Laborers in the nation’s steel mills. The stories, music, and visual lore of steel towns
speak of the harsh working conditions in the industry, the long struggle for labor
unionization, the close connection between work and cultural background (ethnicity,
religion, race), and the strong sense of pride among workers and their families in the mill
communities during the heyday of steel.
Since the mid-1870s, the term “steelworker” has carried with it an aura of toughness
and strength. For more than 100 years, steel built the industrialized nations. The center of
steel production in the United States was southwestern Pennsylvania, due to the
availability there of natural resources, river transportation, and a long tradition of
mechanical and engineering inventiveness. Pittsburgh became known as “The Steel
Capital of the World.” It was there that Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, with the
help of financiers such as R.K. Mellon, established the industrial empire that became U.S.
Steel Corporation, in a miles-long chain of Monongahela River Valley towns—
Homestead, Braddock, Duquesne, McKeesport, Clairton, and others. Their rivals, Jones
and Laughlin and others, built mills at Aliquippa and elsewhere along the Upper Ohio
and Allegheny Rivers in the Pittsburgh industrial district.
From about 1880 to 1920, southwest Pennsylvanias steel mills burgeoned through
intensive capitalization and technological innovation, generating a complex network of
interrelated manufacturing in the region that became known as the site of “America’s
Second Industrial Revolution.” With this impetus, steel quickly replaced iron as the preferred structural material throughout the United States. “Big Steel” and “Little Steel”
companies established new steel mills all over the Northeast and Midwest (Ohio, West
Virginia, Illinois, Indiana), and in the South (Alabama). The transportation and
construction industries, based on steel, flourished from coast to coast.
In response to the rise of these huge corporations, the Pittsburgh region also became
the crucible of industrial unionism, where both the American Federation of Labor (AF of
L) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), as well as the United
Steelworkers of America (USWA), began. Watershed events in labor history occurred in
the region and still resonate in community memory: the Pennsylvania Railroad strike of
1877, the Homestead strike and battle in 1892, the great steel Strike of 1919, and the
struggles in the late 1930s that resulted in passage of the Wagner Act and protection of
workers’ rights.
In the mill towns of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, at first both labor and
management were primarily of northern European stock. Soon, the demand for labor
attracted waves of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe, along with African
Americans from the South. In the Deep South, most steelwork was done by African
Americans, under the management of the predominant Scotch-Irish. Except for during
wartime, women did not work on the shop floor in the steel industry until the equalopportunity and affirmative-action laws of the 1970s.
After World War II, the “Big Steel” corporations stopped investing in their older
American plants, opting instead to begin new operations overseas. As suddenly as they
had arisen a century earlier, the vast steel mills began to close in the 1980s, laying
offhundreds of thousands of workers virtually overnight and dimming the economic
future of once booming industrial towns. In the 1990s, these towns, including those in the
former “Steel Capital” Pittsburgh region, have realized they must retrain their workers,
reclaim their environments, and restructure their economies to include steel making
where possible, but never again to depend upon it solely.
Systematic documentation of steelworker lore began in the 1940s, when George
Korson asked Jacob Evanson, a talented public-school choral director in Pittsburgh, to
collect folk music from mill workers in the area for a chapter in Korson’s book on
Pennsylvania lore. Evansons chapter still stands as one of the most comprehensive and
thoughtful field studies on the folklore of steel (Evanson 1949). His published versions of
songs such as “The Twenty-Inch Mill” and “The Homestead Strike” drew national
recognition through performances and recordings by singers such as Pete Seeger and
Vivien Richman (see Richman 1959).
From the 1950s to the 1970s, collecting and analysis of steelworker lore continued
with work by folklorist Hyman Richman and journalist George Swetnam, although no
major projects were undertaken. Then, in the late 1980s, the precipitous decline of steel
in the Pittsburgh area reignited documentation efforts. The regional nonprofit Steel
Industry Heritage Corporation (SIHC), together with the Pennsylvania Heritage Affairs
Commission, conducted a three-year ethnographic study of the traditions of steel and
steel-related communities in six counties of southwestern Pennsylvania, to generate a
variety of oral history and folklife programming. The SIHC is working in the 1990s with
state and federal agencies to establish a heritage-park program and a Steel Heritage
Center in the region. The Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania produced an exhibit
on Homestead’s history and is developing a worker’s-house museum in Pittsburgh.
Elsewhere in the country, the city of Birmingham, Alabama, has developed the Sloss
Blast Furnace national historic site and conducted oral-history projects in the
Birmingham steel district.
The largest steel mills often employed thousands of workers at one site, in dozens of
hierarchically organized departments. The process of steel making requires working with
molten metals at temperatures of 3000°F and more. Over the years, the work has often
involved severe physical discomfort (noise leading to permanent hearing loss, extremes
of heat and cold, air laden with chemicals and fine metal dust, floors soaked with water
and grease, long hours of double and even triple “turns” to earn much-needed overtime
pay—or to avoid losing one’s job). Early on, there were virtually no safety rules or
procedures to protect workers, and, though working conditions continue to improve,
health and safety are still issues in the 1990s. The oral histories collected from workers
often describe accidents and disasters (furnace explosions, crane-operating
miscalculations), along with narratives of how problems were averted by quick thinking
and action. Songs created by early-20th-century Slovak immigrant workers describe their
efforts to adapt to the harsh conditions of the mills in the new land and the effects of
accidents on workers’ families. There are tales of ghosts in mills where workers died on
the job, and stories of accidental “burials” of workers in ladles of molten steel or of their
interment in unmarked graves within the mill complex (ascribed to management’s
attempts to suppress knowledge of the deaths).
The fifty-year struggle to unionize the steel industry was as much about working
conditions and injury compensation as about wages. Songs and stories tell of strikes and
battles and of repression by the company’s “cossacks” (the Iron and Coal Police) and
their hired Pinkerton guards. Among the most famous songs was “The Homestead Strike
Ballad,” one of several recounting the events of the strike and lockout at the Homestead
Works in 1892. In 1993 folklorist Archie Green published his analysis of the long-term
influence in American industrial folklore of the songs from the Homestead strike.
The ever-present danger, the need for dependable teamwork, and the solidarity forged
through unionization efforts often have prompted intense camaraderie among
steelworkers. “Reunion committees” of former employees at the Homestead Works, the
Duquesne Works, and the mills at Aliquippa still meet annually, years after shutdown.
Ethnicity has also been an important factor in the steel workplace, especially during
the early years of the industry. Signs showing plant regulations were often printed in a
halfdozen languages. Foremen could hire and fire at will; edinic tensions ran high
between labor and management, and often among workers themselves, as they struggled
to keep their jobs. Promotion was often denied to eastern and southern Europeans and to
African Americans. English-speaking mill managers coined insulting names such as
“garlic snapper” and “Hunkie” to refer to immigrant workers; the workers, for their part,
called managers “cake-eaters,” “Johnny Bulls,” and “Irish.” (The 1919 steel strike was
dubbed the “Hunkie Strike,” because so many foreign-born laborers took part in it.)
Workers also gave each other nicknames based on cultural background, appearance, work
habits, or other characteristics, a practice that continues (“Babe,” “Lefty,”
“KentuckyMike”). Interedinic practical jokes were part of mill life, as was the sharing of
skills and games firom the old country. Because of linguistic barriers and the high noise
level in the mills, a supplementary communication system of gestures and sign language
evolved.
Until college education became more widespread after World War II, much of the
knowledge of iron and steel technology was passed down through semi-oral tradition
from veteran workers to new ones. Although there were blueprints and manuals for
equipment operation, workers often devised more efficient techniques on their own and
invented modifications to the equipment. Production terminology and descriptions of
work processes have found their way into workers’ songs such as the late-19th-century
“The Twenty-Inch Mill” and the late-20th-century “Steel Mill Scat.”
In steelworkers’ stories, strength of body, manual skill and dexterity, quick reactions
in a crisis, and care for the safety of others are the most valued traits. Many mills have
had local worker heroes embodying these characteristics about whose exploits stories and
tall tales are related. Hyman Richman was told about Henny Palm in McKeesport,
“Armstrong Joe” at the Edgar Thomson Works in Braddock, and Mike Lesnovich at the
Duquesne Works. There are stories of antiheroes, too—clumsy or loutish workers, harsh
or villainous foremen. Perhaps the best-known popular image is Joe Magarac, the Paul
Bunyanesque steelworker superhero (Richman 1953).
In steelworking towns, the mill and the community were usually closely interrelated.
Often the company had built much of the worker housing, and then controlled the town
by putting company managers into political office. In southwestern Pennsylvania mill
towns, immigrant workers usually lived in the flat areas close to the river and adjacent to
the plant gates, while managers lived on slopes overlooking the mill (where the air was
cleaner). Sometimes the company would give land or a building for a parish church, to
encourage worker loyalty and indebtedness. A well-known example of industrial
corporate paternalism was Andrew Carnegie’s nationwide gifts of public libraries
(actually community centers), a practice he started in Braddock and Homestead. The
companies often built ballfields and sponsored baseball and football teams, encouraging
rivalries between mill workers from neighboring towns. (At one time, the town of
Duquesne had twenty baseball teams!) People’s continued identification with these sports
is reflected in their strong loyalty for the region’s professional teams, the Pittsburgh
Steelers and the Pittsburgh Pirates.
The liminal areas between the workplace and the community for most workers were
the mill bars, which were (and in some cases still are) the worker’s first stop after
receiving a paycheck at the plant gate, before heading home. Located along streets just
outside the gates, these establishments served large quantities of alcohol day or night.
Among the most famous drinks is the “boilermaker” (named for one of the toughest jobs
in a steel mill), which, in Pittsburgh, is also known as a”shot ’n’ a beer” or an “Imp ‘n’
Iron” (Imperial whiskey with an Iron City Beer chaser). Mill bars, along with ethnic halls
and “sportsmens clubs,” still function as male workers’ social centers. Mill workers’
wives belong to ladies’ auxiliaries of ethnic fraternal societies, and Christian Mothers’
organizations in their church parishes.
In Pittsburgh in the 1990s, there are still large neighborhoods with concentrations of
specific ethnic groups: Italians in Bloomfield, Germans inTroy Hill, Jewish and Asian
groups in Squirrel Hill, Ukrainians on the South Side, Polish people in Lawrenceville,
and eastern Europeans followed by African Americans in the Hill District. In the nearby
mill towns, ethnicity was less differentiated geographically: eastern and southern
European immigrants grouped together in the worker-housing areas, while those of
British and German background lived “up the hill.” Nowadays ethnicity is more a matter
of choice than proximity: The suburbanization of the 1950s and 1960s has diluted the
original ethnic neighborhoods, but new forms and contexts of cultural expression allow
people to maintain their sense of ethnic identity.
Religious denominations in the region still include, among others, Roman Catholic,
Byzantine Cadiolic, Maronite Cadiolic, Russian Orthodox, Antiochian Orthodox, Serbian
Orthodox, as well as Protestant groups (Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Methodist, Lutheran,
Mennonite, Society of Friends, Holiness/ Pentecostal) and the branches of Judaism.
Newcomers to the region since World War II have introduced Hinduism, Islam, Baha’i,
and other religions as well. When the 19th-century immigrants established their religious
institutions, they further subdivided the denominations by nationality, so that some
people would go to “the German church,” others to “the Polish church,” and still others to
“the Lithuanian church” or “the Croatian church”—all Roman Catholic. (Even Jews in
Pittsburgh identified their synagogues by nationality.) Some of this ethnic-religious
linking persists, with special services still conducted in the old-country language, Saint’sDay parades, and church-sponsored old-country food and craft sales.
Some of the many ethnic-based social clubs and insurance associations still remain in
the mill towns of Pennsylvania and Ohio, with Croatian, Slovenian, and other fraternal
organizations continuing to sponsor music and dance ensembles and youth groups. Kolo,
polka, and czardas dancing, tamburitza combos and ballabale bands, and German singing
societies continue as a living legacy of the steelworking era.
In their homes, churches, and clubs, workers and their families also continue to
express their cultural heritage through visual means. Men use metalwork skills they
learned in the mill to craft sculptures or invent small machines during leisure hours at
home, recycling scraps of steel that would othervvise have been thrown away by the
company. Working families create shrine-like home displays of gear, tools, and metal
test-samples from the mills, or of ethnic family heirlooms. Icon and egg “writing,” mural
painting and stenciling are still practiced; the murals at St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic
Church in Millvale (near Pittsburgh), for example, combine ethnic, occupational, and
religious symbolism.
In the 1940s, Pittsburgh schoolchildren regularly performed steelworking folksongs
and folk-like songs arranged by Choral Director Jacob Evanson. In the 1970s, two
Pittsburgh playwrights produced “Steel City,” a documentary drama that incorporated
narratives collected from steelworkers in Aliquippa. Local interest in, and promotion of,
the legendary folklore (or fakelore) hero Joe Magarac have continued unabated, in spite
of folklorists’ attempts over the years to quash the Magarac stories as inauthentic. The
Duquesne University Tamburitzans (founded in the 1930s), the Pittsburgh Folk Festival
(started in the 1950s), and the Pittsburgh International Folk Theatre (begun in the 1990s)
present highly stylized arrangements of eastern and southern European folk dance, and
encourage mill-town children’s participation in “junior tamburitzans” and other folklorebased performing groups sponsored by local ethnic churches and clubs.
Doris J.Dyen
References
Dorson, Richard M. 1981. Land of the Millrats. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Dyen, Doris J., and Randolph Harris. 1991. Aids to Adaptation: Southeast European Mural
Paintings in Pittsburgh. In Folklife Annual 1990, ed. James Hardin. Washington, DC: American
Folklife Center, pp. 10–29.
Evanson, Jacob A. 1949. Folk Songs of an Industrial City. In Pennsylvania Songs and Legends, ed.
George Korson. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 423–466.
Green, Archie. 1993. Homestead’s Strike Songs. In Wobblies, Pile Butts, and Other Heroes:
Laborlore Explorations. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, pp. 228–272.
Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania. 1991. Homestead: Story of a Steel Town. Exhibit
Catalog. Pittsburgh.
Hoerr, John. 1991. Andthe Wolf Finally Came. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Richman, Hyman. 1953. The Saga of Joe Magarac. New York Folklore Quarterly 9:282–293.
Richman, Vivien. 1959. Vivien Richman Sings Folk Songs of Western Pennsylvania. Folkways
Records FG 3568.
Steel Industry Heritage Corporation. 1994. Ethnographic Survey of the Steel Heritage Region.
Homestead, PA: SIHC.
Swetnam, George. 1988. Slag Pile Annie. In Devils, Ghosts, Witches: Occult Folklore of the Upper
Ohio Valley. Greensburg, PA: McDonald/Sward, p. 41.
United Steelworkers of America. Undated (late 1970s). Songs of Steel and Struggle. LP recording,
with booklet, including Introduction, by Archie Green and liner notes by Joe Glazer.