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I R O N A N D S T E E L

Illinois Steel Works, Joliet, between 1880 and 1901. Photographer: Detroit Publishing Company. Source: Library of Congress.

national protest coordinated by the AmericanFederation of Labor (AFL) that sought unionrecognition and the -hour day. The strike tem-porarily halted steel production, but, after stateand federal troops were called in, workers re-turned to their plants. A nationwide collapsefollowed soon thereafter. When the steel indus-try agreed to an -hour day in , the changeresulted more from public pressure and the ef-forts of U.S. president Harding than from thestrength of organized labor.

During the s, in the midst of the G

D and the reforms of the N

D, steelworkers in the Chicago area andacross the nation finally won substantial gainsthrough . The successful union-ization efforts of the s brought togethertens of thousands of workers of various ethnicbackgrounds. At the turn of the century, moststeelworkers in the Calumet and Indiana millshad been immigrants from Southern and East-ern Europe. During the s and s, largenumbers of M and A A

men found in the mills. Often, area steelcompanies attempted to exploit ethnic differ-ences among workers to fight unionization. Formany years, steelworkers were divided by eth-nicity and craft distinctions. But in the late

s, after New Deal legislation made union-ization easier, workers were organized acrossthe industry. In Chicago and elsewhere, Amal-gamated joined the Steel Workers Organiz-ing Committee of the C I- O (CIO) in launching a organization drive that won recognitionby U.S. Steel in . The most violent ofthe Chicago-area clashes accompanying thiseffort was the “M D M,”in which people were killed by police gunfireduring a strike outside the E S plant ofRepublic Steel. But this incident did not pre-vent unionization, and, in , steelworkersformed a powerful national union, the UnitedSteelworkers of America (USWA). By the be-ginning of the s, when the USWA counted, members in the Chicago region, thepredominant ethnic groups in the mills wereMexicans and African Americans.

From the s until the s, the steelindustry remained one of the Chicago area’sleading economic sectors. Immediately afterWorld War II, the United States was makingover half the world’s steel, and mills in Indi-ana and Illinois accounted for about per-cent of total U.S. production capacity. Manyof the large open-hearth plants established in

the early part of the century continued tomake huge amounts of steel. Between and, Interlake and Wisconsin Steel becametwo of the first U.S. mills to install basic oxy-gen furnaces, which were faster and cheaperthan the older open-hearth equipment. Mean-while, a large new plant was built by Bethle-hem Steel at B H, Indiana. Thelast giant mill constructed in the Chicago re-gion, the Bethlehem plant helped make theIllinois-Indiana region the geographical cen-ter of the U.S. steel industry at the end of thes.

During the C W, when most Chicago-area steelworkers were represented by theUSWA, relatively high wage levels did not pre-vent labor conflict. Between and ,there were five industrywide strikes. In ,about , Chicago-area steelworkerswalked out for two months. An even moreserious work stoppage occurred in , whentens of thousands of workers in the Chicagoarea joined , steelworkers nationwidein a four-month strike to win changes in workrules, wage levels, and benefits.

During the s and s, the U.S. steelindustry suffered a sudden collapse that threwthousands out of work. U.S. Steel and other

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I R O N - A N D S T E E LW O R K E R S

American steel companies that still dependedupon large numbers of older, inefficient plantsfailed to withstand the combination of a de-cline in demand and the rise of internationalcompetition in the s. The sudden declineof American steel stunned the employees ofmills across the Chicago area. Between

and , about , Chicago-area steel-workers lost their jobs. Wisconsin Steel closedabruptly in after attempts at a financialbailout failed. South Works endured a pro-longed shutdown before closing its doors in. Inland Steel cut thousands of workers.Republic Steel dismissed half its employees.In , it merged with LTV Steel, which de-clared bankruptcy in . The closures leftmany steelworkers without jobs or health careand decimated communities in northwest In-diana and the Calumet district.

During the final years of the twentieth cen-tury, the Chicago region continued to be aleading center of production in an Ameri-can steel industry that was much weaker andsmaller than it had been before. By the mid-s, the area was home to several “mini-mills,” small-scale plants that used sophisti-cated electric furnaces to recycle scrap metal.By the end of the s, mills in Northern In-diana were making about a quarter of all thesteel produced in the United States. While theregion remained a center of steel production,the industry was no longer the powerhouse thathad been a crucial part of the Chicago-areaeconomy for over a century.

David BensmanMark R.Wilson

See also: Business of Chicago; Calumet Region; Eco-nomic Geography; Global Chicago; Poles

Iron- and Steelworkers. As early as ,Chicago had six foundries. Steelmakingin Chicago began in . As steel productiongrew nationwide during the late nineteenthcentury, steel production in Chicago grew too.For decades, immigrants came to Chicago be-cause of the high wages available in the mills.Steel companies specifically recruited many ofthem.

The first wave of immigrants to the mills,mostly S, I, and G, came inthe s and s. The second wave, ofSlavic immigrants, mostly P and S,first arrived in the s and continued tocome until the beginning of W W I.The third wave, M and A

A from the South, began duringWorld War I. The Europeans tended to settlein largely homogeneous ethnic neighborhoodsnear the mills along the C R onthe S S, although the dominant groupin particular neighborhoods has changed overtime. These areas have prospered and declinedalong with the firms that ran the mills. AfricanAmerican employment in the Chicago steel

Open-hearth blast furnace, U.S. Steel Company’s South Works, ca. 1952. Photographer: Unknown. Source:Chicago Historical Society.

industry increased sharply after W W

II, but hostility from white residents forcedthese workers to settle on the western andnorthern fringes of this area.

Around the turn of the century, the largestmills in Chicago were the South Works, builtby the North Chicago Rolling Mill Com-pany in , and the Wisconsin Steel Works,built by International Harvester in . WhenU.S. Steel formed in , it took control ofthe South Works. Unable to expand its steel-making operations in Chicago proper, U.S.Steel began work on building the city of G,Indiana, in so that it could continue totake advantage of the Chicago region’s proxim-ity to and barge routes. Other millsthat took advantage of these same geographicconditions operated in Gary, J, even Mil-waukee.

Chicago steelworkers played an impor-tant role in the industry’s two most im-portant of the early twentieth cen-tury. The National Committee for OrganizingIron and Steel Workers, chaired by C

F L president John Fitz-patrick, began an organizing drive in Chicagoduring World War I. This push culminated inan unsuccessful nationwide steel strike in .The industry’s use of African Americans asstrikebreakers during this dispute, particularlyin Chicago and Gary, enflamed racial tensionsamong steelworkers for decades afterwards. Inthe late s, the Steel Workers OrganizingCommittee of the C I

O (CIO) began the first indus-trywide union organization since . As partof this effort, employees at Republic Steelin Chicago participated in the unsuccessful