Men sitting on stack of Pig Iron

1885

View this item

Men sitting on stack of Pig Iron
  • Title
  • Men sitting on stack of Pig Iron
  • Creator
  • Frederick T. Gretton
  • Identifier
  • MSP328.B001.F14.I01
  • Source Identifier
  • MSP328.B001.F14.I01
  • Description
  • The source of the metal used in puddling furnaces was pig iron, a crude iron cast in blocks that was the product of the primary iron-producing unit called the blast furnace. By 1880 the Jones & Laughlin South Side Works had an annual capacity of 65,000 tons, and Laughlin and Company could produce 50,000 tons of pig iron a year. In 1850 more than 10,000 Irish immigrants lived in the City of Pittsburgh, comprising 21.4 percent of the residents. During the same period, Germans comprised 13.2 percent of the city's population. of the 340,000 inhabitants of Greater Pittsburgh in 1890, nearly 100,000 (28.9 percent) were immigrants. Most of the immigrants flocked to Pittsburgh to work in the burgeoning industries like its iron and steel mills. As a result, Pittsburgh's working class became a mosaic of nationalities like Croats, Serbs, Slovenes, Slovaks, Lituanians, Bohemians, Romanians, Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, and others.
  • Genre
  • photographs
  • Subject
  • Iron workers--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh.
    Steel industry and trade--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh.
    Steel industry and trade--Employees--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh.
    Cast-iron.
    Immigrants--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh.
  • Source
  • Frederick T. Gretton Photographs, 1857-1953, MSP 328, Library and Archives Division, Senator John Heinz History Center
  • Contributor
  • Detre Library & Archives, Heinz History Center
  • Collection
  • Frederick T. Gretton Photographs
  • Rights Information
  • No Copyright - United States. The organization that has made the Item available believes that the Item is in the Public Domain under the laws of the United States, but a determination was not made as to its copyright status under the copyright laws of other countries. The Item may not be in the Public Domain under the laws of other countries. Please refer to the organization that has made the Item available for more information.
    http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/