Homestead

Before being removed to his home, Mr. Frick sent this message to the reporters: "The shooting will in no way effect the Homestead strike."

Dangerous as the Carnegie Chairman's injuries were, his recovery was rapid, and two weeks after his encounter with Berkman he was able to return to his office and resume full charge of the firm's affairs to which, while on his sick bed, he had still continued to give a considerable measure of attention.

Berkman was taken to the county jail on Sunday night, there to await trial. He seemed indifferent to his fate and expressed regret that he had not succeeded in killing Frick. Bauer and Knold, his supposed accomplices, were locked up on the following day. A wagon load of Anarchist literature was seized at the house of Bauer, who acted as an agent for publications of this character.

The effect of the shooting on public opinion was strongly marked. The press of Pittsburgh was unanimous in expressing sympathy for Mr. Frick, and in so doing, voiced the general sentiment of the people. At Homestead much regret was expressed, and the workmen seemed to feel that, although Berkman did not represent them or their cause, directly or indirectly, his cowardly act was certain to prejudice their interests.

Undoubtedly the attempt to murder Mr. Frick served to hasten the defeat of the workingmen. The courage displayed by the Carnegie Chairman won him admiration in quarters where he had previously been condemned, and there were other circumstances which took the edge off the animosity generated by his harshness towards organized labor. During the crisis at Homestead, his young wife became a mother and, so powerfully did the events in which her husband was the central figure effect her that, for a time, she lay at the point of death. The child lived only a few days. Mr. Frick, it was said, in recognition of the fact that the New York Sun was the only newspaper in the country which took up the cudgels in his behalf, intended to name the little one Charles A. Dana Frick, after the editor of that journal. These incidents conspired to soften the popular heart somewhat, although Mr. Frick did not abate in the least his hostility towards the Amalgamated men and his determination to break the back of unionism in the Carnegie mills at any cost.

There was, however, one man in Allegheny county who neither sympathized with Frick nor scrupled to express his regret that Berkman's weapons failed to do their work.

This man was W. L. Iams, a youth belonging to one of the best families in Greene County, who was serving in Company K, Tenth Regiment, under Colonel Hawkins.

Iams was stretched on the grass outside Lieutenant Colonel J. B. Streator's tent, chatting with a group of comrades, when the news of the attempt on Frick's life was brought in. Acting on the impulse of the moment, and doubtless without measuring the significance of his words, the young man jumped to his feet and shouted "Three cheers for the man who shot Frick." Colonel Streator heard the remark and, stepping out of his tent, asked who had uttered it. Receiving no response, he ordered the regiment drawn up in line in the company streets, and, after condemning the language used by Iams as treasonable, demanded from one company after another the name of the offender. When he came to Company K, Iams stepped forward from the ranks and said "I did it." The Colonel asked him why. "Because I do not like Frick" was the answer. Iams was ordered to apologize before the regiment but refused, and was thereupon sent to the guard-house and subjected, without the benefit of a trial by court-martial, to the most degrading punishment known under military law. He was first strung up by the thumbs with notice that he would be cut down as soon as he apologized. Although suffering exquisite torture, the young man remained firm and declined to retract his words. After hanging for a quarter of an hour, he lost consciousness and the regimental surgeon, Dr. Neff, ordered him to be cut down. Iams was then placed in the guard-house until his case was reported to Colonel Hawkins, at the headquarters of the provisional brigade. The report was returned with the approval of Colonel Hawkins and General Snowden and an order from the latter that the man be disgraced and drummed out of camp. Colonel Streator executed these directions to the letter. Iams' head and face were half shaved; his uniform was exchanged for an old pair of overalls and a shirt and dilapidated hat to match, and in this wretched condition he was led out of camp to the tune of the "Rogues' March." His sentence carried with it permanent exclusion from the National Guard and disenfranchisement.

Iams proceeded to Pittsburgh and, strange to say, became the lion of the hour. He announced his intention of prosecuting the officers concerned in his punishment and a score of attorneys volunteered their services as his counsel. Among these was Frank P. Iams, Esq., a cousin of the young man, who was engaged in practice at the Pittsburgh bar.

Within twenty-four hours the Iams case became a National cause celebre. It was discussed everywhere from Maine to California. Military authorities waxed warm over it. Legal authorities squabbled over it. Professional publicists were interviewed concerning it.

Editors made it the subject of tremendous publications. Pictures of Iams, hairless, mustacheless and defiant appeared in the illustrated weeklies. The Allegheny County Democrats, happening to have another convention on hand at this time, took the matter up in a political way, and as it happened that Colonel Streator was a well-known and popular Democratic club man, "confusion worse confounded" followed the endeavors of the workingmen in the convention to secure the passage of resolutions excoriating the "brutal and inhuman" conduct of Iams' superior officers.

The preponderance of sentiment was everywhere against the officers. In inflicting a punishment so severe and unusual on a thoughtless youth, whose insubordinate conduct might have been otherwise chastised with equally good effect, and especially in denying him even a drumhead court-martial, they were held guilty of tyrannically exceeding their authority.

Iams carried out his threat of prosecuting the officers and indictments were subsequently found against General Snowden, Colonel Hawkins, Colonel Streator and Surgeon Neff. The trial, however, resulted in the acquittal of the defendants, the judge and jury being satisfied that whether the punishment inflicted on Iams fitted the crime or not, military law permitted its infliction.

After two weeks' service, the military force at Homestead was reduced to three regiments of infantry, a troop of cavalry and a battery, the retiring regiments breaking camp on July 27 and 28. Those that remained were booked for a term of service which was to end only when the Carnegie mills were in undisturbed operation, an order of things which was not to be finally established until more than two months later.

Mr. Frick's illness did not stay the hand of Secretary Lovejoy, who continued to lodge informations against the participants in the affair of July 6. Pinkerton detectives and a few newspaper reporters who had been placed on the Carnegie Company's pay-roll furnished the secretary with the necessary testimony. The first of the workmen to be held without bail was Sylvester Critchlow, a daring fellow who had done active duty as a sharpshooter in the mill-yard. Samuel Stewart, a clerk in the mill, swore that he had seen Critchlow fire at the men in the barges, and on this evidence the defendant was held liable for first degree murder and committed to jail pending his trial.

The workmen, for their part, proceeded to carry out their threat of prosecuting the Carnegie officials. Hugh Ross, himself under bail on the charge of murder, made information before Alderman King, of the South Side, Pittsburgh, charging that H. C. Frick, F. T. F. Lovejoy, Robert Pinkerton, William Pinkerton, J. A. Potter, G. A. Corey, J. G. A. Leishman, H. M. Curry, C. W. Bedell, Fred. Primer, W. H. Burt, Nevin McConnell, James Dovey, John Cooper and Fred. W. Hinde "did kill and murder John E. Morris, George W. Rutter, Silas Wain and Joseph Sotak." The arrest of Chairman Frick was to be deferred until he should recover from his wounds. As the Homestead men, for the most part, had been arrested at such times and under such circumstances as compelled them to spend a night in jail, before securing a hearing in court on their application for admission to bail, Ross made special efforts to have the Carnegie officials subjected to the same experience. This manœuvre, however, was defeated. Messrs. Leishman, Lovejoy and Curry, hearing that warrants were out for their arrest, went at once, in company with a formidable array of counsel, to the criminal court where Judge Ewing was sitting, and asked for admission to bail. Judge Ewing said he could not hear the applications until the defendants had appeared before an alderman and either waived examination or been held for court; but with a degree of courtesy probably never before exhibited in a criminal court he dispatched a messenger for Alderman King, permitted the defendants to waive a hearing and then went on to consider the question of bail. This was speedily disposed of. The Judge declined to consider the representations made by the attorneys of the Amalgamated Association as to the entrance into the case of the elements of first degree murder. There was no equality, he held, between the Carnegie officials and the men in the conflict of July 6. The former were exercising their rights; the latter were rioters and trespassers, whom it was proper to oppose with arms. He, therefore, would admit the defendants to bail in the sum of $10,000.

Messrs. Dovey and McConnell, superintendents of departments in the Homestead mill, were arrested later and passed the night in jail. Superintendent Potter and G. A. Corey evaded the constables and presented themselves before Judge Ewing next morning. Alderman King was again brought into court and the four men were released on bail in the same manner as Messrs. Leishman, Lovejoy and Curry. The court ordered also that Mr. Frick give $10,000 bail and that it be taken at his home.

Judge Ewing was roundly denounced by the workingmen for the lengths to which he had gone to spare the Carnegie officials the humiliation which O'Donnell and his companions had been forced to endure. "Evidently," they said, "the judges are prejudiced against us and are bent upon discriminating in favor of our rich and influential antagonists."

Another disquieting circumstance was the verdict arrived at by the coroner's jury in pursuance of the inquest held on the men who were killed in the Homestead conflict. In each instance the killing was charged to an "unlawful assembly," and the jury recommended that "said unlawful assembly be certified to the September sessions of the grand jury."

On August 2, Attorney Brennen presented to court a petition signed by sixty-seven steelworkers of Pittsburgh and Homestead, praying that a license be issued for the establishment of a voluntary trade tribunal, in conformity with an act passed in 1883, to arbitrate differences in the steel trade. The acceptance of the terms of the act must be mutual between employers and employed. Mr. Brennen entertained hopes that the Carnegie firm, seeing the willingness of the men to submit to arbitration, might yet consent to this mode of adjustment. Secretary Lovejoy settled the matter definitely in the negative by the brief statement that "The question of recognizing the Amalgamated Association cannot be arbitrated."

This was the last overture made to the firm on behalf of the workmen. The latter, however, continued to keep up their courage and maintained an almost unbroken front, desertions being few and far between. Mass meetings were held frequently and at these it was invariably agreed that the mill could not be operated with non-union men, that sooner or later the firm must yield to the pressure of circumstances and that, with the help received from the treasury of the Amalgamated Association and from other sources, the locked-out men could hold out, if necessary, for a year or more.

There were some who foresaw the collapse of these castles in the air, but, rather than place themselves under the suspicion of lukewarmness, they held their peace.

CHAPTER XIII.

Berkman and Iams

Frick's Assailant Railroaded to the Penitentiary – The Iams Trial – Hanging by the Thumbs Approved by a Jury – The Mills Filling Up – Sermons to Non-Unionists – Strikers Go Through the Plant – The Relief Fund – Gompers Arrives and Makes an Incendiary Speech – Pittsburgh and Mahoning Manufacturers Capitulate – William and Robert Pinkerton on the Defensive

ANARCHIST Berkman received but a short shrift. He was placed on trial before Judge McClung on September 19, appearing at the bar without an attorney and without witnesses. His demeanor was cool and indifferent. District Attorney Burleigh presented six indictments, charging the prisoner with offenses ranging from felonious assault and battery down to carrying concealed weapons.

Mr. Frick was placed on the stand and told the story of the shooting, and the blood-stained garments worn by the Carnegie chairman at the time of the attack were put in evidence. Corroborative testimony was furnished by Mr. Leishman and others.

The prosecution having closed its case, Berkman asked to be permitted to testify in his own behalf. "I am not guilty," he said. "I have a defense." A German interpreter was assigned to assist him. The Anarchist's defense consisted of an inflammatory address covering forty pages of closely written foolscap. As rendered into English by the interpreter, sentence by sentence, it was almost unintelligible. It proved, however, to be a review of the "blood-stained register of America," beginning with the "murder" of John Brown, cropping out again in the execution of the Chicago Anarchists who were concerned in the Haymarket massacre, and culminating in the descent of the Pinkertons upon Homestead. The statement bristled with denunciations of capitalists as tyrants who oppress the workingmen, and the inference which it finally conveyed was that Berkman considered himself a martyr of the Chicago type whose exploits would serve to rivet the world's attention on the enormity of the Carnegie Company's crimes against labor. Strangely enough, it seemed not to dawn upon the mind of this young fanatic that he and his fellow preachers of anarchy could not possibly be mistaken as representing the element that toils for a subsistence, and that a martyr to the cause of beer, blood and idleness must necessarily be an object of contempt in the estimation alike of the classes and the masses.

Judge McClung confined his charge to a few perfunctory remarks and the jury, without leaving the box, rendered a verdict of guilty on all six indictments. Sentence was then imposed on each indictment, the penalties aggregating 22 years imprisonment, twenty-one in the penitentiary and one in the work-house.

The trial occupied just four hours, attesting that in this case at all events, justice ceased to travel with a leaden heel.

The Iams episode was not so easily disposed of. Prosecutions were entered against Colonels Hawkins and Streator and Surgeon Grim on the charge of aggravated assault and battery, and the defendants were held under bonds for trial at the September term of court. The trial began on October 27, before Judge W. D. Porter, and continued for ten days. The proceedings were watched with special interest by military men, owing to the issue involved between civil and military law and the prospective establishment of important precedents. Colonel J. R. Braddocks, of the Pittsburgh bar, State Senator Edward E. Robbins, of Greensburg, and J. M. Braden and Albert Sprowls, of Washington, Pa., appeared as counsel for the defendants; and Frank P. Iams, a cousin of the disgraced militiaman, and John D. Watson, both of the Pittsburgh bar, conducted the prosecution.

The defense opened the proceedings by demanding that the indictment be quashed on the ground that the punishment of Iams was commensurate with the enormity of his offense against good order and military discipline, that it conformed to military law, and that jurisdiction in the case properly belonged to a military tribunal. After some intricate controversy, Judge Porter denied the plea and ordered the trial to go on.

Attorney Watson opened for the prosecution, giving a graphic recital of the torture to which the prosecutor, Iams, had been subjected. Iams himself was placed on the stand and related his experiences, a fair conception of which may be formed from the following extract from his testimony:

"When I was first tied up I asked for a chew of tobacco. Soon I began to grow tired; my legs cramped; my head ached; my eyes felt as if they were being pushed from their sockets; the muscles in the back of my neck seemed as if they were being torn from the base of the skull. I suffered terrible agony. It seemed to me that I had been suspended in the air a week before being cut down. I saw Colonel Streator there. When I was cut down I was in a dazed condition; everything seemed blurred. The first thing I remember was when some one gave me some ammonia. I was lying on the ground; had a terrible headache. Some one gave me some whiskey. I remained in the guard tent all night."

Attorney Braden endeavored to show on cross-examination that Iams had prearranged to misbehave in order to secure his discharge; that he had swallowed tobacco in order to make him sick while under punishment, and that he had admitted to a friend that the punishment did not hurt him much, but the lawyer failed to shake the young man's testimony. Before leaving the stand, Iams stated that if the defendants were convicted it was his intention to bring a civil suit against them for damages.

Several members of Iams' company were called as witnesses and corroborated the details of the young man's story. John H. Gladden, an hospital nurse of the Tenth regiment, testified that he had seen Iams trussed up by the thumbs, but watched the proceedings only for ten minutes, as the sight sickened him. Private Kent swore that Colonel Streator, on hearing it rumored that Iams meant to shoot him on sight, said that he (Iams) "had better keep out of the way, or he would shoot him if he could hit at forty yards."

Senator Robbins, whose interest in the case was sharpened by the fact that he was quartermaster-general of the Tenth regiment, opened for the defense. He denied that the case had the elements of an assault, questioned the severity of Iams' punishment, and warned the jury that the conviction of the defendants must be followed by the destruction of discipline in the National Guard. Deputy Sheriff Gray was brought forward by the prosecution to tell the story of the lock-out at Homestead, the exhaustion of the Sheriff's powers and the fate of the Pinkertons, so as to make clear the gravity of the conditions with which the military had to cope. The defense interposed a statement to the effect that the Governor had exceeded his authority in ordering out the troops, but this was overruled by the court.

Colonel Streator's story did not materially conflict with that told by Iams. Colonel Hawkins testified that on the afternoon when Mr. Frick was attacked he received two communications by signal, one stating that Frick had been shot by a striker, the other that Frick was dead and that extraordinary precautions were necessary. He had thereupon ordered all commanders to be on the alert, to double their camp guards and to send out three extra patrols. While the camp was in this state Iams had proposed three cheers for the man who shot Frick. When Colonel Streator reported the affair, witness had said to him: "Colonel, you know your duty as a soldier." The situation was critical and prompt measures were needed.

Robert W. Herbert, a newspaper reporter, said that Iams had told him of his intention to shoot Streator, and that in speaking of General Snowden, the young man had said, "I will get even with that four-eyed – on the hill." One of the hospital nurses swore that Iams had made himself sick with tobacco, and another that Iams had been drinking and wanted to be confined in the guard-house. Surgeon Grimm illustrated for the court's edification the knot, known as a close-hitch, by which the rope was fastened on Iams' thumbs, and described it as not being a severe kind of knot. Veterans of the civil war bore witness that the punishment suffered by Iams was in accordance with the usages of war and that it was mild considering the gravity of the offense.

An amusing lapsus linguae marked the evidence of Colonel Norman M. Smith, of the Eighteenth regiment. Here was the colloquy:

Attorney Iams. – "You have hung men up by the thumbs in your regiment?"

Colonel Smith. – "I have never had occasion, but if I had, I would cheerfully do so – I mean, I would do so. I wish to strike out the word 'cheerfully.' That was a slip." Whereupon an expansive smile illumined every face in the court-room.

The closing speech for the defense, delivered by Senator Robbins, was a fine forensic effort, bearing in the main on the absence of malice and the necessity of extraordinary punishment when soldiers mutiny in the field. Attorney Iams, in closing for the prosecution, compared his relative to the Savior on the cross, and averred that the only reason why the youth was not permitted to die while suspended by the thumbs was because the defendants "wanted him alive next morning in order that they could shave his head and drum him out of camp." Judge Porter charged squarely in favor of the defense, telling the jury that, "If Colonel Streator, in punishing Iams, was actuated only by upright motives in an effort as an officer to maintain order, he should not be punished."

It took the jury twenty-one hours to arrive at a verdict. A few stood out for conviction on the charge of simple assault and battery, which had been ruled out by the court, and, to test the matter, an appeal was made to Judge Porter for instructions. The judge replied with a scathing rebuke. When the jurors next appeared they returned a verdict of acquittal, but directed that, in the aggravated assault and battery case, the costs be divided between Colonel Hawkins and Streator.

While there was much sympathy for Iams, this finding was commonly regarded as a just one, in view of the supreme necessity of maintaining discipline in the military service and the wide latitude permitted by military usage in punishing delinquencies in the field. It is safe to say, however, that the harsh penalties imposed upon Iams will never again be resorted to in the National Guard of Pennsylvania without reference to a court-martial.

While these events were in progress, the mills at Homestead were filling up rapidly with non-union men. The Tide kept up her daily trips, and the sight of brawny fellows with bundles, duly ticketed for "Fort Frick," became so common on the Monongahela wharf at Pittsburgh that people ceased to marvel at it and to curse and scoff at the blacksheep. By the first of August there were over 800 men at work, their board and lodging being provided within the mill enclosure. Regimental chaplains were secured to hold regular services on Sunday, with the assistance of a band which took the place of a choir. Chaplain Hays, of the Fifteenth regiment, preached the first sermon. His theme was "Saul of Tarsus," with which eminent biblical character he managed to connect Private Iams and the anarchists, denouncing both the latter as liberally as he praised the scriptural hero. After this sermon, the more illiterate of the non-unionists were firmly convinced that Saul of Tarsus was the leading non-unionist of his time besides being a regular martinet in military matters.

Superintendent Potter now claimed openly that the strike was broken, that about forty of the firm's old employees had quietly returned to work and that a majority of the rest were ready and anxious to return. The advisory board met these assertions with an emphatic denial, crediting Mr. Potter with making a "gigantic bluff," as Vice Chairman Thomas Crawford put it, for the purpose of discouraging the strikers.2 Mr. Potter, however, invited the advisory board to send a committee to inspect the mill and verify his representations. The invitation was accepted and four skilled steelworkers went through the plant and narrowly inspected the work going on in every department. At a mass meeting of the strikers, held on August 2, this committee reported that, while it was true that a large number of men were at work in the mill, little actual progress was being made, and that the consequent loss to the firm was heavy enough to justify the most sanguine expectations on the side of the Amalgamated Association. The chief officers of the Association were present when the report was made, and delivered speeches full of enthusiasm and confidence. Every man at the meeting pledged himself to stay out to the bitter end.