TESTIMONY OF

**August R. Carlino, President & Chief Executive Officer**

**Steel Industry Heritage Corporation**

**and the**

**Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area**

**before the**

**Subcommittee on National Parks**

**Committee on Energy and Natural Resources**

**United States Senate**

**on**

**S. 697**

**The Steel Industry National Historic Site Act**

**September 27, 2007**

Mr. Chairman and other distinguished members of the subcommittee, my
name is August R. Carlino and I am President and Chief Executive Officer
of the Steel Industry Heritage Corporation. The Steel Industry Heritage
Corporation (SIHC) is a non-profit heritage tourism and economic
development organization based in Homestead, Pennsylvania. SIHC is the
management entity for the Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area, one of
37 National Heritage Areas designated by Congress.

Thank you for inviting me to testify today before the Subcommittee on
National Parks on S. 697, the Steel Industry National Historic Site Act.
I am grateful to Senator Arlen Specter and Senator Robert Casey for
their willingness to sponsor, and support, this legislation you are
considering today.

The Steel Industry National Historic Site Act has had a very long life,
and has been introduced and re-introduced many times over the past
several Congresses. In fact, the consideration of a National Historic
Site for the properties included in S. 697 dates back to the late 1980s,
as the permanent closure and dismantling of many of the steel mills in
the Pittsburgh Industrial District began to occur. At that time in
Pittsburgh, civic, corporate, labor and community groups realized the
demolition of mills would cause a lasting change to the region's
socio-economic landscape and have national implications. It was their
vision to preserve a part of a steel mill to tell the story of
Pittsburgh's steel-making history to the nation.

During the late 19th and 20th centuries, the Pittsburgh region was the
world's leading producer of iron and steel. The region's proximity to
raw materials, ease of shipping and abundant capital wealth and labor
encouraged the construction of huge integrated production facilities,
bordered by supporting manufacturing facilities, coal mines, coking
ovens, machine shop and foundries, all of which were linked by an
expanse of railroads. This and the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio
rivers made it the center of the nation's iron and steel industry. The
centerpiece of this industrial complex was the U.S. Steel Homestead
Works, located on the shores of the Monongahela River just upstream from
the City of Pittsburgh. It was the closing of this mill in 1984 which
sparked a regional effort to save its most significant features and to
pursue its designation as a unit of the National Park System.

The Homestead Works, which date back to Andrew Carnegie, has a storied
and turbulent history. Built in 1906-1907, the Carrie Blast Furnaces
enabled the Homestead Works to become the largest producer of iron and
steel in the world. The Furnace's output of iron often set production
records with each shift, and helped set the daily commodity price for
steel. By the end of World War II, Carrie Blast Furnaces 6 and 7,
located on the northern shore of the Monongahela River in the Boroughs
of Swissvale and Rankin, were each producing between 900 and 1,000 tons
of iron daily, or between 300,000 and 350,000 tons of iron each year per
furnace. Iron from the furnaces was made into steel on the southern side
of the mill, transported from the furnace complex to the steel mill side
across the Rankin Hot Metal Bridge. On the southern shore in the
Boroughs of Homestead, West Homestead, Munhall and Whitaker, the massive
mill complex of the Homestead Works made the steel that went into many
of America's and the world's most prominent structures including the
Panama Canal lock gates, the George Washington Bridge, the Empire State
Building, the Chrysler Building, Rockefeller Tower, the Sears Tower, the
Golden Gate Bridge and the United Nations Building. Additionally,
Homestead was the center of armament production for the United States
during both world wars, turning out armor plate, munitions, weapons and
steel for America's war needs.

Of all the remaining blast furnaces nationwide, Carrie 6 and 7 have the
greatest concentration of pre-World War II equipment. The facility was
the cornerstone of the Pittsburgh Industrial District, a sprawling
interconnected mosaic of mills, mines, aluminum and glass factories,
machine shops, foundries, railroad, and river barge facilities that
stretched more than 150 linear miles along the shores of the region's
rivers.

The proposed National Historic Site in S. 697 also includes the Pump
House and Water Tower, a five-acre site situated within the Homestead
Works in Munhall Borough, directly across the river from the Carrie
Furnaces. It was at this site, a river landing within the Homestead
Works for off-loading of materials, that the infamous Battle of
Homestead occurred between Pinkerton Guards and striking steel workers
who had been locked out of the mill. This battle, which took place on
July 6, 1892, was a pivotal moment in United States labor-management
history. As much as it is studied today, the consequences of that day
still has ramifications in labor relations in the U.S., and is viewed as
hallowed ground by organized labor and the community for the lives that
were lost there. The dramatic events of that lockout and battle, are
"among the most famous of American history" and a "savage and
significant" story, according to labor historian Paul Krause. At the
root of the battle in 1892 was Carnegie, with his determination at any
cost to drive down wages through modernization and technology
advancements in iron and steel production, matched against the might and
strength of the most powerful union remaining in the steel industry, the
Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steelworkers, who desired to protect
wages and jobs as the mill's and the steel industry's production
processes advanced.

Individually, these sites would warrant some form of protection and
preservation as they represent significant elements of America's
industrial legacy. Collectively and when linked by the Rankin Hot Metal
Bridge, the Battle of Homestead site and the Carrie Furnaces are
monuments of national significance which tell a story of America's rise
as the world's greatest industrial and economic power. This is a story
that cannot be told or interpreted anywhere else in the United States,
and the reason why S. 697 proposes the creation of a National Historic
Site for the properties.

In the early 1990s, this fact was recognized by the late Senator John
Heinz. Through his efforts, feasibility plans and studies were conducted
by the National Park Service and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum
Commission to determine what properties of the closed Homestead mill
needed to be saved from demolition, and how those saved sites might be
preserved and interpreted. While his death was unfortunate, the project
moved forward with strong leadership and legislative sponsorship from
Senator Specter and Congressman Mike Doyle. The support for S. 697 is
widespread, including past funding for planning and development, and the
potential for substantial capital funding from the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania, the many Pittsburgh-based foundations, and a planned
capital campaign to be conducted by the Steel Industry Heritage
Corporation, chaired by top executives of the U.S. Steel Corporation and
the United Steel Workers of America.

Local governments have also committed to the long-term preservation of
these resources, as Allegheny County has purchased the Blast Furnace
complex and its surrounding 130-plus acres with plans of revitalizing
the brownfield into a modern mixed-use industrial and commercial complex
with the proposed National Historic Site as the anchor for the
redevelopment project. The Rankin Hot Metal Bridge will serve as an
interpretive link between the iron and steel sides of the mill, and as
transportation link between the two sides, as both a roadway and a
connector in the soon-to-be-completed rail-trail, the Great Allegheny
Passage, which will connect Pittsburgh with Washington, DC by 2010.

The properties included within S. 697, the Steel Industry National
Historic Site Act, represent a rare, if not the only, opportunity to
preserve one of the nation's most significant industrial complexes.
Homestead's association with steel making, labor organizing, great
American capitalists like Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, and its
extant working-class communities with ancestries rooted in Eastern,
Southern European and African American traditions, present the
opportunity to develop a National Historic Site that tells a part of the
story of America that is unrepresented in the National Park System
today. All of the partners, both public and private, have diligently, at
times doggedly, worked to get to the point we are at here today -- this
esteemed body's consideration of the legislation that would preserve
Homestead's legacy for future generations in the world's most premiere
historical conservation institution, the National Park System. I urge
your favorable consideration of S. 697, and I am happy to answer any
questions you might have.

Thank you for your consideration of this important legislation.