Iron Valley Transition and Evolution of Merchant Iron Producers in the Youngstown District 1845-1967

Abstract

The study of the merchant iron industry presents a unique representation of the growth of both the Mahoning Valley and its industrial fortitude into the twentieth century. Known as the Steel Valley throughout the 1930s to the 1970s, the region's principal industry began in the first half of the nineteenth century in the form of pig iron production to serve local pioneer life and other industries throughout Youngstown and Pittsburgh. As steel manufacture flourished at the turn of the century, extensive steel production supplanted many of these former merchant iron producers, as large-scale manufacturing centralized in Youngstown. Those former merchant iron producers and their furnaces that remained portray distinctive methods of business practice and significant development in iron making technology and work. Relative hesitation of local industrialists to convert from iron to steel production allowed some former independent merchant iron producers to remain in operation or become part of a larger corporate entity into the twentieth century. This thesis looks at the furnaces in Hubbard, Struthers (Anna furnace) and Lowellville, Ohio (Mary furnace) and how their transition into the twentieth century presented various changes and adaptation in blast furnace technology, and how reliance on wrought iron manufacture presented a regional disadvantage as steel overtook iron production. One of the primary sources used are photographs, which allow the best look at changing technology within the industry when other documentation from these companies are relatively non-existent. Other information such as industry periodicals, newspapers, personal accounts and local histories help construct an extensive study of an industry that developed the Mahoning Valley into one of the largest iron and steel centers in the United States.