skilled workers saw their places taken by new men, who were quickly trained. The mechanization of the mills also reduced the value of skilled labor.These union members had trouble finding jobs anywhere. The industry-wide blacklist kept the union men out of every steel mill. Within two years, the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers lost half of its national membership. By 1910, the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers had only one contract with a small company.The 1892 defeat of Homestead meant a twelve-hour day, seven days a week for almost all the workers. Pinkerton spies were installed everywhere. Wages were slashed more than anyone had ever expected them to be, and grievance committees were done away with. Workers meetings were also banned. And working and living conditions sank lower than they had ever been before. “As for Mr. Carnegie, he wired a friend in 1899, ‘Ashamed to tell you profits these days. Prodigious!’ In 1900 the company’s net worth was $40 million,” (Meltzer, 146).The Pullman Strike: 1894, Railroad Industry, Chicago, Illinois The Pullman Strike had many causes. Pullman workers lived in a company town described as, “bordered with bright beds of flowers, and green velvety stretches of lawn, shaded with trees, and dotted with parks and pretty water vistas,” (Meltzer 148). This, however, was not a complete truth. Though was a section of the town that included this. The houses in it were designated only for the Pullman officials. There were ten large tenements designated for the workers. They were each three stories tall containing flats of two to four. Each building accommodated twelve to forty-eight families. Bathrooms were shared between two or more families, and there were water faucets for each group of five families.The Pullman Corporation appointed all the town officials. The Pullman Journal backed all corporation policies. T...
