In this mood, with suspicions as to the mission of Chairman Frick, but with impregnable confidence in themselves, the men prepared to settle the scale of wages, which was to be agreed upon in the spring of 1892 and to go into effect on July 1.
They sought no advance in wages, but it was a foregone conclusion that, if wages were to be depressed, they would offer implacable resistance.
There was calmness in all quarters at this time. No smoldering embers of dissatisfaction; no long nourished grievances were in existence to precipitate a sudden outbreak.
Mr. Potter, the superintendent of the Homestead mill, calmly discharged his daily round of duties.
Mr. Frick sat in his comfortable office in Pittsburgh, and calmly mapped out a plan of some, as yet, unheralded campaign.
Mr. Carnegie calmly continued to hob-nob with European celebrities and to indulge his penchant for the erection of free libraries.
There was not a cloud the size of a man's hand to mar the serenity of the horizon that bounded the little world of the Carnegie interests.
The gathering of the storm had not yet begun.