Steel Town (1944)

[Music] [Music] this is my hometown it's called Youngstown and it's in the state of Ohio near the Pennsylvania [Music] boundary in Youngstown we make steel we make steel and talk steel I guess it's the same in Sheffield England or that place Russians built in the eurals Magneto gor I'd like to tell you something about how we make steel here and while I'm at it introduce you to some friends of mine who work in the [Music] Mills look down any Street in town and you'll see the Mills at the end of it they're 25 miles of them along the Mahoning River and today they're busy day and night every 8 hours the shifts change 15,000 men to the [Music] ship the men going to work can see the freight trains bringing in the raw materials iron ore coal and limestone [Music] this is the O it looks like dirt but in a few weeks it'll become part of a ship a tank or a gun and in peace time an office building a bridge or a dam structure an overhead crane picks it up and carries it over to the skip hoists which take it up to the top of the blast [Music] furnace in the blast furnace the boys smelt the ore into iron the first first step in making steel molten iron comes out at 3,300 de the slag comes up to the top like creaming a pitcher and goes out the other way [Music] that's Johnny chonko on the snort valve controlling the blast when things get too hot he's got to think quick and move quicker Peter Zeman's the blower head man on the shift he tells him when it's time to stop the flow and this is Frank melee a friend of mine Frank came here from Italy 45 years ago he's got his own place up in the hill come Christmas it's full up with his children and grandchildren [Music] Frank doesn't talk much but I know how he feels about his home his kids and the satisfaction he gets knowing they'll grow up with the same chance as the kid's next door or any other kid in the [Music] country this is The Open Hearth where the molten iron from the blast furnace is mixed with scrap iron and the two purified into steel I remember the first time I saw it the size of the place the noise the sirens wailing when the big stuff moved overhead and the Heat hitting you like a solid wall it's something you don't [Music] forget these boys are slagging lining a furnace with doite this protects the wall of the Furnace against the extreme [Music] temperature down the line Bob Wentworth is charging scrap iron scrap that came from farms backyards and attics all over the country collected by school kids and Housewives to do their part in the war next door Tommy Hughes is giving one of the furnaces a drink of hot iron from the 35ton ladle this iron is fresh from the blast Burns [Music] these are the foremen Bill Riley and John Strauss John came here from Croatia he's got two sons the older is a captain in the Army the younger Ed is still in high school he's a substitute on the football team next year when he gets a little more beef on him he'll be a regular [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] of course it isn't all football education comes first the principal Mr Glascow understands the kids he believes they should help plan their own schooling Ed's interested in flying so along with languages and literature he gets courses in physics and aerology and internal combustion [Music] engines it means a lot to have pre education like this for your kids if you listen in on these youngsters of course you'll hear them talk about football and dances and things of that sort but you'll hear other things too talk about what kind of a world this can be after the war things maybe their parents didn't talk about enough they know what's going on these kids and that's all to the good yes if you listen to them you get to appreciate how much democracy depends on education education for [Music] everybody in the open heart the Steel's nearly finished the first and second helpers take a sample Mike hubinsky is the first Earl strong as his assistant [Music] Mike's people came here from Czechoslovakia Earl's ancestors came from England in the 17th century when there wasn't much to America but a few Colonial Villages along the coast by inspecting samples of the Molton steel the boys can tell exactly when the furnace should be tapped Earl's a musician he plays bull fiddle with the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra no professionals here they're all steel workers and their wives and daughters the Maestro Michael foch Chelli is a timekeeper in the Mills and there's been plenty of bad jokes about that [Music] that they're rehearsing a piece by Gerald meerovich Youngstown boy who's in the Navy now [Music] steel men get in the habit of doing things together like in the mill the Open Heart gang ravels out the hole in the rear of the furnace and lets the steel out roaring and spitting at 3000° [Music] the pit gang dumps in Alloys to give it the Special qualities they want in this [Music] batch this label weighs 100 tons but the overhead crane handles it like a toy lifts it over to a line of Ingot mold holds where it's tapped off we call this teaming just to be on the safe side another test is made to be sure that the Alloys have been added in proper [Music] amounts the ingots are carried over to the blooming Mill where they get their first shaping [Music] it looks rough but these rollers squeeze the ingots down to a tolerance of a 16th of an inch George Bannon and Clarence Kenny control the operation from the pulpit they've been doing this together for so long they work like one man with four hands when the ingots flatten to a slab Fred Ingram takes [Music] over he cuts a slab with hydraulic shears under many tons of pressure Fred's a sharp Steward for the union which has an agreement with a mill he represents the workers on the plants Labor Management committee these days they're discussing production problems and they've been doing a great job up there working together planning together figuring out new ways to make more steel we've got the machines like this one in the hot strip Mill where in one continuous operation a slab of Steel is flattened into a sheet each roller operates at a different speed synchronized to handle a slab that's growing longer and thinner and moving faster all the way down the [Music] line This Is It steel only a few hours ago it was iron or now it's finished and on its way to become a part of the new world that's building we've proved we can lick production problems we've got the equipment the science everything it takes to get the job done but when the war is over we're going to have other problems we know about that in Youngstown we've had it here before there were times when there was no smoke in the sky the Mills were quiet the street full of men and angry questioning wondering we're beginning to understand that these things don't just happen one place they happen everywhere we're thinking that all this production all over the world that's doing such a job in a war can do a job in peace too if we can just learn to work together and I guess we're beginning to learn d