pa1778data.pdf
pa1778data.pdf
pa1778data.pdf
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U.S. STEEL DUQUESNE WORKS<br />
HAER No. PA-115<br />
(Page 6)<br />
The mill not only employed state-of-the-art technology, but<br />
also introduced new, more powerful mill engines that made it<br />
possible to roll rails directly from the soaking pits without any<br />
intermediate reheating steps. The new engines eliminated an<br />
entire and expensive process in the rolling of rails, and came to<br />
be known as the "direct process." As a result, the mill was able<br />
to produce steel rails at a significantly lower price than those<br />
produced at competing mills, such as the nearby Edgar Thomson<br />
Works owned by Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie was quick to realize<br />
the adverse implications of this for his own business, and<br />
falsely discredited the new process by distributing a circular to<br />
all of the major railroads citing the unsafe quality of rails<br />
made by the direct rolling process. According the Carnegie's<br />
circular, rails made without any intermediate reheating steps<br />
were vulnerable to rupture because they lacked a homogeneous<br />
cellular structure.<br />
Carnegie's attempt to discredit the rolling practices at the<br />
Allegheny Bessemer Steel Company severely limited the firm's<br />
ability to market rails. The lack of secure markets for its<br />
products, together with a summer-long strike which began in April<br />
of 1889, made the mill vulnerable to purchase overtures by Henry<br />
Clay Frick, the newly appointed president of Carnegie Brothers<br />
and Company. After several months of negotiation, the mill was<br />
sold to Carnegie in 1890 for $1,000,000 in bonds redeemable after<br />
five years. Immediately after the purchase, Carnegie adopted the<br />
direct rolling process at all of his mills. From that point on,<br />
nothing more was heard of the 'unsafe' features of direct<br />
rolling. The Duquesne Works, as it was now called, switched from<br />
the production of rails to the production of semi-finished<br />
products (blooms and billets) and became so profitable that the<br />
mill was paid for by the matured bonds without the Carnegie<br />
Company having to spend one cent of its own money for the<br />
purchase. 3 Carnegie's acquisition is considered by many<br />
historians as one of the greatest "steals" in American business<br />
history.<br />
The most significant addition to the mill prior to the<br />
incorporation of U.S. Steel in 1901, was the construction of a<br />
new blast furnace plant. Built in 1895-1897, the plant formed<br />
part of an ongoing effort by Carnegie engineers to improve the<br />
productive capacity of the company's blast furnaces through the<br />
practice of "hard driving." This effort had begun in 1872 at the<br />
Carnegie-owned Lucy furnaces in Pittsburgh with the introduction<br />
3 "Furnace, Mill, and Factory," The Engineering anfl Mining<br />
Journal (February 18, 1888) : 13 0; "New Works of the Allegheny<br />
Bessemer Steel Company," 15; Bridge, The Inside History, 174-7; and<br />
Wall, Andrew Carnegie, 497-9.