Republic Steel Cleveland photograph   Save
Ohio Guide Photographs
Description: The Republic Iron and Steel Company was founded in Youngstown, Ohio in 1899; over the course of the 1920s and 1930s, it acquired a string of smaller mills, from Canton and Massillon to Elyria and Cleveland. Located on the banks of the Cuyahoga, the Cleveland blast furnaces were originally built in the 1910s for the Corrigan-McKinley company. In 1937, backed by the Congress of Industrial Organizations, workers at the Republic Steel Company, the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company, and several other steel companies staged sit-down strikes over low wages and poor working conditions. Ownership brought in scab labor to work around the striking workers, used riot gas to expel the strikers, and finally petitioned the governor of Ohio to send in troops. In contrast with its strenuous efforts to break unions in the 1930s, Republic happily unionized in the postwar period in order to receive lucrative government contracts. Reverse reads: "Republic Steel Blast Furnaces. Ident. 50 State Picture Book; page 38 upper; Location, Cleveland; Credit, Ohio Writers' Project; Caption, Blast Furnaces, Republic Steel Corporation." View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: SA1039AV_B04F11_04_01
Subjects: Cleveland (Ohio)--Buildings, structures, etc. ;
Places: Cleveland (Ohio); Cuyahoga County (Ohio)