THE STEEL TOWNS
Pittsburgh, preëminent in steel, the home of the company with which
for many years Andrew Carnegie set the pace for the rest of the world
to follow in steel making; Pittsburgh, her skies blackened with the
smoke of hundreds of furnaces that produce more than one quarter of the
world’s supply of its most necessary metal, naturally comes to mind
when one mentions steel cities--she is easily the greatest of them all.
Situated in the extreme west of the state of Pennsylvania, on the
border of the great coal deposits of that state, with excellent
facilities for getting her ore and coal at comparatively low cost, and
having an unsurpassed location in respect to markets for her finished
products, Pittsburgh is likely to keep for a long time her commanding
position among the steel towns.
And yet Pittsburgh is not among the towns included in the title of this
chapter. She is the world’s steel city. And this is the story of some
of the communities that owe their existence to the United States Steel
Corporation, that have sprung up as a result of the extension of its
manufacturing facilities, and in the building and management of which
the forward-looking influence of the biggest of all businesses has been
reflected.
Among such cities Gary, Indiana, holds the foremost place.
Bearing, appropriately, the name of the head of the Corporation, the
man who more than any other was responsible for its organization,
and beyond peradventure, responsible for its policies, Gary may
be said to represent, so far as a town may, the spirit of the
Corporation--efficiency.
Gary’s history, to the date when this is written, covers only fourteen
years. The site of the city, on the borders of Lake Michigan, in the
northwest corner of Indiana and about twenty-five miles from Chicago,
consisted of sand dunes on which scrub oak and sage brush grew less
than fifteen short years ago. Its inhabitants were wild birds and a few
hardy hunters and fishermen, and on one memorable occasion a cave in
the dunes gave refuge to the car-barn bandits of Chicago until their
surrender was forced by the police. In 1906 the Steel Corporation’s
management decided that another steel plant was needed in the Middle
West, bigger than any then existing, and selected a desolate spot on
the shore of Lake Michigan for its location. Thus was the plant and
city of Gary conceived.
The magnitude of the project and the difficulties which had to be
overcome would have appalled any but so large a corporation. The
proposed steel plant could not be operated successfully unless it had
a town to house its many thousands of employees, and the site of Gary
offered not even the ordinary facilities for town building. It had no
harbor, nothing could grow on its arid soil--these were only two of the
handicaps. But the Corporation set to work to build a city literally
from the ground up, and Gary, with a population of 56,000 to-day, and
rapidly growing, was the result.
The Corporation’s management has always shown its realization of the
fact that “not by bread alone does man live”; that the mere paying of
employees a living wage is not sufficient, and that even the least
educated worker has an aesthetic sense, even though often uncultivated,
that should be developed and pandered to within reasonable limits if
the best good of the worker and the employer is to be achieved. To
make the big Indiana sand dune attractive seemed an impossible task,
but it was accomplished. The Corporation’s engineers apparently took
for their guidance the motto that hangs in the office of the big
company’s chief executive, “It can be done,” and made Gary at least
an attractive, if not a beautiful, residential town. To do this,
nearly two million cubic yards of fertile soil was brought into the
town, superimposed on the sand, and used for the laying out of parks,
boulevards, and lawns. Many thousands of trees were planted on the soil
with gratifying results.
The lack of a harbor was compensated for, and safe haven provided
for the ore boats which had to bring raw material to the proposed
big plant, by the cutting of a harbor slip five thousand feet long,
twenty-two feet deep, and two hundred and fifty feet wide, affording
draft and anchorage for the largest lake steamers afloat, and
terminating in a basin of ample size to permit these vessels to turn
around. In the calm waters of this artificial harbor, protected by
a breakwater, the ore boats are unloaded at the rate of 1,250 tons
an hour, the ore being conveyed from their holds to a storage yard
parallel to the slip until needed to feed the hungry furnaces.
Work on the building of the steel plant and city was started April,
1906. To the Indiana Steel Co., a subsidiary of the Illinois Steel
Co., and especially organized for the purpose, was given the task of
erecting the steel plant, while the Gary Land Co. was organized and put
in charge of the creation of the city.
How gigantic was the task of building Gary may be gathered from its
cost to the Corporation. The construction of the steel plant and the
creation of the town has involved an expenditure of over $100,000,000,
and work is yet to do. Of the fifty-six open-hearth and other steel
furnaces contemplated in the original plan, forty-seven have been
completed so far. The first heat of pig iron was produced on December
21, 1908, and the first steel ingots early the following year.
The Gary plant is probably the largest single steel plant in the
world. It consists of twelve blast furnaces, forty-seven steel
furnaces, a rail mill, billet mill, plate mill, five merchant mills,
slab mills, an axle plant, and a by-product coke plant of ten
batteries, each of seventy ovens. With these are auxiliary shops,
machine shop, roll shop, electric repair shop, boiler shop, blacksmith
shop, etc., and the necessary electrical equipment.
Sixteen gas engines of 2,000 H. P. each, supplemented by four 3,000
H. P. steam engines, are used to operate the blast furnaces. The power
required to run the open-hearth furnaces and steel mills is supplied by
seventeen 3,000 H. P. gas engines, driving an equal number of electric
generators, the gas for these engines and for the blowing engines being
supplied from the blast furnaces. In this way the power required for
the entire plant is supplied by blast furnace by-product gas. Part of
the power generated is transmitted to Buffington, five miles away,
where it is used to run the machinery of the Universal Portland Cement
Works. The rail mill is driven by three electric motors, each of 6,000
H. P.
The annual capacity of the big plant is as follows:
TONS
Pig iron 2,173,200
Coke 3,360,000
Ingots 3,030,000
Billets, blooms and slabs 1,544,600
Sheet bars 104,000
Rails 750,000
Finished steel, including rails 1,997,900
During the construction of the plant, over 10,000,000 cubic yards of
material were excavated and over 1,200,000 cubic yards of concrete
placed. More than 150,000 tons of fabricated steel were used in its
construction. The plant covers an area of 1,250 acres, and a plot of
land of approximately the same size and adjoining the existing plant is
being reserved for possible further extensions.
Gary, the town, was incorporated in June, 1906, only a few months after
the foundations for the first buildings were excavated. At the first
election for town officials, only 33 votes were cast. Seven years
later, in 1913, over 9,000 voters marked the ballots.
When the Steel Corporation decided to build Gary it determined to make
it both a modern and a model city. The town was carefully laid out by
competent engineers and ample provision allowed for growth. It now
covers several square miles. Its principal thoroughfares are Broadway,
100 feet wide, and Fifth Avenue, 80 feet wide. These are paved with
concrete block and the other streets with macadam.
Citizens of New York and other big cities, accustomed to seeing
their important thoroughfares constantly torn up for the laying of
sewers, electric wires, etc., would find a pleasant change from these
conditions in Gary, where it is never necessary to do such work in the
principal streets. All gas and water mains and sewer pipes are laid in
wide alleys between the streets and thus all repairs and improvements
can be carried on without any obstruction to traffic.
Many pretty homes, a number of them owned by steel workers, make
attractive the residential section of the town. The Gary Land Co. has
erected a great number of these houses--1,000 or more--and these are
offered for sale at prices representing approximately the cost of the
land and improvements, with a special discount to plant employees.
The prices of these houses range from $1,500 to $25,000. The company
also offers for rent, at exceedingly nominal rates, houses built for
the most part of concrete and equipped with electricity and all other
modern conveniences. All these dwellings are attractively finished and
each has its plot of green in front.
The visitor to Gary is never allowed to leave the town without seeing
the Y. M. C. A., the finest building in the city, erected at a cost
of $260,000 and the gift to the town of the man whose name it bears.
The building contains a gymnasium, swimming pools, class rooms,
club rooms, dormitories, and so on. Opposite the Y. M. C. A. is the
beautiful Carnegie Library, and not far off, the Federal Building. The
Gary Hospital, built and maintained by the Corporation, is absolutely
modern, both in equipment and management, and bears favorable
comparison with similar institutions in the largest cities.
But the town, Gary, is known first and foremost as the birthplace of
the most modern and efficient educational system. The Gary plan of
training youth, with modifications, has been extensively copied in many
large cities. Unfortunately, after a rather inadequate try-out in New
York City, it was abandoned; apparently, however, chiefly because local
politics made it impossible for those in charge of the work there to
get full results from the Gary methods.
Professor William Wirt, an enthusiast on the training of youth and an
iconoclast so far as old methods are concerned, is at the head of the
Gary school system. In fact, he originated it. When the town officials
and those of the Steel Corporation took up the matter of education,
they went at it in a thorough manner and looked around for the best
school principal to be obtained. Wirt’s plans were approved, he was
chosen for the post, and given a free hand in modeling the entire
system. The Emerson and Frœbel schools were the result.
Wirt proceeded to turn topsy turvy many of the old ideas in education.
He started off with one big advantage over other reformers--he was able
to arrange all details from the beginning, even the building of the
schools, in accordance with his plan, and he worked out a scheme under
which the youth of the town enjoys a vocational training completely
equipping graduates of the school for entering practically any chosen
walk in life.
But Prof. Wirt has done more than this. He has succeeded in making
education attractive for the young people of Gary.
One of Wirt’s pet theories, not one new or exclusively his by any
means, is that play is as essential to the growing boy or girl as
study, and in the schools work and play are so alternated as to double
the number of children which the school buildings would ordinarily
accommodate, one class working while another uses the playgrounds.
Thus, with three school buildings, well over 3,000 children are fully
provided for on full time.
The curriculum includes all the regular school subjects, as well
as many others, including music and a number of sciences. A large
auditorium is devoted to the study of history and geography, which are
combined into one subject and inculcated with the assistance of lantern
slides or moving pictures, visualization of scenes and events being
made use of to attract interest and assist memorization. The same idea
is employed in other studies, the room devoted to natural history, for
instance, being equipped with a wide variety of stuffed animals and
even with small live ones.
The range of vocational subjects taught runs from painting, carpentry,
and iron work to accountancy and architectural draughtsmanship. Each
subject is taught in a room with the proper equipment, there being a
carpenter shop, paint shop, foundry, draughting room, etc., and each
trade or profession is taught, not theoretically, but by practice.
Teachers for these subjects are not chosen from college faculties,
but are skilled workers in the different lines, and the students or
apprentices to each trade make articles used in the school itself. This
serves not only to reduce the cost of maintenance of the school but to
give the pupils the interest in their work that comes from seeing the
product of their skill in actual use.
Thus, the youthful carpenters make tables, chairs, desks, etc., that
can bear comparison with high-grade factory products; the painters keep
the schoolrooms and buildings spick and span; the draughtsmen plan
additions or improvements; the accountants keep the school books. In
every case a concrete end is served to the benefit of the school and
the pupil.
Nor is the female of the species forgotten vocationally. A kitchen and
lunch room are run by the girls. Here they prepare palatable dishes
and sell them to their fellow-students. Thus the young housewife
gains actual experience in the most essential department of good
housekeeping. Laundry work, sewing, and other feminine industries are
similarly taught, besides stenography, bookkeeping, etc.
In that part of the school buildings and grounds devoted to recreation
are to be found swimming pools, one for each sex, tennis courts,
baseball diamonds, swings, slides, and other aids to enjoyment loved by
and suitable to the young of all ages and both sexes. Instruction in
play is just as thorough as in study. The recreation teachers devote
their entire time to this work.
An excellent illustration of how the Gary educational system appeals to
boys and girls is afforded by the story told the writer by a foreman
in the mills of the American Sheet & Tin Plate Co., which has a large
plant on the outskirts of the town. His story, told as nearly as
possible in his own words, is as follows:
About two years ago, my nephew, left an orphan by the death of his
mother, came from Pittsburgh to my care. I had been told that the
boy was incorrigible, and would pay no attention to his studies;
in fact, that he flatly refused to go to school. And it proved the
information was correct. Arriving at Gary he would not even make a
pretense at studying, and I practically had to use force to induce
him to visit Prof. Wirt with me.
Arriving at the school the boy explained to Mr. Wirt that he did
not consider himself in need of an education as his only ambition
was to become a house painter. The Professor thereupon suggested
that he come to school and learn how to paint, assuring him that
he would not be asked to do anything he objected to. Naturally the
boy, who was never so happy as when pottering around with a paint
brush, accepted the suggestion.
The first day he was given a pot of paint and a brush and put under
the care of a painter. In a short time he was fairly adept at
laying on color. Then, one day, Mr. Wirt called him in and informed
him that some of the classrooms were to be redecorated in several
colors and that, in view of his progress, he would be put in charge
of the job provided he could make a satisfactory estimate of its
cost.
That was a stumper. The boy confessed his inability to estimate,
and the necessity for a knowledge of mathematics being thus forced
upon him, took up the study enthusiastically. Gradually he was
brought to appreciate the advantage of other studies.
To-day that boy would miss his breakfast rather than be late for
school. It would take a padlock and chain to keep him away from his
studies. And so far as I can find out, he is taking pretty nearly
the whole curriculum.
Prof. Wirt has been strongly supported in his methods by the Steel
Corporation officials.
Gary is growing rapidly. Two Corporation subsidiaries, besides the
Indiana Steel Co., already have plants there. These are the American
Sheet & Tin Plate Co. and the American Bridge Co. The American
Locomotive and American Car & Foundry companies both big railway
equipment manufacturers, not connected with the Steel Corporation, are
said to be planning the erection of plants in that vicinity. The Gary
Screw & Bolt Co., one of several local enterprises, has a plant for
making bolts, nuts, and screws, and employs 800 men.
No less than six trunk lines, the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern,
Baltimore & Ohio, Wabash, Michigan Central, Pennsylvania, and Nickel
Plate, connect with Gary. Smaller roads entering the town are the Lake
Shore & South Bend Ry.; Gary & Southern; Gary, Valparaiso & Eastern;
and Gary, Hobart & Eastern. The Elgin, Joliet & Eastern, a Steel
Corporation road, has a large freight yard near the steel works.
A village in 1906, Gary is now a city of the second class, having
attained that rank in April, 1915.
[Illustration: Interior of Gary School]
Citizens of Gary have always been ashamed of one thing about their
town. This, appropriately known as the “patch” is a small section
thrusting itself wedge-like into the heart of the city, and being full
of saloons and dives. The site of the patch was not acquired by the
Corporation, because of some question as to validity of title, so the
big company has no power of restriction over its development. Gary men
have long hoped that some means of cleaning up the section would be
found. Prohibition seems to be doing it.
Away up in the northeast corner of Minnesota, on the shore of Lake
Superior, is Morgan Park, another steel city, named after the great
banker who financed the organization of the Steel Corporation. This
town is one of the latest developments and contains many new and
interesting features.
The engineers who laid out Morgan Park were able to use Gary as a model
and to improve on that city in many respects, particularly as the
demands on the new settlement in the matter of population would be much
smaller than was the case at Gary and it was possible to develop the
town along suburban residential lines.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of Morgan Park is the provision
made for children. In no other town in the world are there as many
playgrounds per capita. Each block has its own playground for small
children, provided with swings, slides, sand piles, and so on, and
thus the little ones in every part of the city are able to enjoy the
advantages of outdoor play under the eyes of their parents and without
their having to cross a street.
For older children and for such adults as still keep up personal
interest in athletics there are many places where they may indulge
in tennis and other sports, and these give the workers in the mills
and their families greater and more varied opportunities for physical
recreation than are enjoyed by the inhabitants of most larger and more
pretentious cities.
To the visitor Morgan Park presents an unusually attractive aspect.
The streets are all laid out in curves, beautifully parked, and the
effect of this to the eye is entirely pleasing. Altogether, the
physical aspect of the settlement is more that of the exclusive suburbs
of some big city than what one ordinarily conceives to be a steel town
usually associated with grime and smoke.
Like all the other Steel Corporation developments Morgan Park has a
modern, thoroughly equipped hospital, Y. M. C. A. and other advantages
above those which a city suburb usually boasts.
Morgan Park is really a suburb of Duluth and is part of that
municipality. But while it is under the city government it enjoys
the various advantages mentioned because of the direct influence of
the Corporation which spends a large amount in beautifying the town,
providing playgrounds, etc., and which keeps a corps of trained
workers to promote welfare work of various kinds within its confines.
Just as in Gary which, though a self-governing city, displays in all
its activities the influence of the big corporation. J. P. Morgan,
Jr., paid the total cost of the beautiful and commodious Y. M. C. A.
building.
And throughout the State of Minnesota are a number of small towns
which, in somewhat the same sense, may be classed among the Steel
Corporation towns. That is, although self-governing municipalities
they owe the majority of their improvements, such as hospitals, to the
munificence of the Corporation which employs most of their inhabitants
and sees to it that its employees shall have all possible opportunity
for comfort and social betterment. Hibbing, Coleraine, Eveleth--all
these are, in the true sense, steel towns.
One of the great problems that has faced the Corporation in building
the towns or settlements to house its mill workers has been that
of the bachelor, or the man who has come to this country to work
leaving his family in Europe or elsewhere. A large percentage of steel
workers belong to one or other of these two classes, and it has been
a difficult matter to devise a means of giving these men decent and
respectable living accommodations with as many of the comforts of home
as possible at a price within the means of the worker with his hands.
In different communities different plans have been tried. In Morgan
Park the Corporation erected large boarding houses with some of the
advantages of a club but the success of these has not been as great as
was hoped for.
Ellwood City, near Pittsburgh, where the National Tube Co. has one of
its big seamless tube plants, probably comes nearer to solving this
difficult problem than any other point. Here the Tube Company maintains
what is really a men’s hotel, with excellently kept bedrooms, club
rooms, etc., rented at a cost of a few dollars weekly to the workers.
The hotel, boarding house, or club, call it what you will, is located
but a few steps from the big restaurant maintained by the company. Thus
the boarding-house menu is avoided while the worker, tired out with his
day’s toil, is spared the necessity of a long walk for his evening meal.
Down below the Mason and Dixon Line conditions are considerably
different from what they are in the North. In dealing with the
white worker of Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and other states the
Corporation has sought to avoid anything that smacks of paternalism. It
has simply provided the worker with certain advantages, leaving as much
as possible to him the management of these. But in the South, with a
large percentage of the workers colored, it has been necessary for the
Tennessee Coal & Iron Co., the Corporation’s southern subsidiary, to
manage directly the affairs of the settlements of its workers.
Although among the smallest of the steel towns Westfield, Ala., is
one of the most important from the sociological standpoint. It is a
development devoted exclusively to the negro, its entire population
being black, and it seeks to give the colored worker who resides
there advantages identical with those which his white brother enjoys
elsewhere.
Situated in a little valley, amid rolling hills, the town slopes down
from all sides to a big common, the most noticeable feature of which is
a large and well-kept baseball park. Around this centre are grouped two
excellent schools, community houses, and other buildings used as social
centres, while, divided by winding roads, the well-built houses of the
town straggle in all directions, half-hidden by the southern foliage,
along the sides of the hills.
It need hardly be pointed out that a development of this character
has a broad and important economic aspect. The negro constitutes a
substantial percentage of the American population. In the South he
predominates. But until now the negro has never enjoyed any advantages
or the opportunity for social betterment. In Westfield he has such an
opportunity and while, temporarily, the town must be managed by white
brains it is almost certain that, in time, the negro residents of this
delightful village will learn to manage their own affairs and will
do so. And unless the writer misunderstands the spirit of the Steel
Corporation, it will put every encouragement in their way to that very
end.
Fairfield, Ala., but a short distance from Westfield, has been called
the South’s model industrial city, and also the “city of homes.”
Situated like the negro village, on softly undulating ground amid the
luxurious southern foliage, the site chosen for Fairfield offered its
builders an excellent field for achieving artistic effects in its
layout, and they did not fail to make use of the opportunity. Like
Morgan Park, although almost within a stone’s throw of the steel mills,
it presents the appearance of an exclusive suburb. Its well-paved
streets are shaded by green trees through the leaves of which peep out
the fronts of cosy-looking modern houses. Even the trolley cars running
through its principal streets fail to disturb its peaceful charm.
To describe the many “steel towns” scattered all over the eastern
half of the American continent would be impossible, as it would be
to discuss the problems presented by local conditions in each case.
Broadly speaking, the Corporation, wherever it has built to house its
employees, has sought first of all the comfort and happiness of these
workers and not its own gain. And it has always borne in mind that
comfort and happiness are æsthetic as well as physical, and built
accordingly. In the older steel centres the Corporation, as it has not
built from the ground up, has naturally not been able to introduce into
the communities as many basic improvements as has been possible in the
newer developments. But it has in every case sought to improve existing
conditions, always with the workers’ comfort, health, and happiness as
its goal.
The H. C. Frick Coke Co. has set itself the task of making attractive
the coal-mining towns of the Connellsville region. By the usual
corporation methods of sanitation, of making personal and community
cleanliness easily attainable, it has raised very materially the
standard of living in the coal towns, and the standard of management of
the towns themselves. It has even managed to make many of these towns
attractive--if the reader has ever been through coal-mining regions he
will appreciate the size of this achievement--by encouraging gardening
by means of prizes and so on, and by fostering community pride. It has
set new community standards in the coal districts.
To the late George G. McMurtry must be given much credit for the
movement for bettering conditions in industrial centres. Over 30 years
ago Mr. McMurtry conceived and laid out a model city in the environs
of Pittsburgh for the workers of the American Sheet Steel Co. The town
laid out by the former head of the Sheet Steel Company will stand as a
lasting monument to him, though it does not bear his name--Vandergrift,
Pa., the first of the steel towns.