Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

Stored off-site. Users must request boxes 48 hours in advance of desired use. Neither drop-in nor next-day requests can be fulfilled. For additional information, contact Special Collections.

Use Restrictions

See the University of Virginia Library’s use policy.

Preferred Citation

Papers of the Low Moor Iron Company, Accession #662, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

This collection was purchased from Green Bookman in 1939.

Provenance

The Low Moor Iron Company ceased operations in 1930; what happened to the records of the company in the years immediately following is not known, but in 1939, the Green Bookman, a Charlottesville bookshop, sold the records to the University of Virginia Library.

The records arrived at the receiving room door of the new Alderman Library on October 16, 1939, in a trailer truck whose load was estimated to weigh about fourteen tons. As the manuscripts staff dug around in the piles of over 1200 account books, and countless boxes of papers they realized that the company had saved almost all of its papers including checks, invoices, vouchers, and receipts, and certain of these records were destroyed as their information was recorded in other records. Once the bulk of the collection had been reduced, the remaining records were transferred to the stack area of the Division of Rare Books and Manuscripts.

Processing Information

By 1958, little storage space remained in Alderman Library, and the Rare Books and Manuscripts Division was especially crowded because of the rapid growth of its collections. After an examination of its storage areas, the division's staff decided to move the Low Moor records to the attic of one of the student dormitories. The collection had had little use chiefly because there was no finding aid. There seemed little likelihood of extensive researcher use until the collection could be processed.

In preparation for the move, the old letter boxes in which much of the collection had arrived in the Library were discarded. The records from each box were placed between sheets of the heavy gray cardboard used to protect unbound newspapers in the Library's stacks, and the spine labels of the old letter boxes were copied onto the cardboard. The resulting bundles were wrapped with brown Kraft paper and tied up with string. The bundles were numbered. Whatever original order the letter boxes may have had was lost by the time they arrived in the Library, and after the bundling, removal to a dormitory attic, and subsequent return to the Library in 1976, all vestiges of the original order were lost.

The bundles remained in the dormitory attic for almost twenty years. Occasional visits were made by the division staff to check on their condition, and on very rare occasions, a researcher was brave enough to ask to be shown the collection. Once the researcher saw the imposing amount of material and the conditions in the attic, interest in using the collection invariably died.

In late 1976 a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities was obtained to allow the Library to process the Low Moor Iron Company papers, and the papers of Edward L. Stone and the Borderland Coal Company, another large collection of records stored in the same dormitory attic. All of these records and papers were moved back to the Library where the bundles were cleaned and opened. The contents of each were placed in a Hollinger storage box, and all notes on the paper wrappings and on the gray cardboard sheets were recorded.

The more than 1200 bound accounting records of the Low Moor Iron Company were surveyed by the grant project staff. The contents of each volume were noted on a mimeographed form, and later typed on 3 x 5" cards to create a readily-accessible file for the Manuscripts Reading Room. This information was also typed on pages to be added to this guide.

Biographical/Historical Information

The Low Moor Iron Company, the first producer of pig iron in Virginia according to the company's claims, was a self-contained manufacturing unit producing from its own mines the coal, limestone, and iron ore needed for its iron production. Located in Low Moor near Clifton Forge in Alleghany County in western Virginia, an area rich in mineral deposits, the company was in operation from 1872-1930, producing only pig iron; it never attempted to produce finished iron products.

Coal came to the Low Moor furnaces from the Kay Moor Mines at Kay Moor, West Virginia, about thirty miles from Low Moor; limestone was produced from the Low Moor limestone quarries; and iron ore came from the Fenwick, Dolly Ann, Jordan, Rich Patch, Low Moor, and Longdale Mines, most of them within twenty miles of Low Moor at Covington or Clifton Forge.

The towns of Low Moor and Kay Moor were company towns in every respect. Workers lived in company-owned houses, bought food in company stores, worshiped at the company church, saw movies in the company theater, were treated in the company hospital, and were buried in the company cemetery. Workers received part of their pay in scrip that they exchanged for goods and services. According to a statement from the Kay Moor Mines dated November 1904, Kay Moor then employed 338 people, paid them an average wage of $36.26 per month, and issued half of their pay in scrip. Kay Moor had four stores; Low Moor had seven or eight. All of these stores carried large inventories which are detailed in the collection. These inventories are valuable to anyone interested in determining the wants and needs of a coal miner and his family.

In the late 1910's and 1920's Kay Moor had a company theater called the Azure Theater which seated about 300 people. There were also plans for a company-owned social center, to have pool tables, a soda fountain, and provisions for dancing and skating. The company was in tough economic straits by the 1920's, however, and there is no evidence that the social center was built. The town of Low Moor was so completely under the company's influence that one of Low Moor Iron Company's assistant managers served as the town sheriff. He often foreclosed on people who did not pay their debts, and drove troublesome people "out of town on a rail" as he put it.

The Low Moor Iron Company's fortunes fluctuated during the various business cycles between the years 1880-1930. Low Moor was one of the larger pig iron producers in Virginia, but Virginia pig iron production was not important nationally. Low Moor officials sometimes sold their product themselves, but more often they used agents, the prevalent method at the time. Low Moor Iron Company used a variety of agents through the 1900's. James F. Bryan acted as the exclusive agent for the sale of Kay Moor Coal from September 21, 1903 to September, 1905. From about 1890 until about 1910 Dalton Nash and Company were the exclusive eastern agents of Low Moor Iron. After that time the exclusive agency went to Philips Isham and Company located in New York. From about 1890 the western agency was handled chiefly by Thomas Mack and Company. After 1902 Thomas Mack and Company underwent a name change, becoming Walter Wallingford and Company, with offices located in Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Chicago.

Perhaps the Low Moor Iron Company's biggest problem over the years was obtaining railroad cars for the transportation of its finished product. Low Moor Iron Company had its own cars for transporting its raw materials among its various facilities. For the long haul necessary for its finished goods, however, it depended upon the services of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, and the relationship was not always a happy one. The Low Moor Company complained many times to the C & O Railroad about the discrepancies between long-and shorthaul freight rates. Low Moor also had trouble getting cars from the C & O. In a letter to one of Low Moor Company's agents from an irate customer dated 1898, the customer wrote: "We wrote you on Saturday and endeavored to question upon your mind the necessity of taking care of us with Low Moor iron. We are on our uppers--there is not a pound of Low Moor iron in the yard. Of the one hundred tons ordered some time ago, not one pound of it has been received." This was, according to the Low Moor Iron Company, because they could not get the railroad cars. In a letter from Thomas Mack and Company dated November 26, 1901, to General Manager E. C. Means: "We are hopeful that the car supply will get better because of the number of orders you have of ours for prompt shipment. Our customers are complaining that they are not getting the iron fast enough. . . . We hope that the railroad will be able to supply you with empty cars." In another letter dated 1916 to John B. Guernsey, then acting General Manager of the Low Moor Iron Company, "We were not supplied with coke cars for today's loading, and consequently we have been practically down of Kay Moor ovens all day."

The problem of procuring labor also plagued the Low Moor Company. The company sometimes tried to hire immigrant laborers and send the men directly to Low Moor from New York City. There were problems with this, as is explained in the following letter dated April 7, 1906:

To Mr. George Wickes
Supt. of Mines
Kay Moor, Virginia

Dear George,
Tony arrived with twenty one men last night. One got away in Jersey two in Washington D.C., four in Charlottesville. Some of the men are very good looking, but taken as a whole they are the worst lot I have ever seen: Irish, German-Jews, and Italians. . . . Our New York transportations to this place have never been a success.

Signed,
Ed D. Wickes Supt. of Mines

Low Moor Iron Company not only had trouble procuring labor, but it also had trouble with labor already employed in the mines and at the factory. Labor dissension and strikes troubled the Kay Moor Mines through the 1900's. The great coal strike of 1902 hurt the Low Moor Company's coal mining operation, but by 1903 things were "nearly back to normal" according to the mine superintendent. There was still trouble at Kay Moor Mines, however. In a letter dated April 26, 1906, to the treasurer of Low Moor Company, the manager of the mines wrote about the trouble in "trying to get the agitators out." The mines were seventy-five men short of the total labor force needed because many of the coal miners returned to their farms during the spring. There were rumblings of another strike at Kay Moor, the result of which was to be a fourteen percent increase in wages for the Kay Moor Mine workers via an agreement with the United Mine Workers Union in December.

The Low Moor Iron Company grew along with the rest of Virginia industry in the 1890's and 1900's. Starting with only one furnace in the 1870's, it opened a second furnace at Covington, Virginia, in 1891. In 1911 it opened a third furnace, this time at Low Moor. Covington, with its heavy industry, soon became known as the "Pittsburgh of Virginia." Virginia's pig iron production rose from 9,000 short tons in 1870 to 544,034 long tons in 1903. Judging from the Low Moor Company's correspondence, the most prosperous period for the company fell between the years 1895-1907. In the years between 1907-1917 problems befell the Virginia pig iron industry. In a letter from William W. Hearns, the president of the Virginia based Princess Pig Iron Company, to U. S. Senator Thomas S. Martin, Hearns writes of the problems of the Virginia pig iron industry: "There is not a blast furnace in Virginia that is making any money from the manufacture of pig iron. The cause of this is there is an exceedingly low price on pig iron in the country at the present time, and the increased cost of manufacturing is due to the increase in wages in all lines." With the outbreak of World War I prices rose dramatically, but in a market report to Low Moor dated November 11, 1916, it was stated that: "In spite of the high prices, it is not a picnic to be in the iron industry. There is a desperate shortage of cars and equipment in the coal and iron districts, and in consequence there are troubles of all kinds to get materials shipped. The situation has grown serious."

When America became involved in the First World War, it meant a boost for the Low Moor Iron Company. The government helped it procure labor, and even helped it repair its furnaces. The problem of supplies and cars for their shipments, however, plagued the company more than ever. It had a good deal of trouble getting all the raw materials it needed due chiefly to the "tight ship" run by Harry F. Byrd, Sr., U.S. Fuel Administrator for Virginia. After the war very serious problems began to trouble the Low Moor Iron Company. The demand for iron fell precipitously and a short but severe depression ensued from 1919-1922. The depression seemed to hit the iron industry especially hard. Prices took a huge drop due to the lack of demand, and many pre-war contracts had to be revalued. To compound the company's problems, the Kay Moor Mines went on strike in 1919. This strike was quickly settled, as the market for coal was so good that the Low Moor Company ceased taking orders temporarily in 1921 as it could not fill the orders it had on hand.

The Low Moor Company furnaces lay idle for some twenty months. Finally, in November 1922 one of Low Moor's furnaces was finally fired up. While prosperity gradually returned to the rest of the country, the Low Moor Iron Company never recovered. Production of pig iron in the Virginia iron industry declined from 544,034 tons in 1903 to 148,053 tons in 1923, considered a good year for the industry as a whole. In February 1926 Low Moor officials talked of merging with two other iron companies in order to revive the iron business for the three companies. The merger, however, never occurred. By late 1926 the company was in the process of liquidation. An advertisement in the Charleston, West Virginia, Daily Mail dated April 30, 1927, told of a huge warehouse sale at the Low Moor Iron Company. The advertisement noted "thousands of screws, pipe fittings, valves, etc." The last piece of correspondence from the Low Moor Iron Company in the collection is dated 1929. It deals with the sale of a machine.

Why did the iron industry in Virginia decline as it did? Some say that lack of speed, efficiency, and a decent transportation system for Alleghany County caused it. In a letter from C. E. Bertie, secretary of the Virginia Pig Iron Association, to the Manufacturers Record dated 1925, Bertie claimed that it was the tremendous rise in the cost of transportation. Virginia, he claimed, had almost no home market. Over 80% of its normal production was shipped out to other states. The failure of the Interstate Commerce Commission to treat Virginia furnaces as southern furnaces was the cause of much of the trouble. From 1914-1925 there were four blanket increases in freight rates in the country, of which only one applied equally to all localities. Southern furnaces were received only two increases--a 25% increase in 1918 and a 25% increase in 1920--but northern furnaces had had 5%, 15%, 25%, and 40% increases in their transportation costs. Virginia furnaces, although recognized as southern furnaces, had had freight rates increased in line with the northern furnaces. Prior to the war Virginia iron reached all points in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois on a competitive basis with southern furnaces. After World War I the advantage was limited to a small portion of southeastern Ohio. All of Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan were now lost to the Virginia producers. The Virginia producer, according to Bertie, felt that the freight rates should be restored to a relationship with southern furnaces. If what Bertie said was true, the other southern states iron industries should not have been in the same desperate economic straits as Virginia's, and statistics should support this. In the 1920's production rose to new heights in Alabama. In Tennessee, however, iron production plunged to new lows during the 1920's. While the south accounted for 10.2% of the entire U. S. production in the years 1919-1924, Virginia accounted for less than 1% during those years. In 1915 Virginia accounted for over 6% of the U.S. iron production. One can see a decline in other areas of the south than Virginia. While the discrepancies in the freight rates may have helped cause the decline, clearly there are other reasons.

During the 1900's there was a discovery of extremely rich iron ore deposits in the mid-west. Much of this ore was on or near the surface, making the mining of it both easy and inexpensive. This in turn lowered production costs of the pig iron. This caused iron production to shift to that region, and resulted in a decline in the Virginia iron industry. There was a sharp increase in iron production in the mid-west through the 1920's. The iron ore in the mid-west may have been of better quality than Virginia, but the iron ore in Virginia was of sufficient quality to produce a good pig iron. The western ore deposits were not as conveniently located as Virginia deposits, but the inexpensiveness of production more than made up for it.

In examining the rise and fall of the Low Moor Iron Company, we can see a situation in which the conditions for the manufacture of iron were nearly ideal. There was plenty of land for expansion and resources for the manufacture of the iron. The major internal problem faced by the Low Moor Iron Company was that of transportation. External developments, however, caused the final demise of the Low Moor Iron Company.

Low Moor Iron Company Personnel:

Executive Staff: Managing Director, Colonel H. M. Goodwin: ca. 1881. General Managers: H. G. Merry: ca. 1884-1902; E. C. Means: ca. 1905-1915; J. P. Guernsey: ca. 1915 (acting General Manager); F. U. Humbert: ca. 1916-1929. Assistant General Manager: E. B. Wilkinson: ca. 1909-1915. Treasurers and Assistant Treasurers: Edward Low: ca. 1886-1898; Frank Lyman (in New York): ca. 1898-1919; S. G. Cragill (Asst. Treasurer): ca. 1900-1915; H. A. Dalton: ca. 1921-1929; John Lipscomb (Asst. Treasurer): ca. 1918-1928.

Factory and Mine Supervisors: Kay Moor Superintendents: C. C. Cooke: ca. 1918; Ed. D. Wickes: ca. 1906; H. L. Tansell: ca. 1903; A. H. Reed: ca. 1906. Kay Moor Managers: J. W. Monteith: manager of mines. ca. 1918; promoted in 1925 to general superintendent in charge of mine plants, coke ovens, shops, repairs, and construction; A. L. Monteith: assistant superintendent of mines, ca. 1918; George T. Wickes: manager of Covington mines, ca. 1906-1917; Ross Howell, ca. 1918. Stack Mines Superintendents: J. H. Carpenter: ca. 1906; C. D. Oberschain: ca. 1907; J. L. Harris: ca. 1903; John S. Ham: ca. 1891-1901. Rich Patch Mines Superintendents: John R. Thompson: foreman, ca. 1906. Low Moor assorted other personnel: S. L. Tulley: trainmaster, ca. 1906; B. J. Shenkley: foreman, Low Moor limestone quarries; L. Q. Wood: assistant traffic manager, ca. 1919.

Scope and Content Information

The Low Moor Iron Company papers consist of approximately 280 four-inch Hollinger archives boxes (ca. 95 linear feet) of records, ca. 1885-1927, and some 1200 bound volumes of the company's accounting records, 1873-1927, of this iron producing company located in Low Moor (four miles southwest of Clifton Forge), Alleghany County, Virginia.

This material consists of records typical of those produced by a firm of this type in the period, but as the company owned its own coal and iron mines and limestone quarries, there is considerable information about the production of these raw materials. Large numbers of the records that deal with the company's employees have survived: time books, payroll books, hands ledgers, and the like. Because these books sometimes include information about the employee's trade or job with the company, and as race is indicated in some of the records, these books should provide date for studies of the structure and upward mobility within the labor force, patterns of ethnic--possibly racial--occupational penetration and mobility, material conditions of the workers, and so on. The papers should permit a range of studies detailing the pattern and evolution of industrial organization in the iron industry, and the evolution of markets and marketing structures for the entire period. Because the company was dependent upon railroads to move its raw materials to the furnaces, and for the marketing of its products, there is considerable information about railroads and their relationship to their customers.

Organization

The word "organization" is used here with considerable diffidence, for any researcher studying the container list that follows will realize quickly that there is no organization in the usual sense of the word.

As noted under "Provenance," the Low Moor Iron Company papers were subjected to a number of moves; when processing began in the fall of 1976, no discernible scheme of organization could be determined.

The first step was to review the series of coded numbers placed on the bundles of papers before they were moved to the dormitory attic, but these did not provide any sort of useful organization. Next, the spine titles of the original letter boxes were reviewed (they had been copied onto the gray cardboard sheets before the move to the dormitory attic), but they, too, proved useless.

These steps having provided no scheme, and after a considerable hiatus due to a turnover in student processors on the collection, the new student processors were instructed to begin a box-by-box inventory of the contents of the collection. During this inventory, old folders were replaced with acid-free ones, and the original folder headings were copied onto the new ones. Some removal of paper clips was accomplished, and the materials were reviewed and notes taken for the guide.

Some consolidation of materials was accomplished, and in other cases, materials were moved. This work has created some problems in the numbering of the boxes. Thus, the researchers will find boxes marked "6A" and "23C"; he will also discover that certain box numbers have been entirely omitted. As the box numbers exist only to aid in the location of material, it was not felt that the unusual numbers and the omissions would cause problems in working with the papers.

A certain amount of movement of boxes within the collection, and of materials among boxes, probably would ease use of it. But what processing was accomplished on this project took far longer than had been anticipated, and there was no time in the late spring of 1978, when the processors had to complete their work with the project, to undertake a mass movement of material. Thus, they stand in the order in which we found them at the beginning of the project.

Additional Descriptive Data

Other Finding Aid

Some 1200 bound accounting record books of the Low Moor Iron Company came into the custody of the Library with the loose papers. When the project staff investigated these volumes in the dormitory attic where they were stored, they found that the volumes had been shelved by size rather than by series. Thus, a letterbook may stand next to a stock report book for a furnace, which is, in turn, next to a store account book for the Kay Moor Mines' store. No series are shelved in order.

Members of the project staff surveyed the volumes, completing for each volume two copies of a mimeographed survey form, and assigning to each volume a number. One copy of the survey report form was placed in the volume, and the second was returned to the Library.

From the survey report forms, 3 x 5 inch index cards--with a carbon copy of each--were typed. One set of index cards has been kept in order by the numbers assigned to the volumes as they stand on the shelves. This provides a shelf list for the use of the library staff. The other set of cards was sorted into categories as a finding aid. On the list that follows, the researcher will find a number of major headings such as "Accounts," "Inventories," "Letter Books," and "Shipments-Outgoing."

Insofar as it has been possible to determine from the data on the survey report forms, the volumes have been assigned to categories. Most of the major categories, or headings, have sub-headings. Within those sub-headings, the volumes have been arranged chronologically. The investigators realize that after careful study of some of these volumes, they will be revealed as belonging to other categories than those in which they have initially been placed. The card index will allow such movement.

Available in the Manuscripts/Archives Reading Room in the Library is the sorted card index file. There is a card for every volume in this file whereas, on the pages that follow, volumes have been summarized under the headings and sub-headings. In each case, the number of volumes has been given in the summarized list; the date ranges given are inclusive in most cases, and do not reveal the many gaps in sequences unless the number of volumes is small and the date range wide. Occasional remarks about the content of volumes have been supplied if the contents are not obvious from the heading or sub-heading.

Researchers wishing to examine any of these volumes will have to use the card index file in order to be able to give to the staff the volume number assigned to the individual volumes that are to be inspected.