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It was something straight out of a Victorian industrial nightmare. I just found it completely dangerous and it was. You can see from the film they are not wearing any safety kit, no helmets, no safety jackets; they are wondering around the place in their shirt sleeves and flat caps. They probably thought it was woosy to wear a helmet. I found them very hard. Crusty. Quite bitter really. Working in the steel mill was a grim experience that they did for the gash. I think it was to do with kind of feeling left out of mainstream civilised development, and they were left to do the dirty work. And people thought badly of them. Despite doing the dirty work. Lionel Took, interview Kirsty Young, The British at Work: Them and Us: 1964-1980, subject of 1967 BBC documentary re young person experiencing working life in steel mill
By 1,000 B.C. steel is being made in India. Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man 4/13: The Hidden Structure, BBC 1973
Steel is just stuff. Anthony Caro
Michael, we’re bigger than US Steel. The Godfather II 1974 starring Robert De Niro & Al Pacino & Robert Duvall & Diane Keaton & Talia Shire & Morgana King & John Cazale & Marianna Hill & Lee Strasberg et al, director Francis Ford Coppola, Hyman Roth
[Andrew] Carnegie is the first ever to mass produce steel. In America prices plummet by over 80%. Output rockets from a few thousand tons in 1860 to 11 million by 1900. America: The Story of the US e7: Cities, History 2010
Carnegie understood the value of the new [steel] technology and began to adapt it. The Men Who Built America III: A Rivalry is Born, History 2013
Over the next few years over 100,000 new buildings were erected in Chicago alone ... built with Carnegie’s steel. ibid.
[Henry] Frick’s first job was to get Carnegie’s steel working more efficiently. ibid.
Andrew Carnegie and Henry Frick: together they have driven Carnegie Steel to massive profits. The Men Who Built America IV: Blood is Spilt
When the waters stopped more than two thousand people had died. ibid.
John D Rockefeller was worth three times as much as Carnegie. ibid.
Unions were relatively new in America, and Frick wasn’t about to let them take root on his watch. ibid.
Two thousand steel workers barricaded the front of the plant to prevent Frick bringing in replacements. ibid.
The public’s outrage was escalating. ibid.
Carnegie: his company and his reputation were under threat. The Men Who Built America V: A New Rival Emerges
One out of every eleven steel workers would die while on the job. The Men Who Built America VII: Taking the White House
Sheffield was Steel City. At the time of the Great Exhibition it produced half the quantity of steel produced in the entire world ... Five million tons in 1900. Jeremy Paxman, The Victorians: Having It All, BBC 2009
The Lake District isn’t really an area most people associate with our industrial past and heavy industry. Once upon a time round Workington and Barrow in Furnace there were great industrial centres and they mined iron ore in the hundreds of tons, and it were some of the best iron ore in all of England. You know. Alas, it’s all gone. Fred Dibnah’s Made in Britain e3: The Source of Iron, BBC 2005
All the ore mined at the Florence mine came here to the Workington steel works where is was converted by Bessemer converters into steel to manufacture railway lines. ibid.
We’re now in Falkirk which of course was the place where the industrial revolution in Scotland all started. And here there is a great iron foundry called the Carron Iron Works that were opened in 1760. After thirty years it employed a thousand men and became the biggest iron smelting plant in the whole of Europe. Fred Dinah’s Made in Britain e4: Castings
In 1950 there were more than two hundred foundries like this in central Scotland. Now this is one of the only ones left. ibid.
A hundred years ago when Fred’s engine was built there were over five thousand forges like this all over Britain. Now there are no more than a hundred. Fred Dibnah’s Made in Britain e6: The Road to Steel City
It’s a museum that tells the story of early steel-making here in Sheffield – Abbeydale industrial hamlet. ibid.
‘Up until the 1850s they only really cast iron, you know. And they really needed something a bit tougher. And along came Henry Bessemer in 1855 and he invented this thing – a giant eggcup.’ Fred Dibnah’s World of Steam, Steel and Stone e1: The Industrial Landscape, BBC 2006
Bloke admiring smoky town: So this is Smokedale ...
Bloke with pipe: Half a million people live there. A town of steel. Storyville: The Big Melt – How Steel Made Us Hard, BBC 2014 *****
World without steel – that’s a thought. ibid.
The Steel Corporation has virtually no money. It is almost bankrupt. Keith Joseph, televised interview
The American people will find it hard as I do to accept a situation in which a tiny handful of steel executives whose pursuit of private power and private profit exceeds their sense of public responsibility can show such utter contempt for the interests of a 185 million Americans. John F Kennedy
A few gigantic corporations have decided to increase prices in ruthless disregard for their public responsibilities. John F Kennedy
Some time ago I asked each American to consider what he would do for his country. And I asked the steel companies in the last twenty-four hours. We have their answer. John F Kennedy
The prim building with its thick carpets was built for tidy and genteel officials with tidy and genteel routines. It has suddenly become the central powerhouse of the steel strike. As with the miners’ strike exactly eight years ago, the motivating power behind the action has shifted to South Yorkshire ...
A great tussle is already joined between the powerhouses at places like Rotherham and Stocksbridge and the slow-witted pessimism in many other steel areas. Paul Foot, The Rotherham Lads Are Here! 1980
You see blokes on the picket line you’d never have dreamed would be there. And often they’re the ones who have the best ideas about what to do next.
I suppose most of the blokes still feel that this is just part of ordinary life. But I must admit for me it’s like living history. I feel that one day I’ll be telling those children’s children what it was like being in the Great Steel Strike of 1980. Tom Bartholomew
Give them cold steel, boys! Lewis Addison Armistead, American army officer, attributed
Why was Sheffield king of the steel and cutlery business? ... Location, location, location. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations s1e7: Cutting Edge, Discovery 2002
In the seventeenth and eighteen centuries Sheffield had over a hundred and sixty mills. ibid.
After three or four hours the lid would have been opened and the puller-out would wrap his lower body in water-soaked cloth, a water-soaked leather apron, position himself over the furnace – not a pleasant job – then the crucible would have been pulled out. ibid.
Sheffield not only had supplies of iron, coal and water, it now also had the steel industry which was ideally placed to exploit the steam engine. ibid.
1856 when Henry Bessemer invented a process for producing mass-produced steel. ibid.
The decline of the steel industry here in America has matched the growth of the Chinese steel industry. Justin Rowlatt, The Chinese Are Coming 2/2, BBC 2011
But there are a few steel companies who are thriving here. ibid.
China has called the tariff abusive protectionism. ibid.
You’ve got to have steel in you somewhere. Alan Bates