Draft talk:Steelton Village

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Buckeye Steel Castings Company

Among the largest industrial employers was Buckeye Steel Castings, part of a cluster of factories developing c. 1900. Buckeye Steel Castings was organized in 1886, and the Columbus Steel Works and Furnaces of Carnegie Steel were built in 1894-1895. Access to the Baltimore and Hocking Valley Railroads was instrumental to industry development, as was the availability of land for potential development outside the city limits in Marion Township. Here factories could avoid Columbus property taxes, and farmland in 1900 was available in large tracts at low cost. Transportation connections were important to compete with Cincinnati and Cleveland in the foundry business, and when iron foundries were giving way to steel production, no less than 22 railroads or electric streetcar/urban lines enabled the capacity to grow industry and labor.

The proximity of raw materials in southeastern Ohio, the lower cost of living in Columbus compared to other manufacturing cities, the scarcity of unionization efforts because of the availability of contract prison labor, and the overall growth of smaller industries and start-ups (1890-1900) were factors in the growth of Steelton. Though the area was still an emerging industrial area, by 1900, Columbus had 500 factories in the city making “everything from carriage and foundry products to jewelry and watches.” This fact, advertised nationally by the Columbus Chamber of Commerce, also drew new manufacturing companies into Steelton.

Columbus’s role in steel production was not the same as in Toledo, Youngstown, or Cleveland where steel was created from pig iron. Northern Ohio had better access to iron ore deposits from Lake Superior. Eventually, Columbus’s steel plants distinguished themselves by creating fabricated steel from northern Ohio plants and making it into usable products—and one product was definitely key, the railroad safety coupler produced by Buckeye.

Buckeye was notable because, despite recessions and business downturns nationwide and in Ohio in the 1890s, it succeeded. Buckeye Steel Castings out of an earlier company, Buckeye Malleable Steel, formed in 1894, and originally located on the North Side on Russell Street had attracted local investments from old Columbus families—John G. Deshler, Felix Jacob, James Kilbourne—who had weathered the national depressions of 1893-1897 when 800 banks had failed. By 1902, the company, now known as Buckeye Steel Castings, began to manufacture automatic car couplers with the Buckeye Automatic Car Coupler Company. The coupler greatly enhanced the safety of railroad workers by preventing severe injuries and death for workers who might be caught between railroad cars crashing into each other. However, the automatic couplers were not required for railroad cars at the time which made the success of the company even more remarkable.

Buckeye relocated to the early South Side industrial site where the 80’ tall Steelton furnace had been built by National Steel, on the west side of Parsons Avenue beside the Carnegie Steel Plant in 1899 and purchased the National Steel Company in 1910. The Columbus Iron and Steel Company was also located here. In 1917, they became the American Rolling Mill Company (ARMCO). They too focused on fabrication not steel production. Steelton was an apt nickname for the area, and Buckeye would eventually swallow most of its predecessors.

In a stroke of good fortune or industrial brilliance, the combined “Buckeye” companies succeeded with two new investors—Frank Rockefeller, brother of John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil fame and Thomas Goodwillie, a Rockefeller executive. Both were on the lookout for new opportunities. Buckeye, now joined as one company, gave the new investors corporate stock and, in turn, they agreed to share all increases of future stock and secure Congressional support to mandate the automatic couplers on railroad car manufacturers. When Rockefeller and Goodwillie were able to secure Congressional support for the mandatory use on all manufactured railroad cars, this was a game changer.

Rockefeller was president of Buckeye Steel Castings from 1895 to 1907–a self-made man who had only a basic education before enlisting in the Civil War at age 16. By contrast, the next president of Buckeye had an extensive formal education, a degree in mechanical engineering, on-the-job technical training as an engineer, was a master mechanic and a general superintendent of railroad power, and had six years experience with Buckeye.

S.P. Bush, grandfather and great grand father of two future U.S. Presidents, was an advocate and practitioner of Scientific Management, a well-studied approach at looking holistically at production to alleviate bottlenecks before they happened—whether it was a new modern design for factory architecture or a layout in the production line for an open-heath process. His approach guaranteed efficiency and quality products. In addition, Bush was an advocate of Welfare Capitalism, a progressives idea promoted by the National Civic Federation, made up of business and labor leaders and government officials. The group advocated workers be given “special consideration for physical comfort wherever labor is performed; opportunities for recreation; educational advances; provision of suitable sanitary homes; and plans for saving and lending money.”

Buckeye Steel was important to the area as its largest employer. By 1916, 2000 employees were on the payroll and it continued into the next decade. Buckeye’s golden era of production and civic leadership was in the 1920s. The neighborhood was a settled mosaic of cultures and community. The National Origin’s quota system ended Eastern European and Mediterranean immigration in favor of Northern European immigration (the British Isles, Scandinavia, and Germany) in the 1920s. Buckeye managed to survive the Depression and even had temporary growth in World War II by producing tank armor. Buckeye continued to operate and actively recruited workers from West Virginia and Kentucky. “Distinct ethnic clusters began to disappear...Buckeye Steel Casting was, unfortunately typical among the area industries that experienced success, became complacent, and failed to develop new products.”

By the 1950s, with housing opportunities rising in the suburbs, many second generation Hungarians and others began moving to the new developments, often taking advantage of the GI Bill for school, home, and business loans. It was not available to African American veterans. Others did not leave—they continued to invest in the neighborhood, like the Schottensteins, even if they no longer lived nearby. They continued to do business and support the cultural and community groups.

Seagrave Corporation

Another important node of Steelton industrial activity was along South High Street (Route 23), paralleling Parsons Avenue to its west. The massive Seagrave Corporation, producing firefighting equipment and fire engines, also had moved to the area for its connections to labor, transportation, and room to grow. Industries which had formerly been in the downtown (the original Montgomery Township) were beginning to relocate to take advantage of township incentives or the ability to expand.

However, Seagrave’s original location was in Clinton Township. along Lane Avenue, west of the Olentangy River, near the “new” Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College, and near a hamlet known as “Lanevue,” which was later renamed “Seagrave.” Frederick Seagrave, inventor of a trussed, lightweight ladder capable of reaching heights safely for picking apples in Michigan orchards in 1880, moved to Clinton Township in Lanevue to be near the Hocking Valley Railroad.

Combining ladder manufacture with a horse-drawn ladder wagon, a prototype of a firefighting apparatus was created. In 1898, H. A. Linthwaite, a noted Columbus architect, was contracted by Seagrave to draw up plans for a large brick building 50’ by 450’ for the “Seagrave Trussed Ladder” company, and the contract for the building was awarded to John Erfurt. In 1901, the Seagrave Corporation moved to its new building at 2000 South High Street.

Success was achieved by inventiveness. Once Seagrave offered $500 to invoice and sell their property at 50 cents on the dollars (in gold) to the first person who offered on Election Day, if candidate William Jennings Bryant was elected the next U.S. President of the United States. The offer was not a hoax. But Seagrave created a stir and must have been fairly certain that Bryant would be defeated. That same year, Seagrave gave demonstrations outside Fire Engine House No. 12, betting the strength of his ladder would hold by having three men sit in the middle of the ladder which spanned two chairs. The ladder did not bend. If no alarms for a fire were called in, Seagrave used the quiet time to put his fire engines on an impromptu parade around the fair grounds. Publicity brought sales.

In 1899, the City of Los Angeles ordered a trussed hook and ladder truck and other apparatus for $2,250. Others took notice from the publicity in national magazines. Within six months, the Seagrave Company was forced to double the size of is operation in order to fill the orders, not just for new sales, but even for a competitor manufacturer that could not keep up with their own orders. The competitor company ordered a $100,000 dollars of the Seagrave Trussed Ladder; it was the largest sale ever made Seagrave had ever made. In May, 1908, Seagrave staged and filmed a purposely-set fire in downtown Columbus, attracting a large crowd to watch as it was quickly extinguished. The film debuted later in August during an international convention of fire chiefs. The early film was just one way to impress the invitees. One thousand seven hundred and fifty city fire hydrants were painted red to welcome them. The fire hydrants and film were a hit, and so was the debut of the first motorized fire truck in the United States. The movie was later shown in theaters, and Columbus schools closed early one day so students could attend a special matinee of the film.

Of course, the Seagrave Corporation profited from each newspaper story of a fire—and the admirable job its product contributed to the safety measures and successes on the scene. From a dynamite blast at the Marble Cliff quarries, felt even as far south as the Seagrave factory to a fire in the Foster Block (northwest corner Mound and South Hugh Street) that involved the daring rescue of many tenants, including a woman with typhoid carried to safety on a Seagrave ladder—the merits of the firemen and the Seagrave name made headlines. Samuel Kinnear, civil engineer and city council member, later wrote in The Columbus Evening Dispatch regarding the Foster Block fire, “the merits of the Segrave company’s truss leader was admirably tested. Its lightness and strength makes its usefulness a marvel.”

On the 4th of July, 1909, architects Julian and Julian announced Seagrave’s intent to construct a two-story structure of brick and mill construction, 56’ by 106’ with a composition roof as an addition to its already large plant. Columbus City Council had obviously taken notice of the growth of Steelton when in July, 1909, it voted to expend $5000 to build a new market house at Parsons and Innis Avenue. However, city funds were running low, so the South Side businessmen’s committee “went away satisfied with the promise of council to purchase the site and provide cash for the buildings next year.” The money did not materialize.

Seagrave kept expanding its line of firefighting apparatus. Just five months later in 1909, Columbus Firehouse No. 16 debuted a new ladder which could be extended easily to 85’ in five seconds but did not require a longer wagon to carry it. Continued success necessitated more expansion. Within a year, Julian and Julian architects again were asked to draw up plans for another factory on the site. Seagrave was now making new 30 horsepower engines and making them available for the Southside YMCA classes to study them. Throughout the 1920s, the Seagrave executives included not only Julius Stone, president, but also R. Buchler of Steelton Bank, and William Trautman, President of the Foreign Grocery located on Parsons Avenue.

In 1929, another brick and steel warehouse was planned. The building would have 16,000 square feet of floor space to be used to store fire-fighting equipment and was to be built by the John Heckert Company for $35,000. The announcement came in June, 1929, just months before the stock market crashed. Seagrave, like others, was impacted by the national financial crises, and by the end of 1930, Harold Spain, Seagrave president, reported that though sales were down by 21%, the net balance of $100,937.19 was manageable. The deficit, however, continued to grow, but, by 1935, Seagrave had reduced its deficit to $525, compared to its deficit in 1933 of $665,533, purported to be the worst year of the Great Depression.

By the late 1950s, Seagrave was the largest manufacturer of fire-fighting equipment in the United States, employing 310 men and 20 women in the 1950s. It had survived labor disputes over the firing of two employees for union activities in 1937 and a 1944 major fire that destroyed Seagrave’s neighbors on South High Street—the nearby Jackson Furniture Co.; Topper Structural Steel Company’s showrooms and warehouse; the Ohio Farm Bureau’s Ohio Horticultural Services offices. In November, 1946 Seagrave had faced a deadlock with the United Auto Workers, resulting in a strike vote by Union Local 120 representing its 250 employees; however, one month later, Seagrave shut down, laying off workers because of a national coal strike and a freight embargo. Five other Columbus plants faced similar shutdowns.

Troubles followed a year later when the Seagrave Corporation and the Americans-LaFrance Foamite Corporation of Elmira, New York were indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiracy to monopolize the production and distribution of motor-driven fire apparatus. The indictment alleged that the two corporations accounted for approximately 60% of all sales annually, and municipalities were forced to pay exorbitant prices for this equipment. Consequently this threatened the safety of cities from the hazards of fire. Four officials, including Howard Spain, president of Seagrave, were each fined $5000 of charges to restraining trade under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The two companies were each fined $15,000.

Looking back at the tumultuous times, in 1959, Dr. Henry Hunker, in his study of Columbus’s industries, noted why Seagrave had endured. “The Seagrave Corporation is typical of the independent, specialized plant that was common in the older Columbus industrial community (and) represents local inventiveness, initiative, and capital successfully at work.” A year later, Seagrave already had plans to leave Columbus.

One explanation was Seagrave needed more room to grow with too many orders and the low ceilings of the buildings, supported by too many supporting posts, impaired the production. In addition, Seagrave had a diverse product mix of both paint and leather and were also housing two fire equipment companies—they had run out of room. In 1964, it was announced that Seagrave operations were purchased by FWD Corporation eleven months earlier. A Seagrave division would remain on site with 75 employees to help with the move to Clintonville, Wisconsin where there was already a 60,000 sq ft.manufacturing plant on 100 acres waiting. Seagrave pledged to help assist 200 employees find other employment. A federal judge, perhaps suspicious of the chain of events, ordered the company to post a $400,000 bond within one week or an injunction would prohibit the company from moving before an on-going management-labor dispute was settled by arbitration.

Three years after the move in 1967, small weekly ads appeared in the classified section of newspapers above the ads to rent a refrigerator or a stove for $2 a week. The ads read, “Flea Market, 2000 South High St. Seagrave Bldg. Every Sat. & Sun., 7 a.m.-6 p.m. ‘Antique Collector’s Haven’ Come, Sell-Trade-Buy.”

Federal Glass Corporation

The junction of Marion Road (and nearby Innis Road) with Parsons Avenue was an especially important site because here Marion Township and the City of Columbus met.  Relocating in the township meant lower taxes for industries, open fields for expansion, and access to railroads. It was to become a growing part of the Steelton industrial powerhouse.

Buckeye Stamping (555 Marion Rd.) manufactured cans; Bonney-Floyd (611 Marion Rd.), steel manufacturers; the Columbus Gas and Appliance Co., (776 Marion Rd.), glass plates and appliances; Hercules Box Co., (521 Marion Rd.), paper box manufacturers; Brightman Manufacturing Company (659 Marion Rd.), manufacturing machines; American Blower Corporation (666 Marion Rd.), manufacturing radiators; Lattimer Stevens Corporation (715 Marion Rd.), appliance manufacturing; Linde Air Products (732 Marion Rd.); and Brown Steel Company (753 Marion Rd.) were located there.

Federal Glass Corporation, established in 1900 at nearby 515 Innis Avenue, was the first in the glass industry to produce glass tumblers, then bottles and other glassware, using automated machines. Federal had originated in the mid 19^th century in Steubenville, Ohio, near many other glass producers in West Virginia. The glass industry was dependent on the availability and cost of natural gas to fuel the furnaces, and later they moved to Tiffin, Ohio where they were offered five years of no-cost natural gas. By 1900, the owners, the Beatty brothers, were acquiring smaller glass factories and, though the glass industries had suffered depressed sales in 1899, George Beatty, president, made a bold move—they risked their combined assets on a larger venture, the creation of a factory in Steelton.

Because they had created a mechanized glass making process by feeding automatic steam presses with glass melted in continuous tanks, they had achieved success in creating glass tumblers and tableware through technology. At the same time, they kept diversified assets with bottling glass and glass blowing plants in Indiana, and continued on the executive committee of an association they created, the National Association of Manufacturers of Pressed and Blown Glassware (NAMPBG), to deal with potential labor disputes.

Ground was broken in June 1900 for their new factory which had more than a dozen buildings on 17 acres of undeveloped land in the township. The company, because of its expected success in manufacturing tableware and wide-mouth canning jars, sold another company in Dunkirk, Indiana. There is no known explanation for why the name “federal” was chosen, only an awareness that two large glassmaking firms already existed—“United States” and “National” Glassware, and the word “Federal” put them in the same league.

Glassblowing machines—for which George Beatty had received a U.S. Patent in 1892 in Tiffin— also were shipped to Columbus, probably with the intent on using them. Federal Glass had violated trade agreements with other companies not to manufacture tableware for five years. They faced litigation, followed by countersuits.

The glass and tableware manufacturing was cutthroat as companies undercut each other’s prices and violated agreements. Problems for the company had not stopped there. Faced with a natural gas shortage, Federal entered into an agreement with Buckeye Steel Castings to lease 17,000 acres in Licking County to find new sources of natural gas.  The wells proved empty, and Federal Glass turned to using producer gas made from coal.

Having survived attempts at unionization, the Great Depression, World War II, new government regulations, takeovers and mergers in the glass industry both nationally and in Ohio in the 1960s, it was the 1970s that did Federal in. When Federal Glass unexpectedly closed its doors in 1979, the loss was catastrophic for 1500 workers.  The ripple effect was great. Another 200 workers in the Hercules Box Company would lose jobs. The city’s economy lost $1.2 million, the cost of which was calculated on what Federal spent on goods and services in the local economy. Columbus Public Schools lost $375,000 annually. The property taxes paid by Federal meant a loss of $500,000, and another loss of $500,000 was from loss of real estate and personal property taxes.

In the end and over the following year, management, employees, city and state officials, and even Federal’s competitors  in the glass industry agreed—there was blame enough to go around. “Plastic, foreign competition, over-production, union contracts, management overkilll, an absentee landlord, conspiratorial companies, and the irresolute FTC (Federal Trade Commission) synergistically brought Federal Glass to its knees,” A former employee summarized the reference to the FTC by saying, “They are bureaucrats, and the last three letters tell you, they are rats.”