In 1888, Youngstown industrialists
George D. Wick and
James Anson Campbell organized the Mahoning Valley Iron Company, with Wick as president. Charles Dayton Arms, Wicks brother in law and also an iron entrepreneur, was brought in as president. Five years later, the two men resigned from the firm when it was taken over by the
Republic Iron and Steel Company, and their next project would come in response to major changes that occurred in the community's industrial sector. Youngstown's industrial leaders began to convert from
iron to steel manufacturing at the turn of the century, a period that also saw a wave of
consolidations that placed much of the community's industry in the hands of national corporations. To the rising concern of many area industrialists,
U.S. Steel, shortly after its establishment in 1901, absorbed Youngstown's premier steel producer, the
National Steel Corporation. During the previous year, however, Wick and Campbell combined resources with other local investors who wanted to maintain significant levels of local ownership within the city's manufacturing sector. The group established the Youngstown Iron Sheet and Tube Company with $600,000 in
capital. Wick, who emerged as the steel company's first president in 1900, appointed Campbell as secretary. The word "Iron" was dropped from the company's name in 1905. Although the company's focus began with
sheet and
tube, it eventually became one of the nation's most important steel producers with a varied product line. In 1923, Youngstown Sheet and Tube purchased the assets of the Brier Hill Steel Company (also located in Youngstown, at
Brier Hill), as well as the facilities of the Steel and Tube Company of America in
East Chicago and
Indiana Harbor, Indiana, making it the fifth-largest steel maker in the
United States and the largest employer in the
Mahoning Valley. It acquired the Mark Manufacturing Company in the same year. The home plant of YS&T was known as the Campbell Works, located in
Campbell and
Struthers, Ohio. This plant contained four
blast furnaces, twelve
open hearth furnaces, several
blooming mills, two
Bessemer converters, a
slabbing mill, a butt-weld tube mill, a hot
strip mill, seamless tube mills, and and
bar mills at the Struthers Works. The Brier Hill Works consisted of two blast furnaces named Grace and Jeannette, twelve open hearth furnaces, a blooming mill, a intermediate blooming mill, a round mill, and plate mills, and an electric-weld tube mill. During much of the
Depression, the Brier Hill works was shut down, but it reopened in 1937. Much of the reopened plant's production comprised tube rounds for the Campbell seamless tube mills. Due to the imbalance of ironmaking and steelmaking facilities at the two plants, rail shipments of molten iron "hot metal" were sent from Campbell to Brier Hill from 1937 until 1979. In 1916, Sheet and Tube workers at the East Youngstown plant rioted during a
strike over
working conditions, which resulted in most of the town's
business district being burned to the ground. The strike was quelled by the arrival of
National Guard troops. After the riots, East Youngstown was renamed Campbell in honor of the company's president. In 1937, Youngstown Sheet and Tube played a prominent role in the
Little Steel Strike, along with
Republic Steel,
Inland Steel,
Bethlehem Steel, and
Weirton Steel. The so-called "Little Steel" group, led by Republic's Tom Girdler, operated independently of United States Steel, which had previously signed a labor agreement with the
Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and its subordinate
Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC). Violence during this strike resulted in the deaths of workers in
Chicago and Youngstown. In 1952, during the
Korean War, President
Harry S. Truman attempted to seize American steel mills in order to avert a
strike. This led to the
U.S. Supreme Court decision of
Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, which limited presidential authority. The company abruptly closed its Campbell Works and furloughed 5,000 workers on September 19, 1977, a day remembered locally as "Black Monday." The Brier Hill Works and the company's plants in
Indiana were sold to
Jones and Laughlin Steel, later acquired by
Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV), a
conglomerate. The Brier Hill Works closed in 1979 as part of a continued wave of steel mill closings that devastated the Youngstown economy. The Brier Hill Works was eventually reopened in 1986 by
Cargill Corporation, under the name North Star Steel. In 2002, Cargill sold the operations to
recycling minimill Vallourec Group, a French conglomerate. The
Indiana Harbor mill continues operating, owned by
Cleveland-Cliffs. ==Notable employees==