With its rich deposits of coal and iron ore and access to river transportation, Western Pennsylvania became the birthplace of the American steel industry. It also became the scene of some of the nation’s worst labor clashes.

Coal mining in the region dates to 1760 and peaked with the steel industry’s demands in the late 19th century.

In the beginning, Western Pennsylvania concentrated on iron production.

Between 1840 and 1880, coal and coke replaced charcoal as the fuel for iron making. Coke is created by burning coal under controlled conditions to drive off volatile matter as gas, leaving carbon and ash from the coal fused together in the form of coke.

But iron on its own is not a strong metal. Steel is made by heating iron ore at high temperatures to remove impurities and to create an alloy of iron and carbon. Elements such as nickel and manganese are added to create different grades of steel.

The molten metal is then cast into semi-finished shapes such as slabs which are rolled and processed into final products like sheets, plates and beams.

The beginning of the region’s steel industry can be traced to 1816 when George Anschutz established the first rolling mill in Pittsburgh. The city with its strategic location at the confluence of the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers made it a hub for transporting raw materials and finished products.

The shift to steel production was catalyzed by Andrew Carnegie’s adoption of the Bessemer process which transformed Pittsburgh into the world’s steel capital.

But the creation of the American steel industry was not without growing pains in the form of labor strife, riots and union busting.

In “The River Ran Red: Homestead 1892” edited by David Demarest Jr., it’s noted that by 1870 Henry Clay Frick had invested in coal and coking ovens in Connellsville. In 1875, Carnegie, already a major figure in the iron industry, opens his first steel mill, the Edgar Thomson Works in Braddock with its patented Bessemer process.

The Bessemer process works by blowing air through molten iron in a large converter which oxidizes impurities to create high-quality steel in minutes. The revolutionary method made steel widely available for large-scale industrialization and the construction of bridges, railroads and skyscrapers.

What followed was a fast-moving effort by Carnegie to create a steel-making giant.

The next year, 1876, the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers formed at a convention in Pittsburgh, according to Demarest’s book.

In 1881, Pittsburgh Bessemer Co. opened a steel mill in Homestead. Two years later, Carnegie Brothers & Co. gains a major interest in the Frick Coke Co. By 1883, Pittsburgh Bessemer beset with union troubles, sells its Homestead mill to Carnegie Brothers & Co. for the cost of its original investment.

According to Demarest’s book, by 1886 Carnegie Phipps & Co., a new corporate entity in Carnegie’s empire, builds the Homstead mill’s first open hearth furnaces, a state-of-the-art technology that creates steel suitable for structural beams and armor plating for the U.S. Navy.

The next year, Frick, a bitter opponent of organized labor, became a shareholding partner in Carnegie Cos. At the same time, Carnegie forces Frick to settle a strike in the coke region on terms favorable to labor so steel profits can be maintained.

In 1889, Frick became chairman of Carnegie Phipps & Co. and buys the Duquesne steel works. In the same year, the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers successfully bargained for a three-year contract with a sliding wage scale tied to the market price of steel in exchange for union recognition and the right to regulate working conditions.

In 1891, Frick used the Pinkerton National Detective Agency to crush the latest strike in the coke region.

The next year Carnegie Steel Co. Limited was created by merging Carnegie Phipps & Co. and Carnegie Brothers & Co. with a $25 million capitalization. Its centerpiece was Homestead’s largest open hearth furnace. Carnegie Steel was the largest steel company in the world and produces enough steel to equal half the total production of Great Britain.

Demarest writes when Carnegie bought the Homestead works there were six highly organized and disciplined workers’ lodges at the plant. When the 1889 contract was due to expire, Frick attempted to break the union by offering a take-it-or-leave-it contract to the Amalgamated Association that contained deep wage cuts. At an impasse, the workers were locked out. Frick fired all 3,800 workers and built a massive fence around the steel mill.

On July 5, 1892, 300 Pinkerton agents embarked on two barges on the Ohio River at Bellevue bound for the Homestead works.

Early in the morning of July 6, strikers spotted the barges and telegraphed a warning ahead of the boats. Thousands of strikers rushed to the riverbank at the mill. Workers feared with the Pinkertons occupying the plant, the labor force would be replaced with nonunion workers, called scabs.

When the Pinkertons attempted to land at the mill at 5 a.m., shooting broke out with casualties on both sides. According to Demarest’s book, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. there was an armed standoff on the river bank. At least three Pinkertons and seven strikers were killed.

At 6 p.m. the Pinkertons surrendered and are forced to run a gauntlet of jeering strikers to reach a train station. Many are beaten. The strikers took control of the mill.

On July 12, Carnegie Steel asked Gov. Robert Patterson for help. Patterson sent 8,500 National Guard troops to occupy the plant.

According to Demarest’s book, three days later on July 15, the Homestead mill was operating again with replacement workers. Union leaders and strikers were arrested. Public support for the strikers faded because of the strikers’ brutal treatment of the Pinkertons. An assassination attempt on Frick by a Russian anarchist unaffiliated with the union further eroded public support.

Scores of labor leaders and workers were eventually acquitted of the charges against them, but they were in jail while the strikebreaking continued. By Nov. 21, the union gave up and some of its workers reapplied for jobs at the Homestead mill at reduced wages and with 12-hour work days.

According to Demarest, the capitulation of the union led to the elimination of organized labor in the steel industry until the late 1930s.

But the steel plant in Butler was never the scene of union strikes or even a union.

In “Butler Armco The Mill A Pictorial History” author David Todd, writes the Butler mill’s eventual owner George Matthew Verity believed in “substituting cooperation and teamwork for strife and confrontation.”

According to Todd, Verity was the manager of a Cincinnati metal roofing firm in the 1890s and wanted a steel mill of his own for roofing projects. He formed the American Rolling Mill Co. (Armco) on July 12, 1900, in Middleton, Ohio.

Its open hearth furnace made steel into ingots. A bar mill reduced the ingots into smaller bars and a processing operation corrugated, galvanized and created a finished product.

Todd wrote that Verity’s core principles were his company must innovate or perish, concentrate on special-purpose steels and depend on the skills and expertise of a local and dedicated work force.

Butler’s Armco mill began in 1908 as the Forged Steel Wheel Co. which made railroad wheels. One of its main customers was the local Standard Steel Car Co. plant. Six open hearth furnaces were built in 1910, and for more were added in 1916. The facilities expanded to also produce hot and cold rolled sheets. It was purchased in the early 1920s by Columbia Steel Co. At the time, the mill employed nearly 1,600 workers.

In 1927, Armco bought the Butler mill from Columbia, including the Butler mill’s patents for producing wide steel sheets in coils several hundred feet long.

Todd wrote Armco spent much money in plant improvements and testing new steel-making techniques.

In 1938, a union organizing drive at the mill was defeated.

During World War II, the Butler mill produced steel for armor plate and specialty steel for Air Force radars.

In the postwar years, the plant added an electric furnace in 1947, a new hot strip mill in 1958, a stainless steel processing plant and a cold mill for electrical steel in 1959 and a rebuilt cold mill in 1960.

Electrical steel, an iron-silicon alloy used in transformers and motors, was a big seller with Westinghouse one of Armco’s largest and most loyal customers.

In the late 1960s, Armco’s Butler plant perfected continuous casting for its specialty steels, added an electrical finishing shop and a melt shop to replace its obsolete open hearth furnaces that dated back to 1910. Its wheel works closed in 1970 because it was no longer profitable due to new technology used by its competitors and excessive liability exposure caused by railroad accidents.

AK Steel purchased Armco in 1999, one year short of Armco’s 100th anniversary. AK Steel itself was bought by Cleveland-Cliffs in 2020.

The Butler mill still produces stainless and electrical carbon steel.