It denounced the Silver Purchase Act as "a cowardly
makeshift" which should be repealed, and it declared in favor of
"the coinage of both gold and silver without discrimination,"
with the provision that "the dollar unit of coinage of both
metals must be of equal intrinsic and exchangeable value." The
Prohibition party in that year came out for the "free and
unlimited coinage of silver and gold." A more significant sign of
the times was the organization of the "People's party," which
held its first convention and nominated the old Greenback leader,
James B. Weaver of Iowa, on a free silver platform.
The campaign was accompanied by labor disturbances of unusual
extent and violence. Shortly after the meeting of the national
conventions, a contest began between the powerful Amalgamated
Association of Steel and Iron Workers, the strongest of the
trade-unions, and the Carnegie Company over a new wage scale
introduced in the Homestead mills. The strike began on June 29,
1892, and local authority at once succumbed to the strikers. In
anticipation of this eventuality, the company had arranged to
have three hundred Pinkerton men act as guards. They arrived in
Pittsburgh during the night of the 5th of July and embarked on
barges which were towed up the river to Homestead. As they
approached, the strikers turned out to meet them, and an
engagement ensued in which men were killed or wounded on both
sides and the Pinkerton men were defeated and driven away.
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