The transfer was to take place at 11:00 p.m. on the evening of July 5, Frick wrote to Pinkerton. “The boats and barges are manned with reliable men, and will at once start for our Homestead works, and should arrive there about 3 o’clock on the morning of the 6th.”
He continued in a fashion that made it clear that their planning had been ongoing for some time: “The boats are well provisioned, all the uniforms etc. that you have had shipped to the Union Supply Company, are on board the boat. There will also be on board the boats the Sheriff’s Chief Deputy who will accompany and remain with your men.”
“We have taken all possible precaution to keep the arrangements quiet,” Frick concluded, “but, of course, it is more than likely that we will not be successful in this.”
It was typical of Frick, who signed off only as “Chairman,” to downplay the possibility of trouble. As understatements go, however, it was one of the greatest magnitude.
13
EARLY WARNING
INDEPENDENCE DAY OF 1892 was, by all accounts, a subdued affair in Homestead, Pennsylvania. The Pittsburgh Dispatch led its story on strike developments with a description of the holiday weather, which seemed emblematic of the prevailing mood:
“The people of Homestead spent a very wet Sunday afternoon. It was none of your new fangled poetic summer showers, but a genuine old-fashioned drizzle, which transformed the dust-carpeted streets into rivers of sticky, yellow mud. It flooded the camps of the men detailed to watch the silent works and made life a moist and heavy burden for the little gang of humanity within the white-washed confines of the steel works.”
A story in the Homestead Local News struck a note of melodrama. “The thunder of an awful silence pervades in the vicinity of the still works,” the piece began. “In the region of Munhall [the neighboring town just to the west of Homestead], that community in which for three years the hum of ponderous machinery has reverberated and almost caused the very earth to tremble, is now ominously silent. . . . Spread out on its broad expanse is the property owned by the Carnegie Steel Company, and for a greater part covered by their mammoth works. It lies there, a monster, sleeping. How different from its waking moment! Where there were ordinarily hundreds now there is not a single puff of smoke or steam.”
It was undoubtedly a welcome respite from the usual clouds of foul air and the endless grinding of gears and wheels and the shrieks of escaping gases. At the same time, most residents must have understood what a deceptive calm it was, and how ironic was the holiday being celebrated. Certainly no king or queen held sway over the populace of Munhall and Homestead, but many viewed Carnegie and Frick as rulers whose powers were equally absolute, and the conflict that loomed had taken on revolutionary overtones. “We are asking nothing but our rights,” Mayor McLuckie had told a reporter on the previous day, “and we will have them if it requires force to get them.”
Faced with a dearth of real news to report, the Dispatch gave over space to further description of the military-style preparations made by the advisory committee: “With the aid of a field glass the man in the signal tower [freshly erected atop union headquarters] can gaze over the ramparts and take a leisurely survey of what is going on in the enemy’s camp. During the day he can signal by a system of variously colored flags to the pickets stationed on the hills across the river; at night a strong flashlight will be used. The river patrol will send up rockets when necessary and will also make a liberal use of colored fire.” Mention was also made of “that hoarse-voiced steam whistle” which had sounded the alarm when the B&O Express was thought to be arriving full of scabs and thugs, and which was to be reserved for “great emergencies.”
Meanwhile, assistant plant superintendent E. F. Wood had finally gotten around to issuing a response to the committee’s charge that blast furnaces in the plant had been relit with the intention of putting strikebreakers to work. There was no truth whatsoever to those reports, Wood declared. “Saturday morning the regulations which control the pressure of natural gas in the furnace pipes failed to work properly and I ordered the escaping gas to be ignited in order to avoid accident.”
Whether anyone bought Wood’s story is debatable, but the calm held throughout the afternoon and evening except for one incident, when a pair of workmen burst into union headquarters about 3:00 p.m.
“Black sheep,” one of the men shouted, gasping so hard he could hardly squeeze out the words. “Fifty of them, with trunks on their backs, walking right into town.”
In moments a force of more than five hundred union men had been mobilized and was on the way down the muddy streets to confront this brazen cadre of strikebreakers. Every street in “Hunkie-town,” where the scabs were seen taking cover, was blockaded by menacing strikers. Once it was certain that every avenue of escape was blocked, a pair of captains led a group of handpicked men on a house-to-house search. A cry went up in one, and a striker came bursting out a door with a cowering man caught by the nape of his jacket.
As the terrified captive spoke little English, it took some moments to sort the matter out. Once an interpreter had been summoned, however, all became clear. The man was Hungarian, an employee of the Homestead mill, and one of their own. He and nine of his fellow Hungarians, fearful of the violence that seemed sure to erupt, had packed their trunks and were on their way out of town when all the fuss began. Fearful and bewildered, they’d turned back and taken refuge with friends and relatives.
On the way back to headquarters, exasperated union leaders encountered a stoop-shouldered old woman standing before the mouth of a narrow lane between buildings. “The dirty black sheep,” she called in a cracking voice. “Did you get them?” Before anyone could respond, the white-haired woman drew a hand from beneath a shawl and produced a cudgel with its thong wrapped around her bony wrist. “I have guarded this point well,” she told them proudly.
One of the committee captains turned to a nearby reporter and shook his head in disbelief. “I believe that woman could win the strike for us,” he said.
RUMORS CONTINUED TO SWIRL through the community. The Post reported that upward of one hundred Homestead superintendents had left town, ostensibly on vacation leave during the lull in operations. However, it was suspected that the men had actually been dispatched to various towns and cities in the East and Midwest to recruit non-union workmen. “It is noted that Manager Potter has gone to the company’s iron mines near Duluth, where there are brawny men by the hundred,” the Post story said.
Nor had the concerns outside Pittsburgh lessened. A Dispatch story that ran on July 5 reported that U.S. Navy officials had expressed fears that further delays in deliveries of armor plating, already well behind schedule, would bring a halt to work on several new ships under construction. Since Carnegie’s contracts with the navy totaled more than $4 million, the matter was of serious concern to the company as well, but as the story noted, the navy brass “cannot believe that the company will be long in reaching an agreement with their men for the reason that any prolonged cessation of work would not only mean an immediate loss, but might jeopardize their chance of getting an additional contract for from five to ten thousand tons of armor soon to be let.”
Union leaders took heart from such reports, believing that the pressures would induce the company to cave in. But it was a fine line that they were walking; should Carnegie Steel lose too much business as the result of a prolonged strike, there could be no work to go back to, whatever agreement might be reached.
Soon enough, however, the agonizing would end. Sometime during the evening of July 4, Frick sent a letter to William H. McCleary, the high sheriff of Allegheny County, setting an inevitable chain of events in motion. Citing the veiled threats made by the advisory committee in its letter to assistant superintendent Wood concerning the lighting of the open-hearth furnaces and arguing “that from threats openly made we have reasonable cause to apprehend that an attempt will be made to collect a mob and to destroy and to damage our property aforesaid and to prevent us from its
use and enjoyment,” Frick went on to say: “We therefore call upon you, as Sheriff of Allegheny County, Pa., to protect our property from violence, damage and destruction, and to protect us in its free use and enjoyment.”
In retrospect, this rather showy request to the sheriff seems part of a well-rehearsed scenario. Given his previous experience in handling labor unrest, Frick had little reason to trust the abilities of local law enforcement, and sending out such a call set the stage for the use of the Pinkerton men he had already engaged.
From his point of view, he was the defender of a multimillion-dollar physical plant now surrounded by a well-organized group of four thousand workers, bolstered by the sympathies of just about every workingman in the Monongahela Valley, not to mention the very mayor of the town that lay just outside his gates and through which every means of ingress and egress to his installation passed. He well understood that in a moment’s flashpoint, anything might give rise to the sacking and destruction of what most considered the world’s flagship steelmaking installation.
From a businessman’s standpoint, then, and setting aside the fact that the impasse had been reached as the result of his and Carnegie’s intransigence, the decision to import Pinkerton men to bolster an ill-organized, undermanned force of deputies with little stake in standing firm against a howling mob of thousands was not so much an underhanded tactic as a prudent business decision.
Once the decision had been reached not to simply close the plant for whatever length of time it would take for workers to give in, there was no longer any turning back. From then on, he was a general, preparing for an all-out battle. One might imagine a commercial geared to the Fortune 500 crowd of the day: a soot-stained, high-collared actor wearing a suit and sitting on an overturned bucket amid the smoldering ruins of the Homestead works. “Should have brought in the Pinkertons,” the Frick stand-in laments. If bringing in the Pinkertons signaled ill will and duplicity to the workers, that was the last concern of Henry Frick.
It seemed likely, then, that the request to Sheriff McCleary was merely a necessary precursor to the deputizing of the Pinkertons, who had already disembarked from their train in Ashtabula and were on their way to Bellevue, an Ohio River hamlet about ten miles downstream from Homestead, not far past the confluence of the Allegheny and the Monongahela.
In any case, McCleary responded dutifully to Chairman Frick’s request and, early on the morning of July 5, appeared at union headquarters in Homestead, accompanied by two deputies. According to accounts in the Pittsburgh Dispatch and elsewhere, the high sheriff told union leaders about the request he had received from the company. Under the circumstances, he said, “I thought it would be a wise move to come here this morning and personally look over the ground.”
O’Donnell and some fifty members of his advisory committee listened to the sheriff, then asked him to wait outside while they convened behind closed doors. When they emerged, O’Donnell had a startling proposition for the sheriff: “The Advisory Committee is not only ready but anxious to assist you in preserving peace and protecting property hereabouts,” he began, before dropping his bombshell. The advisory committee would offer as few as one hundred or as many as five hundred men to be deputized on the spot and to serve the high sheriff as sworn officers of the law. The committee would even be willing to post a bond of $10,000 for each man to ensure that their duties were performed properly.
The offer sent McCleary into a hasty conference with his own men, but in short order he had regrouped. He thanked O’Donnell for the union’s offer and promised to keep it in mind for the future, “but just now,” he said, “I prefer to have my own men and I will send fifty deputies to Homestead this afternoon.”
He went on to repeat his request for a look at the mill grounds, and O’Donnell acquiesced, appointing a group of men to escort him there. O’Donnell stayed behind to meet with his trusted advisers and, upon McCleary’s return from the tour, called the sheriff in for one final piece of business. McCleary, who professed to find no signs of disorder in or about the plant, was somewhat apologetic as he entered the room where O’Donnell and his men had gathered around a long table. “Still,” the sheriff explained, “I must do my duty and I will send the men.”
O’Donnell asked the sheriff if that was all he had to say, and McCleary assured him that it was. “Well, then,” O’Donnell said, pointing to a great mound of documents that had been piled in the center of the table. “What you see here, Sheriff, is the last meeting of the Advisory Committee of the AAISW. We, as members of that committee, have, after due deliberation, resolved to formally disband this committee, and we have asked you here to witness it.
“The Advisory Committee from now on,” he continued, “will not be responsible for any disorder or any lawless act perpetrated either in Homestead Borough or Mifflin Township. Do you understand?” he demanded. “Our responsibility ceases from this very moment. I now declare the Advisory Committee to be dead.”
As O’Donnell finished speaking, the members of the committee reached to unfasten their lapel badges and tossed them down on the table. In the words of a Dispatch reporter, “The odd bits of narrow ribbon formed a crimson mound in the center of the table.” Scarcely had the badges stopped flying than others began to move the pile of documents that had been gathered on the table and place them in the grate of the room’s fireplace. O’Donnell struck a match, and in moments the committee’s documents were ablaze.
O’Donnell stood and turned to the astonished sheriff. “Have you anything further to say to us?” O’Donnell asked.
McCleary had nothing at all to say. He and his men backed hastily out of the room and hurried through the streets of Homestead to the banks of the Monongahela, where a grim ferryman offered to cross them over to the train station at Rankin for a quarter a head. It wasn’t the cheapest price you might find, but McCleary wasn’t in the mood for haggling. In short order, he and his men were across the river and at 2:00 p.m. were on a B&O train bound for Pittsburgh.
In the meantime, several members of the now-disbanded advisory committee sent a telegram to the union’s legal counsel in Pittsburgh, asking that a court order be sought enjoining the sheriff from sending deputies to the Homestead works. Speaking now as concerned “Citizens of Mifflin,” they decried the move as one “calculated to cause unnecessary disturbance.”
But by 6:00 p.m., the union’s underground telegraph was crackling. Armed men were on board the evening Homestead express. “They are bound for Fort Frick,” shouted one man as he jumped down from the train at an intermediary stop. “And they are going to get off at Munhall.” By the time the express made its stop in Munhall—about six minutes later, according to newspaper accounts—there were two thousand men gathered about the platform as Sheriff McCleary’s chief deputy, Samuel Cluely, stepped down from the train along with nine other officers.
Cluely, a silver-mustached man who cut an able figure, stopped short. No shouts, no catcalls, just a wall of grim-faced men everywhere he looked. In moments the train pulled out, and the crowd began to close in about the platform. Cluely had a pistol holstered at his side, but using it in such circumstances was clearly out of the question.
Finally, a former committeeman stepped forward, speaking in a calm if forceful voice. “Gentlemen, what is your business here?”
Cluely just as calmly handed over a copy of the notice he had been ordered by his boss to post about the town.
Whereas, It has come to my knowledge that certain persons have congregated and assembled at and near the works of the Carnegie Steel Company . . . and that such persons have interfered with workmen employed in said works obtaining access to same, and that certain persons have made threats of injury to employees going to and from said works, and have threatened that if the owners of said works attempt to run the same the property will be injured and destroyed. . . . Now, I, William H. McCleary, High Sheriff of said county, do hereby notify and warn all persons that all acts enumerated are unlawful, and that all person
s engaged in the same in any way are liable to arrest and punishment.
The order went on to amplify and extend the terms and conditions, but the import was clear. The gloves were off. The finish fight had begun.
“Our instructions are to proceed to the Homestead Steel Works with all possible speed,” Deputy Cluely said, when the committeeman’s gaze lifted from the sheriff’s order.
The committeeman shook his head. Someone behind him shouted, “You fellows will never get to the gates alive,” and a cheer of affirmation rose.
The committeeman turned and raised a hand to the crowd. “Order, boys, order; these gentlemen are now in our care and you must protect them from the unthinking mob.” He instructed an aide to clear a path through the crowd and then turned back to Cluely.
“Follow me or I will not be responsible for what may happen,” he said.
Cluely turned his own formidable gaze on the nine deputies. No one questioned what they saw there. All fell into line behind the union spokesman, and Cluely and the procession made their way to union headquarters, passing as smoothly and quietly through the assembled multitudes as a hot knife through butter. Cluely and his men were given a choice: they could accept safe passage back to Pittsburgh, or stay on, at their own risk, in Homestead.
It wasn’t much of a choice. Before leaving, however, Cluely was quick to point out that there would be many more men returning in his wake.
“And we are not going anywhere,” the union representative responded. There would have been no bravado from either side in such an exchange. Only resignation. And, surely, no small amount of sadness.
14
ROCKETS’ RED GLARE
THE EVICTION OF CLUELY and his fellow deputies may have played directly into company hands. It having proved impossible to secure the protection of the Homestead works property from local law enforcement agencies, Frick was now entirely within his legal rights to bring in private guards.
Meet You in Hell Page 15