Bethlehem Steel Worker's Trousers
date: label: date made
content: c. 1974
notes: label: Description
content: These protective wool trousers were part of the uniform worn by employees of Bethlehem Steel in the 1970s. They tell the story of the workers who powered a titan of American industry. Bethlehem Steel began with the Bethlehem Iron Company, which was founded in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in the late 1850s to manufacture railroad rails. Through turn-of-the-century acquisitions and name changes, in 1904 it was part of the newly-named Bethlehem Steel Corporation, led by Charles M. Schwab.
label: Description
content: Under Schwab’s leadership, Bethlehem Steel expanded quickly, acquiring other plants and becoming the largest armament manufacturer in World War I. Bethlehem Steel survived the Great Depression due to the 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act; in the 1930s the company provided the steel for icons of American architecture, including the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the George Washington Bridge in New York, and the Chrysler Building in New York City, then the world’s tallest skyscraper. In World War II, Bethlehem Steel’s sales grew a thousand times greater as they produced steel battleships, becoming the second-largest supplier of steel to the U.S. military. By the end of the war, the company employed 300,000 people. After the war, Bethlehem Steel continued to grow, reaching its peak in the 1950s as it manufactured steel for domestic industrial products such as cars, machinery, and tools. The workers of Bethlehem Steel were known for dedicated labor activism, including a strike in 1959 that lasted 116 days.
label: Description
content: Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, Bethlehem Steel began to decline, part of the larger decline of American industrial manufacturing in the late twentieth century. In the 1970s and 1980s, steel workers began to be laid off and plants began to close. The mid-Atlantic region, including many of Bethlehem Steel’s plants in Pennsylvania, became known as the “Rust Belt”: an area that had once relied on iron and steel manufacture but was left economically struggling. Although the flagship plant was in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the company had many other plants throughout Pennsylvania, as well as a site in Lackawanna, New York and mines in Cuba. The last steel was poured at Bethlehem in 1995, and the company officially filed for bankruptcy in 2001.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Occupations
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: BETHLEHEM STEEL CORPORATION (THROUGH FRANK LINDSAY FISHER)
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1977.1132.08
label: catalog number
content: 1977.1132.08
label: accession number
content: 1977.1132
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Trousers, Steel Worker
label: Object Name
content: trousers
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 43 in x 20 in; 109.22 cm x 50.8 cm