SIA Iron and Steel Special Interest Group
virtual presentation

Wednesday, July 22, 2026, 5:00

The Homestead Strike of 1892 was a violent labor dispute in Homestead, Pennsylvania, where Carnegie Steel Company manager Henry Frick locked out workers following wage disputes, culminating in a deadly battle between strikers and private Pinkerton guards. The strike ended in November 1892 with the sending of Federal troops, crushing the union and significantly weakening organized labor in the steel industry until the 1930s.

It has become a legend, but in reality, it was far from the classic struggle of steel laborers against greedy capitalists as often characterized. Union, in fact, represented only 700 out of 4000 workers. For the managers, it was just as much about control of production as wages. It also had strong undercurrents of Luddite resistance to automation and steel technology. All of this was occurring in a political environment of socialist terrorists, anarchists, Marxists, assassinations, anti-unionism, competition between competing unions, corporate greed, and a divided nation politically.

Speaker Quentin Skrabec holds BS, an MS, and a Ph.D. degrees in metallurgical and manufacturing engineering. He has thirty years of steel management experience, including furnace operations. He has been a manager at National Steel (Weirton), Jessop Steel, Jones and Lauglin, and LTV Steel (Pittsburgh, Chicago, Canton, Cleveland) as well as a joint venture with Sumitomo Steel.

His books on iron and steel include The Pig Iron Aristocracy, Henry Clay Frick: Master of Manufacturing Capitalism, The Metallurgic Age: The Victorian Flowering of Invention and Industrial Science, The Carnegie Boys: The Lieutenants of Andrew Carnegie, and Braddock’s Steelmakers.

He has published two business history encyclopedias for Greenwood (ABC-CLIO), The 100 Most Significant Events in American Business (won National Library Association Best Business Reference in 2015) and The 100 Most Important American Financial Crises.

Join Zoom Meeting

https://zoom.us/j/93484613774…

Meeting ID: 934 8461 3774
Passcode: 879116