Steel mills create steel and iron by heating raw materials in a cauldron. The industry was once booming in the US, but foreign competition, rising costs, and deregulation led to many closures. Working in a steel mill is hard, but pays well. The decline of the industry also hurt other industries like railroads and coal mining. Some mills still produce steel, but the industry is fading away due to advances in other materials.
A steel mill is a place where steel and iron are created by heating raw iron ore and other materials in a huge cauldron. Using large electric cauldrons to heat iron ore, coke, calcium and a host of other materials in a red-hot liquid, a steel mill pours the molten metal into molds where it cools. Typically shaped into large cylinders or I-beams, the steel is hammered into a finished shape and size as it cools. Many types of steel and iron can be made in a steel mill by altering the ingredients used to make the steel. Many of the many steel giants went out of business in what was known in the United States as the Iron Belt.
Working in a steel mill, or foundry as they are often called, is considered very hard and demanding work. The intense heat, heavy lifting, and dangerous conditions were often rewarded with good wages. During the 1940s and 1950s in the United States, the steel industry was booming. Many communities in Pennsylvania and other East Coast states were solidly based in the steel industry. As the mills began to close, cities and towns began to decline in wealth, population, and industry.
Foreign steel began slashing the prices charged by American steel mills along with rising fuel costs and shipping costs, and the steel mills fell by the wayside in the hierarchy of American industry. In the 1980s, “Reaganomics,” the term coined by then-President Ronald Reagan, deregulated the steel industry, nearly driving the final nail into the coffin of a way of life for many small American communities. Other industries such as coal mining and iron working also suffered from the loss of the steel mill.
Another industry hurt by the closure of steelmakers was the railroad. Most of the large steel girders produced in the factories were shipped by rail. When the mills closed, the railroads soon followed, abandoning the track that had sustained many communities for decades. Trucking companies also felt the pinch from the steel plant closures, though they were better than railroads at finding additional transportation needs, and many of the larger companies remained intact.
A small fraction of America’s steel mills continue to produce steel for construction and keep alive a once-mighty way of life, albeit on a smaller scale. Steel continues to be used less and less in many manufacturing facilities thanks in part to advances in composites and plastics. Just like the American family farm, the iron and steel industry and all the mills and foundries can go the way of the barn and slowly fade into the pages of history.
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