strike, in 1892, against the Carnegie Steel
Company, occasioned by a cut in wages. The Amalgamated Steel and Iron
Workers sought to intercede against the reduction, but were refused
recognition. Preparing to supplant the disaffected workmen with
non-union men, a force of Pinkerton detectives was brought up the river
in armored barges. Fierce fighting ensued. Bullets and cannon-balls
rained upon the barges, and receptacles full of burning oil were floated
down stream. The assailants wished to withdraw, repeatedly raising the
white flag, but it was each time shot down. Eleven strikers were killed;
of the attacking party from thirty to forty fell, seven dead. When at
last the Pinkertons were forced to give up their arms and ammunition and
retire, a bodyguard of strikers sought to shield them, but so violent
was the rage which they had provoked that, spite of their escort, the
mob brutally attacked them. Order was restored only when the militia
appeared.

[Illustration: City street piled with debris several feet thick.]
Main Street, Johnstown, after the flood.

[Illustration: River front, factories in the background, fires in the
foreground.]
Burning of Barges during Homestead Strike.

[Illustration: Man standing behind a large curved steel plate.]
The Carnegie Steel Works. Showing the shield used by the strikers when
firing the cannon and watching the Pinkerton men. Homestead strike.

This bloodshed was not wholly in vain. Congress made the private militia
system, the evil consequences of which were so manifest in these
tragedies, a subject of investigation, while public sentiment more
strongly than ever reprobated, on the one hand, violence by strikers or
strike sympathizers, and, on the other, the employment of armed men, not
officers of the law, to defend property.

That, however, other causes than these might endanger the peace was
shown about the same time at certain Tennessee mines where prevailed the
bad system of farming out convicts to compete with citizen-miners.
Business being slack, deserving workmen were put on short time.
Resenting this, miners at Tracy City, Inman, and Oliver Springs
summarily removed convicts from the mines, several of these escaping. At
Coal Creek the rioters were resisted by Colonel Anderson and a small
force. They raised a flag of truce, answering which in person, Colonel
Anderson was commanded, on threat of death, to order a surrender. He
refused. A larger force soon arri