By noon, the men who were posted behind the ramparts in the yard of the Homestead mill were almost worn out with fatigue and hunger. Most of them had been up all night without tasting food, and the strain upon them had been enough to tax sorely the most robust physique. At 1 o'clock a relief expedition was organized and a squad of men carrying baskets of provisions made their way into the yard and by dodging behind furnace stacks and piles of iron managed to reach their suffering comrades without exposing themselves to the fire of the enemy. Cheers from the throng on the hills behind greeted this successful maneuver. The men on guard, after eating a hasty meal, tired and begrimed as they were, announced their intention of staying at their posts to the end.
From time to time, the Pinkertons waved a flag of truce, but it was not respected any more than was the national flag hoisted on the Little Bill. Sentiment had no place in the calculations of the men who formed the garrison in the mill yard. The Pinkertons had made the attack; they had been warned off and refused to go when they had the chance, and they had fired upon the workmen and taken many lives. Therefore, they need expect no quarter. So the flags of truce were shot down one after another and as the display of these symbols made it necessary for one of the Pinkertons to expose himself in every instance, and exposure invariably meant being wounded, this recourse was soon dropped altogether. The horrors of the position of these men increased every hour. The atmosphere of the barges was stifling. The relentless rays of the July sun beat down upon the roofs of the craft and raised the temperature within beyond the limit of endurance. There was scarcely a breath of air to carry away the noxious exhalations from the lungs of the 300 men within and the fumes of smoke and powder. Bullets, bolts, scrap metal and other missiles struck the frail structures on every side and gave promise of demolishing them piecemeal before sunset. Occasionally a missile found its way through a loophole and brought down one of the guards. It was in this way that Thomas J. Connors, of New York, was killed. Connors was sitting under cover in the outer barge, with his head buried in his hands, when a rifle bullet whizzed through the open doorway of the barge and struck him in the right arm, severing the main artery. He died in a few hours. This man's death is a matter of special interest, since it was afterwards made the basis of indictments for murder lodged against several of the Homestead leaders.
The wounded Pinkertons were waited upon and helped as far as the limited resources of the barges permitted by A. L. Wells, a young student of Bennett Medical College, Chicago. Wells had joined the expedition for the purpose of earning enough money during the vacation months to help him comfortably through his next year's course. He was a stout-hearted fellow and did his best to alleviate the sufferings of the unfortunates around him, many of whom lay groaning in agony on the floor, amid pools of blood. The young man fortunately escaped injury and stuck to his suffering companions to the last, unmindful of his own comfort. Even in that Pinkerton barge there was room for genuine heroism.
Shortly after one o'clock, a council of war was held among the men behind the barricades, and a new plan was agreed upon for the quick destruction of the barges.
Dynamite.
THROWING DYNAMITE BOMBS.
Here was a sure destroyer; one that could be trusted to do the work which the burning raft and the car of fire had failed to do. A supply of stick dynamite was obtained and a dozen of the most reckless men in the yard opened up a bombardment of the barges with the deadly explosive. But somehow the sticks of dynamite proved little more effective than the means previously utilized. Most of them fell wide of the mark and the few which struck the barges did slight damage. Guardsman Wells, in telling the story of the fight afterwards, held that the first stick thrown tore a hole in the side of the barge Iron Mountain as easily as if the barge were made of paper. If so, this was the only instance in which the dynamite was really effective. The workmen, who felt confident that it would be easy to blow the barges to pieces, were greatly disappointed. It looked as if they might keep on firing lead and iron into the vessels forever without wiping out the enemy, while the importance of ending the battle before nightfall was plain to all of them.
About this time, it is said, some of the Pinkertons, unable to endure the agony and suspense any longer, eluded the vigilance of their officers and committed suicide by drowning. Detective Atkinson, of New York City, made this statement in a Pittsburgh newspaper on the day after the battle: "When we saw that preparations were being made to burn the barges, I loaded my revolver and made up my mind to blow out my brains should the boat be set on fire. I am just as positive that not less than a dozen of our men committed suicide during the day as I am that I am standing here. I saw four jump into the water and sink and I have been told that several others made away with themselves in the same way." The proprietors of the Pinkerton agency professed subsequently to have examined their roster and accounted for all the missing men, and that, with one exception, there were no cases of suicide. Atkinson's story, however, was corroborated by others, and is given here as having, at least, a semblance of truth.
The news received over the telegraph wires at the advisory committee's headquarters was not of a character to dampen the ardor of the Homestead defenders or lead them to dread the accounting to which somebody must be held after the score which they had to settle with the Pinkertons would be wiped out in blood. First came the information that the sheriff had thrown up his hands and that the governor declined to call out the militia. Then messages of sympathy and encouragement began pouring in, and, as these multiplied, the conviction impressed itself upon the men that they were fighting not only their own battle, for the salvation of themselves and their families, but the battle of organized labor as a whole, and that the eyes of workingmen all over the continent were upon them. Perhaps this was an extravagant conception, but it was substantially justified by the tone of the telegrams sent in from far and near, proffering aid and bidding the men of Homestead stand to their guns. Even from far-away Texas came the news that artillery would be shipped to Homestead to help the cause of labor. To many rough fellows, heroic in their way and easily misled by circumstances, it appeared more likely than not, that the killing of those two barge-loads of Pinkerton guards was but the first step in a conflict of national extent, which would wind up in the coming of an industrial millennium. Hardly a man among them imagined that the law would seek atonement for the death of Mr. Frick's hired invaders.