Pittsburgh Pennsylvania Steel Industry Background

Pittsburgh Pennsylvania Steel Industry

Background and History of Pittsburgh Steel:

Pittsburgh Pennsylvania developed a strong economy during the nineteenth century, due primarily to its proximity to natural coal deposits suitable for mining and the vast iron ore deposits in the Midwest north of Minnesota. By the end of the Civil War, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company had become the world's largest consumer of industrial steel. Henry Bessemer had developed the process for adding air to molten iron ore in a process and a final product, (Bessemer steel), that bore his name, and Andrew

Carnegie helped build the industry that provided much of the material shipped to the rest of the country as demand for steel for use in the revolutionary new building process made possible by the strength of Pennsylvania steel.

Landmarks like the first skyscrapers built in New York City and historic brides like the Brooklyn Bridge were built with Pennsylvania steel. Before the end of the century, the open hearth process replaced Bessemer's (Nevins & Commager, p.264), and the founding of the Pennsylvania Steel Company in 1901 established Pittsburgh,

Pennsylvania as the world leader in steel manufacture, leading naturally to the growth of Detroit, Michigan as the automobile manufacturing capital of the world soon after the introduction of the modern assembly- line production methods pioneered by Henry Ford.

The immense growth of the U.S. steel production industry originally coincided with the Emancipation Proclamation, providing gainful employment for many of the recently freed American slaves, and for several generations thereafter, for many thousands of European immigrants eager even for the back-breaking work in the Pennsylvania coal mines and steel mills. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the Pennsylvania steel industry continued as one of the most successful modern business ventures and contributed substantially to U.S. arms production instrumental in the Allied victory in World War II (Nevins & Commager, p.440).

Pennsylvania steel also fueled the development of unionized labor in the United

States, eventually also providing the background for some of the earliest conflicts between union labor and corporate interests. In the latter part of the twentieth century, local politics focused more and more on the problems associated with environmental pollution, eventually contributing to the sharp decline of the Pennsylvania steel industry by the end of the century.

Decline of the American Steel Industry in the Late 20th Century:

In the early 1980s, the steel industry was very strong, with its union workers making more money than any other industrial laborers both in the United States and even worldwide. Eventually, wages rose faster than demand for steel, partly as a result of the increasing availability of foreign steel. In retrospect, the industry failed to respond appropriately by lobbying for federal restrictions on imported steel instead of recognizing the need to embrace a newer technology in the form of modern oxygen furnaces as an improvement over the open-hearth furnaces that replaced the Bessemer process almost a century earlier.

Similarly, steel industry leaders like the infamous U.S. Steel Company continued to ignore the reality of decreased quality of North American iron ore; instead of importing higher quality foreign raw material, they invested unwisely in the expensive refinement processes required by the use of lower grade American iron ore.

Management issues and worker relations also contributed to the decline of Pennsylvania steel. Traditionally, the ranks of steel industry management consisted of former steel workers who rose into leadership positions after decades of first-hand experience. In the post-industrial age, industry management followed the general

American big business trend of hiring management candidates whose credentials were academic rather than practical, one unanticipated consequence of which was a fundamental change in relationship between workers and management (Hoerr, p.37).

Whereas earlier generations of steelworkers took personal pride in their work, their product, and their industry, the late 1980s witnessed a fundamental change in that dynamic: steelworkers who used to identify with their profession began to resent the discord between the ranks of workers and management. This attitude culminated in their habit of actually sleeping on the job during the overnight shift, further undermining production in an industry already struggling to compete with foreign manufacturers and to overcome costly management decisions to resist better business planning evident in countries like Japan (Hoerr, p.117).