The Great Depression of America

From 1870 to 1910 was Pittsburgh's Golden Age. Steel was a main factor in making Pittsburgh what it is today. But steel was not the only industry in Pittsburgh. Wood, coal, limestone, sand, and flax were also some of the resources they had. It was the steel capital of the world due to the abundance of resources. With all of the big promising jobs many people did not want to have the small jobs that were needed (Dietrich).

" Pittsburgh's strategic location and wealth of natural resources spurred its commercial and industrial growth in the 19th century. A blast furnace, erected by George Anschutz in 1792, was the forerunner of the iron and steel industry that for more than a century was the city's economic mainstay; by 1850 it was known as the "Iron City." The Pennsylvania Canal and the Portage Railroad, both completed in 1834, opened vital markets for trade and shipping. After the American Civil War, great numbers of European immigrants swelled Pittsburgh's population, and industrial magnates such as Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and Thomas Mellon built their steel empires there. The city became the focus of historic friction between labor and management, and the American Federation of Labor was born there in 1881."

“Chicago and the nation entered the Progressive era. …The 1901 steel strike ended in defeat for the union, and the once powerful Amalgamated slipped into irrelevancy. Chicago’s steel mills remained unorganized, yet U.S steel tried to sidestep Chicago radicalism by developing a whole new town just across the border in Indiana. Gary, Indiana became the center of the region’s steel industry. Not overtly planned in the tradition of Pullman but nonetheless a company town…”

Iron ore mining was very successful in the late 1800s, and it is still going today.

Former President Calvin Coolidge said, “In other periods of depression, it has always been possible to see some things which were solid and upon which were solid and upon which you could base hope, but as I look about, I now see nothing to give ground to hope- nothing of man” and to some extent it was true. Americans lost all hope in life entering a deep dark tunnel with no light in the end. The Great Depression was not something that appeared out of thin air; it grew over time like a tumor and eventually plagued America with an excessive disease. No decade was more terrifying in the twentieth century than the 1930s. The stock market crashing, due to people buying stocks on load, the debts from WWI farmers and consumers in deep debt, and

Numerous iron and steel factories began to springing up throughout Pittsburgh, providing factory jobs for all and earning the nickname of “Steel City”.

The 1920’s was a decade of discovery for America. As mentioned in “who was roaring in the twenties? —Origins of the great depression,” by Robert S. McElvaine America suffered with the great depression due to several factors but it managed to stay prosperous at the end. In “America society and culture in the 1920’s,” by David A. Shannon there was much more to the great depression. It was a time of prosperity an economic change. Women and men were discovering who they were and their value to society in “The Revolution in Morals,” by Gilman M. Ostrander. Even if Racism still existed as mentioned in “ The Tribal Twenties,” by John Higham, the 1920’s still was time of change that affects people today.

Early on in the united states wood was located widely in the eastern portion of the united states. Therefore the iron smelters chose to be located close to iron ore. These were generally in swamps located near the coast. However these deposits of iron ore were shallow and quickly exhausted. So in the late 1700s the smelters moved away from the coast to larger iron ore spots more in land. Being closer to larger ore deposits would usually as a result end in more permanent iron smelters.

This act was created in 1974 there are many events that could have impacted the need for such a policy. One event that impacted the need for the RHYA is the Great Depression. The Great Depression led to about 400,000 young boys being homeless. Another important event is the Vietnam War, though it was coming to an end around the time that the act was passed, it lasted for many years and effected the family structure of American households. The draft caused by the war made a lot of families turn into one income families, which could have made teens need to leave home before they were old enough to support themselves in order to leave more resources for the rest of the family.

Steel had become a very common material. Carnegie’s mills became chaotic because there were so many buyers. Most of his steel was used to help build big cities. In the late 1880s. He was one of the most well-known manufacturers of his time period.

Mining was the first great boom in the West. Gold and silver were the magnets that attracted a large number of people. Prospectors from the east were just part of a flood that included people from all around the world. Mining towns got very big when people from all around the United States heard that there was gold in the West. This brought a large crowd of people because they wanted to get wealthy and have a good life. Many Towns didn’t have enough space for all the people that wanted to come get gold. However, other people saw an opportunity to make their fortune by supplying the needs of miners for food, clothing and supplies. Large companies took a huge advantage of this because they were the most powerful and could get people to

The mining industry was especially popular because it supplied coal, which heated the buildings. The railroads created a faster way for the tools to reach the mines and for coal to reach the people, which means the miners could work faster. Timber was valuable to the mining industry because after the tracks were built, large amounts of coal were needed because coal made the train engines run. Timber was also needed to support the walls of the mines, and hardwood timber made tools such as the long tom and the sluice box. The logging industry helped the mining industry grow tremendously because it made the mines safer and was able to speed up the

The assigned readings offered an interesting and complex view of some of the diverse groups of people who were marginalized in California during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The primary sources shared detailed information on how Mexicans, Filipinos, and White Americas experienced hostility and inequality in California. In Resistance, Radicalism, and Repression on the Oxnard Plain, Frank Barajas discusses how beet sugar growers on the Oxnard Plain cut the wages of Mexican laborers working in their fields. This ignited an uproar and began a strike movement among the betaberleros (sugar beet workers), who felt it was an injustice to lower wages and face discrimination just because they were minorities (Barajaos, 29-51). As commotion was occurring within the Oxnard Plain of California, conflict between the residents of the agricultural community of Watsonville and the Filipino farm labor community emerged. Many Watsonville residents showed a strong anti-Filipino sentiment, as well as social and sexual stereotyping of Filipinos (Witt, 293). This tension between Watsonville residents and Filipinos sparked the Watsonville Riot of 1930 (Witt, 299-300).

The iron industry in America began in the early 1500’s. The Britain’s helped out the Americans by sending over some people that professed in the art of working with iron. These people that were sent over were skilled in building and operating iron smelters. An iron smelter is something that is/was used to produce a metal from its ore. An ore is a naturally occurring solid material from which a metal or valuable mineral can be profitably extracted.

Between the years of 1882 to 1971 Sloss Furnace, and its employees, were tasked with turning coal and ore into steel. That steel went on to shape the industrial revolution, from New York skyscrapers, to bridges in the south, Sloss Furnace had a hand in it all.