Industrial Inertia. A Major Factor in the Location of the Steel Industry in the United States

Bibliographic Data

ID4952933
AuthorsAllan Rodgers (corresponding author)
Year1952
Volume42
Issue1
Pages56
Publication date1952-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeographical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0016-7428 • E-ISSN: 1931-0846
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/211251
OpenAlexW2318235927
LanguageEN
Citations received10

T 1 1HE recently announced plans of the United States steel industry for the next two years indicate an investment of several billion dollars in the expansion of existing plants and the construction of new integrated mills. A proportionately heavy share of this investment is being allocated to the so-called deficit steel producing areas, which include the Eastern district, the South, and the Detroit area. Particular emphasis is placed on plant construction in the northern Atlantic seaboard, where two new integrated plants (one, the United States Steel mill at Morrisville, Pa., is now well under way) are to be built, and possibly two others. The implementation of these expansion plans will represent an important shift in the location pattern of the steel industry in the United States. Four probable factors have led to the construction of these plants: the need for decentralization of the highly concentrated steel industry on the ground of national security; the need for new facilities to meet the demands of our expanding defense program; the imminent decline in our Upper Lakes iron-ore reserves, which has prompted the development of foreign sources such as those in Venezuela and Labrador, more economically usable in eastcoast plants; and, finally, the enforced changes in the pricing systems used in the steel industry, which have made it extremely difficult for steel mills in the older producing districts such as Pittsburgh and Youngstown to compete in markets on the Atlantic seaboard and the South. Certainly the most important result of the new program will be a greater conformance of steel production and steel consumption. Nevertheless, even with these impending shifts, the bulk of our steel industry will remain highly concentrated within a relatively small area. The reasons for this concentration have occupied the attention of geographers and economists alike for the past few decades,' yet our understanding of the patterns is still imperfect. This paper purposes to investigate the effect

Business · Regional resilience and development

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