The Homestead Strike and the Weakening of the First US National Paramilitary System

While the Homestead Strike of 1892 was a terrible blow to organized labor and to the Homestead workers themselves, Homestead workers managed to incapacitate the nation's premier paramilitary force, the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Allan Pinkerton had built his Pinkertons into a powerful force through a combination of institution-building and a very deliberate discursive initiative. His many books of detective stories had chipped away at popular perceptions of detectives as immoral and themselves criminal, reimagining them as principled and bold agents of a benevolent capitalism. They had also reimagined workers, when they challenged owners, as criminal, foreign, and dangerous. Homestead workers were in a position to challenge Pinkerton because they had carefully and deliberately built the community of Homestead, Pennsylvania around the idea of the solid, civic-minded, republican workingman. When the crisis came, not only union leaders but local religious leaders, elected officials, and newspaper editors rallied around the strikers and challenged the legitimacy of the use of the Pinkertons. These local framings were picked up by a national press, ultimately leading to the discrediting of the Pinkerton agency, a series of laws prohibiting their use as strike-breakers, and the end of the Pinkerton strike-breaking service. While other private and public strike-breaking services quickly filled the void left by the Pinkertons, it is important to recognize this victory as a part of the constant series of efforts by workers throughout US history to weaken and constrain oppressive institutions.