Frick And Carnegie example essay topic

By the turn of the new century, new and improved technology and the constant pursuing of new ways to gain money by men like Andrew Carnegie who increased the on going tension between the workers and managements. Men worked very long 12 hour shifts for very little money. Low salaries and long days weren't the only thing these workers had to worry about, they had to worry about, "white-hot ingots, fast-moving overhead cranes, and exploding furnaces. Clearly the most powerful union of this time was the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers (AAISW) who began organizing on August 4, of 1876. They fought hard to get better working conditions for workers, job securities, and social conditions.

In 1887 the AAISW decided to join with the American Federations of Labor and the cause of this idea was the membership of the AAISW and the AFL grew to 20,975 members making it the largest unions in America. The union and the work force worked with the management not against it. Andrew Carnegie who favored the union, believing that it was beneficial to labor and capital. He believed strongly that he would rather work out problems with workers than to hire strikebreakers.

In 1889, when Carnegie finally agreed to recognize the AAISW at the Homestead, but by 1892 he believes that the AAISW had gained excessive power and began to plan the demise of it even though he claimed to be a friend of the working man. Carnegie put his second in command in charge to break up the union, his plot manager and chairman, Henry Clay Frick. In 1892, superintendent of the Homestead mill John Potter hoped reached an agreement with the AASIW to change wages. But it failed once more: Frick and Carnegie said that this would never be able to work due to the strong fact that "they pent large sums of money on new machinery, which in turn enabled the men to increase both the daily output or the steel and the amount of their own earnings". Then on May 29 Frick issued an ultimatum to the AASIW: "agree with the company's new wage structure by June 24, or force a lockout".

Soon after this ultimatum was issued the plant was lined with a 3 mile long, 11 feet tall fence mad out of 2 inch thick wooden planks and topped with barbed wire. Search lights where place in 12 feet tall towers and inside of these towers where sharpshooters over looking the inside of the plant so that if any of the workers thought of strikers they would be shot, the plant was renamed by the mill workers after they saw that the fence resembled a prison and a sign of war, to "Fort Frick". On June 2, Frick wrote a secret letter to the Pinkerton National Defense Agency (who were seen to many workers across America as enemies), asking for a force of 300+ guards to help keep the peace and help "deal with the trouble of anticipate when the reopening of the company on June 6th to a non-union policy". A man by the name of John McLuckie, the town's mayor, urged the men to take a hard line, many of the men came together after hearing this to form a strike. June 23, negations ended in a failure once again for a new scale of better wages. After this Frick locked out nearly 800 men after closing the mills open-hearth and armor plate departments.

Then on July 1 the 2700 men left of the plant refused to come back to work and the strike had started. In July the AAISW and men took control of the mill, and now the advisory had control over the mill. Then July 5th the Pinkertons made their way towards the mill. July 6th, more than 10,000 men, women, workers, and children waited for the agents to arrive for they were not backing down. They had fought and lost to gain back what they had lost to the company and they were not bout to give in. The attempts to break started early and often.

At 4 am Hugh O' Donnell a speaker for the workers, roared "I beg you to leave here at once. I don't know who you are nor from where your came, but I do know that you have no business here, and if you remain there will be blood shed! !" Then one of the boats Caption Fredrick Heinde yelled out to him and the workers identifying him self and saying this, "We don't wish to shed blood, but we are determined to go up there and shall do. If you men don't withdraw, we will mow every one of you down and enter to spite you". Then immediately after saying that he ordered him men off the boat and to charge and attack. Shot were fired; Heinde and William Fox were the 1st to be wounded.

The walls fell and the battle began. 4 hours after the 1st shots were fired the Pinkertons made a second attempt at coming ashore, only to be pushed back by another forceful attack. The fight raged for hours and hours until Pinkertons finally surrendered. 6 workers and 2 Pinkertons lay dead and many dozens wounded. This didn't stop Frick from breaking up the union or destroying it, it only made him more furious about doing so. 4 days after the surrendering he pleaded with the Governor of Pennsylvania (Robert E. Pattison) to send out the entire militia of the state (which contained 8615 men) to take back the Homestead.

The workers were happy to hear this news, because now that the state was now involved in things and might be resolved indefinitely. But their hopes and dreams for a peaceful resolve were shattered when they heard that he militia intended on enforcing the company's position and protect the strikers who were hired to resume production at the mill. On July 13 the leader of the National Guard showed up at the plant and told all the workers to just go home. They listen to him because they were tired of fighting and losing lives. On July 23, a year or two after this happened. "Alexander Berkman broke into Frick office, stabbed him 3 times in the back and both legs, and shot him in the ear and neck".

Amazing Frick was able to survive the attack and even continued to work after the attack some days later. Frick not only overcame this horrendous attack but he overcame the union later defeating and breaking it apart. November 20, the workers stopped the strike and returned to work without a contract. In my opinion, I would have been a lot more upset and mad then these workers were, they were miss-treated and practically dismissed to any half decent safety equipment. I feel that the reason that Carnegie gave the job of handling the mill over to Frick was because that Carnegie was to worried that if this union led to a strike that his image would be shattered and broke, and that he wouldn't seen as a good upstanding citizen anymore. The Carnegie Steel Incident was stupid and should never had been that big of a deal, all that Carnegie had to do was to tell Frick, Give them better pay, because if you think about it giving them more pay would give them more incentive to work harder and to be more efficient because then they would feel like they were being paid well and should work on the same level.

When Carnegie assigned Frick to the plant, if you think he ran as far away from the situation as possible, not until it was all over and when it was years later did he try to patch things up with John McLuckie. He offered him money for the compensation for the 8 lives lost on the attack, and McLuckie just laughed and turned down the offer. In my opinion Frick knew the who time that after the strike was over and that after he was attacked that he had done something that was wrong and that had changed his life for ever and ever.