U.S. Fabricating: Maintaining Our Edge - Minnesota Precision ...

Manufacturing in the United States
certainly has produced some marvelous
accomplishments, but not all of them
are recent.
This article will focus on the emergence
of the Pittsburgh industrial complex,
which for a time, made this great inland
city one of the most prosperous in the
entire nation.
Indeed, as recently as 20 years ago,
Pittsburgh was home to more than
five percent of the nation’s Fortune
500 companies. With industry leaders
in glass, paint, steel, oil, coking coal,
aluminum, electrical equipment, railroad
stock, packaged food, bridges, and many
other industries, Pittsburgh was the
manufacturing marvel of the United States
and the entire world.
A review of how Pittsburgh became
prominent and how it gradually lost its
industrial vigor should be helpful to all
of us as we formulate the policies and
methods necessary to ensure the future
prosperity of our citizens.
Pittsburgh is not a new city by North
American standards. Its natural situation
at the point where the Monongahela and
Allegheny Rivers merge into the Ohio River
made it a natural jumping off point for
travel west of the Appalachian Mountains.
George Washington served as a major at
Fort Pitt at this confluence in 1753. Coal
was mined in the bluff overlooking the city
in 1760. The University of Pittsburgh was
founded in 1787.
Blessed with an abundant supply of local
good coal, minerals, and wood; plus and an
impressive array of navigable rivers, iron
working, glass making, publishing, and boat
building all began before 1800. Pittsburgh’s
industrial foundation grew in intensity with
the War of 1812 when the volume of these
industries increased. The city’s population
reached 10,000 in 1816.
Pittsburgh’s major industries increased
somewhat in parallel and depended upon
one another. By the 1830s, a major 395-mile
canal, river, and portage railway system was
developed to enable the shipment of goods
to and from Philadelphia. The canal system
was built at a cost of $25 million at a time
when a few cents could buy a whole meal.
Though the canal later was superseded by
the railroads, it did anchor Pittsburgh as
a major transportation center west of the
mountains. This attribute helped the city’s
industry and by 1840, shipbuilding, iron,
glass, and several other industries were
growing rapidly as Pittsburgh’s population
grew to 21,000. Population more than
doubled by 1849 to 45,000.
The railroad era began in 1851 and
with it arrived opportunities for even
more industrial business. Railroads needed
rails, bridges, water towers, freight cars,
and a nearly endless supply of spare parts.
The markets for Pittsburgh’s products
grew steadily through the 1850s and then
mushroomed with the outbreak of the
Civil War in 1861 when many armaments
were produced there. Along the way,
the region was host to another major
industrial milestone: Colonel Edwin Drake
drilled the world’s first major oil well in
nearby Titusville, Pennsylvania. Gulf Oil,
a major actor in early oil, opened the
world’s first filling station in Pittsburgh
many years later.
By 1870, Pittsburgh’s population
exceeded 86,000, but perhaps more
importantly, industry was expanding
well beyond the city’s borders. Allegheny
County had more than 262,000 residents.
Pittsburgh’s growth was helped by
the commercialization of a technological
breakthrough in steel making, achieved
in England in the 1850s. The Bessemer
process circulated air through the molten
pig iron to allow for the more efficient and
higher-volume production of higher-grade
steel – a material far more versatile and
valuable than the then available cast iron.
Both Carnegie Steel and the Jones and
Laughlin Steel Corporation were early
adopters of this promising new technology.
Both were two of the largest iron and steel
manufacturers in the United States during
the 19th and 20th centuries. Both operated
on the Monongahela river in facilities
sometimes a few miles apart. But these
two giant producers were not alone.
By 1865, the Pittsburgh area was producing
40 percent of the nation’s iron. By 1870,
there were 33 mills in Allegheny County
producing steel. Quite predictably, many