The story of the Sloss Furnace Company is more than a story about a historic manufacturing plant. Like most structures, the iron-producing furnaces were built to generate income for the owners by filling a product need produced at a competitive price that utilized locally available raw materials and human capital.
The Sloss Furnace Company also fits into the larger economic development framework of the post-Civil War South within a timeline that runs from before the Civil War through the early 1920s when poorer Southerners, including many formerly enslaved people or their descendants, moved North in search of better opportunities, through the 1950s.
Topics:
Engineering History