Steel

​With its strategic geographic location to the iron ore mines of Minnesota and Michigan, Chicago was a center for steel production during the late 1800s and into the 1900s. Shipping routes on the Great Lakes from the mining ranges and Chicago’s railroad industry hub are the lynchpin for the entrepreneurial Bauman Brothers to grow their business in The Revolutionist.
 
As benefactors of Julie Josephson, the humanitarianism of Kurt and Matias Bauman clashes with the corruption and ruthless tactics of competitive industrialists and bankers.
 
Steel production during the early1900s employed hundreds of thousands of workers, contributed to the emergence of the middle-class, and the further rise of unionism.
The history of steel production in Illinois, Indiana, and Pennsylvania and its later demise, as major steel manufacturing went offshore, is a center-point in the evolution of the U.S. and the global economy.
 
The early 1900s heralded the invention of new manufacturing processes, steam power, chemical and steel production, and the transition from hand to machine production and the creation of factories. Julie Josephson becomes embroiled in the Industrial Workers of The World (IWW) as a union organizer supporting the rise of the working class striking for better wages and safe and healthy working conditions. The IWW promoted the platform of industrial unionism and workplace and economic democracy. Skilled and unskilled men and women and workers from all nationalities were welcome as members. During World War I and after, their influence ended with the imprisonment of 10,000 organizers and the deportation of many thousands as foreign agitators.