The firm unanimously decided not to start the works until the men agree to give the sliding scale presented a trial,” he said. “This may not be till January next or January, 1890. It makes no difference when. There will be no strike or quarrel between us and our men. We fully recognize their right not to accept our terms and they no doubt recognize our right to run our works or stop them just as we please. . . . The attempt to make Pittsburgh manufacturers pay more than Chicago must be met and settled now, once and for all.”45 Carnegie had indeed paid about 6 percent more in daily wages in 1887 than the Chicago mills, but the sliding scale he had proposed had no minimum like the one now used in Chicago, so if the market became extremely depressed, the workingmen would starve. In fact, rail prices would fall almost 20 percent in 1888, and Carnegie’s profits would fall more than 40 percent to a shade under $2 million.46
The National Labor Tribune, voice of the worker, indirectly supported Carnegie’s position by arguing mills such as those in Chicago should increase wages and reduce hours and by pointing out Carnegie was only submitting to market pressures.47 As tensions in the town of Braddock increased, the company employed a gang of Pinkertons to guard the property, which, the National Labor Tribune observed, “adds a peculiarly repulsive feature to the unfortunate lockout which the Edgar Thomson owners have instituted.” Pittsburgh’s usually pro-capital newspapers were also against the Pinkertons.48 Still, the workers had little support and in May the Braddock men overwhelmingly voted to agree to Carnegie’s terms. While Carnegie had been paying about 6 percent more in daily wages in 1887 than the Chicago mills, after his hard-nosed negotiations he was paying almost 19 percent less.49 This result left no doubt that Carnegie was a tenacious exploiter of labor.
Each returning man was required to sign an individual contract, a situation that surprised the men and the editors at the National Labor Tribune, who commented, “It would be interesting to know just what Mr. Carnegie had in pickle when he evolved that idea of individual signing of a long contract.” It didn’t take long to figure out.
Astoundingly, each man had to pledge they would
not join nor remain a member of any labor union (just as they had to in 1884), which was in direct conflict with what Carnegie had written two years prior in “An Employer’s View of the Labor Question,” when he unequivocally stated, “The right of the working-men to combine and to form trades-unions is no less sacred than the right of the manufacturer to enter into associations and conferences with his fellows, and it must sooner or later be conceded.”50 The side-stepping Carnegie had now reversed himself. What made this reversal even more hypocritical and galling was that Carnegie had just joined an association of his fellows; his firm was now the leader in a rail pool formed toward the end of 1887, which only fifteen of the largest mills were allowed to join. Carnegie was given the top allotment of 13.5 percent, followed by North Chicago at 12.5, Pennsylvania Bessemer Steel at 9.8, and Bethlehem Steel at 9. The pool was powerful enough that wild rumors of an international rail pool spooked the railroads and the public.51
Also extremely disturbing was that when the mill reopened, over one hundred men found themselves blacklisted due to alleged union activity; even a Dunfermline native, David Gibson, was told to go elsewhere. He found work with a firm that repaired the stoves at Edgar Thomson and later recalled, “I worked for eight days, when on Tuesday last, I was sent over to the store for some tools and Jones ran against me. He said, ‘I thought I told you that you were never to get any more work around here?’ I said he never told me anything of the kind. He said he did. I said again he did not. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it does not matter a ———— . You may get the hell out of this.’ I said I could go, but I told him I was not working for his firm. He asked me who I was working for. I told him. He said it didn’t matter a ————, for he would have me discharged.” And Jones did. If any of the blacklisted men found work elsewhere and Carnegie’s lieutenants found out, they had the men discharged. Some of these men grew so desperate for work they threatened to kill Jones and his family if he blocked them from getting a job.52 To retaliate against the blacklisting, the Knights of Labor declared Edgar Thomson nonunion and urged all men to boycott the mill, hoping to dry up Carnegie’s labor supply, but the resolution had no effect as the men currently employed had to eat and the influx of immigrants would work anywhere for anything.