It was May 1892. Trouble had broken out between the Carnegie Steel
Company and its workers, organized in the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. Amalgamated Association was one of the biggest and most efficient unions in the country, consisting mostly of strong Americans, men of decision and grit, who stood up for their rights. The Carnegie Company, on the other hand, was a powerful corporation. Andrew Carnegie, its president, had turned over management to Henry Clay Frick, a man known for his hatred of unions and workers.
The Carnegie Company enjoyed great wealth and prosperity. Wages were arranged between the company and the union, according to a sliding scale based on the current market price of steel products.
Andrew Carnegie decided to abolish the sliding scale. The company would make no more agreements with the Amalgamated Association.
In fact, he would not recognize the union at all. Then, he closed the mills. It was an open declaration of war.
The steel-workers declared that they were ready to take up the challenge of Frick: they would insist on their right to organize and to deal collectively with their employers. Their tone was manly, ringing with the spirit of their rebellious forebears of the Revolutionary War.
Then the news flashed across the country of the slaughter of steelworkers by Pinkertons. In the dead of night, Frick sent a boat packed with strike-breakers and heavily armed Pinkerton thugs to the mill.
The workers stationed themselves along the shore, determined to drive back Frick’s hirelings. When the boat got within range, the
Pinkertons had opened fire, without warning, killing a number of
Homestead men on the shore, among them a little boy, and wounding scores of others.
Source: Emma Goldman was political activist and radical who fiercely