PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: The Carrie Blast Furnaces, part of Andrew Carnegie's Homestead Steel Works along the Monongahela River above Pittsburgh, are awe inspiring for many reasons, not least because workers fed raw materials to a ceaseless conveyor into the furnace blast at one end while other workers withdrew liquid slag and pig iron in equal measure at the other, a balanced blast system running uninterrupted for periods of 4 to 8 years, fed by a constant flow of trains and barges and systems of overhead cranes and conveyors, unless all was stopped by a strike.
