The following discussion of references is presented as a guide for those who are interested in the author's sources or for those who might wish to pursue these topics in greater depth. This listing of sources should not be considered either definitive or exhaustive. It is only intended to reflect the kinds of sources the author found useful to the development of each chapter.
I. Tom L. Johnson, Inventor and Entrepreneur
A fair amount of material on the early career of Tom Johnson is available. Three invaluable sources are Johnson's autobiographical My Story with Elizabeth Hauser (New York 1911) and two unpublished Ph.D. dissertations: Eugene C. Murdock, "Life of Tom L. Johnson" (Columbia 1951); and Michael Massouh, "Tom Loftin Johnson; Engineer-Entrepreneur, 1869-1900" (Case Western Reserve 1970). In 1910, Johnson commissioned a family genealogy which has proven to be a critical source on the lineages of the Johnson, Coleman, and Moxham families. A copy of the Genealogy of the Johnson Family from William Johnson 1714-1765, with special reference to the descendants of Robert Johnson who came from Kentucky (privately printed n.d. but probably 1910) is located at the Filson Club in Louisville.
The technical aspects of Johnson's early railway inventions are explored in more detail in Massouh's "Innovations in Street Railways Before Electric Traction: Tom L. Johnson's Contributions," Technology and Culture 18 (April 1977): 202-217; and are discussed in numerous articles on his fare-box design found in the Street Railway Gazette and the Street Railway Journal between 1886 and 1888. Drawings and descriptions of his early patents (fare-boxes, cable systems and horse car inventions) are contained in records of the U.S. Patent Office.
II. The Louisville Rolling Mill Company
There are very few sources of information on the Louisville Rolling Mill. Pieces of its early history are contained in the biographies of Thomas Cooper Coleman, John Coleman, and William Burke Belknap in J. Stoddard Johnston's Memorial History of Louisville, from its First Settlement to the Year 1896, 2 vols (Chicago, 1898); and from advertizing pieces in the Caron's City Directories for Louisville in the 1870s and 1880s. The Stockholder Record Book for the company, containing only general minutes of meetings, was found in the manuscript division of the Hagley Library in Wilmington. Other material on the Coleman family was derived from accounts and histories recorded by family descendants, the Census records for Bullitt and Jefferson Counties 1850-1910, and various Louisville directories. Coleman's career as a steamboat owner and operator was traced through the extensive steamboat records of the Murphy Library at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. Aside from the Johnston work, two other valuable sources of information on Louisville during the period are George Yater, Two Hundred Years at the Falls of the Ohio: A History of Louisville and Jefferson County (Louisville, 1979); and Maury Klein, History of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad (New York 1972).
III. Alfred V. and Bidermann du Pont, Louisville Capitalists
Detailed information on Alfred V. and Bidermann du Pont in Louisville is very scarce. Johnston's Memorial History of Louisville only makes passing reference to the two capitalists, even though both were extremely prominent in the city for over forty years. With the exception of several historical pieces in the Louisville Courier and the current Louisville Times, the best source is Raymond F. Pisney's unpublished M.A. thesis "The Louisville Agency of the E.I. Du Pont De Nemours and Company, 1831-1887" (Delaware 1965). A glimpse at the du Ponts' political activities in the mid-1880's is afforded by Sarah Yates and Karen Gray, "Business Conflicts in the Mayoralty of Paul Booker Reed, 1885-1887," Filson Club History Quarterly 61 (July 1987): 295-314. Surprisingly, the Hagley Library, the repository of du Pont family materials, contains very little information on the Louisville du Ponts during this period. Some information on Coleman du Pont's years with the Central Coal and Iron Company is recounted in John W. Donaldson's memoir Caveat Venditor; A Profile of Coleman Du Pont (privately printed in 1964).
IV. Investing in the Birmingham Ore Fields
Although it was essentially an extension of the Louisville Rolling Mill, the Birmingham Rolling Mill Company was somewhat easier to trace than its parent company because of the significant research that has been done on the development of the iron industry in the Birmingham region. The critical source remains Ethel Armes, The Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama (Birmingham 1911), which can be supplemented by H. M. Caldwell, History of the Elyton Land Company and Birmingham, Alabama (Birmingham 1892); Klein's History of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad; and Margorie L. White, The Birmingham District; An Industrial History and Guide (Birmingham 1981). Some description of the planning, construction and operation of the mill are found in various issues of the Birmingham Iron Age during 1880 and 1881, and in the biographies of W.B. Caldwell Sr. and Jr., and James B. Caldwell in Johnston's Memorial History of Louisville.
The obstacles to the development of southern iron making in the post Civil War period are described in numerous sources, but Ann Harper, The Location of the United States Steel Industry, 1879-1919 (New York 1977), and David Carlton and Peter Coclanis, "Capital Mobilization and Southern Industry, 1880-1905: The Case of the Carolina Piedmont," Journal of Economic History XLIX (March 1989): 73-94, are particularly instructive with respect to availability of risk capital. General contextual material for Birmingham is afforded by Martha C.M. Bigelow, "Birmingham: Biography of a City of the New South," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (Chicago 1946); Carl V. Harris, Political Power in Birmingham, 1871-1921 (Knoxville 1977); and the local history archives of the Birmingham Public Library.
V. Arthur J. Moxham, Ironmaster
Virtually no published accounts exist for the early career of Arthur Moxham other than anecdotal material provided by his son Egbert for John Frederick's biography of Moxham in the first edition of the Dictionary of American Biography. Some information can be pieced together from Louisville city directories, Census data, the Johnson genealogy, and selected articles from the Louisville Commercial. The most substantive and reliable information on Moxham's early life came from private family records, genealogies and photographs, which several of his descendants have meticulously gathered and maintained. Among these, the singlemost important source is Egbert Moxham's length personal memoir Rosemary (privately printed for family members in 1958) which, though somewhat romanticized and selective, offers a first-hand account of the life of a very private man.
VI. Conemaugh, Woodvale, and the Cambria Iron
The Conemaugh and Woodvale years of the Johnson Steel Street Rail Company are documented primarily through newspaper accounts in the Johnstown Tribune and the Johnstown Democrat, and the two standard histories of the Johnstown area: Henry Storey, History of Cambria County, Pennsylvania, with genealogical memoirs, 3 vols (New York 1907); and John Gable, History of Cambria County, Pennsylvania, 2 vols (Topeka 1926). Personal accounts of the Moxham family life during the period are recounted in Egbert Moxham's Rosemary.
The national prominence of the Cambria Iron Company as an innovative steelmaker is documented in W. T. Hogan, Economic History of the Iron and Steel Industry in the United States, Vol. 1 and 2 (Lexington 1971); James M. Swank, History of the Manufacture of Iron in All Ages, and Particularly in the United States from Colonial Times to 1891, 2d ed. (Philadelphia 1892); Peter Temin, Iron and Steel in Nineteenth Century America, An Economic Inquiry (Cambridge 1964); and Thomas J. Misa, "Science, Technology and Industrial Structure: Steelmaking in America 1870-1925," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (Pennsylvania 1987). More focused treatments include John Boucher, The Cambria Iron Company (Harrisburg 1888); Robert John Hunter, "Biography of Daniel J. Morrell, Ironmaster," unpublished M.A. thesis (Pittsburgh 1954); and Richard Burkert, "Iron and Steelmaking in the Conemaugh Valley," in Karl Berger, ed., Johnstown: Story of a Unique Valley (Johnstown 1984): 255-315. The most extensive documentation of the Cambria Iron Company is Sharon A. Brown, Historic Resource Study: Cambria Iron Company (Washington, D.C., 1989), and its companion volume, Kim E. Wallace, editor, The Character of a Steel Mill City: Four Historic Neighborhoods in Johnstown, Pennsylvania (Washington, D.C., 1989), both completed for the America's Industrial Heritage Project.
VII. Building the Rail Mill
Three sources were particularly helpful in describing the physical plant and operation of the early rail mill. The construction of the mill itself in 1888 was pieced together by numerous articles in the Johnstown Tribune. The early operation of the rail mill is outlined in detail in "How the Johnson Girder Rail and Other Track Appliances Are Made" in Street Railway Journal 6 (June 1890): 296-7, 310. The early history of the operation of the steel foundry is chronicled in Frank Younkin, "The Steel Foundry, A Historical Sketch of the Foundry, Its Products and Processes" (1938), an unpublished mimeo in the company's archives. The Younkin mimeo also describes the evolution of the foundry's product line and development of alloys through the turn of the century. Those archives also contain the burn records and ledgers from the steel foundry starting in 1889 (now lost). The earliest detailed survey map of the mill site is included in the 1891 Sanborn insurance map of the Moxham section of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. A biography of Benjamin Watkins is found in Storey's History of Cambria County Vol. III: 554-557.
Moxham's experimentation with new types of open hearth furnaces can be assessed by consulting W. T. Wellman, "The Early History of Open-Hearth Steel Manufacture in the United States," ASME Transactions 23 (1902): 78-98; Alfred E. Hunt, "Some Recent Improvements in Open-Hearth Steel Practice," AIME Transactions 16 (1887): 693-728; and Misa's "Science, Technology, and Industrial Structure" (as before), 206-236. On the use of oil-gas fuel in steel mills, see Victor Clark, History of Manufactures in the United States, Vol. II: 1860-1893 (New York 1929): 252-253.
VIII. After the Great Flood
Accounts of the Great Johnstown Flood of 1889 are plentiful, but among the most useful are Storey's History of Cambria County, Vol. I: 457-508; David McCulloch, The Johnstown Flood (New York 1967); and Nathan Shappee's unpublished doctoral dissertation "A History of Johnstown and the Great Flood of 1889" (Pittsburgh 1940). Interesting personal accounts are found in Tom Johnson's My Story and Egbert Moxham's memoir Rosemary. The largest and best repository of information (and photographs) of the flood is the Johnstown Flood Museum.
Descriptions of the expansion of the rail mill to a fully integrated fabrication plant after the flood are drawn from the Johnstown Tribune and many original architectural drawings in the company archives. The sophisticated marketing system established by the Johnson Company can be placed in context by looking at Michael Massouh, "Technology and Managerial Innovation: The Johnson Company, 1883-1889," Business History Review L (Spring 1976): 46-68; and Glenn Porter and Harold Livesay, Merchants and Manufacturers, Studies in the Changing Structure of Nineteenth-Century Marketing (Baltimore 1971). Early Johnson Company catalogues are quite scarce. Copies of Catalogue Nos. 4 (Louisville, n.d. but probably 1885) and 5 (Louisville, n.d. but probably 1886) are found in the Engineering Societies Library in New York City. A copy of Catalogue No. 6 (Louisville, n.d. but probably 1888) is located at the Hagley Library in Wilmington. Company archives contain copies of Catalogue Nos. 8 (Johnstown, June 1, 1892) and 9 (Johnstown, June 1, 1894).
IX. Planning the Town of Moxham
Information on the early planning and development of the town of Moxham is fragmentary. Almost the entirety of this chapter was drawn from articles in the Johnstown Tribune. The company archives contain five separate surveys of the planning of the town (or sections of the town) dated between 1887 and 1898, as well as numerous surveys of the right-of-way for the Johnstown and Stony Creek Railroad. The early history of both the Johnstown and Stony Creek and the Johnstown Passenger Railway Company (both horse-drawn and electric) is also derived from the Johnstown Tribune. Early documentation for the street railway, including charters and deeds for the properties on which the car barns were built in 1893 can be found in the archives of the Cambria County Transit Authority.
X. From Local Mill to National Prominence
In terms of technological innovation, the best source on the development of electrification of street railways is undoubtedly Harold Passer's The Electrical Manufacturers, 1875-1900 (Cambridge 1953). Unfortunately, innovation in track work has been a relatively unexplored area of research. General works on the engineering of street railway track work include Alexander Easton, A Practical Treatise on Street or Horse-power Railways: Their Location, Construction, and Management (Philadelphia 1859); Tom L. Johnson, Street Railway Construction (Louisville 1883); Bertram Baxter, Industrial Archaeology: Stone Blocks and Iron Rails (New York 1967); and Mason Platt and C.A. Alden, Street-Railway Roadbed (New York 1898), the latter drawn from a series of articles published earlier in the Street Railway Journal. Specific dimensions of technological innovation of the Johnson rail are described in James R. Alexander, "Technological Innovation in Early Street Railways: The Johnson Rail in Retrospective," Railroad History 164 (Spring 1991).
The extent of Johnson Company penetration of the national street railway track market can be deduced from company records (including the correspondence of Arthur Moxham) in the Hagley Library and the extensive number of elaborate and detailed descriptions of the construction of individual railway systems in the Street Railway Journal, particularly between 1889 and 1896. A specific accounting of Johnson clients however can be derived from the company's archival holdings of ledger books of drawings and orders for specialty track work (Vol. I starting July 9, 1886), which carefully recorded drawings commissioned and orders placed by railway company, date, and type of track work designed. In some cases, specific streets or intersections in the railway's system is cited. Use of Johnson rail or specialty track work can be traced more completely if a detailed history of the development of a specific railway has been or is being researched, as in the cases of O. E. Carson's The Trolley Titans; A Mobile History of Atlanta (Glendale, CA 1981), and Morris Abbott's The Pikes Peak Cog Road (San Marino, CA 1972). In such cases, the use of Johnson rail or specialty track work may not be specifically mentioned in their published works but can be documented through the railway company's construction records and drawings.
The Johnson Company patents for roll processes, tools and machinery, and railway appliances can be traced through the records of the U.S. Patent Office. Most of the earlier patents were in Moxham's name alone. When other Johnson engineers began to patent their work, they consigned the rights to the Johnson Company. Not counting any of Tom Johnson's patents, Moxham and/or the Johnson Company were granted over 200 patents between 1883 and 1895, mostly for rail section or track work design. The critical patent infringement suits filed by the Johnson Company against the North Branch Steel Company (1891), Tidewater Steel-Works (1892), and the Pennsylvania Steel Company (1895) involved the Moxham patents on rolling processes for the Jaybird design. The critical infringement suit over the Johnson rail design itself was filed against the Pacific Rolling Mill Company (1891). These and other minor suits based on track work design were lost at both the circuit court and court of appeals levels and can be traced in the Federal Reporter, vols. 48-68 (1891-1896). Moxham's view of the changing steel market is revealed by his correspondence with Pierre S. du Pont, located in the Manuscripts Department of the Hagley Library.
XI. 1893
The causes of and industrial transitions following the Panic of 1893, particularly in the steel and railroad industries, are examined at length in Hogan, Temin and Misa (as before). A very useful source on the immediate period surrounding the 1893 Panic is Charles Hoffmann, The Depression of the Nineties, An Economic History (Westport, CT 1970). For background in patterns of investment during the period, see Vincent P. Carosso, Investment Banking in America; A History (Cambridge 1970); Richard Sylla, The American Capital Market, 1846-1914 (New York 1975); Thomas R. Navin and Marian Sears, "The Rise of a Market for Industrial Securities, 1887-1902," Business History Review 29 (Fall 1955): 105-138; and Lance E. Davis, "The Investment Market, 1870-1914: The Evolution of a National Market," Journal of Economic History 25 (September 1965): 355-399. Changes in patterns of American business during this period are described Alfred Chandler, "The Beginnings of `Big Business' in American Industry," Business History Review 33 (Spring 1959): 1-31; and Glen Porter, The Rise of Big Business, 1860-1910 (Arlington Heights, IL 1973). The seminal work on these changes is of course Chandler's The Visible Hand; The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge 1977).
The Johnson Company's financial management practices and overall capital condition during the period can be traced through the correspondence of Arthur Moxham with both Pierre and Thomas Coleman du Pont in the Hagley Library. The company's policy of issuing bond certificates to maintain cash flow is recounted by Tom Johnson in My Story. The account of Fred du Pont's death is from Marc Duke, The Du Ponts: Portrait of a Dynasty (New York 1976). The content and disposition of Fred du Pont's estate is detailed in File 412 of the Papers of Pierre S. du Pont at the Hagley Library, and is recounted in Alfred Chandler and Stephen Salsbury, Pierre S. Du Pont and the Making of the Modern Corporation (New York 1970).
XII. The Big Gamble
The considerations surrounding the decision to build the Lorain mill are outlined in the Johnson Company files and the correspondence between Arthur Moxham and Pierre du Pont in the Hagley Library. Particularly useful are the "Financial Plan of the Johnson Company of Ohio" (1894) and "Prospectus, The Johnson Company" (1894). Moxham's investigation of the possibilities of building the mill in Johnstown was traced through the Johnstown Tribune 1891-1894. The plans and surveys for the Lorain mill are in the Johnson Company files at Hagley, and construction of the mill itself followed through the local history and photographic holdings of the Black River Historical Society in Lorain, Ohio.
The deteriorating financial condition of the Johnson Company after 1894 can be pieced together through the correspondence between Arthur Moxham and Pierre and Thomas Coleman du Pont, and the company's year-end statements. Neither the Hagley Library nor the Baker Library at Harvard (the Dun archives) has a copy of the 1896 R.G. Dun Company report on the Johnson Company, but Moxham's extensive rebuttal letter to Dun (of September 29, 1896, in the Hagley files) outlines its major dimensions. Moxham's attempt to expand the profit margin of the Johnstown mill by hiring Frederick Taylor is recounted in Frank B. Copley, Frederick W. Taylor; Father of Scientific Management Vol. I (New York 1923); and Daniel Nelson, Frederick W. Taylor and the Rise of Scientific Management (Madison 1980).
The Federal Steel merger is discussed at length in Hogan (as before); Vincent Carosso, The Morgans: Private International Bankers, 1854-1913 (Cambridge 1987); and Ida Tarbell, The Life of Elbert H. Gary: The Story of Steel (New York 1925). The role of the Johnson Company in the merger is often neglected, but was pursued through William Ripley's Trusts, Pools, and Corporations (Boston 1916), and this author's correspondence with Carosso.
Epilogue: Transitions and Legacies
The transition period between the reorganization of the Johnson Company into Lorain Steel and its absorption into the U.S. Steel Corporation is the subject of some correspondence between Moxham and Pierre du Pont. Pierre's acceptance and tenure as President of the Johnson Company's remaining Lorain holdings is recounted in Chandler and Salsbury (as before), as well as a number of lengthy reports sent by Pierre to Moxham after the latter had moved to Nova Scotia.
Arthur Moxham's role in the formation and construction of the Dominion Iron & Steel Company can be traced through various sources. The viability of the project was examined in depth by Moxham's brother Edgar, resulting in a written prospectus dated October-November 1899 (at Hagley). The evolution of the plant is described in Craig Heron, Working in Steel: The Early Years in Canada, 1883-1935 (Toronto 1988); W. J. A. Donald, The Canadian Iron and Steel Industry: A Study in the Economic History of a Protected Industry (Boston 1915); Edward J. McCracken, "The Steel Industry in Nova Scotia" unpublished M.A. thesis (McGill University 1932); and Don Macgillivray, "Henry Melville Whitney Comes to Cape Breton: The Saga of a Gilded Age Entrepreneur," Acadiensis 9 (Autumn 1979): 44-70; and is recounted by Moxham himself in "Canada as a Steel Producer, The Operations of the Dominion Iron & Steel Company" (1902), reprinted from Cassier's Magazine. Difficulties in developing a Canadian steelmaking capacity in Nova Scotia are examined in Kris Inwood, "Discovery and Technological Change: The Origins of Steelmaking at Sydney, Nova Scotia," in Early Ironmaking (Montreal 1983): 59-65; and in anecdotal accounts in Egbert Moxham's Rosemary.
Moxham's career after 1901 can be largely examined through the records of the Du Pont Company in the Hagley Library. His participation in the formation of the Du Pont Company in 1902 and his various roles in the company through 1914 are recounted in Chandler and Salsbury (as before). On his experiments at Goshen and Odessa, see his own articles in Iron Age: "Chemical Methods of Iron Ore Purification" (January 4, 1923), and "Purifying Iron Ore by Chemical Methods" (June 5, 1924).
Tom Johnson's career after 1885 is ably described in Murdoch and Massouh (as before), his own My Story, and a series of five articles written by Robert Bremner entitled "The Civic Revival in Ohio," published in American Journal of Economics and Sociology 8-10 (1949-1951). Johnson's management of the Detroit Street Railways is recounted in Melvin Holli, Reform in Detroit (New York 1969). Some of his correspondence from the post-1900 period are in the Hagley Library.
Genealogies: The Coleman Family Connection
Research into the family connections among the Johnson, Coleman, Moxham, and du Pont families is a fairly complicated business. The Johnson lineage (cited above) contains significant information on parts of the Coleman and Moxham families as they branch off of the marriage of Thomas Cooper Coleman and Dulcenia Payne Johnson. The du Pont lineage is very accessible through the holdings of the Hagley Library, notably the genealogy commissioned by Pierre du Pont "Genealogy of the Du Pont Family 1739-1943" (privately printed in 1943), and often diagramed in many of the published histories of the du Pont family, such as Chandler and Salsbury (as before); John D. Gates, The Du Pont Family (Garden City 1979); Marc Duke, The Du Ponts: Portrait of a Dynasty (New York 1976); John Winkler, The Du Pont Dynasty (New York 1935); William S. Dutton, Du Pont: One Hundred and Forty Years (New York 1942); and Marquis James, Alfred I. du Pont, The Family Rebel (New York 1941).
Development of the Coleman and Moxham lineages relied entirely on primary sources, and mostly on family records. The principal source of information on the Coleman and Moxham families was correspondence and interviews with direct family descendants including: Arthur James Moxham (grandson of Arthur James Moxham); Murton du Pont Carpenter and Nancy du Pont Reynolds (granddaughters of Edgar C. Moxham, Arthur Moxham's brother); Dulcenia Straeffer Wilder (great granddaughter of Thomas Cooper Coleman); and G. Edgar Straeffer (great grandson of Thomas Cooper Coleman).
Coleman family records can be supplemented by self-recorded family census data for Jefferson County, Kentucky (Thomas Cooper Coleman, Sr., 1850, 1860) and Bullitt County, Kentucky (Thomas Cooper Coleman, Jr., residence at the Meadows, 1880, 1900, 1910), and by the probated wills of Thomas C. Coleman (20 October 1860/22 July 1861, Will Book 5) and Dora Coleman (3 January 1882 [codicil 1 April 1886/30 March 1898] Will Book 21), both in Jefferson County, Kentucky. In addition to Egbert Moxham's memoir Rosemary, the Moxham lineage can be supplemented by the probated will of Catherine Moxham (6 October 1875/27 March 1882 [first probated 30 April 1878 in Llandaff district, Glamorgan, Wales], Will Book 11, also in Jefferson County, Kentucky.