Around the World with Bethlehem Steel by Sharon Ann Holt

FEATURE Around the World with Bethlehem Steel by Sharon Ann Holt ive blast furnaces still standing at the Bethlehem Steel plant in South Bethlehem cast long shadows over the site and the community. When slag was dumped from the furnaces at night, people living on the surrounding hills thought the flow looked like volcanic lava. At the peak of operations in 1957, the power of those furnaces provided employment directly for 165,000 people and ancillary livelihoods for hundreds of thousands more. As a corporation, though, Bethlehem Steel cast an even larger shadow than Top: Ben Franklin Bridge footwalkF beams during construction, Apr. 1926. its tall furnaces, and the power of its products flowed far beyond the Philadelphia Record Photograph Collection. sightlines of those hills. Above: Charles M. Schwab. From Arundel Shan Holt is the director of programs at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH) at Rutgers Cotter, The Story of Bethlehem Steel University-Camden and has taken a leading role in helping a coalition of Bethlehem citizens’ groups craft a vision (New York, 1916). for the future of the Bethlehem Steel site. November 2006 Pennsylvania LEGACIES 5 Around the World with Bethlehem Steel From its incorporation in 1904, sense, required this kind of global to guess which would be the most Bethlehem Steel Corporation extension. Steel is a manufactured useful, and therefore profitable, dedicated its operations to putting metal, not something that comes final forms for each day’s output. goods in motion. The Bethlehem naturally from the ground like iron or Each aspect of the business Steel Company functioned as the copper; many different kinds, grades, presented opportunities to reach steelmaking enterprise within a hardnesses, and degrees of flexibility around the world. corporation that actually had more can be built into steel by carefully Nineteenth-century invested in shipbuilding. With mixing a stew of specific ingredients. entrepreneurs began making iron in Harlan and Hollingsworth yards in The great 19th-century oil magnate, Bethlehem using the rich nearby Wilmington, Delaware, Union Iron John D. Rockefeller, had taught veins of iron ore and plentiful Works in San Francisco, California, American capitalists to be wary of supplies of fuel (wood and later coal) two shipyards each in New Jersey dependence upon other businesses for for the furnaces. By the time and Maine, and one in Groton, essential ingredients. Far better, in Bethlehem Steel Corporation began Connecticut, the Steel started its Rockefeller’s opinion, simply to own its industrial operations, though, corporate life already as a beast with not just the wells but also the drilling those resources had been almost fully many tentacles. Charles Schwab, the companies, the oil-drum makers, the tapped. In less than a decade, forceful personality behind the railroads, and ultimately even the Schwab acquired iron mines in corporation in its formative and retail stations. In something as Michigan and Minnesota and coal flourishing years, had an endless complicated as steelmaking, the same mines in West Virginia, as well as a appetite for acquisitions, something imperatives applied, and Charles variety of mineral sources in Cuba, he had learned in his youth working Schwab followed Rockfeller’s Chile, Venezuela, Mexico, and for Pittsburgh’s legendary steel man, example in full. Canada. Purchasing the struggling Andrew Carnegie. Whenever prices The technology of steelmaking Pennsylvania Steel Company in 1916 were down, Schwab bought, and in has three basic steps. First, iron ore brought Schwab more Cuban mines, the end the empire of Bethlehem is heated with other selected plus rich coal deposits in central Steel Corporation stretched Pennsylvania. across the globe. Iron ore does not Steelmaking, in a certain move by itself, of course, so Rockefeller’s principle Ferris wheel and its shaft made by required the acquisition of Bethlehem Steel for the World’s rail and shipping concerns to Columbian Exposition, 1895. Bethlehem bring the resources to the Steel Corporation and Bethlehem Ship furnaces in Bethlehem. The Corporation photograph collection, Beaver Shipping Company of Hagley Museum and Library. Cleveland, Ohio, joined the corporation in 1916, its steamships carrying iron ore around the Great Lakes from Minnesota’s Mesaba Range and Michigan’s Gogebic. ingredients in blast furnaces to Starting in 1927, the Calmar produce molten iron. Second, the Steamship lines operated along the molten iron is mixed and heated coasts of North America and in a changing variety of processes through the Panama Canal, to create steel. Finally, the molten supplying Bethlehem’s furnaces steel is cast, shaped, rolled, with an international mix of drilled, or otherwise made into an mineral resources. almost endless array of useful Iron ore, moreover, will not turn forms. Steelmaking was grueling, itself into steel without the labor of hot, dangerous, and unforgiving; thousands of working men and the skill and endurance required women. The long geographic reach helped create dense bonds of of Bethlehem Steel includes the camaraderie on shop floors places, in the United States and throughout the company. abroad, that laborers left behind to Business success in steelmaking try their luck at the plant. The First depended upon having the World War (1914–18) created a expertise and skill to manage all great deal of anxiety among the varied mixtures, to find the Americans about the loyalty of most cost-effective manufacturing immigrant populations, especially and transportation methods, and those whose origins lay in countries 6 Pennsylvania LEGACIES November 2006 Around the World with Bethlehem Steel allied with the Germans. In early paraded through the small village 1918, only a few months after the there. The Bethlehem Steel United States entered the war, Company band was on hand and Bethlehem Steel reported “that we furnished martial music.” have 10,500 foreign-born employees Apparently “it was a joyous in the various departments of the occasion for the men.” The Bethlehem plant alone, there being corporation also introduced its fifty-eight different nationalities weekly readers to Professor Julian represented in all.” But the company Korski Grove, a Polish-born newssheet, Bethlehem Steel, hurried American and political science to say that “over 2500 of these professor from the University of employees have their naturalization California. Professor Grove had papers, and are citizens of the United been engaged by the federal States” while others, they assured government to “take charge of readers, were in the process of Americanization in this city and becoming citizens. In general, they suburbs.” The editors hoped that soothingly asserted, “there is great workers would “render him all the evidence that our foreign-born assistance possible.” To smooth Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, 1934. employees are fast realizing what it the professor on his way, the editors Bethlehem Steel Corporation and Bethlehem Ship would mean if the Hun should win printed his appeal in English, Polish, Corporation photograph collection, Hagley Museum this war.” Hungarian, Slovak, Greek, Spanish, and Library. The same publication in later and Italian. issues promoted the Hungarian- Bethlehem Steel also celebrated liked working to the music of the American Loyalty League, a African American loyalty to the company band. federally sponsored effort to find national cause, but not without Bethlehem Steel Corporation Hungarians and their descendants overwhelming condescension. Black acted like a gargantuan magnet and administer an oath of allegiance men, many of them migrants from drawing people and resources to the to the United States. It is not clear southern states, found jobs at the Lehigh Valley. But as wide as its that Hungarians responded with any Steel, but on the general labor crew geographic reach became in the work alacrity to this appeal. The editors and in the coke works, the dirtiest of producing steel, it is even more of the newssheet hoped that Bethle- and poorest paid aspects of the astonishing to map the places where hem’s Hungarians might lead the business. In May 1918, the Bethlehem’s steel was put to use. It way in showing other immigrants newssheet presented the accidental would be a hard job indeed to find a their duty. death of one member of the place untouched by Bethlehem Steel. Northampton coke works crew, New York City drivers routinely rely James Murray, untinged with any on Bethlehem Steel as they travel the It would be a hard official sorrow, merely as an object George Washington Bridge, the job indeed to find a lesson against laziness and deceit on Williamsburg Bridge, the Queensboro the job. Murray’s death occurred Bridge, the Verrazano Narrows place untouched by when hot coke was dumped in a way Bridge, and the Holland Tunnel. The that sealed an alcove where he had crowds of sports and music fans who Bethlehem Steel. lain down to take a rest, forcing him gather at Madison Square Garden either to suffocate in the alcove or ought to know that the roof gets its Hungarians were not the only climb across the blistering hot coke. strength from Bethlehem Steel. concern, though. Americanization He chose to try to escape and died of Traffic along I-78 rolls on Bethlehem was actively promoted in these years, his burns. The editors could scarcely Steel across the Newark Bay Bridge and Bethlehem Steel supported it have been more callous, mocking-up at Bayonne, headed to and from directly for many immigrant groups pictures of a man sleeping and then Jersey City. Rail traffic heading out and their descendants. On June 15, trying to escape the hot coke and of the mid-Atlantic toward New 1918, the company reported in its then suggesting that “every employee England crosses the Hell Gate newssheet that “several hundred should profit by James Murray’s Bridge, a gorgeous span over the Italians and Spaniards,” railroad costly experience” and warn each East River designed by Austrian- workers who lived in bunkhouses other against sleeping on the job.

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