pa1778data.pdf

U.S. STEEL DUQUESNE WORKS
HAER No. PA-115
(Page 15)
unionism among the skilled workforce remaining after the
improvements had been made. Initially, the results of the
Amalgamated Association's policy of accommodation were mixed. By
the late 1890s, however, the policy proved to be a complete
failure. 16 Nowhere was this more evident than in the steel mills
of the lower Monongahela River Valley.
The Edgar Thomson Works in Braddock, the Homestead Works,
and the Allegheny Bessemer Steel Company in Duquesne were the
only facilities in the valley devoted exclusively to steel
production at the time. During the 1880s, local lodges
affiliated with the Amalgamated Association attempted to gain a
foothold in each of them. At the Edgar Thomson Works, the union
men enjoyed only fleeting success, establishing two local lodges
in 1882. In 1885, however, technological improvements at the
works resulted in the displacement of fifty-seven of the sixty-
nine men on the heating furnaces and fifty-one of the sixty-three
men on the rail mill train. This so depleted the membership of
the local lodges that they were forced to dissolve. The efforts
of the Amalgamated Association at the Homestead Works were more
successful, as two local lodges won a bitter strike for union
recognition in the spring of 1882. Over the next few years the
number of lodges at the works grew to four in 1887 and then to
six in 1889. In the latter year, the local lodges maintained
union recognition by winning another bitter strike. 17
Given the mixed results of the Amalgamated Association's
efforts to gain a foothold in the Edgar Thomson and Homestead
steel mills, its attempt to organize the works of the newly
established Allegheny Bessemer Steel Company in 1889 can be
viewed as pivotal with respect to the subsequent history of steel
unionism in the Monongahela Valley. A successful attempt there
might lead to increased momentum in the Amalgamated Association's
efforts. Failure, on the other hand, would result in the virtual
isolation of the Homestead Works as a unionized entity.
The principle owners of the new enterprise were determined
to run the mill on an open shop basis. Shortly after the works
opened for business in April 1889, signs were posted all over the
yards and shops announcing that no union men were allowed within
the mill. In addition, the company offered the lowest wage rates
16 Wall, Andrew Carnegie, 553; Brody, Steelworkers in America,
50-60; and Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor, 35-44.
17 Fitch, The Steel Workers, 111; Brody, Steelworkers in
America, 51; Wall, Andrew Carnegie, 539, 487, 528-30; Paul Lewin
Krause, "The Road to Homestead," (Phd. diss., Duke University,
1987), 388-543.