Editing History of Pittsburgh (section)

==Steel City (1859–1946)==
{{See also|Pittsburgh in the American Civil War}}
The iron and steel industry developed rapidly after 1830 and became one of the dominant factors in industrial America by the 1860s.

===Scots Irish leadership===
Ingham (1978) examined the leadership of the industry in its most important center, Pittsburgh, as well as smaller cities. He concludes that the leadership of the iron and steel industry nationwide was "largely Scotch Irish". Ingham finds that the [[Scotch-Irish American|Scotch Irish]] held together cohesively throughout the 19th century and "developed their own sense of uniqueness."<ref>John Ingham, ''The Iron Barons'' (1978) quotes pp 7 and 228.</ref>

New immigrants after 1800 made Pittsburgh a major Scotch-Irish stronghold. For example, [[Thomas Mellon]] (b. Ulster 1813–1908) left northern Ireland in 1823 for the United States. He founded the powerful [[Mellon family]], which played a central role in banking and industries such as aluminum and oil. As Barnhisel (2005) finds, industrialists such as [[James Laughlin (industrialist)|James Laughlin]] (b. Ulster 1806–1882) of [[Jones and Laughlin Steel Company]] comprised the "Scots-Irish Presbyterian ruling stratum of Pittsburgh society."<ref>Gregory Barnhisel ''James Laughlin, New Directions, and the Remaking of Ezra Pound'' (2005) p. 48.</ref>

===Technology===
In 1859, the Clinton and Soho iron furnaces introduced [[Coke (fuel)|coke]]-fire [[smelting]] to the region. The [[American Civil War]] boosted the city's economy with increased production of iron and armaments, especially at the [[Allegheny Arsenal]] and the [[Fort Pitt Foundry]].<ref name="Boucher"/> Arms manufacture included iron-clad warships and the world's first 21" gun.<ref>{{cite book |title=Allegheny County's Hundred Years |last=Thurston |first=George H |publisher=A. A. Anderson Son, Pittsburgh |year=1888}}</ref> By war's end, over one-half of the steel and more than one-third of all U.S. glass was produced in Pittsburgh. A milestone in steel production was achieved in 1875, when the [[Edgar Thomson Works]] in [[Braddock, Pennsylvania|Braddock]] began to make steel rail using the new [[Bessemer process]].<ref name="Galloway">{{cite book |title=History of Pittsburgh |first1=Miriam |last1=Meislik |first2=Ed |last2=Galloway |publisher=Society of American Archivists, Pittsburgh |year=1999}}</ref>

Industrialists such as [[Andrew Carnegie]], [[Henry Clay Frick]], [[Charles M. Schwab]], and [[George Westinghouse]] built their fortunes in Pittsburgh.  [[George Westinghouse]]'s  advancements included the [[Air brake (rail)|air brake]] and was the founder of over 60 companies, including Westinghouse Air and Brake Company (1869), [[Union Switch & Signal]] (1881), and [[Westinghouse Electric Company]] (1886).<ref name="westinghouse">{{cite web |url=http://www.westinghouse.com/timeline.html |title=Westinghouse, Our Past |publisher=Westinghouse |year=2007 |access-date=March 22, 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040509071422/http://www.westinghouse.com/timeline.html |archive-date=May 9, 2004 |df=mdy-all }}</ref>{{sfn|Huber|2022}} Banks played a key role in Pittsburgh's development as these industrialists sought massive loans to upgrade plants, integrate industries and fund technological advances. Pittsburgh bankers including [[Andrew W. Mellon]], with [[Mellon Financial Corporation|T. Mellon & Sons Bank]] founded in 1869, helped to finance an aluminum reduction company that became [[Alcoa]].<ref name="Galloway"/>

Ingham (1991) shows how small, independent iron and steel manufacturers survived and prospered from the 1870s through the 1950s, despite competition from much larger, standardized production firms. These smaller firms were built on a culture that valued local markets and the beneficial role of business in the local community. Small firms concentrated on specialized products, particularly structural steel, where the economies of scale of larger firms were no advantage. They embraced technological change more cautiously than larger firms. They also had less antagonistic relations with workers and employed a higher percentage of highly skilled workers than their mass-production counterparts.<ref>John N. Ingham, "Iron and Steel in the Pittsburgh Region: The Domain of Small Business," ''Business and Economic History'' 1991 20: 107–116</ref>

===Geography of industrialization===
Beginning in the 1870s, entrepreneurs transformed the economy from small, craft-organized factories located inside the city limits to a large integrated industrial region stretching 50 miles across Allegheny County. The new industrial Pittsburgh was based on integrated mills, mass production, and modern management organization in steel and other industries. Many manufacturers searched for large sites with railroad and river accessibility. They purchased land, designed modern plants, and sometimes built towns for workers. Other firms bought into new communities that began as speculative industrial real estate ventures. Some owners removed their plants from the central city's labor unions to exert greater control over workers. The region's rugged topography and dispersed natural resources of coal and gas accentuated this dispersal. The rapid growth of steel, glass, railroad equipment, and coke industries resulted in both large mass-production plants and numerous smaller firms. As capital deepened and interdependence grew, participants multiplied, economies accrued, the division of labor increased, and localized production systems formed around these industries. Transportation, capital, labor markets, and the division of labor in production bound the scattered industrial plants and communities into a sprawling metropolitan district. By 1910 the Pittsburgh district was a complex urban landscape with a dominant central city, surrounded by proximate residential communities, mill towns, satellite cities, and hundreds of mining towns.<ref>Edward K. Muller, "Industrial Suburbs and the Growth of Metropolitan Pittsburgh, 1870–1920," ''Journal of Historical Geography'' 2001 27(1): 58–73</ref>

Representative of the new industrial suburbs was the model town of [[Vandergrift, Pennsylvania|Vandergrift]], according to Mosher (1995).  Caught up in a dramatic round of industrial restructuring and labor tension, Pittsburgh steelmaker George McMurtry hired [[Frederick Law Olmsted]]'s landscape architectural firm in 1895 to design Vandergrift as a model town. McMurtry believed in what was later known as [[welfare capitalism]], with the company going beyond paychecks to provide for the social needs of the workers; he believed that a benign physical environment made for happier and more productive workers. A  strike and lockout at McMurtry's steelworks in Apollo, Pennsylvania, prompted him to build the new town. Wanting a loyal workforce, he developed a town agenda that drew upon environmentalism as well as popular attitudes toward capital's treatment of labor. The Olmsted firm translated this agenda into an urban design that included a unique combination of social reform, comprehensive infrastructure planning, and private homeownership principles. The rates of homeownership and cordial relationships between the steel company and Vandergrift residents fostered loyalty among McMurtry's skilled workers and led to McMurtry's greatest success. In 1901 he used Vandergrift's worker-residents to break the first major strike against the [[United States Steel Corporation]].<ref>Anne E. Mosher, "'Something Better than the Best': Industrial Restructuring, George McMurtry and the Creation of the Model Industrial Town of Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, 1883–1901," ''Annals of the Association of American Geographers'' 1995 85(1): 84–107,</ref>

A further example of a community planned to serve a particular industrial enterprise was [[Wilmerding]] in the Turtle Creek valley.   It was developed to host the workers of the [[Westinghouse Air Brake]] company and others nearby.<ref name="Huber">{{cite book | last=Huber | first=William R. | date=2022 | title=George Westinghouse, Powering the World| publisher=McFarland & Co. | page=44 }}</ref>

By about 1910, the companies of George Westinghouse and Andrew Carnegie were widely distributed in the Pittsburgh region.   Their locations, and the locations of several other major industrial enterprises, are numbered in the image and are itemized here:{{sfn|Huber|2022|p=6}}

[[File:High res composite excerpt of Lee's 1894 map of Pittsburgh region with rivers in blue.jpg|thumb|350px| Numbered map showing locations of several industrial holdings and other important sites from about 1910.]]

# Westinghouse Air Brake: 25th Street and Liberty Avenue
# Westinghouse Air Brake:  Allegheny City
# Westinghouse Air Brake: Wilmerding
# Union Switch & Signal and Westinghouse Electric: Garrison Alley
# Union Switch and Signal: Swissvale
# First Westinghouse home and gas wells: "Solitude"
# Haymaker gas wells: Murrysville
# Other gas wells: Murrysville
# Fuel gas line: Murrysville to Pittsburgh
# Edgar Thomson Works of Carnegie Steel: Braddock
# Carnegie Steel Company: Homestead
# Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing: East Pittsburgh
# Westinghouse Machine Company
# Westinghouse Foundries: Trafford



===Machine politics===
[[Christopher Magee (politician)|Christopher Magee]] and [[William Flinn]] operated powerful Republican machines that controlled local politics after 1880. They were business owners and favored business interests. Flinn was a leader of the [[Progressive Era|Progressive movement statewide]] and supported [[Theodore Roosevelt]] in the 1912 election.<ref>Eugene Kaufman, "A Pittsburgh Political Battle Royal of A Half Century Ago." ''Western Pennsylvania History'' (1952): 79–84. [https://journals.psu.edu/wph/article/download/2409/2242 online] on the machine's defeat in 1900-1903.</ref>

===Germans===
During the mid-19th century, Pittsburgh witnessed a dramatic influx of [[German Americans|German immigrants]], including a brick mason whose son, [[Henry J. Heinz]], founded the [[H.J. Heinz Company]] in 1869. Heinz was at the forefront of reform efforts to improve food purity, working conditions, hours, and wages,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.heinzfamily.org/aboutus/heinzhistory.html |title=Heinz Family History |access-date=November 6, 2008}}</ref> but the company bitterly opposed the formation of an independent labor union.<ref>{{cite book |first=Kenneth A. |last=Heineman |title=A Catholic New Deal: Religion and Reform in Depression Pittsburgh |year=1999 |publisher=Penn State Press |isbn=0-271-01896-8}}</ref>

===Labor unions===
As a manufacturing center, Pittsburgh also became an arena for intense labor strife. During the [[Great Railroad Strike of 1877]], Pittsburgh workers protested and had massive demonstrations that erupted into widespread violence, known as the [[Pittsburgh Railway Riots]].<ref>''Harper's Weekly, Journal of Civilization'' Vol. XXL, No. 1076 New York, August 11, 1877.</ref> Militia and federal troops were called to the city to suppress the strike. Forty men died, most of them workers, and more than 40 buildings were burned down, including the Union Depot of the [[Pennsylvania Railroad]]. Strikers also burned and destroyed rolling stock: more than 100 train engines and 1000 railcars were destroyed. It was the city with the most violence of any affected by the strikes.
[[File:Harpers 8 11 1877 Steeple View of Pittsburgh Conflagaration.jpg|thumb|left|370px|Burning of Pennsylvania Railroad and Union Depot, Pittsburgh, July 21–22, 1877]]

In 1892, a confrontation in the steel industry resulted in 10 deaths (3 detectives, 7 workers) when [[Carnegie Steel Company]]'s manager [[Henry Clay Frick]] sent in [[Pinkerton Detective Agency|Pinkertons]] to break the [[Homestead Strike]].  Labor strife continued into the years of the [[Great Depression]], as workers sought to protect their jobs and improve working conditions. Unions organized [[H.J. Heinz]] workers, with the assistance of the [[Catholic Radical Alliance]].

===Carnegie===
[[Andrew Carnegie]], an immigrant from Scotland and a former [[Pennsylvania Railroad]] executive turned steel magnate, founded the [[Carnegie Steel Company]]. He proceeded to play a key role in the development of the U.S. steel industry. He became a philanthropist: in 1890, he established the first [[Carnegie Library]], in a program to establish libraries in numerous cities and towns by the incentive of matching funds. In 1895, he founded the [[Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh|Carnegie Institute]]. In 1901, as the [[U.S. Steel]] Corporation formed, he sold his mills to [[J.P. Morgan]] for $250 million, making him one of the world's richest men. Carnegie once wrote that a man who dies rich, dies disgraced.<ref>{{cite journal |author1=Carnegie, Andrew |url=http://digital.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=nora;cc=;view=toc;subview=short;idno=nora0148-6 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120709182150/http://digital.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=nora;cc=;view=toc;subview=short;idno=nora0148-6 |url-status=dead |archive-date=July 9, 2012 |title=The North American Review Volume 0148 Issue 391|journal=The North American Review  |access-date=February 10, 2014}}</ref> He devoted the rest of his life to public service, establishing libraries, trusts, and foundations. In Pittsburgh, he founded the [[Carnegie Institute of Technology]] (now [[Carnegie Mellon University]]) and the [[Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh]].<ref name="Galloway"/>

The third (and present) [[Allegheny County Courthouse]] and Jail was completed in 1886. In 1890, trolleys began operations.<ref name="WQED"/> In 1907, [[Pittsburgh]] annexed [[Allegheny, Pennsylvania|Allegheny City]], which is now known as the [[North Side (Pittsburgh)|North Side]].<ref name="WQED"/>

[[File:Photograph of a Vat of Molten Pig Iron Being Poured into an Open Hearth Furnace at the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company, Pittsburgh, Pennsy - NARA - 535922 (high contrast).jpg|thumb|right|300px|{{center|Steelworker watching molten steel being poured into a mold, J&L Steel, Pittsburgh, May 1942.}}]]