The strike which began in Homestead soon spread to other mills.  The Carnegie mills at 29th and 33d Streets, Pittsburgh, went on strike.  The strike at Homestead was finally declared off on November 20, and most of the men went back to their old positions as non-union men.  The treasury of the union was depleted, winter was coming, and it was finally decided to consider the battle lost.

The defeat meant not only the loss by the union of the Homestead plant but the elimination of unionism in most of the mills in the Pittsburgh region.  Where the great Carnegie Company led, the others had to follow.  The power of the union was henceforth broken and the labor movement learned the lesson that even its strongest organization was unable to withstand an onslaught by the modern corporation.  The Homestead strike stirred the labor movement as few other single events.  It had its political reverberation, since it drove home to the workers that an industry protected by high tariff will not necessarily be a haven to organized labor, notwithstanding that the union had actively assisted the iron and steel manufacturers in securing the high protection granted by the McKinley tariff bill of 1890.  Many of the votes which would otherwise have gone to the Republican candidate for President went in 1892 to Grover Cleveland, who ran on an anti-protective tariff issue.  It is not unlikely that the latter’s victory was materially advanced by the disillusionment brought on by the Homestead defeat.

In the summer of 1893 occurred the financial panic.  The panic and the ensuing crisis furnished a conclusive test of the strength and stability of the American labor movement.  Gompers in his presidential report at the convention of 1899, following the long depression, said:  “It is noteworthy, that while in every previous industrial crisis the trade unions were literally mowed down and swept out of existence, the unions now in existence have manifested, not only the power of resistance, but of stability and permanency,” and he assigned as the most prominent cause the system of high dues and benefits which had come into vogue in a large number of trade unions.  He said:  “Beyond doubt the superficial motive of continued membership in unions organized upon this basis was the monetary benefits the members were entitled to; but be that as it may, the results are the same, that is, membership is maintained, the organization remains intact during dull periods of industry, and is prepared to take advantage of the first sign of an industrial revival.”  Gompers may have overstated the power of resistance of the unions, but their holding power upon the membership cannot be disputed.  The aggregate membership of all unions affiliated with the Federation remained near the mark of 275,000 throughout the period of depression from 1893 to 1897.  At last the labor movement had become stabilized.