pa1778data.pdf

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