war, and that
the attorney of the Carnegie Company had commanded the local sheriff to
deputize a man named Gray, who was to meet the mercenaries and make all
of them deputy sheriffs. This plan to make the detectives "legal"
assassins did not carry, and the result was that a band of paid thugs,
thieves, and murderers invaded Homestead and precipitated a bloody
conflict. This was, of course, infamous, and, compared with its
magnificent anarchy, Berkman's assault was child-like in its simplicity.
Yet the enthusiastic and idealistic Berkman spent seventeen years in
prison and is still abhorred; while no one responsible for the murder of
twelve workingmen and the wounding of twenty others, either among the
mercenaries or their employers, has yet been apprehended or convicted.
With such equality of justice do we treat these agents of the two
anarchies!

However, if Berkman spent seventeen years in prison, the other
anarchists were mildly rebuked by the Committee of Investigation
appointed by the Senate. "Your committee is of the opinion," runs the
report, "that the employment of the private armed guards at Homestead
was unnecessary. There is no evidence to show that the slightest damage
was done, or attempted to be done, to property on the part of the
strikers...."[18] "It was claimed by the Pinkerton agency that in all
cases they require that their men shall be sworn in as deputy sheriffs,
but it is a significant circumstance that in the only strike your
committee made inquiry concerning--that at Homestead--the fact was
admitted on all hands that the armed men supplied by the Pinkertons were
not so sworn, and that as private citizens acting under the direction of
such of their own men as were in command they fired upon the people of
Homestead, killing and wounding a number."[19] "Every man who testified,
including the proprietors of the detective agencies, admitted that the
workmen are strongly prejudiced against the so-called Pinkertons, and
that their presence at a strike serves to unduly inflame the passions of
the strikers. The prejudice against them arises partly from the fact
that they are frequently placed among workmen, in the disguise of
mechanics, to report alleged conversations to their agencies, which, in
turn, is transmitted to the employers of labor. Your committee is
impressed with the belief that this is an utterly vicious system, and
that it is responsible for much of the ill-feeling and bad blood
displayed