(light guitar music)
- [Narrator] As we travel around North America
gathering materials for our documentaries,
we often come across special people and places
that we'd like to share with you.
- [Narrator] In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
we met with Ron Baraff,
the Director of Historic Resources and Facilities
from the Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area.
- This is the birthplace of the industrial revolution,
really, I mean, this region fueled it.
This region built the machinery that became
all those mills and all the infrastructure of this country.
You don't have America's 20th century,
you don't have the industrial revolution
in this country without Pittsburgh.
Rivers of Steel is a National Heritage Area.
We were mandated by the Congress of the United States,
and also by the State of Pennsylvania
as an umbrella organization to oversee
the cultural and industrial heritage of this region.
The building we're currently in
is the blowing engine house.
Blowing engine house, at one time,
it was the lungs of the blast furnace.
In this building would have been giant air compressors
which were powered by gas or steam,
and that provided air to the hot stoves of the furnace
which would be superheated up to 1800 degrees.
That air would then be pushed into the blast furnace
for the smelting process.
This is where that power is coming from.
This is where the blast in the blast furnace is made.
The fuel for all of this industry,
up and down these rivers, for the blast furnaces,
and for the steel plants, often times is coke.
Coke is coal that's been processed.
The machinery behind me,
this is the 48-inch universal plate mill,
which was originally built for the Homestead Works.
It was in place from 1898 until 1979.
Plate from this mill became part of
the Empire State Building,
went into Panama Canal locks,
numerous battleships and structures all over this country.
(light music)
Prior to the Bessemer, steel's being made.
They've been making steel for thousands of years.
But you're making it by the pound.
It was a very slow, laborious process
that required a high amount of skill.
It's not economical.
It's not ideal.
You can't make it in such volume
as to be able to build buildings from it.
Folks like Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick
and Henry Oliver, they're all based here.
Their capital was based here,
the capital and the vision.
He really establishes that system that's put in place,
that system of steel making, the hard driving steel making,
that creates the Carnegie empire.
Now the late 1880s, he brings in Henry Clay Frick
as president of Carnegie Steel.
Frick was that yang to Carnegie's yin.
Carnegie wanted to the friend of the workers,
at least in the public face.
Frick didn't care.
He's not a likable character.
He's as tough as they come.
He was a capitalist through and through,
and did not believe in the rights of the workers
and in labor unions.
He was notorious for busting the unions in the coal fields.
The climate really does change within Carnegie Steel.
It was a very open point of,
"We are going to eradicate all the unions
"within our company."
It obviously culminates in 1892 in Homestead.
In Homestead, Carnegie acquires the plant in 1883.
He's able to acquire the plant
because there's labor trouble.
The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers
holds sway over Homestead.
They were not only involved in the building of the plant,
but the same people who are running the union
are also building the town of Homestead.
Their feeling was, "We have as much of a stake
"in this, in this mill, as you do as the owner.
"You're providing the capital.
"We're providing the work.
"We're providing the knowhow."
June 30, 1892, the last agreement
between the Amalgamated and the company is set to expire.
The line's drawn in the sand.
We're going to eradicate the union right then and there.
Carnegie fully supports this.
June 30th, Frick locks all the workers out.
The union then declares a strike.
Frick orders 300 Pinkerton men
to be brought in to Homestead
to not attack the steel workers,
but to seal off the mill so that they can
start bringing in scab workers.
He was not going to allow that mill
to stand idle for very long.
Within the next week, 8,000 militiamen arrive in town,
the Pennsylvania militia, and seal the town off.
The town's essentially under martial law
for the remainder of the summer.
They start bringing scab workers in,
black sheep, as they're called,
and get the mill up and running again.
By fall, it's apparent that the workers
cannot win this battle.
The majority of the workers ask out of their strike pledge.
A number of them returned to work
under those conditions that were laid out
by Carnegie Steel: disavaow the union,
you work for the sliding scale,
and you work the hours that you're told.
(light music)
Without those brave souls that came here
and gave everything they had, we wouldn't be who we are.
You and I wouldn't be sitting here.
We wouldn't be having this discussion.
It's important to remember that.
(light music)
- [Narrator] Prairie Mosaic is funded by
the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund
with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota
on November 4, 2008,
the North Dakota Council on the Arts,
and by the members of Prairie Public.
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