TY  - BOOK
AU  - Knowles,Anne Kelly
TI  - Mastering iron: the struggle to modernize an American industry, 1800-1868 
SN  - 9780226448596
AV  - HD9515 .K56 2013
U1  - 338.4/76691097309034 23
PY  - 2013///]
CY  - Chicago
PB  - The University of Chicago Press
KW  - Iron industry and trade
KW  - United States
KW  - History
KW  - fast
KW  - Eisen- und Stahlindustrie
KW  - gnd
KW  - Modernisierung
KW  - USA
N1  - Includes bibliographical references and indexes; Iron in America -- Mapping the iron industry -- The worlds of ironworkers -- High hopes and failure -- The elements of success -- Iron for the Civil War -- Conclusion: American iron
N2  - Veins of iron run deep in the history of America. Iron making began almost as soon as European settlement, with the establishment of the first ironworks in colonial Massachusetts. Yet it was Great Britain that became the Atlantic world's dominant low-cost, high-volume producer of iron, a position it retained throughout the nineteenth century. It was not until after the Civil War that American iron producers began to match the scale and efficiency of the British iron industry. In Mastering Iron, Anne Kelly Knowles argues that the prolonged development of the US iron industry was largely due to geographical problems the British did not face. Pairing exhaustive manuscript research with analysis of a detailed geospatial database that she built of the industry, Knowles reconstructs the American iron industry in unprecedented depth, from locating hundreds of iron companies in their social and environmental contexts to explaining workplace culture and social relations between workers and managers. She demonstrates how ironworks in Alabama, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia struggled to replicate British technologies but, in the attempt, brought about changes in the American industry that set the stage for the subsequent age of steel. Richly illustrated with dozens of original maps and period art work, all in full color, Mastering Iron sheds new light on American ambitions and highlights the challenges a young nation faced as it grappled with its geographic conditions
ER  -