pa1778data.pdf

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U.S. STEEL DUQUESNE WORKS
HAER NO. PA-115
(Page 12)
Duquesne's bar rolling capacity was further expanded over
the next several years with the addition of five steam powered
mills, beginning with the construction of an 8" guide mill in
1905. In that same year, a 10" guide mill was relocated from the
Girard Works in Monessen, Pennsylvania, to the Duquesne site.
This was followed by the construction of a 22" bar mill in 1906,
a 10" semi-continuous Belgian or looping mill complete with
automatic repeaters in 1913, and a 12" cross-country mill in
1917. 12
By the time America entered World War I, the Duquesne Steel
Works stood as one of the most modern steelmaking facilities in
the nation. Its product base was expanded to include a variety
of semi-finished goods, and its iron and steelmaking capacity was
greatly increased. While these technological changes enhanced
the mills position both in the region and in the nation, they
also realigned the relationship between labor and processes.
Since it was sold to Carnegie Steel, Duquesne has been a non-
union mill, like most of the steel mills in the Pittsburgh
District. Despite a bitter strike in 1919, labor was unable to
mobilize into a full-scale union until the Wagner Act, initiated
by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s.
Technology and Labor, 1886-1917
When the Allegheny Bessemer Steel Company opened for
business in 1889, the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel
Workers union was at the peak of its strength. Its power,
however, was rooted in the older forms of technology associated
with the production of wrought iron rather than in the technology
of the burgeoning steel industry. The technology associated with
the wrought iron industry was organized around a system of batch
production. Within this system, pig iron, in small batches of
about 550 pounds each, was manually refined in puddling furnaces
and later rolled into wrought iron shapes within rolling
facilities that required a high degree of hand work in the
manipulation and actual rolling of the material. The system was
highly dependent upon the manual dexterity and knowledge of
skilled puddlers and rollers who determined when to engage in the
36(January 8, 1903): 36-42; "The Duquesne Works of the Carnegie
Steel Company - II: The Merchant Bar Mill," The Iron Age 71 (January
8, 1903): 1-4.
12 Carnegie Steel Company. "Duquesne Works: Plant Description
Book" (Duquesne, 1925): 99, 101, 104-7, 114-6, and 120; "Carnegie
Extensions at Duquesne." The Iron Agef Vol.78, (October 25, 1906):
1104; "Newest Type of Merchant Bar Mill." The Iron Trade Review.
Vol. 58, No. 1, (January 6, 1916): 62-4; J. M, Camp and C. B.
Francis. The Making, Fourth Edition: 602.