The Battle for Homestead, 1880-1892: Politics, Culture, and Steel

by Paul Krause

Overview

Paul Krause calls upon the methods and insights of labor history, intellectual history, anthropology, and the history of technology to situate the events of the lockout and their significance in the broad context of America’s Guilded Age.  Utilizing extensive archival material, much of it heretofore unknown, he reconstructs the social, intellectual, and political climate of the burgeoning post-Civil War steel industry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822954668
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	06/23/1992
Series:	Pittsburgh Series in Social and Labor History
Edition description:	1
Pages:	584
Product dimensions:	6.13(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.50(d)

Editorial Reviews

Krause, a historian at the University of British Columbia, chronicles the roots of the rise and fall of the steel industry in his native Monongahela Valley, a perfect metaphor for the collapse of industrial America. The Homestead steelworks incidents were precipitated by Henry Clay Frick's lockout of 3800 workers at the plant, owned by Andrew Carnegie; Frick's calling in of 300 Pinkerton thugs to break the steelworkers' blockade of the company town; and violence that followed when the workers defended themselves with guns. In the aftermath, Carnegie brought the full power of the state to bear on the strike leaders and smashed the union. The author finds previous narratives of these events too simplistic, focusing on the physical confrontation. Krause studies the transformation of work and its brutal effect on the workers. Along the way he offers exemplary portraits of key figures on all sides, including Carnegie, Frick and their numerous union antagonists. An elegantly written and riveting history of a key moment in America's industrialization, industrialization's toll on the labor force and the labor unions' efforts to ameliorate the workers' lot. pk Also forthcoming this month from University of Pittsburgh is ``The River Ran Red'': Homestead 1892 ($19.95 * ISBN *0-8229-5478-8; cloth $39.95 *-3710-7 ), an illustrated anthology of contemporary accounts of the conflict, edited by David P. Demarest Jr. et al. (July)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

see ``The River Ran Red.''

Library Journal

Explores the politics, culture, and morality of steelmaking in late 19th-century America by tracing the circuitous path that led businessmen, engineers, political leaders, and metalworkers to Homestead, Pennsylvania--site of the world's largest and most "progressive" steel mill. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews