Mill and Mine: The CF&I in the Twentieth Century by H. Lee Scamehorn

Abstract

TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE Book Reviews 433 past, a further tussle to determine what philosophy of land use is most appropriate to balance preservation, reclamation, and exploitation. The author sets all of this, not in dramatic sweeps or sparkling examples, but in a methodical microstudy that is useful if rarely exciting. The early chapters are valuable to historians of New Mexico in particular and of the West in general. But only the last chapters provide a sense of the dramas inherent in these issues, or the stakes. Partly this is a result of Rothman’s attempt to be scrupulously fair, not to take sides in the various disputes but rather to show the ways the players in these contests have brought their own realities, their own pictures of right and wrong, with them to the poker table. Rothman’s sympathies seem to lie with the National Park Service, and the finished work is most attentive to the conflicts between the NPS and various of the contending groups and institutions. Yet On Rims and Ridges ’ subtitle promises the reader much more: some engagement with the central mythos ofLosAlamos and its moment in the sun—the wartime and Cold War secret city where nature was converted to weaponry ofvast and unthinkable destructive force. The war years and the Los Alamos of the Manhattan Project get twelve pages in this book; postwar Los Alamos Laboratory and its people another twelve. Nowhere is there mention of toxic waste, of radioactive leaks, of the ecological disasters that lurk across the history of the weapons establishment. Nowhere is there discussion of the underlying philosophies of nature that characterized the Los Alamos atomic project, both during and after the war—matters that, one would think, might loom large across the landscape of a book whose titular subject is the clash of human conceptions of land and nature. The result is a small book on a large subject, full of enticing anecdotes but without the overarching vision needed to subsume a topic of this magnitude. Peier B. Hales Dr. Hales is director of graduate studies of the History of Architecture and Art Department, and a professor in the College ofArchitecture, Art, and Urban Planning, at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His writings on the history of the American West include William Henry Jackson and the Transformation of the American Landscape (Philadel­ phia, 1988), and he recently completed a book-length study of the cultural landscapes of the Manhattan Project, tentatively titled “Atomic Spaces.” Mill and Mine: The GF&I in the Twentieth Century. By H. Lee Scamehorn. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992. Pp. x+247; illustrations, notes, appendixes, bibliography, index. $37.50. The industrial and technological history of the western United States is a neglected area ofAmerican history. Thus, H. Lee Scamehorn’s Mill and Mine: The CF&I in the Twentieth Century is a welcome examination of one of the West’s largest and most important steelmakers. 434 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE The Colorado Fuel & Iron company (CF&I) was the early-20thcentury West’s only fully integrated steel- and ironworks and also that region’s largest distributor ofcoal and coke. The company operated coal mines in four states and manufactured steel and iron in Pueblo, Colorado. During the early years (examined more fully in a companion volume, Pioneer Steelmaker in the West: The Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, 1872-1903 [Boulder, Colo., 1976]), the CF&I management hoped to capitalize on the isolation of the western region to compete successfully against larger eastern manufacturers. However, low-cost production techniques and generous shipping rates allowed the eastern plants to infiltrate the CF&I market. By the early 20th century, in poor health and desperate for capital, the company passed into the hands ofjohn D. Rockefeller. The company was managed by his son,John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who took a hands-off approach until the disastrous events of the coal miners’ strike of 1913-14, marked by the infamous Ludlow Massacre. Much has been written about the violence that characterized that strike, but Scamehorn notes that nearly all previous histories take the perspective of labor. Relying heavily on the correspondence ofJesse F. Welborn, president of the CF&I, Scamehorn provides the perspective of management, concluding that “both sides shared the blame for the strike...