What cultural conflicts emerged in the 1990s?FOCUS QUESTIONS
• What were the origins and the significance of Populism?
• How did the liberties of blacks after 1877 give way to legal segregation across
the South?
• In what ways did the boundaries of American freedom grow narrower in this
period?
• How did the United States emerge as an imperial power in the 1890s?FREEDOM’S BOUNDARIES,
AT HOME AND ABROAD
★ CHAPTER 17 ★
1890–1900
O
ne of the most popular songs of 1892 bore the title “Father Was Killed
by a Pinkerton Man.” It was inspired by an incident during a bitter
strike at Andrew Carnegie’s steelworks at Homestead, Pennsylvania,
the nineteenth century’s most widely publicized confrontation between labor
and capital. The strike pitted one of the nation’s leading industrial corporations
against a powerful union, the Amalgamated Association, which represented
the skilled iron- and steelworkers among the complex’s 3,800 employees.
Homestead’s twelve steel mills were the most profitable and technologi-
cally advanced in the world. The union contract gave the Amalgamated Asso-
ciation a considerable say in their operation, including the right to approve★^649