U.S. Steel

“ With its exports mounting up to the two-million-ton mark annually the Corporation had necessarily either to own or charter a large number of vessels. Ownership, of course, was better in the long run and it was, for a concern like U. S. Steel, with its big steel plants and experienced organization, cheaper to build than to buy the vessels.
The Steel Products Company’s need of a large number of vessels—before the war it owned nine and chartered constantly from thirty to forty—itself assures a steady demand, at least for a time. ”

“ On the contrary, the true purport of the patent was this, and this only: The selection of separate portions of molten metal, pouring the same into a reservoir, mixing such aggregated portions of molten metal thoroughly until it, the commingled metal, became uniform, so that the equalized metal might be used, not alone in the making of steel in a converter, but in any other process of making steel, in a foundry, or in any other mode where a uniform product was desired. ”

“ It had long been an object of manufacturers that steel should be made directly from the molten metal, as it comes from the blast furnaces, without having to pass through the intermediate or cupola process, which involved the casting of the furnace metal into pigs. These, after becoming cold, were assorted, broken up, recharged and remelted in a cupola furnace, and then placed in a converter for conversion into steel. ”

“ It will be observed,
'The primary object of my invention is to provide means for rendering the product of steel works uniform in chemical composition. In practice it is found that metal tapped from different blast furnaces is apt to vary considerably in chemical composition, particularly in silicon and sulphur; and such lack of uniformity is observable in different portions of the same cast, and even in different portions of the same pig. [Here follows table of analyses said to have been made of metal contained in different ladle charges from one cast of a blast furnace.] ”

“ National Tube preferred stockholders29 exchanged their holdings at the rate of $100 for $125 of U. S. Steel preferred, while the junior stockholders received $8.80 in preferred and $125 in common stock of the corporation for each $100 they held.
The Federal Steel Co., second only in size and importance to the Carnegie Steel Co., was chartered late in 1898, as a merger of the Illinois Steel Co., Minnesota Iron Co., Minnesota Steamship Company, Mount Pleasant Coke Company, Lorain Steel Co., Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway Co., and the Johnson Co. of Pennsylvania. ”

“ The surprise is that the manufacturers of steel, having felt the want for so many years, should never have discovered from the multiplicity of patents and of processes introduced into this suit, and well known to the manufacturers of steel, that it was but a step from what they already knew to that which they had spent years in endeavoring to find out. It only remains now for the wisdom which comes after the fact to teach us that Jones discovered nothing, invented nothing, accomplished nothing. ”

“ But every other consideration aside, welfare work had paid in the satisfaction that the management and the stockholders of the great industrial enterprise feel in the knowledge that they have given the man who works with his hands, not in the Corporation alone, but industry generally—for where U. S. Steel leads, others follow—better working conditions, cleaner homes and communities, and better educational facilities for their children. ”

“ In the second patent, the only one necessary to notice, he restates the advantages of the direct process and the difficulties theretofore encountered in its practical operation. 'In the manufacture of steel by the pneumatic process, the converters are charged with molten metal, the product of the blast furnace. This metal is usually cast in the form of pigs, then remelted in the cupola as needed, before being charged into the converter. ”

“ SHERMAN. In regard to the general question I have conversed with a great many railroad men, who have no interest directly or indirectly in the manufacture of steel, and I have not seen one of them who has conversed with me who does not say that it is better for the interest of the railroads and of the people that we should maintain this industry for a while under the peculiar circumstances by which it is surrounded. There is only one Bessemer steel manufactory in the State of Ohio, and that is owned mainly by Mr. ”

“ No other metal plays such an all-important part in modern warfare as does steel. Warships, transports, big and field guns, small arms, shells, gun mounts, and other munitions are made entirely or almost entirely of the metal. And when Germany first threw down her gauntlet to the civilized world the Allies found it necessary to depend to a great extent on American mills for a supply of this vital war metal. And the manufacturers of the United States responded, among them the Steel Corporation. ”

“ One naturally wonders how it is possible to mine and carry these ores to the shipping ports of Duluth, Superior, Two Harbors, Marquette, Ashland, Escanaba, etc., put them aboard ore carrying boats, transport them by steam power to Milwaukee, Chicago, Gary, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburg, Buffalo, and the many other iron centers and convert them into iron and steel at a profit. This, of course, is only possible because of the inventive genius of man. For every operation ingenious machinery has been constructed which has brought the cost of such operations to its lowest terms. ”

“ By 1907 the United States had surpassed Great Britain, Germany, and France combined in the production of pig-iron and steel together, and in the same decade a single great corporation has established its domination over the iron mines and steel manufacture of the United States. It is more than a mere accident that the United States Steel Corporation with its stocks and bonds aggregating $1,400,000,000 was organized at the beginning of the present decade. ”

“ The industries connected with iron and steel making in the United States are conducted in a much larger way than in Great Britain and Germany next in rank. The increasing use of steel by railroads, in highway construction, ship-building, the making of engines and farm machinery, and for large building is causing many persons to wonder how long this progress can continue unhampered. Is there no limit to our high grade ore and to the development of the gigantic enterprises dependent upon coal, iron and steel? ”

“ We still speak of boiler iron, railroad iron, iron ships, etc., but these names are reminiscent, for in the construction of modern boilers and modern ships, steel is used exclusively. In the past decade it is probable that no railroad rails even for the smallest and cheapest of tracks have been made of anything but steel.
The last half of the nineteenth century has been one of triumph of steel manufacture and production in America, and at the present time the United States stands head and shoulders above any other nation in this industry. ”

“ A substitute method for connecting the wire mooring rope to the shackles is to bend the ends of the mooring rope by means of a small vise around a galvanized iron thimble and fasten the end by two bolted clips.
Wire mooring rope.—This is the highest grade of 3⁄4-inch galvanized-steel wire rope, consisting of 6 compound strands, each made of 19 wires, the whole laid around a steel center. Its breaking strength when new is about 18 tons. Its weight per running foot, submerged, is about eight-tenths of a pound. It is used for mooring mines to mushroom anchors. ”

“ The steel manufactories of the United States, which two decades ago were in their infancy, to-day control the markets of the world, dictate either directly or indirectly the prices of iron and steel in all countries, and partly through the richness of their supply of iron ores and coal, partly by the use of laborsaving machinery and skilful, effective means of transportation, have attained a position to not only compete with the older iron and steel-producing countries, but even to profitably export their products to England. ”

“ Clean-up man in the pit was my first job, which I held until I passed to third-helper on the open-hearth. Later I worked in the cast-house, became a member of the stove-gang, and at length achieved the semi-skilled job of hot-blast man on the blast-furnace. I acquired the current Anglo-Hunky language and knew speedily the grind and the camaraderie of American steel-making. In these chapters I have put down what I saw, felt, and thought as a steel-worker in 1919.
Steel is perhaps the basic industry of America. ”

“ It is not surprising that ore can be produced at lower cost in the United States than even in those countries where the most wretched wages are paid. Evidently this one iron field, to say nothing of others already worked, gives a permanence to our steel industry.
Not only did America have the material resources; what is even more important, she had also the men. American industrial history presents few groups more brilliant, more resourceful, and more picturesque than that which, in the early seventies, started to turn these Minnesota ore fields into steel—and into gold. ”

“ Railways were stretching their lines into the golden regions of the West; manufacturers of farm implements were calling for steel to be fashioned into tools to reap the rich crops of the wide prairie lands; inventors were each day evolving some new use for the metal. Was it any wonder then that steel became a world necessity and that the blast furnace became a philosopher’s stone that transmuted dull ore into precious gold? ”

“ THE WAR AND AFTER Never did year dawn so black for American industry as did 1915. The financial world, stunned by Germany’s unexpected attempt at world conquest, could see only the immense economic waste that war is. That the conflict in Europe could have a stimulating effect on American industry seemed unthinkable at that dark period, and industry as a whole seemed shaken to its foundations. Steel, the barometer of trade, naturally reflected this situation sharply. ”

“ How many Americans realize that steel was used even less in 1865 than aluminum is used today? Nearly all the men who have made the American Steel Age—such as Carnegie, Phipps, Frick, and Schwab—are still living and some of them are even now extremely active. Thirty-five years ago steel manufacture was regarded, even in this country, as an almost exclusively British industry. In 1870 the American steel maker was the parvenu of the trade. American railroads purchased their first steel rails in England, and the early American steel makers went to Sheffield for their expert workmen. ”

“ One viewing the continuous activity at the mines, the building up of cities on the ranges, and the tremendous interests represented in the great shipping ports may forget that this is but one end of the gigantic industry which makes the United States the steel-maker for the world. ”

“ In that case United States Steel-the giant of the industry-was allowed to fasten its tentacles tighter on the economy by acquiring the assets of a steel company in the Far West where competition was beginning to develop. ”

“ Finally, in the closing days of the nineties, this competition and stress for control became so great that the steel men and the associated financial interests began to fear that the increased facilities for production would result in flooding the market and in ruining a number of concerns. The rough steel manufacturers began to push into the field of finished products, and the wire, nail, plate, and tube concerns were crowding into the rough steel manufacturing. ”

“ A man with a record for sanity would suddenly lose his balance and cast away the substance of certainty to pursue a vision. The effort to adapt the Bessemer steel process to American conditions was an irresistible road to ruin. That process was producing amazing results in Europe but in this country it was bewitched with perversity and it looked as if the English and German manufacturers would walk away with the steel age. Fortunes were still being swallowed up in snail shaped vessels called converters, not unlike the one Aaron had built at New Damascus twenty-five years before. ”

“ The Allies, calling more and yet more on their man power to fill up the gaps in the fighting line, found it increasingly difficult to meet the ever-growing need for war materials and leaned more and more heavily on our manufacturers. The price of steel, under the enormous buying power from abroad and the increased demand at home, advanced rapidly, nor did this advance let up until the latter part of 1917, when, the United States having at length united her fortunes with England, France, and the other countries defending civilization, prices were fixed by agreement with the Government. ”

“ The frequent and prolonged periods of depression had forced upon steel makers the conviction that some way of combining to prevent their recurrence was desirable, even necessary, if the United States was to keep and increase its lead in the manufacture of the metal most needed by the age. ”

“ There is every reason to believe that the world still needs steel in immense quantities for the myriad uses in which the metal is employed, not only for future expansion but for replacement which should have occurred during the war years. ”

“ This study reviews the controversy as to the origin of the process which, for more than 35 years1 provided the greater part of the steel production of the United States. It concerns four men for whom priority of invention in one or more aspects of the process has been claimed. ”