1919 General Steel Strike
1919-20 nationwide steelworkers' strike in the United States
The Great Steel Strike of 1919 was an attempt by the American Federation of Labor to organize United States Steel, the leading company in the American steel industry. The AFL formed a coalition of 24 unions, all of which had grown rapidly during World War I. In the lead role would be the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers (AA) with a five-member steering committee. The strike began on September 22, 1919, and finally collapsed on January 8, 1920. The opposition led by Elbert H. Gary, president of U.S. Steel had triumphed.
Background
The AA had formed in 1876. It was a union of skilled steel and ironworkers which was deeply committed to craft unionism. However, technological advances had slashed the number of skilled workers in both industries.
In 1892, the AA had lost a bitter strike at the Carnegie Steel Company's steel mill in Homestead, Pennsylvania. The Homestead strike, which culminated with a day-long gun battle on July 6 that left 10 dead and dozens wounded, led to a wave of de-unionization. From a high of more than 24,000 members in 1892, union membership had sunk to less than 8,000 by 1900.
“1919 General Steel Strike” enters the record as 1919-20 nationwide steelworkers' strike in the United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what General, Steel and Strike can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7605761. The Library of Congress control number is sh85127846. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1919, 1920, 1876 and 1892.
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This entry incorporates text from “1919 General Steel Strike” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.