THE MISTAKE AT HOMESTEAD, PA.—JULY, 1892.
CHAPTER VIII. SURRENDER AT HOMESTEAD.—ORGANIZED LABOR DEFEATED.
It is fitting to follow the chapter composed so largely of what Mr. Walker has written concerning the condition of affairs at Homestead, with an account of the surrender. Carnegie, the owner of castles and coaches in Scotland, the many times millionaire, and Frick, his representative, living in luxury and attempted social superiority, have vanquished the forces of organized labor. They have won the battle.
Some victories are more disastrous than defeats, and this victory, at Homestead, of capital, wealth, sham aristocracy, against the people, will teach the people to seek other methods by which their wrongs may be righted. It will show them, coming as it does just after the exhibition of the great power of the people, November 8, 1892, that their plan of action must be changed; that the effective missile to be used against the autocratic aristocrat is not the bullet, but the missive called the “ballot.”
The plan of campaign of the poor “Common People” must be changed. Their defeat at Homestead will be the precursor of a long line of victories yet to be recorded. Organizations of voters will spring into existence, instead of Knights of Labor. The nation will give birth (as it ever has, when necessity has demanded) to men of organizing abilities. The Carnegies and Fricks will find the ballot of organized voters more effective in preventing encroachment on the rights of the people than the bullets of the strikers at Homestead hurled at the hirelings of Pinkerton. As Mr. Walker so ably says, in a conflict of physical force, the people—that is, the poor—are superior; when, according to law, they deposit their ballots, they will enforce the election of the chosen of the majority in spite of all the private armies of the Carnegies and Fricks. And, should that occasion arise, the militia and General Snowden will be found acting with the people in defending the rights of the people. There will be no insolence and arrogance then upon the part of the commander of the militia; for, after an election wherein the people have legally chosen their representatives and legislators, not one militiaman would obey the orders of the “well-bred” gentleman of Philadelphia, if such orders were contrary to the will of the majority as expressed at a legal election.