Radicals! (thread 19), Episode 6: Gunboats on the Monongahela: The Bloody Battle of Homestead

Here’s the short version: in summer 1892, Carnegie was in Scotland, Frick built a fortified mill dubbed "Fort Frick," and a standoff between steelworkers and armed Pinkerton agents exploded into deadly violence on the Monongahela River. The clash left lives lost, the militia in town, and the union severely weakened.

Then an anarchist, Alexander Berkman, tried to assassinate Frick, which shocked the nation and shifted sympathy away from the workers. The strike collapsed, Carnegie’s reputation suffered, and the whole episode forced everyone to ask who was truly the radical: the workers demanding a voice, the managers defending property, or the bomber who thought murder would spark revolution.