Youngstown Steel and Tube - spindles

Reverse reads: "Youngstown Sheet & Tube. Credit W.A. Bartz." This photograph shows man rubber belts criss-crossing from machine to ceiling, turning the wheels of spinning spools of, what is most likely, steel tubing. Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company plant, east from Center Street Bridge in Youngstown, Ohio at one time made most of America’s steel pipe and tubing. The “new” seamless tube mill, which simply plunges a hole through a solid cylinder of steel, furnished completed tubing far stronger than was possible under the old lap and butt welding process. The Youngstown Iron Sheet and Tube Company was one of the largest steel manufacturers in the world. The company was created by George D. Wick and James A. Campbell along with other local investors who wanted to maintain significant levels of local ownership within the city's manufacturing sector, on November 23, 1900. The home plant of YS&T was known as the Campbell Works located in Campbell and Struthers, Ohio (just south of downtown Youngstown). This plant contained four blast furnaces, twelve open hearth furnaces, blooming mills, two Bessemer converters, slabbing mill, butt weld tube mill, 79" hot strip mill, seamless tube mills and 9" and 12" bar mills at the Struthers Works. The Brier Hill Works consisted of two blast furnaces named Grace and Jeannette, twelve open hearth furnaces, 40" blooming mill, 35" intermediate blooming mill, 24" round mill, 84" and 132" plate mills and an electric weld tube mill. In 1952, during the Korean War, President Harry S. Truman attempted to seize United States steel mills in order to avert a strike. This led to the U.S. Supreme Court decision of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company v. Sawyer, commonly referred to as The Steel Seizure Case. The decision limited the power of the President of the United States to seize private property in the absence of either specifically enumerated authority under Article Two of the United States Constitution or statutory authority conferred on him by Congress. Youngstown Sheet and Tube abruptly closed on September 19, 1977, a day the residents called “Black Monday”.