Homestead Strike Research Paper

The Homestead Strike was a industrial lockout and strike culminating into a battle between strikers and private security. Carnegie Steel Company went against the nation's strongest trade union, the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. A strike in 1889 got steelworkers a good 3 year contract , but Carnegie was determined to break the Union. Carnegie had his plant manager, Henry Frick, step up production demands and when the unions refused, Frick locked the workers out of the plant. The workers were fighting to get their wages back, the wages that were cut by Frick and Carnegie. Carnegie thought that if he negotiated with the workers and threatened their jobs that they would drop the union, but he was mistaken. The workers planned to strike for what they deserved.

George Mortimer Pullman the founder and president of Pullman Palace Car Company. He made all his workers in Pullman city which he had made just for the workers. It was a three- thousand acre tract in south Chicago area of 114th street & cottage grove. Made cuts in their pay and accepted them to not criticize the workloads that they were given. He made his workers pay for the library & to rent to use the church. 1893 factory wages fell 25% due to depression & the rent that Pullman had made didn’t decrease. If a worker was in debt Pullman would take it out of their paycheck. 1894, May 11 three thousand Pullman workers had a “wildcat” strike many workers belonged to the American Railroad Union which founded by Eugene V. Debs, he was born in Indiana but moved to chicago to become a railroad fireman, he had saw how his fellow laborers were working in bad working conditions & he saw men working for low wages, and saw how some was injured & killed because of poor equipment safety so he was determine to make things better. June 26, 1894 some ARU members refused to let any train that had a Pullman car to move except for the ones with mail