<P> In the end, only four workers were ever tried on the actual charges filed on July 18 . Three AA members were found innocent of all charges . Hugh Dempsey, the leader of the local Knights of Labor District Assembly, was found guilty of conspiring to poison nonunion workers at the plant--despite the state's star witness recanting his testimony on the stand . Dempsey served a seven - year prison term . In February 1893, Knox and the union agreed to drop the charges filed against one another, and no further prosecutions emerged from the events at Homestead . </P> <P> The striking AA affiliate in Beaver Falls gave in the same day as the Homestead lodge . The AA affiliate at Union Mills held out until August 14, 1893 . But by then the union had only 53 members . The union had been broken; the company had been operating the plant at full capacity for almost a year, since September 1892 . </P> <P> The Homestead strike broke the AA as a force in the American labor movement . Many employers refused to sign contracts with their AA unions while the strike lasted . A deepening in 1889 of the Long Depression led most steel companies to seek wage decreases similar to those imposed at Homestead . </P> <P> An organizing drive at the Homestead plant in 1896 was crushed by Frick . In May 1899, 300 Homestead workers actually formed an AA lodge, but Frick ordered the Homestead works shut down and the unionization effort collapsed . </P>

How were the homestead and pullman strikes a defeat for the unions