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United States
US Steel Corporation – 25 Years Medal
Circa 1930 Silver Medal 35mm x 31mm (18.28 grams) Sterling Silver
UNITED STATES STEEL CORPORATION E H Gary, Man facing right.
25 YEARS OF SERVICVE STERLING W.&H.CO. W.E.NASH,
Locomotive among city factory building, men working on either side.
You are bidding on the exact item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of Authenticity.
 United States Steel Corporation (NYSE: X), more commonly known as U.S. Steel, is an American integrated steel producer headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with production operations in the United States and Central Europe. As of 2018, the company was the world’s 38th-largest steel producer and the second-largest in the US, trailing only Nucor Corporation.
Though renamed USX Corporation in 1986, the company was renamed United States Steel in 2001 after spinning off its energy business, including Marathon Oil, and other assets from its core steel concern.
J. P. Morgan formed U.S. Steel on March 2, 1901 (incorporated on February 25), by financing the merger of Andrew Carnegie’s Carnegie Steel Company with Elbert H. Gary’s Federal Steel Company and William Henry “Judge” Moore’s National Steel Company for $492 million ($15.31 billion today). At one time, U.S. Steel was the largest steel producer and largest corporation in the world. It was capitalized at $1.4 billion ($43.6 billion today), making it the world’s first billion-dollar corporation. The company established its headquarters in the Empire Building at 71 Broadway in New York City; it remained a major tenant in the building for 75 years. Charles M. Schwab, the Carnegie Steel executive who originally suggested the merger to Morgan, ultimately emerged as the new corporation’s first President.
In 1907 US Steel bought its largest competitor, the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company, which was headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. Tennessee Coal was replaced in the Dow Jones Industrial Average by the General Electric Company. The federal government attempted to use federal antitrust laws to break up U.S. Steel in 1911 (the same year Standard Oil was broken up), but that effort ultimately failed. In 1902, its first full year of operation, U.S. Steel made 67 percent of all the steel produced in the United States. About 100 years later, as of 2001 it produced only 8 percent more than it did in 1902 and its shipments accounted for only about 8 percent of domestic consumption.
According to author Douglas Blackmon in Slavery by Another Name, the growth of U.S. Steel and its subsidiaries in the South was partly dependent on the labor of cheaply paid black workers and exploited convicts. The company could obtain black labor at a fraction of the cost of white labor by taking advantage of the Black Codes and discriminatory laws passed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Southern states after the Reconstruction Era. In addition, U.S. Steel had agreements with more than 20 counties in Alabama to obtain the labor of its prisoners, often paying locals nine dollars a month for workers who would be forced into their mines through a system of convict leasing. This practice continued until at least the late 1920s. While some individuals were guilty of a crime they did not receive payment or recognition for their work; many died from abuse, malnutrition, and dire working and living conditions. This practice of convict leasing was fairly ubiquitous as eight Southern states had similar practices and many companies, as well as farmers, took advantage of this.
The Corporation, as it was known on Wall Street, was distinguished by its size, rather than for its efficiency or creativity during its heyday. In 1901, it controlled two-thirds of steel production and, through its Pittsburgh Steamship Company, developed the largest commercial fleet on the Great Lakes. Because of heavy debts taken on at the company’s formation—Carnegie insisted on being paid in gold bonds for his stake—and fears of antitrust litigation, U.S. Steel moved cautiously. Competitors often innovated faster, especially Bethlehem Steel, run by Charles Schwab, U.S. Steel’s former president. U.S. Steel’s share of the expanding market slipped to 50 percent by 1911. James A. Farrell was named president in 1911 and served until 1932.
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