Cuban Ore for American Rails

Click for larger image Hagley Museum and Library An empty 50-ton ore car is about to be returned to the mine at Mayarí, Cuba, up the first of two cabled inclines that climbed 1,500 vertical feet.

Whenever I hear or read something about how the world is becoming globalized, I have to crack a smile. Globalization has been going on for the better part of 150 years, if not longer. It’s what British journalist W.T. Stead dubbed “the Americanization of the world” in his 1902 bestseller of the same name, and what economist John Hobson called “earth-hunger and the scramble for markets.” Thomas L. Friedman is simply updating and flat-worlding Stead.

That’s why history is so valuable – it lets you look back over time and see patterns and cycles that bring present-day issues into better perspective. A century ago, for example, the red hematite rock of eastern Cuba was used to make steel rails in the United States that were shipped to Australia and China and czarist Russia to build railroads. That’s impressive globe girdling.

Cuba played an important role in the early history of American steelmaking as a source of raw material for the then-biggest Eastern producer, Pennsylvania Steel Co., and for the manufacture of rail, the most important steel product until about 1905.

Chapter 4 of MAKING STEEL (“Foreign Affairs”) concentrated on the political machinations that led to the development and expansion of Pennsylvania Steel’s ore deposits before and after the Spanish-American War. In this article for Railroad History, I revisit the topic to examine the railroad/technological side of the mine operations and to display some remarkable period photographs. My thanks to the Hagley Museum and Library for a small grant that let me pursue this research. –MR