True, it was a factor in checking the rapid
rate of expansion of unionism, but it scarcely compelled a retrogression
from ground already conquered. It is enough to point out that the unions
managed to prevent wage reductions in the organized trades
notwithstanding the unemployment and distress of 1907-1908. On the whole
trade unionism held its own against employers in strictly competitive
industry. Different, however, was the outcome in industries in which the
number of employers had been reduced by monopolistic or
semi-monopolistic mergers.
The steel industry is the outstanding instance.[68] The disastrous
Homestead strike of 1892[69] had eliminated unionism from the steel
plants of Pittsburgh. However, the Carnegie Steel Company was only a
highly efficient and powerful corporation, not yet a "trust." The panic
of 1893 dealt another blow to the Amalgamated Association of Iron &
Steel Workers. The steel mills of Alleghany County, outside Pittsburgh,
were all put upon a non-union basis before 1900. In Pittsburgh, the iron
mills, too, became non-union between 1890 and 1900. There remained to
the organization only the iron mills west of Pittsburgh, the large steel
mills of Illinois, and a large proportion of the sheet, tin, and iron
hoop mills of the country.
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