g to punishment a number of the prominent rioters.

Claims for losses in the riot were made on Allegheny County in the sum
of $4,100,000, which the commissioners settled for $2,772,349.53. Of
this sum $1,600,000 was paid to the Pennsylvania Railroad, whose claim
for $2,312,000 was settled for that sum. In addition to the buildings
already specified as burned, there were 1,383 freight-cars, 104
locomotives, and 66 passenger coaches destroyed by fire. Twenty-five
persons in all were killed.

The lesson was worth all it cost, and anarchy has never dared to raise
its head in the corporation limits since that time.

XVII

The Homestead strike and riot of 1892 is another incident of false
leadership in industrial life which must be chronicled here.

For many years the Carnegie Steel Company, whose principal works were
situated at Homestead, just outside the present boundaries of the city,
had employed a large number of skilled workmen who belonged to the
Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, and had contracted
for their employment with the officers of that Association. On July 1,
1889, a three years' contract was made which was to terminate at the end
of June, 1892. The workmen were paid by the ton, the amount they
received depending on the selling price of steel billets of a specified
size which they produced. If the price of these billets advanced, the
wages they received per ton advanced proportionately. If the price
declined, their wages also declined to a certain point, called a
minimum, but a decline in the selling price below this minimum caused no
reduction in wages. The minimum was fixed in the contract at $25.00 per
ton. At the date the contract was made the market price of the billets
was $26.50 per ton.

As the time drew near for the contract to expire, the Carnegie Company,
through its chairman, Mr. Henry C. Frick, submitted to the workmen
belonging to the Association a proposition as the basis of a new
contract. The three most important features of the proposed contract
were, first, a reduction in the minimum of the scale for billets from
$25.00 to $22.00; second, a change in the expiration of the date of the
scale from June 30th to December 31st; third, a reduction of tonnage
rates at those furnaces and mills in which, by reason of the
introduction of improved machinery, the earnings of the workmen had been
increased far beyond the liberal calculation of their employers. At
those places wh