Partners:

[unspecified]

Active 1901-

Firm Notes

The United States Steel Products Corporation had a fabrication division that constructed heavy steel structures, including the George Washington Bridge in Seattle, WA, (1932).

New York financier J.P. Morgan (1837-1913) masterminded the consolidation of ten large corporations involved in the mining and transport of iron ore, steel component manufacture, and steel erection into America’s first billion-dollar company, The US Steel Corporation, established on 03/02/1901. (The firm had a value of $1.4 billion at its inception.) (See Edward Ayers, et al., American Passages: A History of the United States, Volume 2, [Belmont, CA: 2005 Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2005], p. 580.) These ten original firms included the American Bridge Company, American Sheet Steel Company, American Steel Hoop Company, American Steel and Wire Company, American Tin Plate Company, Carnegie Steel Company, Federal Steel Company, Lake Superior Consolidated Iron Mines, National Steel Company, and National Tube Company. By 1914, other firms would be purchased including the Bessemer Steamship Company, Shelby Steel Tube Company, Oliver Iron Mining Company, Pittsburgh Steamship Company, Pochahontas Coal Lands Company, Union Steel Company, Troy Steel Products Company, Clairton Steel Company, Ore Lands of the Great Northern Railway Interests, and Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company. These acquisitions, according to US government anti-trust prosectors in 1914, were made "...in pursuance of a plan to further increase its power over interstate and foreign trade in iron and steel products."(See No. 6214 In the District Court of the United States in the District of New Jersey, October Term, 1914, United States of America v. United States Steel Corporation and Others, Part I, [Newark, NJ: United States District Court of New Jersey, 1914], p. 8.)

Specifically, the acquisition of the American Bridge Company enabled US Steel to become not only the leading producer of steel for bridges in the US, but also a leading constructor of those spans. Morgan consolidated American Bridge, itself, from a group of 28 companies in 1900. (See American Bridge.com, “History,” accessed 05/18/2020.) Again, according to US prosecutors in 1914: "The American Bridge Company, incorporated in 1900, brought under one control a large number of concerns which were competitors and controlled a majority of the bridge construction in the United States. The purpose and effect of said combination were to unlawfully restrain interstate and foreign commerce with the meaning of the [Sherman] Anti-trust Act.” (See No. 6214 In the District Court of the United States in the District of New Jersey, October Term, 1914, United States of America v. United States Steel Corporation and Others,Part I, [Newark, NJ: United States District Court of New Jersey, 1914], p. 8.)

PCAD id: 6317