293] COLLECTIVE BARGAINING l6l 



fated strike was to disrupt the local branches of the union, 

 and to create a state of affairs in which no workman dared 

 join the Association. 



The Carnegie mills were not the only non-union mills in 

 1892. A considerable number of plants in the American 

 Sheet Steel Company and the American Tin Plate Com- 

 pany (though a minority in each branch) were unorganized. 

 The scales signed annually in joint conferences, though 

 doubtless affecting the wages paid in non-union mills, cov- 

 ered only such mills as the company regarded as union. 

 Such was the situation when the United States Steel Cor- 

 poration was formed early in 1901. 



To narrate the history of the formation of that gigantic 

 capitalistic combination would lead us too far afield. Suffice 

 it to say that in the steel business there had come to be two 

 groups of great consolidated companies : one, in which the 

 Carnegie Company was the greatest, produced steel billets, 

 ingots, bars, plates, and slabs ; a second group of companies 

 turned these materials into tubes, wire, tin plate, sheets, and 

 other finished materials. Each group was beginning to feel 

 the need of entering into the business of the other." To 

 prevent conflict, the financial interests intervened and 

 welded the opposing interests into one great organization — 

 the United States Steel Corporation. 



Three of the great companies with which the Amalga- 

 mated had been accustomed to arrange annual scales en- 

 tered into this combination. The leaders of the union 

 knew the policy of the Carnegie management and they natu- 

 rally had misgivings as to the future of their organization. 

 They decided to attempt the complete unionization of the 

 trust. Accordingly, they demanded that the scale be signed 



titled " Tragic Episode at Homestead in 1892 " by Carroll D. Wright 

 in American Fcderationist, September, 1901, p. 333; another, by J. 

 W. Sullivan, " Drama of Homestead," ibid., November, iQOi, p. 467. 

 Also chapter i of Miss Margaret F. Ryington's book, "Homestead; 

 The Households of a Mill Town." 



''2 E. S. Mead gives a history of the matter in the Quarterly Jour- 

 nal of Economics, August, 1901. See also A. Berglund, The United 

 States Steel Corporation, pp. 62-63. 



