Pittsburgh Steel Mill Workers from The Farm Security Administration

I went on a "search bar tangent" while looking at pictures of old chicken coops on The Farm Security Administration's website at The Library of Congress (www.loc.gov) and ended up perusing these photos of steel mill workers.   Many of the photos documenting the mills are from the early 1940s, with the apparent intent of pumping the public up about the importance of manufacturing steel stuff for the war.  I found these portraits from 1938 more interesting. Click on the captions to link to the Library of Congress archives.

Steel Worker in Pittsburgh Steel Mill 1938

Steel Worker in Pittsburgh Steel Mill  1938

Steel Worker in Pittsburgh Steel Mill 1938

Steel Worker in Pittsburgh Steel Mill 1938

Steel Worker in Pittsburgh Steel Mill 1938

Steel Worker at Rolling Mill, Pittsburgh PA 1938

Steel Mill, Pittsburgh PA 1938

Molten Steel 1942

Steel Mill Worker at Rolling Mill, Pittsburgh PA 1938

Steel Mill Worker at Rolling Mill, Pittsburgh, PA 1938

Steel Mill, Pittsburgh PA 1938

Today, with the Mon Valley Works Edgar Thompson Plant right up the road from us, steel is still rolling out of Braddock, PA.  From the United States Steel Corporation's website:  "Mon Valley Works is an integrated steelmaking operation that includes four separate facilities: Clairton Plant, Edgar Thomson Plant, Irvin Plant and Fairless Plant.  Edgar Thomson Plant, located about 10 miles southeast of Pittsburgh in Braddock, Pa., is where basic steel production takes place at Mon Valley Works. Raw materials are combined in blast furnaces to produce liquid iron, which is then refined to create steel. Steel slabs from the facility are sent by rail to the nearby Irvin Plant in West Mifflin, Pa., where they are rolled into a number of different sheet products that serve customers in the appliance, automotive, metal building and home construction industries. Mon Valley Works has an annual raw steel production capability of 2.9 million net tons."