Inland Steel Company records

The Inland Steel Company was founded in 1893 during the financial panic of that year. Economic depression had led to the failure of the Chicago Steel Works that had specialized in reusing old railway rails to produce farm machinery. Ross Buckingham, brother of the former president of Chicago Steel, salvaged the production machinery after the building and property were sold to pay debts.

Buckingham fortunes began to improve when the city of Chicago Heights offered them six acres on which to build a new steelworks and $20,000 for construction costs. Ross Buckingham loaded the equipment from the old plant on railroad cars for shipment out of Chicago. This equipment sat in boxcars for months while buckingham searched for new investors to buy stock in the company and to form a board of directors. Fear of continuing depression led many banks and private investors to doubt that a new steel mill would survive.

A diverse group of businessmen combined to buy the first stock in Inland Steel and incorporated the business on October 30, 1893. Initially, 1300 shares were divided among eight investors. Joseph Block and his son Philip left a Cincinnati business called Block-Pollack Iron Company to help finance and administer the new Inland Steel Company. Block had attempted to convince his Cincinnati partners to help finance the Chicago Heights venture. When they refused, Block left for Illinois to risk his own finances. The Blocks owned 500 of the original stock shares.

William M. Adams had worked for a cousin of Ross Buckingham. Adams saw Inland Steel as a prime investment and provided resources to assist the new company when Buckingham's cousin declined to join the new investors. Adams owned 150 shares of new stock.

George H. Jones from the S. D. Kimbark Hardware Company brought his father-in-law, Elias Colbert, into the company. These two investors owned 300 shares between them.

A farm implement manufacturer from Ottawa, Illinois, Joseph E. Porter, joined the Inland Steel investors and owned 200 shares of stock. Porter became a member of the board of directors.

John W. Thomas, former foreman of the Chicago Steel Works, was responsible for the transfer of machinery from the railroad cars to the factory in Chicago Heights. Thomas purchased fifty shares in the company.

Frank Wells of Chicago purchased the remaining one hundred shares and served on the first board of directors for Inland Steel.

Mechanical problems in the factory and a stagnant market for steel products for agriculture made much of the first year of operation difficult. Company officers did not draw salaries due to the precarious financial position of the steel market. George H. Jones built a growing list of potential customers in his sales capacity, but orders were delayed or canceled in efforts by other companies to remain solvent.

A combination of numerous boiler patches and great good fortune allowed the old machinery salvaged by the new steel company to survive the first year of production. Purchases increased and most employees worked on a full-time basis. Stockholders received a dividend for 1894.

Innovative research in the 1890s found new product markets for Inland Steel to enter. Sales increased seventy-five percent in one year when a light steel web for bed frames was produced to replace cast iron frames.

Expansion in the first years of the twentieth century led to the construction of a new open hearth plant on the shore of Lake Michigan at what became Indiana Harbor. By 1902, the new operation was as profitable as the Chicago Heights plant.

Inland Steel was then hit with financial distress in 1903 when prices for products plummeted in a recession. Five years passed before a stock dividend was again paid to investors. The Inland Steel managers steered the company through periodic recessions before World War I began.

In 1906 Inland Steel purchased the Laura Iron Mine near Hibbing, Minnesota and began the steps to vertical integration that made it one of the steel industry giants. By 1911 the need for its own lake fleet was seen as significant enough to form the Inland Steamship Company. The ability to ship iron ore from its own mine in its own freighters helped reduce costs for the company.

Joseph Block died in 1914 and the other early founders of the company were disappearing also. New managers led the company into the contracts for steel brought on by World War I.

In the 1920s Inland Steel developed a reputation for innovative cost cutting techniques. Electrification of its plants was expensive, but, by 1926, better steel came from the mills and they were safer places for the employees. Ingot production was soon above war related levels. As the Inland Steel empire grew, whole mining towns in Kentucky were electrified when Inland bought local coal mines. Improved living conditions for the miners were perceived as necessary to increasing productivity.

Inland Steel kept expanding operations through the 1930s depression years. New mill structures worth $15,000,000 were added in 1932. Subsidiary companies were purchased to help market Inland Steel products. Everything from roofing material to buckets was manufactured to be sold through the subsidiary businesses. Inland Steel weathered the Great Depression in sound financial condition.

Military contracts in World War II kept the mills operating and the Inland Steel fleet sailing on the Great Lakes. Armaments replaced agricultural implements, but profits remained high.

In the years after World War II sales continued to grow for Inland Steel. A giant corporation had risen from the 1894 company where officers could not draw their salaries without endangering the company. In 1962 working capital of $225,000,000 was listed in the annual report. In 1995 Inland Steel operated a fleet of four bulk freighters for ore transport. Profitability was good enough that the company was acquired by Ispat International in 1998.