Ironmaking

Ironmaking at Sloss depended on the Birmingham area’s abundant iron ore, coal, limestone, and dolomite, and for ninety years these materials were turned into pig iron that was sold to foundries for casting into pipe, machinery, and other products. The plant’s heart was a pair of blast furnaces that together could produce as much as 950 tons of iron a day, supported by steam-powered engines, stoves, boilers, and a network of pipes carrying water, steam, and gas. Sloss obtained ore from company-owned mines in Alabama and, after about 1950, from Brazil and Peru; in Birmingham the principal source was Red Mountain hematite, while company lands in northeast Alabama produced brown ore called limonite. Coal came from company mines in the Warrior Coal Basin and was converted to coke, first in 288 beehive coke ovens at Sloss and later, beginning in the 1920s, in a modern coke by-products plant in North Birmingham that also produced benzol, tar, and ammonia for sale. Limestone and dolomite came from company quarries in North Birmingham and Gadsden and from other area companies, and in the blast furnace they acted as fluxes that combined with impurities to form slag, while preheated air blasted into the furnace at high velocity completed the raw materials needed to make iron. Former workers reported that nearly 2000 men worked at Sloss at one time in the early 20th century, but technological improvements and modernization, especially in the late 1920s, sharply reduced the workforce to 250 by the time the plant closed in 1970. Many workers lived nearby in company-owned housing called the Sloss Quarters, built for black workers as shotgun-style houses with two or three rooms, foundation posts, and no indoor plumbing, while the company also operated a commissary and sponsored activities such as picnics and baseball teams. About 65 percent of Sloss workers were black, yet the workplace remained rigidly segregated until the mid-1960s, with separate bathhouses, water fountains, time clocks, and company picnics, and with job segregation placing an all-white group of chemists, accountants, and engineers at the top, an all-black labor gang at the bottom, and a racially mixed middle in which white workers held the higher-paying title positions while black workers were confined to helper roles. Unionization brought higher wages, a shorter work day, better working conditions and safety standards, and increased benefits, but while many white workers saw the union as serving the common good, many black workers believed it failed to confront job discrimination.

Birmingham, Alabama · United States