Carnegie Steel Company
The Carnegie Steel Company was a steel manufacturer founded by Andrew Carnegie , in which the operation of its ironworks in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania in the late 19th century were combined.
founding
Inspired by his mentor, the head of the Western Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad Thomas A. Scott , Carnegie is looking for a way to build a stable railroad bridge, the Keystone Bridge over the Mississippi, which at the time was a strategic obstacle for all east-west US Railroad was and would have given the Pennsylvania Railroad a real competitive advantage over its competitors. Brick arch bridges, state-of-the-art in its time, were out of the question. The only material that made it possible to span the mighty river was steel, which, however, was lengthy and expensive to manufacture due to the technology used up until then. Carnegie's company, in which he was a minority owner, went almost bankrupt over the cost of building the bridge until he discovered the economic importance of the Bessemer pear through a visit to the UK . Carnegie founded his first smelter in the mid-1870s: Named after the President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the profitable Edgar Thomson Steel Works in Braddock , Allegheny County , Pennsylvania. The profits made by the work allowed him and his associates to buy more smelting works in the area. In 1892 the Carnegie Steel Company was formed from it.
At the beginning of his involvement in the steel industry, Carnegie still believed that the railway sector, which had been a key sector in the USA until then, would almost automatically ensure the sales of its growing production, the role of the railway sector changed after the American Civil War. Only with the realization that steel can also be used extremely effectively as a material for house construction, Carnegie opened up a further sales market for the steel industry and allowed American buildings to grow stably and inexpensively through the invention of steel skeletons. The headquarters of the Carnegie Steel Company was in the Carnegie Building, an office building in the center of Pittsburgh. To underline the utility of steel in construction, this building was fifteen stories tall and left without a roof for an entire year. In 1952 the building was demolished.
Steel mills
Carnegie introduced important technological innovations in the 1880s, notably the Siemens-Martin furnace in Homestead in 1886. From then on it was possible to make steel for bridges and armor plates for the US Navy at a higher price for a premium product paid. Therefore, as production increased, the factory progressed to a continuous production process. Carnegie installed vastly improved material handling systems, such as gantry cranes , hoisting machines , compressed air chargers, trolleys. All of this accelerated the process of steel production and enabled the production of a larger volume. As the hut expanded, so did the number of employees, especially unskilled workers. While Carnegie increasingly withdrew from the operational business of his company, he left this to his business partner Henry Clay Frick , a self-made millionaire who had no qualms about exercising his economic power ruthlessly towards suppliers, competitors and employees. In order to further increase profits, Frick lowered workers' wages. Then on strike in 1892, union members, led by the trade union Amalgamated Iron and Steel Workers Union, the plant in Homestead with the unsuccessful Homestead- strike . While Carnegie was in Scotland, the conflict escalated when Frick had 300 scabs brought into the plant and gunmen from the Pinkerton Detective Agency were used. Ten people were killed and 60 others injured before the governor declared Homestead martial law . Carnegie was furious with Frick for disregarding Carnegie's instructions not to use scabs. Carnegie did not criticize Frick in public and had to take personal responsibility for the incidents.
sale
Carnegie and Frick, together with other wealthy Pittsburgh industrialists, founded the exclusive South-Fork fishing & hunting club, which operated its clubhouse on Lake Conemaugh . The club became the private owner of the poorly maintained South Fork Dam , which was also weakened under Frick's influence. During a particularly violent of the regularly occurring floods, the ailing dam broke on May 31, 1899 . The resulting tidal wave claimed 2,209 lives in Johnstown and the South-Fork region, caused damage of US $ 17 million, which took years to clear and generated tremendous media coverage. The club members were held responsible in the media, but never before the courts. The disaster was probably an impetus for Carnegie's social and educational commitment. Carnegie donated a library to the city and in 1899 bought Frick's stake in the company for 15 million US dollars. Two years later, in 1901, Carnegie sold the steel company to US Steel for $ 480 million , about half of which went to Carnegie itself. US Steel was a group with subsidiaries . In 1936 the name of the subsidiary was changed to Carnegie-Illinois Steel Company.
Local competition
In the difference z. For example, to locations in Germany such as Maxhütte, Völklinger Hütte , Westfalenhütte or Hasper Hütte , thanks to the Allegheny River , the Monongahela River and the Ohio River , the US steel industry had inexpensive transport routes for the removal of heavy products and the bulk supply of Raw materials and supplies. All factories were located directly or near one of the rivers mentioned. Such locations are therefore referred to as “wet locations”.
In 1853 Jones, Lauth and Company established a puddling and rolling mill on Monongahela about four kilometers from Pittsburgh. Bernard Lauth invented and patented the cold rolling process in 1859. In the same year, James H. Laughlin established Laughlin and Company on the opposite bank of Jones , Lauth and Company. Over time, the two companies merged under the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company and installed their first two Bessemer pears for steel production in 1886 .
J&L Steel became a major competitor to Carnegie Steel Company and US Steel in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Pennsylvania. In 1905, construction began on a new steelworks on the Ohio River about 20 miles downstream from Pittsburgh in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania . In 1908 a twelve-story office building was constructed in Pittsburgh.
J&L Steel announced countless business expansions between 1955 and 1958, including an investment of $ 250 million. In 1968, Ling-Temco-Vought Inc. (LTV) of Texas offered $ 428.5 million (today's value US $ 2.88 billion) for the acquisition of a 63% stake in J&L Steel. In 1974, LTV increased its stake in J&L Steel to acquire full control of the company, marking the beginning of the end of "Big Steel" in the Pittsburgh region. In December 2001, LTV filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and was acquired by the International Steel Group a few months later .
20th century steel production
There were already changes in the way steel was made before the Carnegie Steel Company was sold for $ 480 million in 1901 (today's value is $ 3.5 billion). Steel manufacturers had begun to give up the Bessemer pear in favor of the Siemens-Martin furnace . Furnaces of this type were widespread until 1970 when they were replaced by the oxygen blowing process , the electric steel process and the continuous casting process . At the same time, employment in the remaining factories, which had been part of the Carnegie Steel Company since 1900, declined exceptionally, although the J. Edgar Thomson Works were still operating, producing slabs that were shipped by ship to the Irwin Works in West Mifflin , there to coils to be processed.
See also
literature
- Krass, Peter: Carnegie , 2002, A Standard School Biography, together with Nasaw and Wall online edition
- Krause, Paul: The Battle for Homestead, 1880-1892: Politics, Culture, and Steel. U. of Pittsburgh Pr., 1992
- Nasaw, David: Andrew Carnegie , 2006, great biography with Krass and Wall
- Misa, Thomas J .: A Nation of Steel: The Making of Modern America, 1865–1925 , 1995, chapter 1 online
- Wall, Joseph: Andrew Carnegie (Oxford University Press, 1970), a standard biography with Nasaw and Krass
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Mellon Square . Archived from the original on March 6, 2008. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved January 22, 2008.
