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| 132nd Infantry Firing from Behind a Barbed Wire Barricade, 3 October 1918 |
James Patton
The Early Days of Barbed Wire
Barbed wire consists of a twisted pair of thin solid steel wires with slightly smaller gauge steel wire "barbs," short lengths spaced at regular intervals and wound a few times between the twisted pair. The use of the terms “barbed” and “barb” are commonly used interchangeably, but "barbed wire" is a descriptor, whereas "barb wire" is a label, originally a brand name.
Just as the wire is twisted, so is the history. Although the original patent was granted in France in 1860, there is evidence that barbed wire was in use on the North American Great Plains well before that. Due to the astronomical growth of livestock grazing there was a huge need for effective fencing. In the more Eastern parts of the continent they had been building walls and planting hedge rows for hundreds of years, plus they had abundant sources of wood, too.
Many Midwestern farmers and ranchers recognized the value of adding sharp points to their otherwise flimsy wire fences. Over 500 patents were applied for, covering over 2,000 distinct barb variants, as well as production machinery. Although it is possible to make barbed wire by hand, relatively simple machines can do it better, and at high speed as well.
There were many lawsuits and judgements that were evaded; at least two of the cases went to the Supreme Court. Needless to say, the barbed wire industry was in a state of flux, made up of large number of small producers, and since barbed wire was relatively simple to make, competition was intense, and prices were cheap. Attempts at forming cartels failed, and there were two attempts to corner the market. The second one succeeded.
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| The Iowa-Type Barbed Wire |
Warfare Finds Barbed Wire
Agricultural use was not the only market for barbed wire. Military usage of barbed wire formally dates to 1888, when British field manuals first encouraged its use. During the Spanish American War (1898), it is said that Lt. Col. Theodore Roosevelt’s 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry (the “Rough Riders”), most of whom were westerners and quite familiar with barbed wire fences, chose to encircle their camps with them.
During the Second Boer War (1899–1902), the British force built over 8,000 small forts and blockhouses, which were protected by five-strand barbed wire fences. Additionally, about 4,000 miles of barbed wire fencing restricted the mobility of the Boer’s mounted commandos. Barbed wire also protected British camps and supply lines from surprise attacks, and was also used to enclose the concentration camps where Boer civilians (26,000 of whom) and ‘hostile’ native Africans (20,000 deaths) were forcibly detained.
A few years later, during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), the Russian defenders of the Chinese territorial concession at Port Arthur lacked sufficient time to build moats and fortifications, so they installed complex, often electrified, barbed wire belts in front of their positions that slowed down, and even stopped Japanese assaults. The wire was so dense that the Japanese had to use wire cutters to create gaps, all the while under fire. The attackers shifted to siege warfare, using saps, tunnels, mines and heavy artillery barrages. The campaign lasted for 155 days and cost the victors over 57,000 casualties.
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| Defensive Barbed Wire Entanglements, Russo-Japanese War, 1905 |
The Business of Barbed Wire
A few years ago, WFMZ-TV in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania reported that, when interviewed back in the 1980s, several elderly Doughboys then living at Allentown’s Phoebe Home, were asked to share their experience of service on the Western Front. One man had a particularly interesting memory. He said that, attached to the barbed wire in front of German trenches, he saw a small metal tag which was stamped with the words, in English: “Barb Wire Works Allentown Pa.”
The Allentown Barb Wire Works, by then part of U.S. Steel, had sold an awful lot of barbed wire to both sides in World War I. The plant was known locally as simply “the Wire Mill”, and I will continue to use this term.
The Wire Mill’s story began in 1879 with the founding of the Iowa Barb Wire Company in Johnstown PA, near America’s largest steel wire mill, the Gautier Works, founded in 1852. Originally the Wire Mill was a branch of the Iowa Barb Steel Wire Company of Marshalltown, Iowa (founded in 1877). After a couple of difficult years, the Iowa owners sold the works to Charles and George Douglass. Shortly thereafter, in 1881 the Gautier Mill was acquired by the Cambria Iron Co., who expanded it to make their own barbed wire, so in 1884 the Douglass brothers moved their Wire Mill to Easton, PA, where nearby Bethlehem Steel Co. could supply the wire stock. This turned out to be a fortuitous move for the Douglass brothers, as the Gautier Mill was destroyed by the Great Johnstown Flood of 1889. Just before that the Easton site had proven to be unworkable, and in 1888 the Wire Mill was moved twenty miles west to Allentown, Pennsylvania, where they raised $75,000 from the community by selling collateral bonds, and built a new works from the ground up.
The disorganized barbed wire industry had attracted a flamboyant promoter, John W. “Bet-a-Million” Gates (1855–1911), who with the help of Chicago mogul Elbert Gary (1846–1927) set out to corner the market through mergers, acquisitions, law suits and price wars. Gates earned his sobriquet in 1890 by winning about $600,000 against a $70,000 bet, on a horse race in England. A news editor’s headline rounded up the winnings amount to a million dollars, maybe misunderstanding the exchange rate.
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| Million Dollar Gates & Elbert Gary Barbed Wire Monopolists |
Beginning in 1890, Gates and Gary began their quest, and by 1899 they had done it. One of the companies that Gates and Gary acquired in 1892 was the Allentown Wire Mill, which had been renamed the Consolidated Steel & Wire Co.
Gates attributed their success to his gambler’s instincts. In 1899 all of their operations became the American Steel and Wire Co. Later, when asked by a Congressional committee what his goal was, Gates replied, “We wanted to be the wire manufacturers of the world.”
Gates also attracted the attention of J.P. Morgan, who was a crony of Gates’s partner Gary. In business, Morgan was like Gates in only one way: they both liked monopolies. In 1901 Morgan acquired American Steel and Wire, with the specific proviso that Gates would have no role in operating the business. It became a subsidiary of Morgan’s U.S. Steel Corp., which he had previously formed by buying out Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919). Miffed, Gates then spent a good deal of his considerable proceeds from the sale on attempts to make Morgan lose money, continuing right up to Gates’s death in Paris in 1911. Gates is still commemorated in Port Arthur, Texas, for his many contributions to that city, which is another story entirely.
U.S. Steel didn’t want to buy wire stock from Bethlehem, so the Wire Mill was expanded to roll its own wire stock, using re-melted billet steel from U.S. Steel’s Monessen, Pennsylvania, works. In peak years, the Wire Mill produced more than 100,000 tons of barbed wire (for perspective, a ton of barbed wire makes a bit over six miles of single-strand fence).
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| The Allentown Plant in All Its Glory |
The First World War and Barbed Wire
During World War I, the Wire Mill operated continuously, selling most of its output to the Allies, but apparently some got to the Germans as well, possibly shipped through neutral countries. The 13-acre facility employed 1,200 men working 12-hour shifts, had its own police and fire departments and even a hospital. Orders were received by telegraph and telephone and shipments left by rail round the clock. The employees, many of whom were immigrants, mostly lived in the neighborhood focused around Wire Street, near the Wire Mill. All of Allentown kept track of time by the Wire Mill’s whistle.
Although no longer operating non-stop, the Wire Mill continued to prosper through the 1920s, but during the Great Depression it slid into a long decline. During World War II, most tonnages of steel went for ships, tanks and the like, and barbed wire was a low priority. Like much of American industry, to use idled capacity the Wire Mill tried its hand at other defense contracts, but in the summer of 1943, U.S. Steel decided to consolidate its wire operations in a Youngstown, Ohio, facility, where they were already making wire rope and steel cable. That December, the Wire Mill was closed for good. Later completely demolished, today the site is the park-like Wire Mill Arboretum.Sources include
WFMZ TV, The Morning Call, CherylMullenbachInk.com, the National Archives, the National Park Service, and InvestigateMidwest (Link)
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