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Overall, this is an excellent study, the result of a great deal of diligent research. The abundance of factual material found in this book will be appreciated by people doing research about any phase of the all-but-recent history of the US steel industry.
AN Economic History of the American Steel Industry by Robert P Rogers is the 42nd volume of Routledge explorations in economic history and traces changes in the steel market of the USA between 1830 and 2001. A few decades back, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, quite a few books were written about the history of steel industries or steel companies, not even counting the many volumes produced by the late Father William Hogan. In this century the interest in this topic seems to have waned. Mr Rogers therefore deserves praise for the painstaking manner with which he assembled a wealth of steel-industry data stretching over 170 years. In contrast to much of the previous literature, this study generally adheres to an impartial assessment of US steel-industry policies.
The organisation of the book may strike some readers as unusual. In each of the nine sub-periods selected by the author the following topics are discussed: output and processes, demand, individual steel producers, substitutes for steel, input suppliers (including labour), and industry relations with the US government. There is nothing wrong with assigning segments of the 170 year era to successive chapters. However, to have each chapter follow the same rigid framework of analysis, or taxonomy, inevitably led to some repetition as well as to occasional discontinuity from one chapter to the next.
Selected highlights
A brief discussion of the early period provided details about various small-scale methods to produce wrought iron and, regarding incipient blast furnace technology, innovations like preheating of the air...