page_title: Lackawanna Steel Company
section_title: Move to New York State
hierarchical_section_title: Lackawanna Steel Company / Move to New York State
caption_attribution_description: English: Drawing of the layout of the Lackawanna Steel Company plant, Route 5 on Lake Erie, West Seneca, Erie County, New York, in 1903. Français&#160;: Plan d'aménagement de l'usine de la Lackawanna Steel Company, Route 5 sur le lac Érié, West Seneca, Comté d'Érié, New York, en 1903.
context_page_description: The Lackawanna Steel Company was an American steel manufacturing company that existed as an independent company from 1840 to 1922, and as a subsidiary of the Bethlehem Steel company from 1922 to 1983. Founded by the Scranton family, it was once the second-largest steel company in the world. Scranton, Pennsylvania developed around the company's original location. When the company moved to a suburb of Buffalo, New York, in 1902, it stimulated the founding of the city of Lackawanna.
context_section_description: At the turn of the century, the Lackawanna Iron and Steel Company began to consider moving out of the Scranton area. The company's economic condition was deteriorating; in September 1899, Andrew Carnegie wrote,  "My view is that sooner or later Harrisburg, Sparrows Point, and Scranton will cease to make rails, like Bethlehem. The autumn of last year seemed as good a time to force them out of business as any other."
  Labor costs were rising. In 1897, the United Mine Workers had organized most workers at the coal and iron mines, who successfully struck in 1900 for a 10 percent wage hike. The union struck again from May 11, 1902, to October 23, 1902, and won a second wage increase as well as better working conditions. A second factor was the increasing cost of shipping iron ore to Scranton and a lack of rail lines from Scranton to the company's newly emerging markets.
  The Lackawanna Iron and Steel Company decided to move its facilities to the town of West Seneca, New York, in 1899, drawn by the area's easy access to Great Lakes shipping and the numerous rail lines in the area. Scranton decided to move his operation to the Buffalo suburb, located on Lake Erie. To avoid speculation in land, the Lackawanna Steel Company employed John J. Albright, president of the Ontario Power Company, to purchase land on its behalf. Scranton, Albright and several others met in Buffalo on March 23, 1899, to discuss the purchase of land. The group explored several nearby sites on March 24, and that same day chose an undeveloped shoreline area on Lake Erie in what was then the western part of the Town of West Seneca. Albright began purchasing land on April 1, 1899, and by the end of the month had obtained nearly all the required property for the extremely low price of $1.1 million. Albright was often accompanied on his purchasing visits by John G. Milburn, President of the Pan-American Exposition, and many property owners assumed the land purchases were for the Exposition.
  Construction of the massive new steel mill began on July 14, 1900, and nine months later equipment was arriving from Scranton. The company dredged a ship canal and built miles of track to link the plant with the railroads which would bring iron ore and coke to the plant. Lackawanna Iron and Steel began building a company town in 1901, but it lacked most services. The housing stood empty for many years.
  On February 14, 1902, the company was reorganized into the Lackawanna Steel Company. It was the largest independent steel company in the world at the time. Stock worth $60 million was issued, with $20 million of the newly raised capital paying off the construction of the new mill. The mill received its first shipment of iron ore on December 23, 1902. The plant's 6,000 workers (2,000 of whom came from Scranton) blew the first steel in early 1903. The company's property in Scranton was sold to the Lackawanna and Wyoming Valley Railroad, which scrapped all the remaining equipment and tore down all the buildings except for the oldest stone blast furnaces.
  The economic coup which William Walker Scranton had engineered did not please the board of directors, however, who replaced him in late 1904 with Edward A. Clarke. The company continued to expand, and in 1906 bought the large Pennsylvania coal mining firm of J.W. Ellsworth Company.
  Lackawanna Steel Co. had a rocky relationship with the town of West Seneca. The company demanded large investments in sewer, water, gas and road improvements but refused to pay for them (even though the company was much wealthier than the town). The large influx of workers from the company's old Pennsylvania site swelled the Town's population, leading to the creation of extensive tracts of extremely substandard housing and severe public health problems (including outbreaks of cholera, typhoid and influenza). To save the town, West Senecans proposed separating the area around the steel mill as its own incorporated municipality. Lackawanna Steel opposed the incorporation of the proposed municipality (to be named Lackawanna), but it relented in 1909 after th
caption: Diagram of the Lackawanna Steel Co. plant in 1903.
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