America's emergence as a global industrial superpower was built on iron
and steel, and despite their comparatively small numbers, no immigrant
group played a more strategic role per capita in advancing basic
industry than Welsh workers and managers. They immigrated in surges
synchronized with the stage of America's industrial development,
concentrating in the coal and iron centers of Pennsylvania and Ohio.
This book explores the formative influence of the Welsh on the American
iron and steel industry and the transnational cultural spaces they
created in mill communities in the tristate area--the greater upper Ohio
Valley, eastern Ohio, northern West Virginia, and western
Pennsylvania--including boroughs of Allegheny County, such as Homestead
and Braddock. Focusing on the intersection of transnational immigration
history, ethnic history, and labor history, Ronald Lewis analyzes
continuity and change, and how Americanization worked within a small,
relatively privileged, working-class ethnic group.