Late in the 19^th century, Valley industrialists came to realize that steel was becoming the preferred building material in the industrial development of the United States.  They knew they had to change or fall behind the times.  The Valley had the raw materials, access to major transportation routes, and a labor pool that made steel production ideal for the local economy.  The old iron mills needed to be replaced with new technology: Bessemer converters that made tons of steel in the time it had taken older processes to make pounds.  Valley industrialists put their money together to build new plants.

The Ohio Steel Company, formed in 1892 by Henry Wick and Joseph G. Butler, Jr., built a Bessemer plant on 2 farms along the river northwest of Youngstown and went into production in February of 1895.  It was sold to National Steel Company of Pittsburgh in 1899, expanded with 2 new blast furnaces, and in 1901 became the Ohio Works of the Carnegie Steel Company, part of J.P. Morgan’s United States Steel Corporation.

Brown-Bonnell, the largest producers of iron in the Valley, combined resources with the Himrod Furnace Company, Andrews & Hitchcock, and others to build a Bessemer plant at the Brown-Bonnell works near the South Avenue Bridge in Youngstown.  Their Republic Iron and Steel Company expanded to the southeast side of the city with a steelworks near Center Street between Haselton and Lansingville.

James A. Campbell, George D. Wick, and other local investors built Youngstown Iron Sheet & Tube Company on 300 acres of land between the Mahoning River and 2 railroad lines in East Youngstown.  As Sheet & Tube, the largest locally owned steel company in the U.S., expanded, the town grew with more and more workers and was later renamed Campbell after the president of the company.

Have you ever cooperated with others to get a big job done?  How is it easier working together?  Can you think of other ways to combine means of production (capital, ingenuity, resources, labor) to produce goods or services?  For a better look at these artifacts, go to MVHS@mahoninghistory.org.  Under Education, click on ‘What Do You Know’ for a list of articles.  Then click on the embedded images in an article for a downloadable file.