As Close to Hell as They Hoped to Get

Author(s):  
Michael K. Rosenow

This chapter examines the steelworkers' experiences with death and dying in western Pennsylvania, and more specifically in Monongahela Valley, during the period 1892–1919. It begins by recounting the Homestead strike of 1892, which pitted the wealthy owners of the Carnegie Steel Company against the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. It then considers other factors that shaped steelworkers' experiences with death after the defeat at Homestead, including work life and life outside of work. It also explores the responses of steelworkers and their families to death, focusing on their creation of networks of mutual aid by turning to religious and secular fraternal societies to help care for the sick and bury the dead. It also discusses the McKees Rocks strike of 1909 and the themes of death and dignity that defined it before concluding with a look at the story of steelman Joe Magarac and its similarities to steelworkers' experiences in turn-of-the-century steel mills. The steelworkers' rituals of death and dying suggests that death provided a key place where they nurtured spirits of resistance.

1977 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. P. Simmons

At a very early stage in their respective careers, most of the major iron and steel plants of Europe and North America recognized the strategic importance of possessing colliery capacity in order to safeguard their requirements of coking-coal, a basic input to the blast furnace. In the Ruhr—where the tendency towards vertical integration probably reached its apotheosis—the Huttenzechen (tied mines), accounted for nearly twenty per cent of the total coal output at the turn of the century and no less than fifty per cent during the inter-war period. The precise legal standing of the integrated units naturally varied from country to country. In Britain and Germany, for example, the most favoured practice was for the iron and steel plant to establish outright ownership of the mines and to treat them merely as a department of the enterprise complex itself, whereas in the United States, the giant steel works such as Kaiser, Republic, and Bethlehem, preferred to create semi-autonomous subsidiary companies. In India, the two steel firms ofthe pre- Independence era, i.e. the Tata Iron and Steel Company (henceforth abbreviated to T.I.S.CO.) and the Indian Iron and Steel Company (I.I.S.CO.), inclined towards the former organizational model (with the single exception of T.I.S.CO.'s West Bokaro colliery which was purchased in 1947 and was wholly owned by the Company's shareholders).


2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-240
Author(s):  
Antje Kahl

Today in Germany, religion and the churches forfeit their sovereignty of interpretation and ritual concerning death and dying. The funeral director is the first point of contact when death occurs. Therefore he or she is able to influence the relationship between the living and the dead. In the course of this development, the dead body, often referred to as dirty and dangerous, is being sanitized by funeral directors. Funeral directors credit the dead body with a certain quality; they claim that facing the dead may lead to religious or spiritual experiences, and therefore they encourage the public viewing of the dead – a practice which was, and still is not very common in Germany. The new connotation of the dead body is an example for the dislimitation of religion in modern society. The religious framing of death-related practises no longer exclusively belongs to traditional religious institutions and actors, but can take place in commercial business companies as well.


Metallurgist ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (11-12) ◽  
pp. 1234-1238
Author(s):  
P. V. Shilyaev ◽  
V. L. Kornilov ◽  
L. S. Ivanova ◽  
A. A. Demidova ◽  
P. A. Stekanov ◽  
...  

Metallurgist ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (9-10) ◽  
pp. 902-911
Author(s):  
P. V. Shilyaev ◽  
S. V. Denisov ◽  
P. A. Stekanov ◽  
V. L. Kornilov ◽  
M. L. Krasnov ◽  
...  

1982 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 283-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josianne Bodart

While mutual aid is secular, social work as a profession is not yet a hundred years old, and training in this field only began at the turn of the century. Neither priest nor doctor, but equally devoted and competent, the social worker is half-way between the two. His relay function is mediatized by a salary received not from his client, but from an institution which acknowledges he has a cer tain effectiveness. Social work thus reminds us at one and the same time of the priest's priesthood and the doctor's specializa tion. This neo-cleric treats the soul as well as the body and he has ambiguous relations with spelialized institutions which are in pur suit of the sacred or in pursuit of health. The social worker tries to find reference models both in the religious world and in the medi cal world. Furthermore, an analysis of his discourse reveals that he mobilizes items of counter-legitimacy with respect to both the religious and the medical field. This intentionally marginal belonging to two worlds leads him to constantly have doubts about the objectives to be pursued and the decisions to be taken. It is probably in this perspective that the feeling of uneasiness which persuades the world of social work and which prevents these professionals from getting away from vagueness and uncertainty, should be understood.


2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 184-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
LOUISE MISKELL

This article examines the efforts of one British steel company to acquire knowledge about American industrial productivity in the first post-World War II decade. It argues that company information-gathering initiatives in this period were overshadowed by the work of the formal productivity missions of the Marshall Plan era. In particular, it compares the activities of the Steel Company of Wales with the Anglo-American Council on Productivity (AACP), whose iron and steel industry productivity team report was published in 1952. Based on evidence from its business records, this study shows that the Steel Company of Wales was undertaking its own international productivity investigations, which started earlier and were more extensive and differently focused from those of the AACP. It makes the case for viewing companies as active participants in the gathering and dissemination of productivity knowledge in Britain’s steel sector after 1945.


2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 44-56
Author(s):  
Kanza Abid ◽  
Zafar Iqbal Shams

Many processes in the iron and steel making industries emit carbon monoxide, which causes a variety of toxic effects on human health, such as fatigue, impaired memory, headache, and nausea. At elevated exposure, carbon monoxide poisoning may lead to loss of consciousness and death. Therefore, the current study has been carried out to investigate the occupational exposure of randomly selected fifty-eight employees of Pakistan Steel Mills to the carbon monoxide. The selected employees were from 10 different facilities of the Pakistan Steel Mills, who were working in two different shifts viz. nightshift and dayshift, each of twelve hours. Thirty employees from nightshift and twenty-eight employees from dayshift were monitored for their exposure to carbon monoxide. The instrument was logged to measure the employee’s exposure to carbon monoxide with 1-minute interval. The study reveals that the employees, working in the Raw Materials Production Plant during nightshift were exposed to the highest mean concentration of carbon monoxide while those working in Oxygen Plant during nightshift were exposed to the lowest mean concentration of carbon monoxide. According to study, the highest recorded exposure was found near Blast Furnace during dayshift. The employees’ exposure to 98th percentile concentration of carbon monoxide in different facilities of the steel mills has also been analyzed. The employees’ exposure to carbon monoxide during commuting from home to their workplace has also been investigated.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/ije.v3i4.11730      International Journal of EnvironmentVolume-3, Issue-4, Sep-Nov 2014Page: 44-56


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