Iron Will: Cleveland-Cliffs and the Mining of Iron Ore, 1847–2006 by Terry S. Reynolds and Virginia P. Dawson (review)

Terry S. Reynolds and Virginia P. Dawson’s cowritten Iron Will is an excellent example of business and industrial history, a relatively narrow field of study. Sanctioned as a company history by the last remaining independent iron-mining company now known as Cliffs Natural Resources, the book chronicles “Cleveland Cliffs’ rise to prominence in the late nineteenth century, its struggle to survive the consolidation of the steel industry . . . , the shift from a labor intensive to a capital-intensive business . . . , and the company’s recent transition to a global iron merchant” (3). Despite the authors’ stringent focus upon the company itself, they also succeed in showing the importance the mining of iron ore in the Great Lakes region had on the Midwest and the subsequent development of the iron and steel industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As a professor of history at Michigan Technological University, Reynolds has published several essays on the mining of iron ore in the Great Lakes region and the Cleveland Iron Mining Company, while Dawson, president of History Enterprises, Inc., based in Cleveland, has authored several institutional histories.

Included within the authors’ chronological narrative of Cleveland-Cliffs are a number of themes that embrace management, fear of mineral depletion, the cyclical nature of the iron and steel industry, and labor and technology (4). Throughout the book, these themes are well examined, particularly the company’s focus on iron-mining technology and its evolution, such as its transition to greater mechanized open-pit operations and underground mining in the 1860s and 1870s, which led to the depletion of high-grade ores, and the development of taconite pellets in the 1950s. In addition to the mining of iron ore, Dawson and Reynolds also focus on the company’s product diversification throughout various economic crises. Of particular interest is the company’s decision to go into the charcoal iron-smelting business during the depression years of the 1890s by utilizing Michigan’s vast woodlands for fuel for their blast furnaces and by exploiting its by-products, such as wood alcohol and acetone. By the turn of the twentieth century, Cleveland-Cliffs used partnerships to leverage capital resources, as well as investment in other companies, in order to ensure a market for their ore, one such example of the latter being the construction of a large blast furnace in Warren, Ohio, known as the Trumbull-Cliffs Furnace Co., a joint venture between Cleveland-Cliffs and the Trumbull Steel Co.

Supplementing the authors’ extensive and detailed narrative is the use of a vast amount of primary sources, including internal reports and correspondence from the company, as well as daybooks and interviews with company personnel. Their sources, which include more than one hundred illustrations, provide a detailed exploration of the company’s history and deliver a unique glimpse into one of the country’s most important raw-material providers. Despite its sanctioning by Cliffs Natural Resources, the authors successfully removed many of the downfalls that often accompany such a project, including discernible bias within the text and oversight of unscrupulous company labor relations and practice; however, removing all bias is a daunting task. Those interested in mining technology, iron and steel, business, economic, regional and industrial history will find Iron Will both an informative and important addition to the field. Both Dawson and Reynolds present a well-researched economic and industrial history of a company so essential to the Midwest’s industrial prowess throughout the twentieth century, yet with the expanding global economy, Cliffs Natural Resources is currently presented with similar challenges that had plagued them throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.