 The steel industry was an important source of wealth in the United
States at the turn of the 20th Century. Steel was an industry that used vast
amounts of capital, large supplies of energy, business strategies of vertical integration,
and complex technologies. This web exercise asks you to develop an understanding of the
scale of steel-making. The exercise especially asks you to develop an understanding of the
impact of this important industry on the people who worked in it, the communities that
served it, and, especially, on the reformers who were so concerned about the conditions of
American society, especially the hardships that befell industrial workers.
Most of the material in this exercise comes from the famous Pittsburgh Survey. This was a project funded by the Russell Sage Foundation that resulted in the publication of six volumes. The social reformers who conducted the Pittsburgh Survey were part of a group of Americans, often women, whose activities at the turn of the century eventually led to the formation of the modern profession of social work. In the Pittsburgh Survey they carefully documented the living and working conditions of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, especially in the industrial districts. Conducting "survey's"--the careful gathering of information to describe social conditions accurately--was a common phenomenon in the Progressive era.
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