The River Ran Red: Homestead 1892 (Regional) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822954788 ISBN 13: 9780822954781

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992

Synopsis

On July 6, 1892, violence erupted at the Carnegie Steel mill in Homestead, Pennsylvania, when striking employees and Pinkerton detectives hired to break the strike exchanged gunfire along the shore of the Monongahela River. The skirmish left some dozen dead, led to a congressional investigation, sparked a nearly successful assassination attempt on Carnegie Steel executive Henry Clay Frick, and altered the course of the American labor movement. The River Ran Red recreates the events of that summer using firsthand accounts and archival material, including excerpts from newspapers and magazines, reproductions of pen-and-ink sketches and photographs made on the scene, passages from the congressional investigation, and poems, songs, and sermons from across the country. Contributions by outstanding scholars provide the background for understanding the social and cultural aspects of the strike, as well as its violence and repercussions. Written to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the strike, The River Ran Red records and contextualizes public and personal reactions to one of the most important events in labor history, the reverberations of which are still felt today.

About this title

About the Author

David P. Demarest (1931–2011) was professor emeritus of English at Carnegie Mellon University and a pioneering scholar of labor history and working-class literature of western Pennsylvania. His research led to the republication of Thomas Bell’s seminal novel of the American steel industry, Out of This Furnace. He was a founding member of the Battle of Homestead Foundation and a staunch advocate for the preservation of important local historical and cultural landmarks such as the Braddock Carnegie Library in Braddock, Pennsylvania, and the Maxo Vanka murals in Saint Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in Millvale, Pennsylvania.

Reviews

July 6, 1992 will mark the 100th anniversary of the most significant labor-management confrontation in U.S. history: the Homestead Strike. In commemoration of this industrial crisis, Demarest (Carnegie-Mellon) and eight coeditors have produced an anthology of events surrounding the conflict. The numerous illustrations include photographs, cartoons, and period engravings. The text, which includes excerpts from magazine and newspaper articles, Congressional testimony, and speeches and memoranda, reveals the viewpoints of some major players: industrialists Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, unionist John McLuckie, and anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. Although this anthology contains a wealth of information, it lacks an index to guide the reader to specific material in the text. Recommended for public libraries and for those who wish to read a dramatic portrayal of the Homestead Strike. Krause (Univ. of British Columbia) provides a more scholarly treatment, examining the strike in terms of broader issues confronting the Gilded Age. He focuses on the labor-management disputes of the era, which represented the never-ending "conflict between the pursuit of private interest and the defense of the common good." Individuals like Carnegie amassed material wealth at the expense of common laborers who wanted only decent wages and security for their families. Krause suggests that the Homestead lockout revealed the difficulty of reconciling America's vision of democracy for all with the reality of material progress restricted to a fortunate few. Moreover, the author questions whether this "dilemma" will ever be reconciled. An important contribution to the study of American history; highly recommended for research library collections.
- B.A. Kremer, Johns Hopkins Univ. Libs., Baltimore
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822954788
• ISBN 13: 9780822954781
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 244
• Editor: Demarest Jr. David P.