Where the great Carnegie Company led, the others had to follow.
The power of the union was henceforth broken and the labor movement
learned the lesson that even its strongest organization was unable to
withstand an onslaught by the modern corporation. The Homestead strike
stirred the labor movement as few other single events. It had its
political reverberation, since it drove home to the workers that an
industry protected by high tariff will not necessarily be a haven to
organized labor, notwithstanding that the union had actively assisted
the iron and steel manufacturers in securing the high protection granted
by the McKinley tariff bill of 1890. Many of the votes which would
otherwise have gone to the Republican candidate for President went in
1892 to Grover Cleveland, who ran on an anti-protective tariff issue. It
is not unlikely that the latter's victory was materially advanced by the
disillusionment brought on by the Homestead defeat.
In the summer of 1893 occurred the financial panic. The panic and the
ensuing crisis furnished a conclusive test of the strength and stability
of the American labor movement.
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