Steel Industry 1944 Youngstown, Ohio

this is my hometown it's called Youngstown and it's in the state of Ohio near the Pennsylvania boundary in Youngstown we make steel we make steel and talk steel I guess it's the same in Sheffield England or that place the Russians built in the Urals magneto Gore's I'd like to tell you something about how we make steel here look down any Street in town you'll see the mills at the end of it there are 25 miles of them along the Mahoning River and today they're busy day and night every eight hours a shift change 15,000 men to the ship the men going to work and see the freight trains bringing in the raw materials iron ore coal and limestone this is the or it looks like dirt but in a few weeks it will become part of a ship a tank or a gun and in peacetime an office building a bridge or a dam structure an overhead crane picks it up and carries it over to the Skip hoist which take it up to the top of the blast furnace in the blast furnace the boys smokepr in to hire the first step in making steel molten iron comes out at 3,300 degrees the slag comes up to the top like cream in the pitcher and goes out the other way that's Johnny charcoal on the snort valve controlling the blast when things get too hot he's got to think quick and move quicker Peter Zeman's the blower head man on the shift he tells them when it's time to stop the flow this is the open part where the molten iron from the blast furnace is mixed with scrap iron and the to purified into steel I remember the first time I saw the size of the place the noise the sirens wailing when the big stuff moved overhead and the heat hitting it like a solid wall it's something you don't forget these boys are sliding lining a furnace with dolemite this protects the wall of the furnace against the extreme temperature down the line Bob Wentworth is charging scrap iron scrap that came from farms backyards and attics all over the country collected by school kids and housewives to do their part in the war nextdoor Tommy Hughes is giving one of the furnaces a drink of hot iron from the 35 ton ladle this iron is fresh from the blast furnace if in the open heart the Steel's nearly finished the first and second helpers take a sample my cubans is the first or old strong as his assistant myk's people came here from Czechoslovakia girls ancestors came from England in the 17th century when there wasn't much to America but a few colonial villages along the coast by inspecting samples of the molten steel the boys can tell exactly when the furnace should be temped the open heart gang rebels off the hole in the rear of the furnace and lets the steel out roaring and spitting in 3,000 degrees the pit gang dumps in alloys to give it the special qualities they want in this batch this ladle weighs a hundred tons but the overhead crane handles it like a toy lifts it over to a line of ingot molds where it's tapped off we call this teaming just to be on the safe side another test is made to be sure that the alloys have been added in proper amounts the ingots are carried over to the blooming mill where they get their first shaping it looks rough but these rollers squeeze the ingots down to a tolerance of 1/16 of an inch George Bannon and Clarence Kinney control the operation from the pulpit they've been doing this together for so long they worked like one man with four hands when they ain't gets flattened to a slab Fred Ingram takes over he cuts a slab with hydraulic shears under many tons of pressure Fred's a shop steward for the Union which has an agreement with the mill he represents the workers on the plants labor management committee these days they're discussing production problems we've got the machines like this one in the hot strip mill we're in one continuous operation the slab of Steel is flattened into a sheet each roller operates at a different speed synchronized to handle a slab that's growing longer and thinner and moving faster all the way down the line this is it steel only a few hours ago was iron ore now it's finished and on its way to become a part of the new world that's building we've proved we can lick production problems we've got the equipment the science everything it takes to get the job done but when the war is over we're going to have other problems we know about that in Youngstown we've had it here before there are times when there is no smoke in the sky the mills require the street full of men angry questioning wondering we're beginning to understand that these things don't just happen in one place they happen everywhere we're thinking that all this production all over the world that's doing such a job in a war can do a job in peace too if we can just learn to work together

Channel: markdcatlin

Views: 1,030,865

Rating: 4.9009867 out of 5

Keywords: steel, iron, foundry, safety, health, steelworker, USW, union, OSHA, NIOSH, industrial, hygiene, Youngstown, ohio, united, steelworkers

Id: _hlfqggGOZw

Length: 9min 52sec (592 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 14 2008

Reddit Comments

[u/babyd48]

That was really cool! Especially knowing how important it was for the US to have such robust manufacturing for the war. 2. Just to see how human focused factories were and how our economy and labor force has had to change so much in a short amount of time. 3. The end where they talk about what America needed to focus on after the war, and what happened to our economy since 1945 is truly amazing.

[u/joshvarley]

Before osha was a thing. Lol.

[u/detuned--radio]

I’m from Youngstown. My grandfather worked at the steel mills. you can still see quite a few of these abandoned mills around town. Some you can actually go inside of. Very eery. These were better times for the city but Youngstown has slowly been trying to make a comeback ever since the mills closed

[u/Ifch317]

That looks like really hard & dangerous work.

[u/WeiszCracks]

Super interesting video!

My grandfather actually used to own and operate a steel lathe business out of Youngstown — it was called Bostwick — and while I’ve heard stories that the steel industry was once booming in the area, I’ve never seen anything documenting it before. It’s really interesting to see what it was like when it was headed towards its peak!

Really great find, thanks for sharing it!

[u/babyd48]

Yeah i definitely agree. The ending really tied it all together.