Steel, p.29
Steel, page 29
neck: the ends of a roll projecting through machinery frames and not touching the steel being pressed
roll: a cylinder used for pressing steel
tapping draining a batch of liquid steel from an open-hearth furnace or a BOF (compare with casting)
A NOTE ON SOURCES
For persons curious about my sources or keen to probe further into the history and technology of iron- and steelmaking, I refer them to the bibliography that follows, where I have placed an asterisk at works that were especially helpful. I also submit the following.
CHAPTERS 1 AND 2 trace the development of iron- and steelmaking from the earliest times to the 1950s. They sketch not only the technology of working with iron and steel but also something of the business of doing so over these centuries and naturally drew on a broad selection of books. Fortunately I was able to work in the Library of Congress, which is copiously stocked.
A small delight was discovering the stapled illustrated paperback by Donald Sayenga titled Ellet and Roebling. It illuminates the careers of two great American iron, steel, and bridge engineers, John A. Roebling and Charles Ellet Jr.
CHAPTER 3 takes up iron mining and iron ore shipping on the Great Lakes. These topics have a rich history all too little known. Of particular help was David Walker’s Iron Frontier: The Discovery and Early Development of Minnesota’s Three Ranges. This marvelous book holds wonderful stories and photographs of the early iron mining and culture northwest of Lake Superior.
CHAPTERS 4, 5, AND 6, which concern blast furnaces, steelmaking furnaces, and rolling mills, respectively, developed mostly from information derived from the persons interviewed and quoted. Supplemental technical information came from the voluminous Making, Shaping and Treating of Steel, published by US Steel Corporation. In hardback, the eighth edition is 1,300 pages long and weighs seven pounds. It is copiously illustrated with photographs, schematics, flow charts, phase diagrams and more, all in black and white. Its section on the history of iron- and steelmaking is thirty pages long and helpful, but the book’s main purpose is explaining to professionals the technology and practice of modern steelmaking; it served as an invaluable aid. I thank US Steel for providing me a free copy of the eighth edition. At the time, individual sections of aggregated chapters of this massive work—for example, covering raw materials or steelmaking furnaces or rolling mills—were available in rugged paperbacks, and these were highly useful on account of being only a fraction of the length of the whole and lighter in weight while not abridging information.
For other technical aspects of the processes described in these chapters, I refer the reader to the bibliography. Of particular use to me were Dell Allen’s Metallurgy in Theory and Practice and Sidney Avner’s Introduction to Physical Metallurgy.
CHAPTER 7 follows the history of the American steel industry over the last sixty years with nods to the global steel industry and more than a heavy tilt to Bethlehem Steel and what was its largest mill at Sparrows Point outside Baltimore. I expand on several books here.
I relied heavily on Mark Reutter’s Making Steel: Sparrows Point and the Rise and Ruin of American Industrial Might. Reutter began reporting in Baltimore in 1970 and during the 1980s concentrated on Bethlehem Steel’s Sparrows Point plant. Likely no book has ever been written about Sparrows Point and its culture better than this rich and thick one. It traces Sparrows Point from its beginnings to its swollen period as the pride of Baltimore and beyond. Reutter’s revelations about women at Sparrows Point and the indomitable Hungarian immigrant Elizabeth Alexander in particular are exquisite, and I lament the fact I could not condense them in my own work. Reutter’s book embraces all aspects of the Sparrows Point story: technology, living quarters, workers, managers, wages, Frederick Wood, Charlie Schwab, Eugene Grace, business history, shipbuilding, pollution, analysis, and ultimate decline. A rich resource indeed.
I also relied heavily on John P. Hoerr’s And the Wolf Finally Came, about the decline of steelmaking in the Monongahela Valley. Hoerr grew up in the Mon Valley and became a journalist specializing in labor issues. And the Wolf Finally Came is his analysis, especially as it affected the Mon Valley and especially concerning labor relations, of missteps leading to the collapse of steelmaking in this region. It is a comprehensive work and rich in insights.
Far shorter than Hoerr’s book at 233 pages but abundant in analysis and insight is the work of Pulitzer Prize–winning John Strohmeyer’s Crisis in Bethlehem. Strohmeyer was editor of the Bethlehem Globe Times from 1956 to 1984 and thus a close observer of Bethlehem Steel. Thoughtful, quotable, and compassionate, Strohmeyer wrote a book that examines the culture and decline of Bethlehem Steel.
Complementing the above three books is Deborah Rudacille’s Roots of Steel: Boom and Bust of an American Mill Town about past and present Dundalk, the community that arose for Bethlehem Steel plant workers when the company town built on Sparrows Point was demolished in stages to make way for more and larger mills. Rudacille interviewed the men and women who made lives out of working in the mills, who signed on out of high school, toiled while raising families and then all too often were dismissed with only a fraction of expected retirement benefits delivered. She also delved deeply into the ethnic, most particularly the African-American, tribulations at Sparrows Point.
For a history of US Steel, Kenneth Warren’s Big Steel: The First Century of the United States Steel Corporation was invaluable; it concentrates on business history. For the rise of Nucor, I am grateful to the company for providing me with Jeffrey Rodengen’s Legend of Nucor Corporation, a corporate history.
Since 1990, the story of the American industry has been increasingly intertwined with that of the global industry. Newspapers, associations, and corporate websites were valuable aids as I researched the worldwide industry and the rise of Arcelor/Mittal, now the largest steelmaker in the world.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chapter 1
Abel, I. W. Collective Bargaining: Labor Relations in Steel, Then and Now. Pittsburgh: Carnegie-Mellon University, 1976.
*Aitchison, Leslie. A History of Metals. New York: Interscience Publishers, 1960.
Ashton, Thomas S. Iron and Steel in the Industrial Revolution. Manchester, England: University Press, 1924.
Beaver, Patrick. The Crystal Palace. London: Hugh Evelyn, 1970.
Bird, Anthony. Paxton’s Palace. London: Cassell, 1976.
Briggs, Asa. Iron Bridge to Crystal Palace. London: Thames & Hudson, 1979.
Brody, David. Steelworkers of America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960.
Byrd, William. “A Progress to the Mines” in Westover Manuscripts. Petersburg, VA: Edmund & Julian Ruffin, 1841.
Considine, Douglas, ed. Van Nostrand’s Scientific Encyclopedia. 6th ed. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1976.
Crystal Palace Exhibition Illustrated Catalogue. New York: Dover Publications, 1970. First published in Art Journal in London, 1851.
DC Comics, Inc. Superman from the Thirties to the Eighties. New York: Crown Publishers, 1983.
*Dennis, William H. Foundations of Iron and Steel Metallurgy. New York: American Elsevier, 1967.
Derge, Gerhard, ed. Basic Open Hearth Steelmaking. New York: Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers, 1964.
*Derry, T. K. and Williams, Trevor I. A Short History of Technology from the Earliest Times to A.D. 1900. New York: Oxford University Press, 1961.
Ewald, Peter P. Fifty Years of X-Ray Diffraction. International Union of Crystallography, 1962.
Eliade, Mircea. The Forge and the Crucible. 2nd ed. Translated by Stephen Corrin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.
Fisher, Douglas A. Steel Serves the Nation. Pittsburgh: US Steel, 1951.
Fitch, John A. Steel Workers. New York: Amo Press, 1969.
Forbes, Robert J. Studies in Ancient Technology. Vols. 8 and 9. Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1964.
Gillispie, Charles C., ed. Dictionary of Scientific Biography. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975.
Gimpel, Jean. The Medieval Machine. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1976.
Goodale, Stephen L. Chronology of Iron and Steel. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh Iron and Steel Foundries, 1920.
Hart, Ivor B. The Great Engineers. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1967.
Herling, John. Right to Challenge: People and Power in the Steelworkers Union. New York: Harper & Row, 1972.
Hughes, Robert. “Art of the Japanese Sword” in Horizon XIX, 2 March 1977, pp. 50–61.
Kranzberg, Melvin, and Carrroll W. Pursell Jr. Technology in Western Civilization. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967.
*McGannon, Harold E., ed. The Making, Shaping and Treating of Steel, 8th and 9th eds. Pittsburgh: US Steel Corporation, 1964, 1971.
Manchester, William. Arms of Krupp, 1587–1968. Boston: Little, Brown, 1968.
*Metallurgy of Iron and Steel. 2nd ed. Pittsburgh: US Steel Corporation, 1959.
Knauth, Percy. Metal Smiths. New York: Time-Life Books, 1974.
Mulholland, James A. A History of Metals in Colonial America. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1981.
Nasaw, David. Andrew Carnegie. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.
Nutt, Merle C. Metallurgy and Plastics for Engineers. Phoenix: Associated Lithographers, 1976.
Partington, James R. Origins and Development of Applied Chemistry. New York: Arno Press, 1975.
Peterson, Walter F. and Weber, C. Edward. An Industrial Heritage: Allis-Chalmers Corporation. Milwaukee: Milwaukee Historical Society, 1978.
Plowden, David. Steel. New York: Viking Press, 1981.
*Rickard, Thomas A. Man and Metals: A History of Mining in Relation to the Development of Civilization. New York: Arno Press, 1974. First published by McGraw-Hill in 1932.
*Robinson, Basil W. Arts of the Japanese Sword. London: Faber & Faber, 1961.
Reebel, Dan, ed. ABC of Iron and Steel. 6th ed. Cleveland: Penton Publishing, 1950.
Ransom, James M. Vanishing Ironworks of the Ramapos: The Story of the Forges, Furnaces, and Mines of the New Jersey-New York Border. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1966.
Saville, J. P. Iron and Steel. Sussex, England: Priority Press, 1976.
*Singer, Charles; E. J. Holmyard; and A. R. Hall, eds. History of Technology, Vol. 1: From Early Times to the Fall of Ancient Empires; Vol. 2: The Mediterranean Civilizations and the Middle Ages c. 700 BC to c. AD 1500; Vol 3: From the Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution c. 1500 to c. 1750; and Vol. 4: The Industrial Revolution c. 1750 to c. 1850. New York: Oxford University Press, 1954, 1956, 1957, 1958.
Smith, Cyril S. “The Discovery of Carbon in Steel” in Technology and Culture. Vol. 5, no 2, Spring 1964. 149–175.
*———. Four Outstanding Researches in Metallurgical History. Baltimore: American Society of Testing and Materials, 1963.
*———. A History of Metallography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960.
———. Sorby Centennial Symposium on the History of Metallography. New York: Gordon & Breach Science Publishers, 1965.
Smith, J. Russell. Story of Iron and Steel. New York: D. Appleton, 1908.
Steel: Pictorial Presentation of a Basic American Industry. Pittsburgh: US Steel Corporation, 1939.
Steelmelting Furnaces, Steel Plant Design Series. 2nd ed. Pittsburgh: US Steel Corporation, 1956.
Stwertka, Eve and Albert. Steel Mill. New York: Franklin Watts, 1978.
*Swank, James M. History of the Manufacture of Iron in All Ages. New York: Burt Franklin, 1965. Originally published in Philadelphia in 1892.
*Tracey, Edward B. New World of Iron and Steel. New York: Dodd Mead, 1971.
Turner, Roland and Steven L. Goulden, eds. Great Engineers and Pioneers in Technology, Vol. 1: From Antiquity through the Industrial Revolution. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981.
Tylecote, R. F. A History of Metallurgy. London: Metals Society, 1976.
United Steelworkers of America. Then and Now: The Road Between: Story of the United Steelworkers of America. 1974.
Walker, Charles R. Steeltown. New York: Russell & Russell, 1970. Originally published by Harper & Row in 1950.
———. Toward the Automatic Factory. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957.
*Wertime, Theodore A. Coming of the Age of Steel. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.
Chapter 2
Allen, Dell K. Metallurgy Theory and Practice. Chicago: American Technical Society, 1969.
*Alpert, Paul. Twentieth Century Economic History of Europe. New York: Henry Schuman, 1951.
*Bernstein, Irving. Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker, 1933–’41. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1970.
Barrett, Donald F. and Louis Schorsch. Steel: Upheaval in a Basic Industry. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing, 1983.
Brecher, Jeremy. Strike! San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1972.
*Casson, Herbert N. Romance of Steel. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1971. First published in 1907 by Barnes.
Clark, Victor S. History of Manufacturers in the United States. 3 vols. New York: Peter Smith, 1949.
*Cole, G. D. H. Introduction to Economic History 1750–1950. London: MacMillan, 1960.
Dempster, Prue. Japan Advances. 2nd ed. London: Methuen & Co., 1969.
*Dennis, W. H. Foundations of Iron and Steel Metallurgy. New York: Elsevier, 1967.
*———. A Hundred Years of Metallurgy. Chicago: Aldine, 1963.
*Fisher, Douglas Alan. Epic of Steel. New York: Harper & Row, 1963
*———. Steel Serves the Nation: The Fifty-Year Story of United States Steel. New York: US Steel, 1951.
*Groner, Alex. American Business and Industry. New York: American Heritage, 1972.
*Hacker, Louis. World of Andrew Carnegie: 1865–1901. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1968.
Hendrick, Burton J. Life of Andrew Carnegie. New York: William Heinemann, 1932.
*Hessen, Robert. Steel Titan: The Life of Charles M. Schwab. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975.
History of Iron and Steelmaking in the United States. New York: Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers, 1961.
*Hogan, William T. Economic History of Iron and Steel in the United States. Boston: D. C. Heath, 1972
Holbrook, Stewart H. Iron Brew: A Century of American Ore and Steel. New York: MacMillan, 1939.
*Hunt, Robert W. “A History of the Bessemer Manufacture in America” in Technology and American Life (ed. Pursell, Carroll W. Jr.). New York: Oxford University Press, 1969.
Hoyt, Edwin P., Jr. House of Morgan. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1966
Keir, Malcolm. Epic of Industry. New York: United States Publishers Association, 1926.
Lida, Ken’ichi. History of Steel in Japan. Nippon Steel Corp. 1974.
*Livesay, Harold C. Andrew Carnegie and the Rise of Big Business. Boston: Little, Brown, 1975.
Manchester, William. Arms of Krupp, 1587–1968. Boston: Little Brown, 1968.
Marcus, Maeva. Truman and the Steel Seizure Case. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977.
May, Earl Chapin. Principio to Wheeling 1715–1945: A Pageant of Iron and Steel. Harper & Bros., 1945.
McConnell, Grant. Steel and the Presidency, 1962. New York: W. W. Norton, 1963.
Miller, Kurt R. and Harry Mauer. A Geography of Manufacturing. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1962.
Mirow, Kurt R. and Harry Mauer. Webs of Power: International Cartels and the World Economy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982.
Nevins, Allan. John D. Rockefeller, a one-volume abridgement by William Greenleaf of Study in Power. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959.
Nate, Grace Lee. Lake Superior. New York: Babbs-Merrill, 1944.
Oliver, John William. History of American Technology. New York: Ronald Press, 1956.
Pounds, Norman J. G., and William N. Park Coal and Steel in Western Europe: The Influences of Resources and Techniques on Production. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1957.
*Robertson, Ross M. History of the American Economy. 2nd ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964.
Sampson, Anthony. Anatomy of Europe. New York: Harper & Row, 1968.
Sayenga, Donald. Ellet and Roebling. York, PA: American Canal and Transportation Center, 1983.
Schnapper, M. B. American Labor: A Pictorial Social History. Washington, DC: Public Affairs, 1972.
Sinclair, Andrew. Corsair: The Life of J. Pierpont Morgan. Boston: Little, Brown, 1981.
*Smith, Cyril S. A History of Metallography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960.
*Temin, Peter. Iron and Steel in Nineteenth-Century America. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964.
Vaizey, John. The History of British Steel. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974.
Walker, Charles R. Steel: The Diary of a Furnace Worker. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1922.
*Wall, Joseph F. Andrew Carnegie. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.
Warl, Norman J. Labor in Modern Industrial Society. New York: D. C. Heath, 1935.
Warne, Colston E. The Steel Strike of 1919. Boston: D. C. Heath, 1963.
*Warren, Kenneth. American Steel Industry, 1850–1970, a Geographical Interpretation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973.
Wheeler, George. Pierpont Morgan and Friends: Anatomy of a Myth. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973.
Williams, Trevor I., ed. A History of Technology, Vol VI: The Twentieth Century c. 1900 to c. 1950, Part I. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.
Wilshire, B., Horner, D., and N. N. Cooke. Technological and Economic Trends in the Steel Industries. Swansea, UK: Pineridge Press, 1983.
Chapter 3
Bowen, Dana T. Lore of the Lakes. Daytona Beach: Dana Thomas Bowen, 1940.
———. Memories of the Lakes. Cleveland: Freshwater Press, 1946.
———. Shipwrecks of the Lakes. Cleveland: Freshwater Press, 1974.
Boyer, Dwight. Great Stories of the Great Lakes. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1966.
———. Ghost Ships of the Great Lakes. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1968.
———. Ships and Men of the Great Lakes. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1977.
