
The Day Private Gunmen Invaded a Pittsburgh Steel Town
At Homestead in 1892, a labor dispute became an armed battle after Pinkerton agents arrived by barge to retake the Carnegie Steel works.

At Homestead in 1892, a labor dispute became an armed battle after Pinkerton agents arrived by barge to retake the Carnegie Steel works.

In 1909, immigrant workers at Pressed Steel Car challenged opaque pay practices and factory discipline in a strike that exploded into deadly violence.

The 1907 Darr Mine disaster killed 239 miners and exposed the lethal price hidden inside western Pennsylvania’s coal economy.

How wage cuts, a new operating order, militia gunfire, economic desperation, corporate power and a crowd nobody fully controlled turned Pittsburgh into one of the fiercest battlegrounds of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.

How twelve hour shifts, seven day schedules, immigrant labor, union organizing, corporate resistance, police power, racial division and America's Red Scare turned Pittsburgh's steel country into the center of a battle over who had the right to speak inside the mills.