Hugh O'Donnell (c. 1869-19??) was an American steel mill worker and labor leader. He is best remembered as the chairman of the Homestead Strike Advisory Committee during the Homestead Steel Strike of July 1892.
Hugh O'Donnell (c. 1869-19??) was an American steel mill worker and labor leader. He is best remembered as the chairman of the Homestead Strike Advisory Committee during the Homestead Steel Strike of July 1892.
Hugh O'Donnell came to work at the Carnegie Steel Company works at Homestead, Pennsylvania in 1886, at the age of 17. [1] After 6 months in the sheet metal mill he moved to the Homestead works' mill which produced 119-inch steel plate, in which he worked as a heater. [1]
O'Donnell joined the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers and was a member of that organization's Lodge No. 125. [1]
At the time of the Homestead labor dispute, O'Donnell was employed as a mill worker, and not as a professional trade union functionary.
O'Donnell was named chairman of the Advisory Committee, the workers' organization in charge of coordination of the strike. [2] In this capacity he had cautioned against violence and trespassing upon company property in an attempt to keep the company from availing itself of judicial injunction or the seizing of the moral high ground. [3]
The Advisory Committee established its headquarters on the third floor of the Bost Building, located at the corner of Eighth Avenue and Heisel Street in Homestead. [4]
At 10:30 pm on July 5, 1892, some 300 employees of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency arrived by rail at Bellevue, about five miles south of Pittsburgh along the Ohio River. [5] These were put aboard two specially equipped barges, laden with 300 pistols and 250 Winchester rifles, and pulled by tugboat up the river to Homestead. [5] Strike leaders, who assigned lookouts to keep a watch along rivers and rail routes, were apprised by telegram at 2:30 am of July 6 that barges had departed for the steel works and ten minutes later a warning alarm was sounded, echoed by whistles throughout the town. [2]
Chaos ensued and O'Donnell immediately lost control of the defense of the steelworks, which was spontaneously led by residents of Homestead. [2] Armed strikers assembled at the steelworks and shots were fired at the tugboat pulling the barges, one of which shattered a window in the pilothouse. [2] Some of those coming forward in impromptu leadership roles included Margaret Finch, the feisty widow of a steelworker who operated the Rolling Mill House saloon, English immigrant laborer William Foy, and open-hearth skilled worker Anthony Soulier. [6]
As dawn began to break at 4:00 am, a crowd had gathered along the riverbank next to a barbed wire fence which ran from the plant to the river, which had been erected by the company some weeks earlier. [3] The barges were pushed ashore at 4:30, to a cascade of angry shouts and a hail of stones, many of which were thrown by the hundreds of wives of strikers who had assembled. [7]
Gangplanks were lowered and William Foy and Capt. Frederick H. Heinde, commander of the Pinkerton landing operation, tensely faced off amidst mutual threats. [8] A fracas erupted, with clubs wielded and shots were fired, with both Foy and Heinde hit by bullets. [8] The Pinkertons began firing their rifles repeatedly into the crowd, with armed strikers answering in kind, and for the next ten minutes a pitched gun battle was waged; several strikers and two Pinkertons were mortally wounded, with dozens of others injured, including Hugh O'Donnell, who was grazed by a bullet to his thumb. [9]
The Pinkertons remained trapped aboard the barges, while O'Donnell and his associates of the Advisory Committee attempted to restore order to the tense and bloody situation, removing wives and wounded strikers from the scene and O'Donnell personally attempting, to the best of his ability, to calm and organize the crowd. [4]
On July 12, 1892, O'Donnell chaired a mass meeting in Homestead which voted unanimously to support the introduction into town of the National Guard, which had been called out by Pennsylvania Governor Robert E. Pattison. [10] The meeting was addressed by Homestead burgess (mayor) John McLuckie, who railed against the Pinkertons as members of a "dirty, filthy, stinking" organization while encouraging reception of the militia "with open arms," since "they are not dangerous so long as the dignity of the state is not insulted." [10]
O'Donnell was arrested in September 1892, charged with conspiracy, aggravated riot, treason, and two counts of murder in connection with the violent battle between Homestead strikers and Pinkerton Detective Agency employees. [11] He was held without bail on the charges, coming to trial on one of the murder charges in February 1893. [11]
O'Donnell was acquitted of the murder charge in a jury trial and was subsequently released on bail. [11] Prosecutors never proceeded to bring O'Donnell to trial on any other offense, and all charges were eventually dropped. [11]
In the years after the failure of the Homestead strike, O'Donnell found himself blackballed from returning to work in the steel industry. Needing to adopt a new career, he moved to Philadelphia and took a job as a newspaper reporter. [12]
In about 1903, O'Donnell accepted a position in government employment as a deputy to the Pennsylvania state factory inspector. [13] This job placed O'Donnell in crowded Pennsylvania tenements and poorly ventilated factories on a regular basis, and he subsequently contracted tuberculosis as a result. [14] Stricken seriously ill by the disease, in November 1905 O'Donnell left the Northeast for the warmer and drier climate of the Southwest, accompanied by relatives, in an effort to regain his health. [14] Newspaper accounts from December of that year place O'Donnell in the city of El Paso, Texas. [15]
Homestead is a borough in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. The borough is located in the Monongahela River valley 7 miles (11 km) southeast of downtown Pittsburgh and directly across the river from the city limits. The borough is known for the Homestead Strike of 1892, an important event in the history of labor relations in the United States. The population of Homestead was 2,884 at the 2020 census.
The history of Pittsburgh began with centuries of Native American civilization in the modern Pittsburgh region, known as "Dionde:gâ'" in the Seneca language. Eventually, European explorers encountered the strategic confluence where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet to form the Ohio, which leads to the Mississippi River. The area became a battleground when France and Great Britain fought for control in the 1750s. When the British were victorious, the French ceded control of territories east of the Mississippi.
Pinkerton is a private security guard and detective agency established around 1850 in the United States by Scottish-born American cooper Allan Pinkerton and Chicago attorney Edward Rucker as the North-Western Police Agency, which later became Pinkerton & Co, and finally the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. It is currently a subsidiary of Swedish-based Securitas AB. Pinkerton became famous when he claimed to have foiled the Baltimore Plot to assassinate president-elect Abraham Lincoln in 1861. Lincoln later hired Pinkerton agents to conduct espionage against the Confederacy and act as his personal security during the American Civil War.
The Homestead strike, also known as the Homestead steel strike, Homestead massacre, or Battle of Homestead, was an industrial lockout and strike that began on July 1, 1892, culminating in a battle in which strikers defeated private security agents on July 6, 1892. The governor responded by sending in the National Guard to protect strikebreakers. The dispute occurred at the Homestead Steel Works in the Pittsburgh-area town of Homestead, Pennsylvania, between the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers and the Carnegie Steel Company. The final result was a major defeat for the union strikers and a setback for their efforts to unionize steelworkers. The battle was a pivotal event in U.S. labor history.
Henry Clay Frick was an American industrialist, financier, and art patron. He founded the H. C. Frick & Company coke manufacturing company, was chairman of the Carnegie Steel Company, and played a major role in the formation of the giant U.S. Steel manufacturing concern. He also financed the construction of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading Company, and had extensive real estate holdings in Pittsburgh and throughout the state of Pennsylvania. He later built the historic neoclassical Frick Mansion, and upon his death donated his extensive collection of old master paintings and fine furniture to create the celebrated Frick Collection and art museum. However, as a founding member of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, he was also in large part responsible for the alterations to the South Fork Dam that caused its failure, leading to the catastrophic Johnstown Flood. His vehement opposition to unions also caused violent conflict, most notably in the Homestead Strike.
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Carnegie Steel Company was a steel-producing company primarily created by Andrew Carnegie and several close associates to manage businesses at steel mills in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area in the late 19th century. The company was formed in 1892 and was subsequently sold in 1901 in one of the largest business transactions of the early 20th century, to become the major component of U.S. Steel. The sale made Carnegie one of the richest men in history.
Homestead Steel Works was a large steel works located on the Monongahela River at Homestead, Pennsylvania in the United States. The company developed in the nineteenth century as an extensive plant served by tributary coal and iron fields, a railway 425 miles (684 km) long, and a line of lake steamships. The works was also the site of one of the more serious labor disputes in U.S. history, which became known as the Homestead strike of 1892.
The Waterfront is a super-regional open air shopping mall spanning the three boroughs of Homestead, West Homestead, and Munhall near Pittsburgh. The shopping mall sits on land once occupied by U.S. Steel's Homestead Steel Works plant, which closed in 1986. It has a gross leasable area of 700,000 square feet (65,000 m2) in "The Waterfront" and 400,000 square feet (37,000 m2) in "The Town Center." The development officially opened in 1999. More development continued into the early 21st century.
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Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers (AA) was an American labor union formed in 1876 to represent iron and steel workers. It partnered with the Steel Workers Organizing Committee of the CIO, in November 1935. Both organizations disbanded May 22, 1942, to form a new organization, the United Steelworkers.
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