Talk:Homestead strike/Archive 1

Coroner's list of those killed
The Coroner's list of the killed published in the New York Times (7/7/1892) claims that at least 11 deaths were official notifications recieved by the Coroner: "J.W. Kline, Pinkerton detective, of Chicago; Joseph Sotak, a striker of Homestead; Peter Ferris, a laborer at the Homestead plant; Silas Wain of Homestead, who was watching the battle from the mill yard; John E. Morris, emplyed in the steel works at Homestead; Thomas Weldon of Homestead; Edward Connors, a Pinkerton detective of New York; Boritz Markowisky of Homestead; Peter Heise of Homestead; Robert Foster of Homestead; William Johnson of Homestead."

The article says that the Homestead strike was a lockout, but IIRC, the workers occupied the factories. This would explain why there was a fight with the Pinkerton guards. As it stands, the article doesn't indicate how the Pinkerton guards got into a fight with the worker. AdamRetchless 20:43, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

To clarify these points as recounted by Arthur Burgoyne in "The Homestead Strike of 1892" published 1893

The Coroner's list quoted by Arthur Burgoyne has ten names, a few different than the NYT list. For example the Pinkerton deaths are listed as J.W Kline, Edward A. R. Speers and Thomas J. Connors in Burgoyne but as J.W. Kline and Edward Connors in NYT. It seems that they combined Speers and Connors name in the NYT article. (The Thomas Connors name is correct I assume since this was the person listed as victim in the murder trials following the strike)

The Homestead residents listed as killed were listed by Burgoyne as the same as NYT minus the names of Boritz Markowisky, Peter Heise, Robert Foster and William Johnston, and with the addition of the names of Henry Streigel and George W. Rutter.

As for strike vs. lockout Burgoyne tells it as a lockout, however when the barges with the Pinkertons on then approached the Works the workers tore down the fences and occupied the landing area to prevent the landing. A shot was fired as the Pinkertons prepared to disembark (unknown from which side) which broke out into widespread firing by both sides. JeffB 12:34, 1 Dec 2005 (UTC)

Importance Rating on LabourProject
I'd rate this strike as High-Level, not Mid-Level. The Homestead Strike, along with the Haymarket Riot and Pullman Strike, is one of the seminal labor strikes in American history. These three incidents broke the back of the American labor movement (in my opinion) for nearly four decades. The strike is still talked about today for the excessive violence it engendered. Better, the article is in excellent shape and could—with a little work—rise to GA status. High-Level, I'd argue.

changes to dates?
Hi -- the dates keep getting slightly modified (a day this way or other) by anonymous editors, who are most likely accurate, but are there any regular editors who can verify the latest changes? --lquilter 16:47, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

NPOV
I think there's quite a bit of NPOV in this article. Examples: referring to strikebreakers in the derogatory "scabs"; describing non-unionists as rabid, while describing unionists as "polite." It's a good article, but has too many of these little jabs.TheCommodore7 19:06, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I would agree. Flowery language added to weight the situation ought to be removed. ThorsMitersaw (still not sure how to date these things: March 25, 2008)
 * I think it's all fixed up now. Beeblbrox (talk) 19:00, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Watts Riots which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 04:13, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Pullman Strike which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 06:00, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Carnegie Steel 40 years later
I identified two ahistorical comments in the document. One said, "Carnegie Steel remained nonunion for the next 40 years. " I eliminated this because Carnegie Steel was not in existence for 40 years after the strike, rendering this sentence illogical on its face. My deletion was reverted without explanation. When I deleted it again, again with an explanation regarding the impossibility of the timeline, it was reverted again without comment. I have since gone back to the source material, believing that a historian of Brody's skill would not have actually made such a statement or provide support for it. After checking the cited section, I found no support for the twice deleted sentence in the Brody text. So I once again deleted it.

I would appreciate that if someone reverts it once again to at least explain their grounds for doing so. Thanks--DocGov (talk) 19:15, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Death claims by User:208.102.58.221
User:208.102.58.221 made two additions to the infobox, one about William Pinkerton's claims about the number of dead (made in congressional testimony) and another claiming "contemporary news sources" reporting about the same. First, neither citation should be in the infobox. These claims should be made in the text of the article, and properly cited with inline citations there. The infobox should not be the place where debate about the number of dead occurs. Second, neither claim was cited. Merely asserting "testimony before Congress" does not prove it occurred. If there are "contemporary newspaper" accounts/reports, these should be cited. Otherwise, the claims violate both WP:CITE and WP:ORIGINAL. Third, there is good reason for readers to wonder about the bias in William Pinkerton's claims about the the number of dead. There is even good reason for readers to wonder about the bias of contemporary newspaper sources (most of which, at the time, were not neutral and strongly backed the employers.) There are varying claims about the number of dead, some made by biased individuals (such as union members/supporters, or employers/Pinkerton agents). The claims made by these biased sources may be properly included in the text of the article, but it is the duty of Wikipedia contributors to point out that there is widespread disagreement about the number of dead, who died, and how they died. (There are, in addition, modern sources which are much more neutral in their assessment of the number of dead. These should be included as well, and probably given more weight than the biased sources of the day.) Adding uncited claims from clearly biases sources to the infobox, without discussion, is not good Wikipedia editing practice. - Tim1965 (talk) 15:50, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

==Answer== William Pinkertons claims of Pinkerton fatalities can be found in Congressional Record: "Investigation of the Employment of Pinkerton Detectives in Connection with The Labor Troubles at Homestead PA, 52nd Congress, 1st Session/House of Representatives/Misc Doc no. 335/Washington DC Printing Office 1892" .pp.191-192: Which is online at https://books.google.com/books?id=yywJ3Lbov8QC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Pinkerton+Report+on+the+1892+Homestead+strike&hl=en&sa=X&ei=eyxXVfa8KILCggSDqoGYDg&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=%20Conners&f=false

Casuality lists of Pinkertons at the Homestead Strike can be found online by typing "Pinkertons" or "Homestead Strike" at LOC website for time period 07/01/1892 to 09/31/1892 http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/#tab=tab_advanced_search — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.102.58.221 (talk) 16:14, 16 June 2015 (UTC)


 * That's terrific. Then you should add this information to the body of the article, where appropriate, and include an inline citation per WP:CITE. Because there is controversy over the number of deaths, you should be explicit about who says what, and note in the body of the article that there is a dispute about the number of deaths. (Be aware:  Newspaper reports about this event are notoriously unreliable. In part, that is because yellow journalism was common. In part, it is because newspapers often relied at the time on third- and fourth-hand information. And, in part, it is because nearly all newspapers were blatantly biased in favor of the employer.  William Pinkerton's claims, in particular, are horribly biased.) - Tim1965 (talk) 02:44, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Where are the rankings located?
The text in the lead paragraph claims that the Homestead massacre ranks third in US labor dispute history, behind the Ludlow massacre and Blair Mountain. However, the source of this statement is not cited, and it leaves one wondering how such a ranking is possible, what the criteria might be and who could possibly be an authority to make such a determination. Jeff in CA (talk) 04:37, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Why is this part of the "Armed Conflicts involving the United States Armed Forces" template?
Unless I missed something reading through the page, there was no deployment of any federal military, so how exactly is this a conflict involving the US military? Spartan198 (talk) 11:17, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

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Requested move 30 November 2017

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: moved per consensus. — usernamekiran (talk)  17:28, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

Homestead Strike → Homestead strike – Case normalize. Sources don't support treatment as proper name. Dicklyon (talk) 01:55, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

More added after Randy Kryn's comment below and several responses to him. Dicklyon (talk) 02:10, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Evidence
 * Book usage – mostly lowercase in anything that looks like sentence context.
 * Books about it – Most capped uses are headings, titles, and references to these title-cased books about it.
 * "old n-gram" that Randy presents below, showing aggregated results without anything to help separate out sentence context, showing case is mixed, which should be enough per MOS:CAPS to show the WP style would be to default to lowercase.
 * n-gram with "the" in front to establish typical sentence context, eliminating many (but not all) titles and headings, showing lowercase dominates.
 * n-gram with other lowercase words in front establishes that in sentence context caps are very minority usage.


 * Survey & discussion


 * Support as nom based on evidence in sources noted above, per WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS, since WP uses sentence case based on evidence from usage in sentence context. Dicklyon (talk) 01:59, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose per this old n-gram which shows that until 2008 the upper-case was common and used as a proper noun. There is no way to know, using the n-grams which were for some reason discontinued in 2008, if any trend has continued, so keeping it at its present stable name seem reasonable. This is an event I know little about, but many sources see it as a properly named proper noun, and it is arguably the most familiar name. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:11, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
 * If you'll have a look at the more precise evidence I linked above, I'm sure you'll see the flaw in your reasoning. Dicklyon (talk) 07:19, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Randy, please present an analysis supporting your implied proposition that Dicklyon's ngram result is somehow suboptimal. Tony   (talk)  07:59, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Support—obviously. Tony   (talk)  07:59, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Support. The evidence from those who know how N-grams actually work (i.e., that you have to exclude Title Case Headings) clearly proves lowercase is dominant. Here it is in simpler form, and constrained to modern-ish sources: .  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  11:49, 2 December 2017 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

It was a lockout, not a strike.
"Strike" is misleading. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 23.25.95.35 (talk) 18:37, 28 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Sources overwhelmingly refer to it as the Homestead strike. The article as written makes it clear that the action was initiated as a result of a lockout. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 22:36, 28 February 2019 (UTC)