Steel Mill, outside Detroit, now closed

"The influence of our steel-making capacity upon development at home must be marvellous, for the nation which makes the cheapest steel has the other nations at its feet, as far as manufacturing in most of its branches is concerned. The cheapest steel means the cheapest ships, the cheapest machinery, the cheapest thousand and one articles of which steel is the base. We are on the eve of a development of the manufacturing powers of the republic such as the world has never seen, and the writer who is honoured by being asked to write for a similar series its record of the twentieth century may present figures as surprising as I have to submit for the nineteenth."

 

Andrew Carnegie, The Development of Steel Manufacture in the United States

Done