The Knoxville Iron Company was an iron production and coal mining company that operated primarily in
Knoxville, Tennessee
Knoxville is a city in and the county seat of Knox County, Tennessee, Knox County in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 United States census, Knoxville's population was 190,740, making it the largest city in the East Tennessee Grand Di ...
, United States, and its vicinity, in the late 19th and 20th centuries.
[J. S. Rabun, National Register of Historic Places Registration Form for Knoxville Iron Foundry Complex – Nail Factory and Warehouse, 6 October 1980.] The company was Knoxville's first major post-Civil War manufacturing firm, and played a key role in bringing heavy industry and railroad facilities to the city. The company was also the first to conduct major coal mining operations in the lucrative coalfields of western
Anderson County, and helped establish one of Knoxville's first residential neighborhoods,
Mechanicsville, in the late 1860s.
[Old Mechanicsville - History]
Retrieved: 3 January 2011.
During the 1890s and early 1900s, the Knoxville Iron Company was involved in two key events in the history of Tennessee's
labor movement
The labour movement or labor movement consists of two main wings: the trade union movement (British English) or labor union movement (American English) on the one hand, and the political labour movement on the other.
* The trade union movement ...
. The first came in 1891, when the company's Anderson County coal mines were among the targets of striking miners during the
Coal Creek War
The Coal Creek War was an early 1890s armed labor uprising in the southeastern United States that took place primarily in Anderson County, Tennessee. This labor conflict ignited during 1891 when coal mine owners in the Coal Creek watershed bega ...
.
The second came several years later, when the company challenged a state law requiring companies to pay employees in cash, leading to the Supreme Court ruling, ''Knoxville Iron Company v. Harbison'' (1901), which upheld the rights of states to ban
scrip
A scrip (or ''chit'' in India) is any substitute for legal tender. It is often a form of credit. Scrips have been created and used for a variety of reasons, including exploitive payment of employees under truck systems; or for use in local comme ...
and other forms of non-cash payments.
[John Vile]
Knoxville Iron Company v. Harbison
''Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture'', 2002. Retrieved: 3 January 2011.
The Knoxville Iron Company continued operating in some capacity or another until 1987.
The company's mill is still used by
Commercial Metals Company to recycle and manufacture steel
rebar
Rebar (short for reinforcing bar), known when massed as reinforcing steel or reinforcement steel, is a steel bar used as a Tension (physics), tension device in reinforced concrete and reinforced masonry structures to strengthen and aid the concr ...
.
History
Early history
During the Civil War, Confederate forces moved a small iron
foundry
A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal into a mold, and removing the mold material after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals pr ...
from
Loudon to Knoxville, but were unable to produce any iron, due in part to their lack of understanding of iron working processes. When Union forces occupied Knoxville in late 1863, Hiram Chamberlain (1835–1916), a Union officer from
Ohio
Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...
, and S.T. Atkins, a local manufacturer, managed to get the foundry in working order.
Chamberlain remained in Knoxville after the war, and he and Atkins continued operating the foundry.
Noting the largely untouched
ore
Ore is natural rock or sediment that contains one or more valuable minerals, typically containing metals, that can be mined, treated and sold at a profit.Encyclopædia Britannica. "Ore". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 7 April 2 ...
deposits in the hills around Knoxville, Chamberlain decided to develop a large-scale iron works in the city. He recruited
Welsh-born ironmasters Joseph, David, and William Richards, who in turn brought in other Welsh immigrants skilled in iron production.
Chamberlain managed to secure $150,000 in initial capital,
[John Wooldridge, George Mellen, William Rule (ed.), ''Standard History of Knoxville, Tennessee'' (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1900; reprinted by Kessinger Books, 2010), pp. 208-210.] much of it supplied by wealthy Anderson County farmer J. S. Ross.
[East Tennessee Historical Society, Lucile Deaderick (ed.), ''Heart of the Valley: A History of Knoxville, Tennessee'' (Knoxville, Tenn.: East Tennessee Historical Society, 1976), pp. 32, 55.] The Knoxville Iron Company was formally organized on February 1, 1868.
Expansion, 1870-1900
To provide fuel for its foundry, Knoxville Iron began mining coal in the Coal Creek Valley of eastern Anderson County,
shortly after the area acquired railroad access in 1866. The company expanded its Knoxville mill in the 1870s, most notably with the addition of a nail factory in 1875.
By 1895, Knoxville Iron's mill was producing over 15,000 tons of iron per year, and employed over 200 workers.
The company's products included
bar iron
Wrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon content (less than 0.08%) in contrast to that of cast iron (2.1% to 4%). It is a semi-fused mass of iron with fibrous slag inclusions (up to 2% by weight), which give it a wood-like "grain" t ...
,
railroad spike
A rail fastening system is a means of fixing rails to railroad ties ( North America) or sleepers (British Isles, Australasia, and Africa). The terms ''rail anchors'', ''tie plates'', ''chairs'' and ''track fasteners'' are used to refer to parts ...
s, channel iron, and track rails for use in mines.
The company was also a major producer of coal, which it mined at its Coal Creek mines.
Along with Welsh immigrants, the company employed a large number of African American laborers.
[East Tennessee Historical Society, Mary Rothrock (ed.), ''The French Broad-Holston Country: A History of Knox County, Tennessee'' (Knoxville, Tenn.: East Tennessee Historical Society, 1972), p. 313.] To house its workforce, the company expanded McGhee's Addition, a neighborhood just west of its mill. McGhee's Addition subsequently became known as "Mechanicsville,"
the word "mechanic" during this period referring to skilled factory workers. The company also opened a subsidiary, Harriman Rolling Mills, in
Harriman, Tennessee
Harriman is a city located primarily in Roane County, Tennessee, with a small extension into Morgan County. The population of Harriman was 6,350 at the time of the 2010 census.
Harriman is included in the Knoxville, Tennessee Metropolitan Statis ...
, which by 1900 had become that city's largest employer.
Coal Creek War
Knoxville Iron initially used free labor at its Anderson County coal mine, but as production was continuously interrupted by
strikes and other labor disputes, the company started using convict labor in 1878.
In 1891, a labor uprising known as the Coal Creek War erupted in the Coal Creek Valley over the use of convict labor. While Knoxville Iron was not the initial target, the dispute eventually spread to its mine near the head of the valley. On July 20, 1891, and again on October 31, the mine's convict laborers were freed and several buildings destroyed.
[Karin Shapiro, ''A New South Rebellion: The Battle Against Convict Labor in the Tennessee Coalfields, 1871-1896'' (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), pp. 87, 139.] In spite of the dispute, Knoxville Iron continued using convict labor until Tennessee ended
convict leasing
Convict leasing was a system of forced penal labor which was practiced historically in the Southern United States, the laborers being mainly African-American men; it was ended during the 20th century. (Convict labor in general continues; f ...
in 1896.
''Knoxville Iron Company v. Harbison''
In 1899, Tennessee passed a law barring companies from paying employees in scrip. While Knoxville Iron paid its employees in cash, it allowed employees to accept payday advances in store or coal credits. Shortly after the law was passed, a securities dealer named Samuel Harbison purchased several hundred coal credits from Knoxville Iron employees for 85 cents on the dollar. When he attempted to redeem these for cash, the company refused to pay them. Harbison sued, arguing their refusal violated the state's anti-scrip law. After a Knox County chancery court ruled in favor of Harbison, Knoxville Iron filed an appeal challenging the state law, arguing the law violated the
right to contract
Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical the ...
.
The
Tennessee Supreme Court
The Tennessee Supreme Court is the ultimate judicial tribunal of the state of Tennessee. Roger A. Page is the Chief Justice.
Unlike other states, in which the state attorney general is directly elected or appointed by the governor or state le ...
upheld the chancery court's ruling, and Knoxville Iron appealed to the
U.S. Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
. In 1901, the Supreme Court upheld (7-2) the lower courts' ruling. The
majority opinion
In law, a majority opinion is a judicial opinion agreed to by more than half of the members of a court. A majority opinion sets forth the decision of the court and an explanation of the rationale behind the court's decision.
Not all cases have ...
, authored by Justice
George Shiras, acknowledged the abridgement of contract rights, but nevertheless agreed the law was a legitimate exercise of state
policing powers to promote order.
Edward Terry Sanford
Edward Terry Sanford (July 23, 1865 – March 8, 1930) was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1923 until his death in 1930. Prior to his nomination to the high court, Sanford served as a ...
, a future Supreme Court justice, argued the case on behalf of Knoxville Iron.
20th century
In 1903, Knoxville Iron constructed a newer, larger mill in
Lonsdale, a millworkers' town on what was then Knoxville's periphery.
Over the years, the company began focusing more and more on steel production. During the 1960s, the company refurbished its Lonsdale mill to produce rebar from recycled scrap steel. In 1987, the mill was purchased by the Florida Steel Corporation.
[Blue Tee Corp. completes the sale of two of its divisions, Knoxville Iron Co. and Steel Service Co., to Florida Steel Corp.]
stub at Highbeam.com. Retrieved: 3 January 2011. Commercial Metals Company, the mill's current owner, still uses the mill to manufacture rebar. As of 2005, the mill employed 250 workers, and produced 509,000 tons of steel products annually.
[Stephanie Shelton]
Gerdau Ameristeel Completes New Warehouse at Knoxville Mill
15 June 2005. Retrieved: 3 January 2011.
Legacy
The success of the Knoxville Iron Company helped attract heavy industry and railroad maintenance facilities to Knoxville. By 1886, several major manufacturing companies, including two large foundries, two textile mills, a rail car works, and rail car wheel company, were operating in the city.
[Henry Wellge]
Knoxville, Tenn.: County Seat of Knox County, 1886
(Milwaukee: Norris, Wellge and Company, 1886). Map. The iron industry declined in importance in Knoxville in the 1890s and 1900s, as steel and railroad companies demanded a higher-quality ore than the kind typically found in
East Tennessee
East Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions of Tennessee defined in state law. Geographically and socioculturally distinct, it comprises approximately the eastern third of the U.S. state of Tennessee. East Tennessee consists of 33 count ...
.
["Ask Doc Knox,]
Knoxville's Mysterious "Southern Barbell Co."
''Metro Pulse'', 1 April 2010. Accessed at the Internet Archive, 2 October 2015.[John Benhart, ''Appalachian Aspirations: The Geography of Urbanization and Development in the Upper Tennessee River Valley, 1865-1900'' (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 2007), pp. 34-41.]
During the 1920s, Knoxville Iron general manager Willis P. Davis and his wife, Ann, first proposed the establishment of what would eventually become the
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is an American national park in the southeastern United States, with parts in North Carolina and Tennessee. The park straddles the ridgeline of the Great Smoky Mountains, part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, whi ...
.
In 1982, Knoxville Iron's 1870s-era nail factory, the last surviving building from its original Second Creek Valley complex, was renovated for use as an event center in the
1982 World's Fair
The 1982 World's Fair, officially known as the Knoxville International Energy Exposition (KIEE) and simply as Energy Expo '82 and Expo '82, was an international exposition held in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. Focused on energy and ele ...
. This building, now known as The Foundry, has since been listed on the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
.
See also
*
Brookside Mills
Brookside Mills was a textile manufacturing company that operated in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The company's Second Creek factory was the city's largest employer in the early 1900s.East Tennes ...
References
{{reflist
External links
Gerdau Ameristeel – Knoxville
Ironworks and steel mills in the United States
Companies based in Knoxville, Tennessee
American companies established in 1868
Energy companies established in 1868
Manufacturing companies established in 1868
Penal labor in the United States
1868 establishments in Tennessee
Defunct manufacturing companies based in Tennessee