by Peter Krass
Pressure mounting, Abbott called for a truce and the sheriff brought the two sides together for negotiations. The union agreed to the wage reductions and sliding scale, while Abbott agreed to a full three-year contract to expire July 1, 1892, a date to keep in mind. Schwab, the Homestead superintendent, played a key role in convincing the men to accept the wage cuts. Much to Carnegie’s chagrin, however, Abbott also agreed officially to recognize the Amalgamated as the exclusive bargaining agent for the men; the next year there was an additional Amalgamated lodge in the mill, bringing the total to seven.15 While the Amalgamated had won this battle in achieving official recognition, the epic war was far from over. Soon to complicate Carnegie’s increasingly difficult relationship with labor were two horrific accidents that rocked the steelworks—the first at Homestead and the second at Edgar Thomson. Carnegie’s destiny would be forever changed.
September 16, 1889, was just another day at Homestead. The men were under strain, sweating, the droplets hissing on the floor. As lunch hour approached they kept an eye on the clock; then, due to a careless mistake, a stack of structural steel tumbled over. Two men were trapped in its path, their feet crushed, and the ambulance was summoned to cart off the wounded. “It had hardly accomplished this when it was again called out to carry away the victims of the most terrible accident Homestead had ever known,” wrote the correspondent for the National Labor Tribune. “Just at 2 o’clock the big ladle in the open hearth department boiled over, showering the molten metal over the pit men.”16 One man, Andrew Keppler, was completely embedded in a slab of molten steel. Two of his comrades, Hugh O’Donnell and Robert Dobson, worked feverishly to pull the slab away from the accident area, to where it could be cooled and Keppler’s body pried free. Later that night, in the yard, a group of men buried the slab of steel molded around Keppler’s body. O’Donnell, who could not stand the sight of Keppler trapped in the molten metal, was a name Carnegie and his lieutenants would have done well to remember. Such accidents and growing frustration would induce him to become a union leader and a pivotal character in the escalating labor agitation. But the more disastrous accident had yet to come.
The very next week, Carnegie was in Pittsburgh to survey the construction of his library project in Allegheny City, which was to open in five months. “Yesterday I strolled out with Henry Phipps and walked over to see the Library in Allegheny,” he wrote Louise. “If ever there was a sight that makes my eyes glisten it was this gem. A kind of domestic Taj. Its tower a pretty clock, so musical in tone too, for it kindly welcomed me as I stood feeling—‘Yes, life is worth living when we can call forth such works as this!’ I saw many people standing gazing and praising and the big words Carnegie Free Library just took me into the sweetest reverie and I found myself wishing you were at my side to reap with me the highest reward we can ever receive on earth, the voice of one’s self, saying secretly, well done!”17 The ability to “call forth such works” justified accidents, deaths, and the other costs of empire building; it kept Carnegie’s conscience clear.
The very day Carnegie wrote Louise about his “domestic Taj,” the second catastrophic accident occurred. The Friday, September 27 headline of the Pittsburgh Post blared:
FATAL FURNACE C
A SHOCKING ACCIDENT AT THE EDGAR THOMSON WORKS
NINE MEN ENVELOPED IN FLAMES
MANAGER W. R. JONES IN THE LIST OF INJURED
The men had been struggling to unplug a clogged tap hole in the egg-shaped converter when Jones arrived on the scene. Then, at about 7 p.m. on September 26, trapped gases ignited and an explosion blasted open the furnace wall, spewing out forty tons of molten iron. Captain Jones was thrown thirty feet down into the casting pit, where molten metal severely burned him. Alive, but unconscious with a severe head wound, Jones was taken by his brother James to Pittsburgh’s Homeopathic Hospital.
Two other burned men died by Saturday afternoon. Fearing the worst, Carnegie summoned in his personal physician, Dr. Dennis, but it was too late. Jones died Saturday evening. He was a hero who died with his boots on, a noble end he had anticipated years earlier when he said, “Thank God, when I die, I will die like a man at my post of duty, or whatever helm it is.”18 For the funeral, every Carnegie employee was given the day off, and the streets were lined with ten thousand men, women, and children, hats off, paying tribute to the folk hero who shaped the elements of hell. The town was draped in black crepe and the obituaries were glowing, as the Captain was celebrated for his organizational abilities, his knowledge of detail, his fertile mind, and “always planning new victories and winning them.”19 Carnegie lost more than his Captain; he lost a leader who used baseball games to create an unequaled esprit de corps.
Several days after the Captain’s death, Frick visited with his widow, Harriet, to pay his respects and to explain that William Yost, a company lawyer and the Jones family lawyer, would be stopping by to discuss matters.20 Yost was accompanied by Phipps and Dod, who were intent on discussing more than the family estate. The Carnegie executives were concerned about control of the patent rights to the Jones Mixer, as well as more than fifty other inventions that now reverted to Harriet. The emissaries successfully convinced her to sign the rights over to Carnegie Brothers, which she did on October 24, 1889, for the sum of $35,000. It was quite a bargain, considering that six years later Carnegie would estimate the Jones Mixer saved the company $150,000 to $200,000 per year, and that over the next decade, the company would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to protect its patents.21 The value of the patents was not in question, but Harriet Jones’s compensation certainly was. Jones’s son-in-law, Daniel Gage, would pursue the matter in the early 1900s, seeking some monetary retribution. He found no sympathy in the Carnegie quarters. For Carnegie, it was just another savvy business deal. And it can’t be forgotten that when Andrew Kloman had died years earlier, the Captain’s only concern had been what would happen to Kloman’s patents.
Coincidence or not, immediately after Jones’s death, Carnegie, who perhaps sensed his companies would never be the same, attempted to sell out to English interests, but the negotiations failed. Harry Phipps, who was in Dresden, Germany, at the time, was pleased with his partner’s failure: “I am gratified that we are not to go out of business, and especially to make room for a trust, which is by no means a creditable thing. . . . With Mr. Frick at the head, I have no fear as to receiving a good return on our capital.”22 Frick didn’t have the Captain’s rapport with the men, but Schwab did, and the onetime grocery store clerk lobbied to replace his mentor as general superintendent of E.T.
Schwab’s rise through company ranks had been meteoric and precipitated by an encounter with Carnegie. As he had gained experience under Jones’s tutelage more had been delegated to him, including the one job the Captain detested, which was playing messenger to Carnegie, who demanded hand-delivered daily reports when in town. One evening, while waiting for Carnegie, he sat down at the piano in the parlor. When Carnegie heard him playing he was impressed enough that several days later Schwab found himself playing Scottish ballads at a Carnegie party. He had won himself the ultimate champion, for once Carnegie trusted a man he conferred great power on him. Carnegie the positivist also appreciated Schwab’s scientific approach to steelmaking, as opposed to the old guard’s rule-of-thumb approach, and in 1886 he appointed the young, brilliant Schwab superintendent of the troublesome Homestead works. Always quick with a joke and a cheery whistle, the strapping young man was nicknamed Smilin’ Charlie and had the men’s confidence. He was given E.T.
With Phipps’s retirement and Jones’s death, management ranks were thin and, to replace Schwab at Homestead, Carnegie was forced to select a less-than-desirable man in John A. Potter. Schwab had little respect for Potter, suspecting he was “a hand-shaker” with little real interest in the workingman— which, if true, would not sit well with men like Hugh O’Donnell. This change would indeed affect Homestead as tensions there mounted and deft diplomacy was required. Yes, f
orces were at work that would negatively affect Carnegie’s legacy.
There was another factor that was pushing Carnegie on a course for a disastrous collision with his labor force—his own naiveté concerning his men’s growing discontentment as he made unilateral decisions to institute the sliding wage scale and to slash wages. He was as much out of touch with the times as he had been in 1886 when he wrote his labor treatises.
Carnegie really believed the sliding scale was fair, as indicated in a November 1890 letter to Gladstone: “We have not reached the ultimate when we pay thousands of workmen so much per day & take profits. The Sliding Scale is in my opinion, the next step. We have it in our principal Works and hope to make it universal.”23 The scale at E.T., however, didn’t have a minimum, and as prices for rails became severely depressed in the 1890 downmarket, wages fell to dismally low levels. Completely oblivious to the living conditions in Braddock, Carnegie didn’t grasp that his grand sliding scale now amounted to starvation wages.
Frick, still operating out of Pittsburgh, was the first to sense trouble. In October 1890, he asked for an assessment from Schwab, who responded with a sixteen-page typed report in which he summarized the mood and recent labor developments. Frick was shocked to discover that the Amalgamated was trying to retake the mill and that various departments had started submitting requests for a return to the eight-hour day. A blast furnace delegation demanded higher wages and even an end to the sliding scale. Schwab advised Frick that they couldn’t simply dismiss the request for higher wages because furnace output had increased 25 to 30 percent while wages had remained the same. He calculated that it would cost the company $2,362 a month, or $28,344 per year, to give the men what they wanted.24 Considering that Carnegie-owned companies’ profits for 1890 were over $4.8 million, it seemed a small price to pay, but Frick had no interested in granting advances. Instead, he suggested sending a committee of furnace men to tour other companies to prove they stood on equal ground. The furnace men had no interest in a tour and announced that unless their demands were met by January 1, 1891, they would go on strike.
Carnegie was ignorant to the mounting tensions at Edgar Thomson as January 1 drew near; he was focused on his latest philanthropy and on his wife, who, in December, contracted typhoid.25 All too cognizant of typhoid’s mortality rate, Carnegie couldn’t bear to see Louise stricken and insisted Dr. Dennis personally care for her on a daily basis. She didn’t leave the house for almost four months, and there was no commuting to Pittsburgh for Carnegie. Not until the end of March was Louise able to walk around the house, and not until April 3 did she venture outside. She had her strength back not a month too soon, for Carnegie had been busy with his latest philanthropic endeavor, Carnegie Hall, and needed her there for the opening ceremony.
Carnegie wanted to be considered a patron of the arts as well as books, so, in keeping with his “Gospel of Wealth,” he was busy planning a great music hall to satisfy New York City’s cultural aesthetes and elitists. Since 1878, Carnegie, along with Morgan, Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt, had underwritten the New York Symphony Orchestra, which held its concerts in the Metropolitan Opera House. The conductor, Walter Damrosch, now an intimate of Carnegie, convinced his patron the group needed a home more suitable for orchestral performances; thus, in late 1889, Carnegie offered to foot the cost for what was to be called the Music Hall, later to be rechristened Carnegie Hall. Rather than giving it outright to the city, he formed the Music Hall Company of New York, Limited, which had its own president and board and operated autonomously. On May 13, 1890, with silver trowel in hand, Louise gracefully laid the cornerstone at Fifty-seventh Street and Seventh Avenue. Amid applause, Carnegie stepped forward and delivered a short, compassionate speech in which he claimed that “this is no ordinary structure. It differs from most others in this that it is not erected for gain. Its owners seek not to reap high profits from the community. . . . From this platform men may be spurred to deeds which end not with miserable self; here an idea may be promulgated which will affect the world, or here a good cause may be promoted. The hall may lend itself to do charitable work, only true charitable work, which helps those who wish to help themselves.” Carnegie, forever sensitive to charges of being a robber baron, was careful to emphasize the charitable, nonprofit aspects of the hall, and at its conclusion he was given a hearty three cheers.26
As Carnegie watched his $2 million investment arise, its architecture reminiscent of the Italian Renaissance, the interior velvet-lined and an acoustical marvel, he knew it needed truly professional musicians to fill the air with splendor. So, with the Music Hall almost complete in February 1891, Damrosch announced that Carnegie had agreed to support the hiring of the city’s first permanent orchestra. Opening ceremonies involved an extravaganza that lasted the entire first week of May, at which Damrosch conducted the finest music by Wagner, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky, among other masters. Pyotr Tchaikovsky was the guest of honor—a paid guest, courtesy of $2,500 from Carnegie. On May 6, Tchaikovsky noted in his diary:
I had scarcely time to dress and drive to Carnegie’s in a carriage, which had to be fetched from some distance, and was very expensive! This millionaire really does not live so luxuriously as many other people. . . . During the evening he expressed his liking for me in very marked manner. He took both my hands in his and declared that, though not crowned, I was a genuine king of music. He embraced me (without kissing me, men do not kiss over here) got on tiptoe and stretched his hand up to indicate my greatness, and finally made the whole company laugh by imitating my conducting. This he did so solemnly, so well, and so like me, that I myself was quite delighted. His wife is also an extremely simple and charming young lady, and showed her interest in me in every possible way.27
Another major cultural project was being executed in the winter of 1890– 1891 under the guidance of Pierpont Morgan. He had organized a syndicate to build a vast entertainment hall—Madison Square Garden—in which Carnegie invested. Originally it was to be for equestrian use only, but the plans were radically modified to make it a pleasure dome. Built at Madison and Twenty-sixth Street, on the site of an old railroad depot that P. T. Barnum had remodeled as the Great Roman Hippodrome, it was a massive structure of Spanish Renaissance architecture, brick with white terra-cotta trim, Roman colonnades, arched windows, eight domed belvederes, and a 341-foot tower modeled on Seville’s Moorish Giralda and crowned by an 18-foot copper statue of the goddess Diana with bow and arrow. It housed restaurants, theaters, a reproduction of Shakespeare’s house and the Globe Theatre, as well as an amphitheater for horse, dog, and garden shows. Madison Square Garden opened in November 1891.
Carnegie was also involved with the New York Botanical Garden and was appointed to the finance committee, joining Morgan, among others.28 A healthy competition had developed between these titans to fund such cultural institutions. For Carnegie, day-to-day business in Pittsburgh was hardly a priority, especially in the winter of 1890–1891, when he was so distracted by Louise’s health and New York’s cultural vibrancy. While he spent New Year’s Eve at his wife’s side, he neglected the situation at Edgar Thomson, where the furnace men were preparing to strike.
To prevent any booze-inspired labor violence on New Year’s Eve, the night before the furnace men promised to strike, Schwab considered asking the local saloon keeper, Mr. Wolfe, to close for the night; but unwilling to play Scrooge, he did not. It was a mistake. Late on December 31, the stockyard men unexpectedly walked off the job to join a crowd of fellow Hungarians at the saloon for a night of drinking, carousing, and bitter complaining about wages, and by midnight the men were soused, ready to take their seething frustrations out on Carnegie property.
Shortly after midnight a gang of 60 Hungarians attacked the stockyards, vandalizing the property and beating any men who attempted to stop them. Schwab quickly rallied loyal men, whom he armed with clubs, and organized a defense line around the furnaces, which if extinguished, would paralyze the mill. The battle lasted almost three hou
rs before the Hungarians withdrew. But then, beginning around noon, a gang of 250 drunken Hungarians organized and rushed the furnace department, closing it down. Some men were fatally wounded. Anxious and smarting from the forced retreat, Schwab dashed off a letter to Frick, suggesting they bring in Pinkertons if keeping the mill open was of the utmost concern.29
Surprisingly, the man who had been quick to crush violence in the coalfields by using the Pinkerton detectives was opposed to using them now. If the hated Pinkerton boys were brought in, Frick reasoned, it could enflame the violence and cause more men to join the Huns. He preferred to rely on the sheriff and deputized company men to restore order.30 So, throughout New Year’s Day, Schwab rallied a force of at least a hundred men, twelve of them armed with repeating Winchester rifles. “I understand the ‘Huns’ intend making another attack tonight,” he reported to Frick, “and I can assure you that if they do, they will meet with a pretty lively reception as I am determined to drive them out, no matter at what cost or sacrifices.”31 Schwab clearly shared both Frick and Carnegie’s intolerance for labor disruptions and the union.
Although it was New Year’s Day, Carnegie soon heard of the violence at Edgar Thomson. He immediately cabled Frick, who responded that it was “not anything more than a drunken Hungarian spree.” As he explained, “We are asking for no reduction even in these depressed times, when furnaces all over the country are either banking up or their employees accepting a reduction in wages. A little nerve and patience will certainly bring this matter through all right.”32 Frick, who discussed the matter as he would a shopping trip to Macy’s, hoped to downplay the incident and keep Carnegie in New York. At the same time, he prepared his lieutenants for greater violence. Early on January 2, Frick notified his superintendent of the furnaces, James Grayley, that they had procured about twice as many revolvers as needed and would ship them out on the 12:30 p.m. train.33 Again Frick cabled Carnegie that day: “All quiet last night and this morning. Think it is working itself out all right. Newspaper reports greatly exaggerated.”34 Unwittingly, Frick was contributing to Carnegie’s inability to fully understand the dire labor situation by feeding him false information, especially since there was a distinct concern that Hungarians from Homestead would join the battle.