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I spent 20 years in a steel foundry and 10 in a iron foundry….I know
Sparrows Point Steelworker history
Updated September 10, 2012
Sparrows Point, a promontory jutting into the Chesapeake Bay, or the lower Patapsco River - depending upon your sense of geography– east of Baltimore, MD, was named for Thomas Sparrow who received the land as a grant from Lord Baltimore in 1652. In 1887, Frederick Wood, working with an industrial combination of The Pennsylvania Steel Co. and the Bethlehem Iron Co., began the construction of the enormous works that would first become Maryland Steel and subsequently Bethlehem Steel. From its opening in 1890 until today, the works have been a major industrial producer and employer in the Baltimore area. In the 1950' s, Sparrows Point was the largest steel mill in the world, with a bargaining unit of more than 31,000 workers.
Constantly reworking their relations with the company, the steelworkers at Sparrows Point erected their own mighty civilization, spreading from the workplace into the families and communities around Sparrows Point. The company town of Sparrows Point grew as part of the original mill but was bulldozed over several decades until it finally closed in 1975 to provide room for the construction of the ' L' furnace. Local historian Elmer Hall has created a marvelous historical memory of the town
Workers also came to The Point from the Dundalk community (where one campus of The Community College of Baltimore County is located), into segregated adjacent neighborhoods like Turner Station. Watersedge, Edgemere and Fort Howard, into the eastern neighborhoods of Baltimore City, like Highlandtown, or into west Baltimore communities like Edmondson Village, eventually into the Baltimore suburbs, steelworkers and even into southern Pennsylvania, extended their workplace family over many generations. The increase of work at The Point also reflected many ' great' migrations, of black workers from the south and of white workers from rural areas or mining camps in West Virginia and central Pennsylvania.
Issues of company paternalism, unionism, civil rights, women's rights and political power were constant issues that this civilization had to deal with, especially after The United Steelworkers of America (USWA) were voted into Sparrows Point in September, 1941 and the workers developed collected power to challenge the company.
http://www.sparrowspointsteelworkers.com/html/history.html