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Andrew Carnegie constructed a profitable steel mill at Braddock, Pennsylvania in the mid-1870s. The profits made by the Edgar Thomson Steel Works were sufficiently great enough to permit Mr. Carnegie and a number of his associates to purchase other nearby steel mills. In 1892, he formed the 'Carnegie Steel Company' to manage their business. The new office building was fifteen stories high, and to display the use of steel in its construction, it was left uncovered for a full year. Located in Pittsburgh, the building stood for 57 years, 1895—1952. Demolition of the Carnegie Building commenced on March 1, 1952.
Eight steel mills were in the Carnegie Steel Company when it was sold to the United States Steel Company in 1901. U. S. Steel was a conglomerate with subsidiary companies. The name of the subsidiary company was changed to the Carnegie-Illinois Steel Company in 1936.

Contents

Local competition

Year 1900

Year 2005

See also

External links

Local competition

The presence of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio rivers provided a way to transport the heavy materials associated with the steel-making industry. Each plant was located close to or alongside a river.
The seed of the company which became its strongest competitor was sown in 1853. Jones, Lauth and Company established puddling furnaces and rolling mills along the Monongahela at a location a couple of miles (roughly four kilometers) away from Pittsburgh. Bernard Lauth invented and patented cold rolling of iron in 1859. In the same year, James Laughlin constructed Laughlin and Company directly across the river from the Jones, Lauth and Company. Over time, the two enterprises became united under the name J&L Steel and installed their first two Bessemer converters for the production of steel in 1886.
J&L Steel became the most important competitor to the Carnegie Steel Company and U. S. Steel in the vicinity of Pittsburgh. In 1905 it began the construction of a new steel mill along the Ohio River twenty miles (32 km) downriver from Pittsburgh at Aliquippa. In 1908, it constructed a new 12-story office building in Pittsburgh.
J & L Steel announced numerous expansions of its operations, including a $250,000,000 expansion for 1955-58. In 1968, Ling-Temco-Vought, Inc. of Texas, offered to buy sixty-three percent of J&L Steel, marking the beginning of the end for "big steel" in the Pittsburgh region.

Year 1900

★ Braddock, Pennsylvania, 15,654 population in 1900, the site of the J. Edgar Thomson Works. The first Carnegie free public library built in America is in Braddock.

★ Homestead, Pennsylvania, 12,554 population in 1900, the site of the Homestead Works. A massive plant acquired in 1883, it has been razed. It had at one time employed 30,000 men.

★ Mingo Junction, Ohio, 2,954 population in 1900. The steel mill was the only manufacturing plant in Mingo Junction in 1900.

★ Duquesne, Pennsylvania, Duquesne Works. It was a modest, but new, plant called Duquesne Steel Company when it was acquired in 1889.

Year 2005

Changes in the way in which steel is produced had already appeared before the Carnegie Steel Company was sold in 1901. Steel manufacturers had begun to abandon the Bessemer converters and install open-hearth furnaces. Open-hearth furnaces were widely employed until the 1970s when the basic oxygen furnace, electric arc furnace and continuous casting made them obsolete. Currently, employment is extraordinarily low at the remaining plants which have been a part of the Carnegie Steel Company since 1900, though in Braddock the J. Edgar Thomson Works is still active, producing hot iron that is shipped up the river to the Irvin Works at Dravosburg to be finished into steel.

See also

★ List of possible monopolies

External links

★ Old steel mill at Mingo Junction, Ohio