steel industry — Bunk History

Magazine advertisement for United States Steel, highlighting a kitchen countertop, lawn furniture and playground equipment, and a suspension bridge.

Making Steel All Shiny and New

When it seemed that steel had lost its gleam with American consumers, the industry turned to marketing to make it shine again.

by Matthew Wills, Nicolas P. Maffei via JSTOR Daily on January 10, 2022

A worker entering the U.S. Steel Clairton Works in Clairton, Pennsylvania.

A Rust Belt City’s New Working Class

Heavy industry once drove Pittsburgh’s economy. Now health care does—but without the same hard-won benefits.

by Scott Wasserman Stern via The New Republic on March 31, 2021

On the 40th Anniversary of Youngstown’s “Black Monday,” an Oral History

On September 18, 1977, Youngstown, Ohio, received a blow that it has never recovered from.

by Vince Guerrieri via Belt Magazine on September 19, 2017

How Andrew Carnegie's Genius and Blue-Collar Grit Made Pittsburgh the Steel City

A third-generation mill worker pays homage to the controversial industrialist.

by Ken Kobus via Zócalo Public Square on April 7, 2017

Bethlehem Steel Mill.

The Steel Mill That Built America

Bethlehem Steel was the birthplace of skyscrapers, bridges, and battleships. What happened after the plant's furnaces went cold?

by Matthew Christopher via Atlas Obscura on February 25, 2025

Indiana Dunes National Park.

Inside the Fight to Save the Indiana Dunes, One of America’s Most Vulnerable National Parks

Caught between steel mills, suburbs and a hard place, the 15,000-acre site is a fantasia of biodiversity—and a case study for hard-fought conservation.

by Eli Wizevich via Smithsonian on July 25, 2024

Smoke rises from a derailed cargo train in East Palestine, Ohio, on Feb. 4.

The Air Pollution Disaster that Echoes in the Ohio Train Derailment

What is an industry-made disaster, and what is caused by natural factors like weather?

by Cassondra Hanna via Made By History on February 22, 2023

Bridge in Pittsburgh.

Life In The ’Burgh'

A Steel City bibliography of Pittsburgh.

by Drew Simpson, Dan Holland via The Metropole on January 11, 2023

American Civil Rights leader Jesse Jackson (center) participating in a rally, January 15, 1975 (Wikipedia Commons)

Black Mayors, Black Politics, and the Gary Convention

The National Black Political Convention of 1972 saw many national giants on the Black political scene.

by Brandon Stokes via Black Perspectives on March 22, 2022

Lithograph of Monongahela River bridge

The Girders of Steel City's History

Pittsburgh as a symbol of America itself.

by Ed Simon via HNN on July 11, 2021

Postcard depicting the Montefiore Hospital in Pittsburgh

The Rise of Healthcare in Steel City

On deindustrialization, the care economy, and the living legacies of the industrial workers’ movement.

by Gabriel Winant, Nick Serpe via Dissent on March 18, 2021

Mike's Big Ditch

The failed canal project that could have saved cities like Youngstown, Ohio.

by Vince Guerrieri via Belt Magazine on August 28, 2019

A broken key with a fist

The Road Not Taken

The shuttering of the GM works in Lordstown will also bury a lost chapter in the fight for workers’ control.

by Sarah Jaffe via The New Republic on June 24, 2019

President Kennedy hands Senator Estes Kefauver the pen he used to sign a bill.

The Greatest Show of Them All

How a New Deal senator’s anti-monopoly investigations changed American business.

by Jill Priluck via Lapham’s Quarterly on April 8, 2019

Truman Declared an Emergency When He Felt Thwarted. Trump Should Know: It Didn’t End Well.

Truman seized control of the country’s steel mills during the Korean War. It led to a landmark ruling by the Supreme Court.

by Steve Hendrix via Retropolis on January 11, 2019

Amazon’s Labor-Tracking Wristband Has a History

Jeff Bezos is stealing from a 19th-century playbook.

by Stephen Mihm via Bloomberg on February 23, 2018

Brigadier General Smedley Butler.

Genesis of the Modern American Right

During the Great Depression, financial elites translated European fascism into an American form that joined high capital with lower middle-class populism.

by Joseph M. Fronczak, Matthew Wills via JSTOR Daily on September 16, 2024

Chicago police pursue fleeing workers in this screenshot from the suppressed Paramount newsreel footage. An officer's gun can be seen in the foreground.

The Bloody Labor Crackdown Paramount Didn’t Want America to See

Executives feared their newsreel footage would “cause riots and mass hysteria.”

by Greg Mitchell via Mother Jones on September 4, 2023

A black-and-white frame of a crowd of police officers confronting strikers - beating them with clubs.

When Unions and Police Clash: The Memorial Day Massacre You May Not Know About

Decades ago, labor protests, picketing and strikes often led to violent confrontations between activists and police, although that almost never happens today.

by Greg Mitchell via Los Angeles Times on May 27, 2023

Illustration of William and Florence Kelley

The Father-Daughter Team Who Reformed America

Meet the duo who helped achieve the most important labor and civil rights victories of their age.

by Jon Grinspan via Smithsonian on November 3, 2022

A field of manoomin - wild rice - in northern Minnesota, with water and trees in the background.

What Minnesota's Mineral Gaze Overlooks

The tendency to favor interest in resource extraction over the protection of the state’s waters, vital to the native Ojibwe population, has deep historical roots.

by Andrew Hoyt via Edge Effects on July 14, 2022

Reprint from the September 1966 issue of AFL-CIO American Federationist, Box 38, Folder 4, William Page Keeton Papers, Special Collections, Tarlton Law Library, The University of Texas at Austin.

Controlled Prices

Before the rise of macroeconomics that accompanied World War II, price determination was a central problem of economic thought.

by Andrew Yamakawa Elrod via Phenomenal World on January 12, 2022

Merchants of Death

From the Nye Committee to Joe Kent, the fight against war profiteering is a constant struggle.

by Hunter DeRensis via The American Conservative on November 8, 2021

An old water tower stands near abandoned outhouses on the former site of a Firestone plantation in Liberia.

Corporations Are Hiding Vast Troves of History From the Public

You can work around some of the holes this lack of access creates, but it takes years.

by Gregg Mitman via Slate on November 2, 2021

Illustration of Clarence Thomas in front of factory

The Radicalization of Clarence Thomas

His time working for Monsanto and other polluting industries helped make him the fierce conservative he is today.

by Scott Wasserman Stern via The New Republic on August 13, 2021

Doorkeeper at a meeting of the United Mine Workers of America in Wheelwright, Kentucky.

Before Operation Dixie

What the failed Southern labor movement teaches us about the rightward shift in US politics.

by Joe William Trotter Jr. via Dissent on December 16, 2020

Is Anti-Monopolism Enough?

A new book argues that US history has been a struggle between monopoly and democracy, but fails to address class and labor when decoding inequality.

by Gabriel Winant via The Nation on January 21, 2020

Life Under the Algorithm

How a relentless speedup is reshaping the working class.

by Gabriel Winant via The New Republic on December 4, 2019

Workers atop the 70-story RCA building in New York's Rockefeller Center having lunch on a steel beam.

One of the Most Iconic Photos of American Workers is Not What it Seems

But “Lunch atop a Skyscraper,” which was taken during the Great Depression, has come to represent the country's resilience, especially on Labor Day.

by Jessica Contrera via Retropolis on September 1, 2019

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez speaks to an audience in front of a Green New Deal sign.

The Federal Government Subsidized the Carbon Economy. Now it Should Subsidize a Greener One.

Why the Green New Deal fits right in with America’s energy economy.

by Ryan Driskell Tate via Made By History on April 26, 2019

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