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A view of the idled Homestead Steel Works at Homestead and the town, with strikers on the lookout, July 1892.
Credit: Library of Congress
In July 1892, a pitched battle between Pinkerton agents and thousands of striking steel workers at the Carnegie Homestead Steel Works, followed by a 95-day occupation by the state militia, helped turn Homestead into one of the most infamous and memorable strikes in American history. Carnegie and Frick crushed the Homestead workers' union organizing drive and set back steel workers efforts for collective bargaining for decades. By 1900 not a single steel plant in Pennsylvania had a unionized workforce.