after a long period of negotiations about a labor dispute, between the management of the Carnegie Steel Company at Homestead and the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers.
Without reaching an agreement , desided deputy general manager Henry Clay Frick, to break down the Union.
Frick threatens to fire all the workers who were associated with the Union and to take only them who are not member of the Union.
Now it was no longer a struggle about a labor dispute, it became also a struggle about the right to exist of the Union.
Then, Frick did really what he meant to do.
The (in the meantime been fired) Unionmembers, organized a strike and they prevent strikebreakers to set foot on the factory area.
To break the strike, Frick is hiring the Pinkerton brigade, existing of 300 hundred men.
This ends on july 6, in a horrorible disaster, in which ten workers and three Pinkerton men die. Hundreds of people being wounded.*
Pinkerton was a detective agency who had the task, to "protect" companies against strikes.
After this terrible occurance, America introduced a law, to forbid organisations like Pinkerton. In its place, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), was founded, that in fact does the same as Pinkerton!
This event, has determined the rest of the lifes of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, who knew each other already in that time.
Another moment in the coming weeks, I will write more about those two persons.
The humaliation, that these workers have experienced, is now something that the almost whole Greek population goes through, standing in front of those who have the full power to the resources of satisfaction, normally called MONEY!!!
* My own translation from the book, in Dutch: Mijn leven / Living my life- Emma Goldman.
Keep alive
Aleke!
P.S. English is not my native language!
