Whither America, Whither Democracy? 481suggestion for a man of Cleveland’s conservative,
laissez-faire approach to economic issues.
In 1892 a violent strike broke out among silver
miners at Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and a far more
important clash shook Andrew Carnegie’s
Homestead steel plant near Pittsburgh when strik-
ers attacked 300 private guards brought in to pro-
tect strikebreakers. Seven guards were killed at
Homestead and the rest forced to “surrender” and
march off ignominiously. The Homestead affair was
part of a struggle between capital and labor in the
steel industry. Steel producers insisted that the
workers were holding back progress by resisting
technological advances, while the workers believed
that the company was refusing to share the fruits of
more efficient operation fairly. The strikewas pre-
cipitated by the decision of company officials to
crush the union at all costs. The final defeat, after a
five-month walkout, of the 24,000-member
Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel
Workers, one of the most important elements in the
AFL, destroyed unionism as an effective force in
the steel industry and set back the progress of orga-
nized labor all over the country.
As in the case of the Haymarket bombing, the
activities of radicals on the fringe of the dispute
turned the public against the steelworkers. The boss
of Homestead was Henry Clay Frick, a tough-
minded foe of unions who was determined to
“teach our employees a lesson.” Frick made the
decision to bring in strikebreakers and to employ
Pinkerton detectives to protect them. During the
course of the strike, Alexander Berkman, an anar-
chist, burst into Frick’s office and attempted to
assassinate him. Frick was only slightly wounded,
but the attack brought him much sympathy and
unjustly discredited the strikers.
The most important strike of the period took
place in 1894. It began when the workers at George
Pullman’s Palace Car factory outside Chicago walked
out in protest against wage cuts. (While reducing
wages, Pullman insisted on holding the line on rents
in the company town of Pullman; when a delegation
called on him to remonstrate, he refused to give in
and had three of the leaders fired.) Some Pullman
workers belonged to the American Railway Union,
headed by Eugene V. Debs. After the strike had
dragged along for weeks, the union voted to refuse to
handle trains with Pullman cars. The union was per-
fectly willing to handle mail trains, but the owners
refused to run trains unless they were made up of a
full complement of cars.
When Pullman cars were added to mail trains,
the workers refused to move them. The resulting
railroad strike tied up trunk lines running in and out
of Chicago. The railroad owners appealed to
President Cleveland to send troops to preserve
order. On the pretext that the soldiers were needed
to ensure the movement of the mails, Cleveland
agreed. When Debs defied a federal injunction to
end the walkout, he was jailed for contempt and the
strike was broken.Whither America, Whither Democracy?
Each year more of the nation’s wealth and power
seemed to fall into fewer hands. As with the railroads,
other industries were being influenced, if not com-
pletely dominated, by bankers. The firm of J.P.
Morgan and Company controlled many railroads; the
largest steel, electrical, agricultural machinery, rubber,
and shipping companies; two life insurance compa-
nies; and a number of banks. By 1913 Morgan and
the Rockefeller National City Bank group between
them could name 341 directors to 112 corporations
worth over $22.2 billion. The “Money Trust,” a
loose but potent fraternity of financiers, seemed fated
to become the ultimate monopoly.
Centralization unquestionably increased effi-
ciency, at least in industries that used a great deal of
expensive machinery to turn out goods for the mass
market, and in those where close coordination of out-
put, distribution, and sales was important. The public
benefited immensely from the productive efficiency of
the new empires. Living standards rose.
But the trend toward giantism raised doubts. With
ownership falling into fewer hands, what would be the
ultimate effect of big business on American democ-
racy? What did it mean for ordinary people when a few
tycoons possessed huge fortunes and commanded such
influence even on Congress and the courts?
The crushing of the Pullman strike demon-
strated the power of the courts to break strikes by
issuing injunctions. And the courts seemed only
concerned with protecting the interests of the rich
and powerful. Particularly ominous for organized
labor was the fact that the federal government based
its request for the injunction that broke the strike on
the Sherman Antitrust Act, arguing that the
American Railway Union was a combination in
restraint of trade. An indirect result of the Pullman
strike was that while serving his sentence for con-
tempt, Eugene Debs was visited by a number of
prominent socialists who sought to convert him to
their cause. One gave him a copy of Karl Marx’s
Capital,which he found too dull to finish, but he
did read Looking Backward and Wealth Against
Commonwealth.In 1897 he became a socialist.