Lackawanna Steel Company
[4] Developed in Scotland in 1828, the hot blast preheats air before it is pumped through molten iron, substantially lowering fuel needs.
[6] The most likely successful first use of the hot-blast technique in the U.S. was carried out in 1835 at Oxford Furnace in Warren County, New Jersey, by William Henry, Seldon Scranton's father-in-law.
[6] Benjamin Loder, president of the New York and Erie Railroad; industrialist William E. Dodge; and eight others invested $90,000 in the firm.
[7] Shipments of rail track were hauled overland through the snow to the New York and Erie Railroad, arriving just in time to save the line from bankruptcy.
[12] In 1853, the firm reorganized, doubling its capital investment and adopting the name Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company.
[12] The first week of January 1871, a nascent mine workers union, the Workingmen's Benevolent Association, went on strike for higher wages.
[12][19] While escorting a body of miners from the mines one afternoon, he was attacked by a mob and in the ensuing fight, two of the rioting strikers were killed.
[24] Although a majority of the steel workers appeared ready to accept the tentative agreement, a mob of 6,000 men formed on August 1 in downtown Scranton and resolved to reject it.
[24] A few minutes later, the county sheriff and a hastily assembled posse arrived and fired shots over the heads of the crowd to try to disperse the mob.
[24] Mayor McKune, although badly injured, helped restore order around 2 p.m.[24] The following day, 3,000 federal troops arrived from Pittsburgh and entered the city.
[15][26] At the turn of the century, the Lackawanna Iron and Steel Company began to consider moving out of the Scranton area.
The company's economic condition was deteriorating; in September 1899, Andrew Carnegie wrote, "My view is that sooner or later Harrisburg, Sparrows Point, and Scranton will cease to make rails, like Bethlehem.
[28] The group explored several nearby sites on March 24, and that same day chose an undeveloped shoreline area on Lake Erie in what was then the western part of the Town of West Seneca.
[28] Albright began purchasing land on April 1, 1899, and by the end of the month had obtained nearly all the required property for the extremely low price of $1.1 million.
[3] The company's property in Scranton was sold to the Lackawanna and Wyoming Valley Railroad, which scrapped all the remaining equipment and tore down all the buildings except for the oldest stone blast furnaces.
[3] The large influx of workers from the company's old Pennsylvania site swelled the Town's population, leading to the creation of extensive tracts of extremely substandard housing and severe public health problems (including outbreaks of cholera, typhoid and influenza).
[3] To save the town, West Senecans proposed separating the area around the steel mill as its own incorporated municipality.
[41][45] Lackawanna Steel officials, fearing that immigrant union members would become violent, asked for and received protection from the New York State Police.
[49] Late in the afternoon, during the shift change, a crowd of 7,000 pro-union strikers and supporters began throwing rocks, bottles and debris at the company's guards, and city police were called in to break up the disturbance.
[49] At 7:20 p.m., a crowd of 3,000 unionists and their supporters intercepted a group of 200 strikebreakers leaving the plant, and chased them through the surrounding neighborhood before police intervened and stopped them.
[50] "[F]rantic signals to cease firing" by the Lackawanna Police, who were in the middle of the crowd trying to restore order, "were disregarded by the plant guards".
[52] Lackawanna Steel, which had employed only 72 African Americans prior to the strike, hired several thousand black strikebreakers and brought them to the city to maintain operations.
[55] Toomey lost re-election in the city's regularly scheduled mayoral race on November 4, 1919, and John H. Gibbons, a Socialist, was elected.
[57] Rumors that the company might sell itself emerged in mid-October 1921, but in fact the firm went on a buying spree and snapped up a pig iron manufacturer and a steel bridge maker.
[58] Over the next several years, the Lackawanna plant continued to expand physically, its works now rambling over more than two miles (3 km) of shoreline and spilling over into the nearby town of Hamburg.
[62] The chief executives and creditors of these firms visited one another's plants in order to appraise them and assess the financial viability of each company.
[36] The company built a new facility in Burns Harbor, Indiana, and stopped investing in new steel production methods at Lackawanna.
[87][88] The fire, which began at about 7 AM after a lightbulb exploded over flammable materials, was fought by more than 100 firefighters from Lackawanna, Buffalo, and Hamburg.
[91] While this made the city of Lackawanna eligible for federal assistance money to redevelop part of the site, a cooperative agreement had not been signed as of May 2006.
[7][93] In addition to the original stone furnaces near Scranton, a number of the company's other construction projects are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
