Andrew Carnegie by Willard Sterne Randall

Author:Willard Sterne Randall [Willard Sterne Randall and Nancy Nahra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Business/Leadership
ISBN: 9781612306247
Publisher: New Word City, LLC
Published: 2014-02-01T05:00:00+00:00

“Trial of My Life”

In an atmosphere of ruthless corporate competition, the most callous men accrued the most power. A case in point was Henry Clay Frick, the coalfield baron whom Carnegie chose as chairman of the Carnegie Steel board. Frick was the man on the embattled scene, as Carnegie absented himself more and more from day-to-day operations to pursue capital in New York and Europe. Carnegie had built a reputation as a friend of labor - a bad reputation among businessmen, but something like hero status among his own workers. So nothing had prepared his staff for what turned out to be the worst labor confrontation of the 1890s.

Shortly after Frick, who was known for regularly using strikebreakers in his coal mines, took control, he vowed to break the power of the Carnegie Steel craft unions. Carnegie had acceded to a generous pay increase for workers at his newest steel plant at Homestead, Pennsylvania, the linchpin of the fifteen-mile-long belt of Carnegie plants stretching from Pittsburgh south to Braddock. Privately, Carnegie was pressuring Frick to cut wages by 20 percent, while proclaiming pro-labor sentiments, most notably in two magazine articles appearing in 1886. In them, he denounced strikebreaking, coining an eleventh commandment for labor: “Thou shalt not take thy neighbor’s job.”

The contract between the steelworkers and the management at Homestead was set to expire on July 1, 1892, shortly after Carnegie sailed to his summer home in Scotland. When talks broke down in late June, Frick declared he would close the mill on July 1 and reopen five days later, admitting only non-union employees. He built a huge fence around the entire plant stretching to the Monongahela River. Then he secretly hired 300 armed Pinkerton detectives to steam upriver under cover of darkness to occupy the plant.

When the barges tied up, gunfire broke out. An all-day battle ensued in which the strikers overwhelmed the strikebreakers. Three Pinkerton men and ten strikers died that day, but Frick refused to yield. Some 8,000 National Guardsmen were called in to lock out the workers. Eventually, 40 percent of the men were rehired after the union gave up its five-month strike.

Carnegie was roundly condemned by the press for staying out of reach in Scotland even after an anarchist attacked, shot, stabbed, and nearly killed Frick, who still insisted, “There is no necessity for you to come home.” Carnegie knew that, if he returned, Frick would resign. The day after the pitched battle, he cabled Frick: “All anxiety gone since you stand firm. Never employ one of these rioters. Let grass grow over works.” When workers cabled, pleading with their “Dear Master” to intervene, Carnegie refused to answer. Had he been on the scene, he probably could have settled the strike, but his executives believed he would weaken and begged him to stay away.

Carnegie was badly stung by the public outcry. “This is the trial of my life,” he wrote his friend, British Prime Minister William Gladstone. Frick’s insistence on hiring strikebreakers was “a foolish step,” Carnegie said.

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