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Kings and Princes of
Steel
But
among the wealthiest men in the thirteen colonies who were about to declare
Independence in 1776, only David Ross (1740-1817) of Virginia built his
£100’000+ fortune almost exclusively on his iron plantations, comprising the
Oxford Iron Works, the Calloway and Stonewall furnaces, the David Ross forge
and furnace, along with 100’000 acres of land and 450 slaves primarily
engaged in iron making. The £45’000 Anthony Morris (II) estate of
Philadelphia comprised large interests in various iron forges and furnaces,
but that fortune was incepted in brewing and enlarged by city real estate.
Nor
did this picture change much during the first four decades of the 19th
century. Tench Coxe (1755-1824), the U.S. commissioner of revenue (1792-97)
and political economist who actively promoted cotton as a staple crop in the
South and cotton manufacturing as an industry, bought the 80’000 acres of
Pennsylvania coal lands which would make his descendents rich, but he did
not actually exploit them. Likewise the great Cornwall ore hill with its
iron deposits eventually estimated at $60 million was then acquired by the
Coleman and Grubb families, who ran iron forges and furnaces in Eastern
Pennsylvania even before the American Revolution.
With
the population growth and the development of other manufactures, the needs
for ironware (tools, nails, tin plate, fixtures, etc) increased. But the
industry got its impetus with the introduction of steam railroads, which
required increasing quantities of iron for both, rails and rolling stock
(locomotives, cars and wagons). Such goods were first imported from England,
but soon American inventors built their own locomotives and pioneering
entrepreneurs produced the first American iron rails.
As
early as 1825, John Stevens (jr) of Hoboken, the one time partner and later
competitor of the Livingstons in river steam-shipping, built a small steam
locomotive. In 1829, Peter Cooper built the “Tom Thumb”, a small steam
engine for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. Three years later, Matthias
Baldwin started to produce his “Old Ironsides”, the first of many
locomotives for American railroads .
How
the Scrantons converted their ill fated nail factory in North Eastern
Pennsylvania to manufacture T-rails for the Erie Railroad in 1847 is
documented elsewhere in this work . When it was reorganized in 1853 as the
Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company, with such highly regarded investors as
John Insley Blair (from New Jersey) and William Earl Dodge (from New York),
the Scrantons’ iron business became the nucleus of a great American iron and
(later) steel concern.
Equally
successful where the Montour Iron Works of Danville, Pennsylvania, which in
1845 were effectively the first in America to produce T-shaped rails,
following the design of John Stevens jr. By the time that firm became the
Pennsylvania Iron Works (1860), it employed 3000 people, the largest
workforce of any iron producer in the USA. It was owned by the Grove
brothers, who opened their “Columbia Furnace” (the first at Montour, Pa.) in
1839 .
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The Trusts
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