Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919)

• born in Scotland - self-made man
  
• father Will was weaver - Chartist
  
• immigrated to Pittsburg 1848 - telegraph
  
• Pennsy. RR of Tom Scott - "managerial revolution"
  
• learned "capital theory of value"
  
• Keystone Bridge Co. - steel from small puddling furnaces
  
• Eads Bridge at St. Louis 1867-74
  
• Union Iron Works - Bessemer patent pool 1872
  
• Henry C. Frick - coke replaced charcoal -helped by Thomas Mellon
  
• Panic of 1873 - J.P. Morgan
  
• Edgar Thomson Steel Co. 1875 - made RR rails (2/3 total steel market)
  
• vertical & horizontal integration to replace chaotic competition among 1000 small iron and steel mills
  

Homestead Steel Works

• largest steel mill built 1881 by Carnegie on Monongahela River
  
• structural steel for skyscrapers and ships replacing RR rails
  
• open hearth furnace
  
• 3000 Slavic unskilled workers - 10 cents per hour
  believed in "za chlebom" - right to one's daily bread
  
• 400 skilled workers - Amalgamated Association of Iron & Steel Workers
  
• believed in "labor theory of value"
  
• new contract due 1892 - Frick offered 18% wage cut
  
• Pinkerton detectives - fence built
  
• Advisory Committee - Hugh O'Donnell, mayor John McLuckie
  
• June 24 contract deadline
  
• June 25 - wildcat strike by Knights of Labor
  
• June 28 - lockout by Frick
  
• July 6 - river invasion by 316 detectives on 2 barges
  
• July 11 - 8000 state militia called by Gov. Robert Pattison - Repub party boss Christopher Magee, Co. lawyer Philander Knox
  
• July 23 - Frick shot by Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman
  
• strike failed after 4 months -became open shop - juries acquitted leaders but blacklisted
  

Significance

1. Power of Carnegie
   • able to control production process, detectives, militia, courts, scabs
2. Mechanization of work
   • Amalgamated was obsolete, with 1500 fewer members after 1892
3. Labor surplus
   • too many workers competing for jobs
4. Government was pro-business
   • not laissez-faire or "invisible hand" of supply and demand
5. Radicalization of labor
   • Couer d'Alene and Pullman 1894, IWW 1905
   • Molly Maguires

Industrial Revolutionaries

1. John D. Rockefeller
2. Thomas Edison
3. Alexander Graham Bell
4. George Eastman

Resources

• Industrial Workers of the World
• Song Lyrics to Solidarity Forever song as sung by Joe Glazer, Educational Director of the United Rubber Workers, from the recording Songs of Work and Freedom, (Washington Records WR460)
• The American Experience/Andrew Carnegie
• Emma Goldman Papers
• Labor films
• Labor history