Beyond Rust. Allen Dieterich-Ward

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СКАЧАТЬ calls for political reform. If James Parton’s 1868 description of the region as “Hell with the lid taken off” was meant to evoke the technological sublime, its use by muckraker Lincoln Steffens in his 1904 Shame of the Cities reflected the struggles of an “angry and ashamed [community] that has tried to be free and failed.”¹⁵

      The process of industrialization produced a range of social changes embedded in the natural and built infrastructure, but the region’s topography itself presented a host of formidable challenges that raised costs, hindered institution building, and constrained development. Landscape architect and planner Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., observed in 1911 that “no city of equal size in America or perhaps the world, is compelled to adapt its growth to such difficult conditions of high ridges, deep valleys and precipitous slopes.” The ruggedness of the landscape also lent itself to the creation of neighborhoods with strong, often ethnic-based, identities and boundaries. Whether in a new mill town or a more established neighborhood, the spatial layout of housing increasingly reflected the hierarchy of the workplace, with unskilled workers occupying the dirtiest, noisiest, and cheapest housing in the river valleys, followed by skilled workers, foremen, and finally executives in their hillside mansions. As the pace of industrialization accelerated, new types of immigrants, including southern and eastern Europeans, Christian Syrians, and Maronites (Christian Lebanese), as well as smaller numbers of African Americans poured into the cities. Wheeling nearly tripled its 1870 population, peaking at around 62,000 in 1930, while Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) grew from 262,000 to more than 1.3 million during the same period.¹⁶

      In addition to personnel policies that pitted various ethnic groups against one another, industrialists used political tools to more effectively control their workforces beyond the factory gates. From the 1860s to the 1890s, ironworkers and coal miners developed some of the nation’s most powerful labor unions, including the Sons of Vulcan (1858), the Knights of Labor (1869), the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers (1876), and the United Mine Workers (1890). Skilled workers, such as iron puddlers, heaters, and rollers, enjoyed considerable autonomy, and their unions followed a craft model that often broke down along racial and ethnic lines as well as skill level. As Andrew Carnegie, B. F. Jones and the Steel Valley’s other industrialists tightened their control of workplace processes, however, the integration of coal, iron, and steel production in increasingly large mines and mills presented challenges that union organizers were able to overcome only by expanding their notions of solidarity.¹⁷

      The introduction of new technologies, such as the Bessemer converter, lessened the importance of workers whose expertise had been acquired through years of workplace training. Without the need for artisanal labor, during strikes employers were able to introduce new workers, often of different ethnic or racial backgrounds, who were frequently either excluded from or uninterested in joining the existing unions. Even when unionists responded by building broader organizations, solidarity still had its limits for workers who defined their shared interest as often in terms of ethnic or racial prejudices as along class lines. Notwithstanding the Amalgamated’s emphasis on inter-craft solidarity, for example, the organization did not allow blacks to join segregated lodges until 1881, nor did they allow common laborers admittance until 1889. Indeed, it was in the mines and not the mills where labor organizers enjoyed the most success in building a true industrial union; the United Mine Workers organized all underground workers regardless of specialty. Despite the challenges posed by technological change and ethnic prejudice, in 1882 a strike by the Amalgamated Union at the newly built Homestead Works forced the Pittsburgh Bessemer Steel Company to sign a contract with the union. A year later, the bankrupt company sold the mill to Andrew Carnegie, which prompted a decade of simmering labor tension even as production skyrocketed.¹⁸

      The ascendance of the region’s large industrial corporations also resulted in close ties between executives and politicians on the local and state levels. Among the numerous benefits of generous financial support for members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly was the creation of the infamous Coal and Iron Police, which allowed companies to create their own private security forces. In 1888 and 1889, the deputization of hundreds of armed guards allowed Carnegie to introduce replacements and break the union at the Edgar Thomson Works. However, Amalgamated Union workers at Homestead had enough support from local politicians to resist such tactics until 1892. During a final attempt to break the union, on July 5, Henry Frick, Carnegie Steel’s chairman, attempted to land three hundred armed guards from the Pinkerton Detective Agency on the shore of the Monongahela to protect plant access for replacement laborers. Locked-out workers and residents resisted, which resulted in a firefight that ended with bystanders killing several guards after they had surrendered. In the aftermath, the Pennsylvania governor sent in the entire state militia to support management, effectively breaking the strike and eventually the union.¹⁹

      The battle at Homestead quickly became a “quasi-mythical epic,” in the words of one historian, captured for the world by at least 135 journalists that covered the story. Despite attempts by union organizers to halt the violence, most accounts focused on what Reuben Gold Thwaites described as “the attendant horrors [of] the mob.” This negative representation of workers provided the political cover employers needed to finally eliminate organized labor in Pittsburgh’s iron and steel industry. Over the next forty years, company officials and their allies in state and local government systematically rooted out union activity in mills, employed company spies to prevent worker organization, and undermined pro-labor candidates in local government. Anti-union sentiment among employers was especially strong in southwestern Pennsylvania and extended beyond the steel mills, with only one union, a carpenter’s local, remaining intact throughout the entire period. While few statistics are available, one scholar discovered that officials at six Carnegie mills fired at least 700 workers between 1896 and 1910 as a result of company spy reports.²⁰

      A nuanced analysis of manufacturing in the Steel Valley also reveals intra-regional patterns that would later have significant ramifications for metropolitan development. On the one hand, Wheeling iron-makers, too, began vertical integration during the 1880s and adopted Bessemer converters, thereby eliminating some skilled occupations and placing more control over production in the hands of managers. Unable to match their better capitalized rivals in terms of basic steel and with a declining market for cut nails, however, the largest Wheeling firms diversified their operations into the production of pipes, tin plate, and other finished goods. The creation of the American Tin Plate Company in 1898 resulted in the acquisition of the tin milling operations of most of the large companies in Wheeling and Steubenville, with other area mills becoming parts of American Steel and Wire, American Steel Hoop Company, and National Tube Company. The 1901 creation of U.S. Steel from the merger of Carnegie’s empire with Federal Steel, National Steel, and a host of smaller companies marked the high point of this wave of consolidation. The new conglomeration also included eight plants on the Ohio River in and around Wheeling and Steubenville, marking the functional consolidation of operations throughout the entire Steel Valley.²¹

      Because the production of tin plate remained a relatively skilled operation, mill workers in Wheeling and Steubenville remained unionized well after the industrial unions had been crushed in southwestern Pennsylvania. After Homestead, the Amalgamated Union essentially gave up trying to organize basic steel and focused their efforts on the less technologically advanced finishing mills. However, the creation of U.S. Steel resulted in a protracted industry-wide strike, with workers shutting down all eight plants along the Ohio that had been included in the new conglomeration. Strikers had a great deal of public support in local communities, with Mingo Junction, Ohio, Mayor W. J. O’Donnell stating flatly that he was “with the Amalgamated Association men in this fight to the end.” In spite of this support, the strike was in disarray by September as managers hurriedly trained new workers to take the place of skilled workers and the escalation of violence turned public opinion against organizers. In the years following the strike, the number of local union lodges in the Wheeling district fell from eighteen to about six, though this was still relatively more than along the Monongahela and other areas around the country.²²

      The complex relationship between politics, union activity, and СКАЧАТЬ