from the riverbank. Before the Pinkertons surrendered, nine strikers and seven detectives had been killed during a twelve-hour battle.
The state militia entered the fray, management imported strikebreakers, and by the end of the year the Homestead mill was operating without a union, just as Frick had wanted. Within another year, thirty more of the areaâs sixty-odd iron and still mills had likewise broken their unions. 6 But U.S. Steel was not eager to repeat the Monongahela Valley experience in the town of Gary if it could help it.
The planning of Gary, such as it was, reflected this sentiment. The various Gary plants stretched all along the lakefront, allowing town residents virtually no access to the water. In the event of trouble, supplies, guards, and willing workers could be brought directly into the plants by boat. On the other side of the factories was the Grand Calumet River, which separated all the plants but one from the residential areas of town. In effect, the river might act as a defensive moat should events like those in Homestead be repeated in Gary.
Finally, a third community provided inspiration for Garyâthis time in a more positive fashion. Lying thirty-odd miles northeast of Homestead, the Kiskiminetas Valley town of Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, was built from scratch in the 1890s by the Apollo Iron and Steel Co., which in time, like so many other independent companies, became part of U.S. Steel.
Apollo Iron and Steelâs first home was in Apollo, Pennsylvania, one mile from where Vandergrift would be built. Keeping up with technological developments and growing demand, the iron mill at Apollo was transformed into a steel mill in the 1880s. But residences, mostly owned by the workers, got crammed into the existing town boundaries, encroaching ever closer upon the mill, and the company had difficulty getting room to expand the works. Thus in 1892, Apolloâs chief executive, George Gibson McMurtry, began contemplating expansion elsewhere, and for that purpose purchased 640 acres of land upriver in Westmoreland County.
The major depression of 1893 led steel prices to collapse. Apollo announced a wage cut, which precipitated a strike at that mill by the Amalgamated, which of course had only recently experienced the bloody defeat at Homestead. After two months, Apollo reopened after announcing that it would employ only those who renounced the union. It hired skilled workers from other, nonunion mills and promoted laborers to fill the ranks of the semiskilled. There was no violent explosion at Apolloâthe Amalgamatedâs spirit, it seemed, was for the moment broken.
McMurtry was not present for these events. Instead, he was in Europe visiting celebrated model industrial towns, including the Krupp estates near Essen, Germany, various English factory villages, and the foundries at Le Creusot, France. His trip was not unlike the grand tours taken by Francis Cabot Lowell and Milton Hershey. McMurtry saw landscaped European towns in which companies provided schools, housing, and social programs.
Two years after returning to the United States, McMurtry hired the celebrated landscape architecture firm of Olmsted, Olmsted and Eliot to design a model industrial town for him. The legendary Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. had made his reputation with the rolling landscapes and rustic motifs of New Yorkâs Central Park and pastoral middle-class suburbs.
Olmstedâs successors, partner Charles Eliot and stepson John Charles Olmsted, envisioned for McMurtry a town of curvilinear boulevards dominated by a large village green.
McMurtry had stipulated that the new town would have a modern sanitary infrastructure, including water mains, sewers, and gas lines, all of which he believed would mean a stronger, healthier workforce. Like Apollo, and for that matter like Homestead and Braddock, the company would not build housing for workers, instead leaving this to private interests. Lest this have the
The state militia entered the fray, management imported strikebreakers, and by the end of the year the Homestead mill was operating without a union, just as Frick had wanted. Within another year, thirty more of the areaâs sixty-odd iron and still mills had likewise broken their unions. 6 But U.S. Steel was not eager to repeat the Monongahela Valley experience in the town of Gary if it could help it.
The planning of Gary, such as it was, reflected this sentiment. The various Gary plants stretched all along the lakefront, allowing town residents virtually no access to the water. In the event of trouble, supplies, guards, and willing workers could be brought directly into the plants by boat. On the other side of the factories was the Grand Calumet River, which separated all the plants but one from the residential areas of town. In effect, the river might act as a defensive moat should events like those in Homestead be repeated in Gary.
Finally, a third community provided inspiration for Garyâthis time in a more positive fashion. Lying thirty-odd miles northeast of Homestead, the Kiskiminetas Valley town of Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, was built from scratch in the 1890s by the Apollo Iron and Steel Co., which in time, like so many other independent companies, became part of U.S. Steel.
Apollo Iron and Steelâs first home was in Apollo, Pennsylvania, one mile from where Vandergrift would be built. Keeping up with technological developments and growing demand, the iron mill at Apollo was transformed into a steel mill in the 1880s. But residences, mostly owned by the workers, got crammed into the existing town boundaries, encroaching ever closer upon the mill, and the company had difficulty getting room to expand the works. Thus in 1892, Apolloâs chief executive, George Gibson McMurtry, began contemplating expansion elsewhere, and for that purpose purchased 640 acres of land upriver in Westmoreland County.
The major depression of 1893 led steel prices to collapse. Apollo announced a wage cut, which precipitated a strike at that mill by the Amalgamated, which of course had only recently experienced the bloody defeat at Homestead. After two months, Apollo reopened after announcing that it would employ only those who renounced the union. It hired skilled workers from other, nonunion mills and promoted laborers to fill the ranks of the semiskilled. There was no violent explosion at Apolloâthe Amalgamatedâs spirit, it seemed, was for the moment broken.
McMurtry was not present for these events. Instead, he was in Europe visiting celebrated model industrial towns, including the Krupp estates near Essen, Germany, various English factory villages, and the foundries at Le Creusot, France. His trip was not unlike the grand tours taken by Francis Cabot Lowell and Milton Hershey. McMurtry saw landscaped European towns in which companies provided schools, housing, and social programs.
Two years after returning to the United States, McMurtry hired the celebrated landscape architecture firm of Olmsted, Olmsted and Eliot to design a model industrial town for him. The legendary Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. had made his reputation with the rolling landscapes and rustic motifs of New Yorkâs Central Park and pastoral middle-class suburbs.
Olmstedâs successors, partner Charles Eliot and stepson John Charles Olmsted, envisioned for McMurtry a town of curvilinear boulevards dominated by a large village green.
McMurtry had stipulated that the new town would have a modern sanitary infrastructure, including water mains, sewers, and gas lines, all of which he believed would mean a stronger, healthier workforce. Like Apollo, and for that matter like Homestead and Braddock, the company would not build housing for workers, instead leaving this to private interests. Lest this have the
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