1906. To the Indiana Steel Co., a subsidiary of the Illinois Steel

Co., and especially organized for the purpose, was given the task of erecting the steel plant, while the Gary Land Co. was organized and put in charge of the creation of the city. How gigantic was the task of building Gary may be gathered from its cost to the Corporation. The construction of the steel plant and the creation of the town has involved an expenditure of over $100,000,000, and work is yet to do. Of the fifty-six open-hearth and other steel furnaces contemplated in the original plan, forty-seven have been completed so far. The first heat of pig iron was produced on December 21, 1908, and the first steel ingots early the following year. The Gary plant is probably the largest single steel plant in the world. It consists of twelve blast furnaces, forty-seven steel furnaces, a rail mill, billet mill, plate mill, five merchant mills, slab mills, an axle plant, and a by-product coke plant of ten batteries, each of seventy ovens. With these are auxiliary shops, machine shop, roll shop, electric repair shop, boiler shop, blacksmith shop, etc., and the necessary electrical equipment. Sixteen gas engines of 2,000 H. P. each, supplemented by four 3,000 H. P. steam engines, are used to operate the blast furnaces. The power required to run the open-hearth furnaces and steel mills is supplied by seventeen 3,000 H. P. gas engines, driving an equal number of electric generators, the gas for these engines and for the blowing engines being supplied from the blast furnaces. In this way the power required for the entire plant is supplied by blast furnace by-product gas. Part of the power generated is transmitted to Buffington, five miles away, where it is used to run the machinery of the Universal Portland Cement Works. The rail mill is driven by three electric motors, each of 6,000 H. P. The annual capacity of the big plant is as follows: TONS Pig iron 2,173,200 Coke 3,360,000 Ingots 3,030,000 Billets, blooms and slabs 1,544,600 Sheet bars 104,000 Rails 750,000 Finished steel, including rails 1,997,900 During the construction of the plant, over 10,000,000 cubic yards of material were excavated and over 1,200,000 cubic yards of concrete placed. More than 150,000 tons of fabricated steel were used in its construction. The plant covers an area of 1,250 acres, and a plot of land of approximately the same size and adjoining the existing plant is being reserved for possible further extensions. Gary, the town, was incorporated in June, 1906, only a few months after the foundations for the first buildings were excavated. At the first election for town officials, only 33 votes were cast. Seven years later, in 1913, over 9,000 voters marked the ballots. When the Steel Corporation decided to build Gary it determined to make it both a modern and a model city. The town was carefully laid out by competent engineers and ample provision allowed for growth. It now covers several square miles. Its principal thoroughfares are Broadway, 100 feet wide, and Fifth Avenue, 80 feet wide. These are paved with concrete block and the other streets with macadam. Citizens of New York and other big cities, accustomed to seeing their important thoroughfares constantly torn up for the laying of sewers, electric wires, etc., would find a pleasant change from these conditions in Gary, where it is never necessary to do such work in the principal streets. All gas and water mains and sewer pipes are laid in wide alleys between the streets and thus all repairs and improvements can be carried on without any obstruction to traffic. Many pretty homes, a number of them owned by steel workers, make attractive the residential section of the town. The Gary Land Co. has erected a great number of these houses--1,000 or more--and these are offered for sale at prices representing approximately the cost of the land and improvements, with a special discount to plant employees. The prices of these houses range from $1,500 to $25,000. The company also offers for rent, at exceedingly nominal rates, houses built for the most part of concrete and equipped with electricity and all other modern conveniences. All these dwellings are attractively finished and each has its plot of green in front. The visitor to Gary is never allowed to leave the town without seeing the Y. M. C. A., the finest building in the city, erected at a cost of $260,000 and the gift to the town of the man whose name it bears. The building contains a gymnasium, swimming pools, class rooms, club rooms, dormitories, and so on. Opposite the Y. M. C. A. is the beautiful Carnegie Library, and not far off, the Federal Building. The Gary Hospital, built and maintained by the Corporation, is absolutely modern, both in equipment and management, and bears favorable comparison with similar institutions in the largest cities. But the town, Gary, is known first and foremost as the birthplace of the most modern and efficient educational system. The Gary plan of training youth, with modifications, has been extensively copied in many large cities. Unfortunately, after a rather inadequate try-out in New York City, it was abandoned; apparently, however, chiefly because local politics made it impossible for those in charge of the work there to get full results from the Gary methods. Professor William Wirt, an enthusiast on the training of youth and an iconoclast so far as old methods are concerned, is at the head of the Gary school system. In fact, he originated it. When the town officials and those of the Steel Corporation took up the matter of education, they went at it in a thorough manner and looked around for the best school principal to be obtained. Wirt’s plans were approved, he was chosen for the post, and given a free hand in modeling the entire system. The Emerson and Frœbel schools were the result. Wirt proceeded to turn topsy turvy many of the old ideas in education. He started off with one big advantage over other reformers--he was able to arrange all details from the beginning, even the building of the schools, in accordance with his plan, and he worked out a scheme under which the youth of the town enjoys a vocational training completely equipping graduates of the school for entering practically any chosen walk in life. But Prof. Wirt has done more than this. He has succeeded in making education attractive for the young people of Gary. One of Wirt’s pet theories, not one new or exclusively his by any means, is that play is as essential to the growing boy or girl as study, and in the schools work and play are so alternated as to double the number of children which the school buildings would ordinarily accommodate, one class working while another uses the playgrounds. Thus, with three school buildings, well over 3,000 children are fully provided for on full time. The curriculum includes all the regular school subjects, as well as many others, including music and a number of sciences. A large auditorium is devoted to the study of history and geography, which are combined into one subject and inculcated with the assistance of lantern slides or moving pictures, visualization of scenes and events being made use of to attract interest and assist memorization. The same idea is employed in other studies, the room devoted to natural history, for instance, being equipped with a wide variety of stuffed animals and even with small live ones. The range of vocational subjects taught runs from painting, carpentry, and iron work to accountancy and architectural draughtsmanship. Each subject is taught in a room with the proper equipment, there being a carpenter shop, paint shop, foundry, draughting room, etc., and each trade or profession is taught, not theoretically, but by practice. Teachers for these subjects are not chosen from college faculties, but are skilled workers in the different lines, and the students or apprentices to each trade make articles used in the school itself. This serves not only to reduce the cost of maintenance of the school but to give the pupils the interest in their work that comes from seeing the product of their skill in actual use. Thus, the youthful carpenters make tables, chairs, desks, etc., that can bear comparison with high-grade factory products; the painters keep the schoolrooms and buildings spick and span; the draughtsmen plan additions or improvements; the accountants keep the school books. In every case a concrete end is served to the benefit of the school and the pupil. Nor is the female of the species forgotten vocationally. A kitchen and lunch room are run by the girls. Here they prepare palatable dishes and sell them to their fellow-students. Thus the young housewife gains actual experience in the most essential department of good housekeeping. Laundry work, sewing, and other feminine industries are similarly taught, besides stenography, bookkeeping, etc. In that part of the school buildings and grounds devoted to recreation are to be found swimming pools, one for each sex, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, swings, slides, and other aids to enjoyment loved by and suitable to the young of all ages and both sexes. Instruction in play is just as thorough as in study. The recreation teachers devote their entire time to this work. An excellent illustration of how the Gary educational system appeals to boys and girls is afforded by the story told the writer by a foreman in the mills of the American Sheet & Tin Plate Co., which has a large plant on the outskirts of the town. His story, told as nearly as possible in his own words, is as follows: About two years ago, my nephew, left an orphan by the death of his mother, came from Pittsburgh to my care. I had been told that the boy was incorrigible, and would pay no attention to his studies; in fact, that he flatly refused to go to school. And it proved the information was correct. Arriving at Gary he would not even make a pretense at studying, and I practically had to use force to induce him to visit Prof. Wirt with me. Arriving at the school the boy explained to Mr. Wirt that he did not consider himself in need of an education as his only ambition was to become a house painter. The Professor thereupon suggested that he come to school and learn how to paint, assuring him that he would not be asked to do anything he objected to. Naturally the boy, who was never so happy as when pottering around with a paint brush, accepted the suggestion. The first day he was given a pot of paint and a brush and put under the care of a painter. In a short time he was fairly adept at laying on color. Then, one day, Mr. Wirt called him in and informed him that some of the classrooms were to be redecorated in several colors and that, in view of his progress, he would be put in charge of the job provided he could make a satisfactory estimate of its cost. That was a stumper. The boy confessed his inability to estimate, and the necessity for a knowledge of mathematics being thus forced upon him, took up the study enthusiastically. Gradually he was brought to appreciate the advantage of other studies. To-day that boy would miss his breakfast rather than be late for school. It would take a padlock and chain to keep him away from his studies. And so far as I can find out, he is taking pretty nearly the whole curriculum. Prof. Wirt has been strongly supported in his methods by the Steel Corporation officials. Gary is growing rapidly. Two Corporation subsidiaries, besides the Indiana Steel Co., already have plants there. These are the American Sheet & Tin Plate Co. and the American Bridge Co. The American Locomotive and American Car & Foundry companies both big railway equipment manufacturers, not connected with the Steel Corporation, are said to be planning the erection of plants in that vicinity. The Gary Screw & Bolt Co., one of several local enterprises, has a plant for making bolts, nuts, and screws, and employs 800 men. No less than six trunk lines, the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, Baltimore & Ohio, Wabash, Michigan Central, Pennsylvania, and Nickel Plate, connect with Gary. Smaller roads entering the town are the Lake Shore & South Bend Ry.; Gary & Southern; Gary, Valparaiso & Eastern; and Gary, Hobart & Eastern. The Elgin, Joliet & Eastern, a Steel Corporation road, has a large freight yard near the steel works. A village in 1906, Gary is now a city of the second class, having attained that rank in April, 1915. [Illustration: Interior of Gary School] Citizens of Gary have always been ashamed of one thing about their town. This, appropriately known as the “patch” is a small section thrusting itself wedge-like into the heart of the city, and being full of saloons and dives. The site of the patch was not acquired by the Corporation, because of some question as to validity of title, so the big company has no power of restriction over its development. Gary men have long hoped that some means of cleaning up the section would be found. Prohibition seems to be doing it. Away up in the northeast corner of Minnesota, on the shore of Lake Superior, is Morgan Park, another steel city, named after the great banker who financed the organization of the Steel Corporation. This town is one of the latest developments and contains many new and interesting features. The engineers who laid out Morgan Park were able to use Gary as a model and to improve on that city in many respects, particularly as the demands on the new settlement in the matter of population would be much smaller than was the case at Gary and it was possible to develop the town along suburban residential lines. Perhaps the most interesting feature of Morgan Park is the provision made for children. In no other town in the world are there as many playgrounds per capita. Each block has its own playground for small children, provided with swings, slides, sand piles, and so on, and thus the little ones in every part of the city are able to enjoy the advantages of outdoor play under the eyes of their parents and without their having to cross a street. For older children and for such adults as still keep up personal interest in athletics there are many places where they may indulge in tennis and other sports, and these give the workers in the mills and their families greater and more varied opportunities for physical recreation than are enjoyed by the inhabitants of most larger and more pretentious cities. To the visitor Morgan Park presents an unusually attractive aspect. The streets are all laid out in curves, beautifully parked, and the effect of this to the eye is entirely pleasing. Altogether, the physical aspect of the settlement is more that of the exclusive suburbs of some big city than what one ordinarily conceives to be a steel town usually associated with grime and smoke. Like all the other Steel Corporation developments Morgan Park has a modern, thoroughly equipped hospital, Y. M. C. A. and other advantages above those which a city suburb usually boasts. Morgan Park is really a suburb of Duluth and is part of that municipality. But while it is under the city government it enjoys the various advantages mentioned because of the direct influence of the Corporation which spends a large amount in beautifying the town, providing playgrounds, etc., and which keeps a corps of trained workers to promote welfare work of various kinds within its confines. Just as in Gary which, though a self-governing city, displays in all its activities the influence of the big corporation. J. P. Morgan, Jr., paid the total cost of the beautiful and commodious Y. M. C. A. building. And throughout the State of Minnesota are a number of small towns which, in somewhat the same sense, may be classed among the Steel Corporation towns. That is, although self-governing municipalities they owe the majority of their improvements, such as hospitals, to the munificence of the Corporation which employs most of their inhabitants and sees to it that its employees shall have all possible opportunity for comfort and social betterment. Hibbing, Coleraine, Eveleth--all these are, in the true sense, steel towns. One of the great problems that has faced the Corporation in building the towns or settlements to house its mill workers has been that of the bachelor, or the man who has come to this country to work leaving his family in Europe or elsewhere. A large percentage of steel workers belong to one or other of these two classes, and it has been a difficult matter to devise a means of giving these men decent and respectable living accommodations with as many of the comforts of home as possible at a price within the means of the worker with his hands. In different communities different plans have been tried. In Morgan Park the Corporation erected large boarding houses with some of the advantages of a club but the success of these has not been as great as was hoped for. Ellwood City, near Pittsburgh, where the National Tube Co. has one of its big seamless tube plants, probably comes nearer to solving this difficult problem than any other point. Here the Tube Company maintains what is really a men’s hotel, with excellently kept bedrooms, club rooms, etc., rented at a cost of a few dollars weekly to the workers. The hotel, boarding house, or club, call it what you will, is located but a few steps from the big restaurant maintained by the company. Thus the boarding-house menu is avoided while the worker, tired out with his day’s toil, is spared the necessity of a long walk for his evening meal. Down below the Mason and Dixon Line conditions are considerably different from what they are in the North. In dealing with the white worker of Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and other states the Corporation has sought to avoid anything that smacks of paternalism. It has simply provided the worker with certain advantages, leaving as much as possible to him the management of these. But in the South, with a large percentage of the workers colored, it has been necessary for the Tennessee Coal & Iron Co., the Corporation’s southern subsidiary, to manage directly the affairs of the settlements of its workers. Although among the smallest of the steel towns Westfield, Ala., is one of the most important from the sociological standpoint. It is a development devoted exclusively to the negro, its entire population being black, and it seeks to give the colored worker who resides there advantages identical with those which his white brother enjoys elsewhere. Situated in a little valley, amid rolling hills, the town slopes down from all sides to a big common, the most noticeable feature of which is a large and well-kept baseball park. Around this centre are grouped two excellent schools, community houses, and other buildings used as social centres, while, divided by winding roads, the well-built houses of the town straggle in all directions, half-hidden by the southern foliage, along the sides of the hills. It need hardly be pointed out that a development of this character has a broad and important economic aspect. The negro constitutes a substantial percentage of the American population. In the South he predominates. But until now the negro has never enjoyed any advantages or the opportunity for social betterment. In Westfield he has such an opportunity and while, temporarily, the town must be managed by white brains it is almost certain that, in time, the negro residents of this delightful village will learn to manage their own affairs and will do so. And unless the writer misunderstands the spirit of the Steel Corporation, it will put every encouragement in their way to that very end. Fairfield, Ala., but a short distance from Westfield, has been called the South’s model industrial city, and also the “city of homes.” Situated like the negro village, on softly undulating ground amid the luxurious southern foliage, the site chosen for Fairfield offered its builders an excellent field for achieving artistic effects in its layout, and they did not fail to make use of the opportunity. Like Morgan Park, although almost within a stone’s throw of the steel mills, it presents the appearance of an exclusive suburb. Its well-paved streets are shaded by green trees through the leaves of which peep out the fronts of cosy-looking modern houses. Even the trolley cars running through its principal streets fail to disturb its peaceful charm. To describe the many “steel towns” scattered all over the eastern half of the American continent would be impossible, as it would be to discuss the problems presented by local conditions in each case. Broadly speaking, the Corporation, wherever it has built to house its employees, has sought first of all the comfort and happiness of these workers and not its own gain. And it has always borne in mind that comfort and happiness are æsthetic as well as physical, and built accordingly. In the older steel centres the Corporation, as it has not built from the ground up, has naturally not been able to introduce into the communities as many basic improvements as has been possible in the newer developments. But it has in every case sought to improve existing conditions, always with the workers’ comfort, health, and happiness as its goal. The H. C. Frick Coke Co. has set itself the task of making attractive the coal-mining towns of the Connellsville region. By the usual corporation methods of sanitation, of making personal and community cleanliness easily attainable, it has raised very materially the standard of living in the coal towns, and the standard of management of the towns themselves. It has even managed to make many of these towns attractive--if the reader has ever been through coal-mining regions he will appreciate the size of this achievement--by encouraging gardening by means of prizes and so on, and by fostering community pride. It has set new community standards in the coal districts. To the late George G. McMurtry must be given much credit for the movement for bettering conditions in industrial centres. Over 30 years ago Mr. McMurtry conceived and laid out a model city in the environs of Pittsburgh for the workers of the American Sheet Steel Co. The town laid out by the former head of the Sheet Steel Company will stand as a lasting monument to him, though it does not bear his name--Vandergrift, Pa., the first of the steel towns.