History of the steel industry (1850–1970)

The air blast burned the carbon and silicon out of the pig iron, releasing heat and causing the temperature of the molten metal to rise.

Experience quickly proved steel had much greater strength and durability and could handle the increasingly heavy and faster engines and cars.

[4] Britain led the world's Industrial Revolution with its early commitment to coal mining, steam power, textile mills, machinery, railways, and shipbuilding.

Britain's demand for iron and steel, combined with ample capital and energetic entrepreneurs, made it the world leader in the first half of the 19th century.

Abé (1996) explores the record of iron and steel firms in Victorian England by analyzing Bolckow Vaughan & Company.

[6] Blair (1997) explores the history of the British Steel industry since the Second World War to evaluate the impact of government intervention in a market economy.

But by then twenty years of political manipulation had left companies such as the British Steel Corporation with serious problems: a complacency with existing equipment, plants operating under capacity (low efficiency), poor quality assets, outdated technology, government price controls, higher coal and oil costs, lack of funds for capital improvement, and increasing world market competition.

The first commercial scale production of steel in Australia was by William Sandford Limited at the Eskbank Ironworks at Lithgow, New South Wales, in 1901.

Between 1928 and 1932, the operations at Lithgow were transferred, under the management of Cecil Hoskins, to a new plant at Port Kembla, still the site of most of Australia's steel production today.

The Minister for Public Works, Arthur Hill Griffith, had consistently advocated for the greater industrialization of Newcastle, then, under William Holman, personally negotiated the establishment of a steelworks with G. D. Delprat of BHP.

[11] The discovery of Iron Knob and Iron Monarch near the western shore of the Spencer Gulf in South Australia combined with the development by the BHP metallurgist, Archibald Drummond Carmichael, of a technique for 'separating zinc sulphides from the accompanying earth and rock' led BHP 'to implement the startlingly simple and cheap process for liberating vast amounts of valuable metals out of sulphide ores, including huge heaps of tailings and slimes up to' 40 ft (12 m) high.

From 1880 to World War I, the industry of the Ruhr area consisted of numerous enterprises, each working on a separate level of production.

[14][15] Many diverse, large-scale family firms such as Krupp's reorganized in order to adapt to the changing conditions and meet the economic depression of the 1870s, which reduced the earnings in the German iron and steel industry.

Germany became Europe's leading steel-producing nation in the late 19th century, thanks in large part to the protection from American and British competition afforded by tariffs and cartels.

[20] It represented the "Americanization" of the German steel industry because its internal structure, management methods, use of technology, and emphasis on mass production.

[25] 20th century growth was not robust, due more to traditional, social and economic attitudes than to inherent geographic, population, or resource factors.

[34] This explosive American growth rested on solid technological foundations and the continuous rapid expansion of urban infrastructures, office buildings, factories, railroads, bridges and other sectors that increasingly demanded steel.

This iron ore was shipped through the Great Lakes to ports such as Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Erie and Buffalo for shipment by rail to the steel mills.

Few Native Americans wanted to work in the mills, but immigrants from Britain and Germany (and later from Eastern Europe) arrived in great numbers.

[39] In Alabama, industrialization was generating a ravenous appetite for the state's coal and iron ore. Production was booming, and unions were attempting to organize unincarcerated miners.

Convicts provided an ideal captive work force: cheap, usually docile, unable to organize and available when unincarcerated laborers went on strike.

Lauder devised several new systems for the Carnegie Steel Company including the process for washing and coking dross from coal mines, which resulted in a significant increase in scale, profits, and enterprise value.

In 1888, he bought the rival Homestead Steel Works, which included an extensive plant served by tributary coal and iron fields, a 425-mile (685 km) long railway, and a line of lake steamships.

Carnegie, through Keystone, supplied the steel for and owned shares in the landmark Eads Bridge project across the Mississippi River in St. Louis, Missouri (completed 1874).

Seeking labor peace in order to avoid strikes, Bethlehem like the other majors agreed to large wage and benefits increases that kept its costs high.

At the grassroots however, women of the steel auxiliaries, workers on the picket line, and middle-class liberals from across Chicago sought to transform the strike into something larger than a showdown over union recognition.

The effort failed, and while the strike was won, the resulting powerful United Steelworkers of America union suppressed grassroots opinions.

[52] Integration was the watchword as the various processes were brought together by large corporations, from mining the iron ore to shipping the finished product to wholesalers.

[60] Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, a believer in socialism, decided that the technological revolution in India needed maximization of steel production.

[62] Communist party Chairman Mao Zedong disdained the cities and put his faith in the Chinese peasantry for a Great Leap Forward.