Central High School - Wildcat Yearbook (Pueblo, CO)

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:Sheen--C74 gbcmf of gbusgfob life Steel! The backbone of a civilization! Steel! A not-so-costly silvery-blue metal that is more priceless than gold. Steel has made the modern world what it is today, without it tomorrow would be another age of darkness. Trains, automobiles, airplanes, and sea-faring vessels, surely transportation owes its progress to steel. The machinery upon which the industries of the nation de- pend in turn depends upon steel. The housewife, the soldier, the businessman, the farmer, directly or indirectly all depend upon steel. Man would not even be able to wage a successful war without his steel battleships, tanks, trucks, cannon, guns, planes, etc. Modern man is helpless without steel: yet it is pitia- ble to find how little modern man knows of the story of steel. Throughout the world, throughout the United States, there are many cities almost entirely dependent upon steel manufacturing for the employment and support of their citizens. Pueblo, often called the little Pittsburgh of the West, is one of these cities. Although the Colorado Fuel and Iron corporation employs only a small portion of the population of Pueblo, the entire city is almost dependent upon the plant for economic success or failure. Under normal conditions the steel mills bring work to 10,000 men and women and affords support to 40,000 other persons, members of employee's families. The Colorado and Wyoming railway, a company owned railroad operat- ing between Pueblo and outlying mines, employes over one hundred men. The railway connects the steel plant with its sources of raw materials, Valdez, Colo- rado: Monarch, Colorado: and Sunrise, Wyoming, These mining towns em- ploy several thousand men. Fluxes in the demand for steel are transmuted by small depressions and booms to these mining camps hundreds of miles away. The influence of Pueblo's steel plant is felt as far away as San Francisco, California, where a CF'i5I branch mill operates. This mill produces wire cloth and similar products. The actual steel plant in Pueblo employs almost 6,000 men and provides for the care and education of them and their families. For the men, study courses are designed to aid in advancement in their kind of work. The women receive instruction and help in such household arts as cooking, sewing, etc. The children of the mill employees also benefit from this recrea- tional and educational program tutored by the steel YMCA. Corwin hospital, built by the C F 'Ed I insures medical care for mill employees and their depend- ents. In Pueblo, Valdez, and Monarch, Colorado, in Sunrise, Wyoming, in San Francisco, California, the power and necessity of steel is particularly felt. In all these cities the tradition of steel is passed on from generation to generation. In Central high school almost 75 per cent of the student body come from homes entirely dependent upon the Colorado Fuel and Iron steel mill. Their grandfathers were among the first men to spread the gospel of steel: their fathers are veterans of 25 years or more steady employment at the mill-the skilled masters of the open hearth, the blast furnace, and the blooming mill: and the younger generation, with the eagerness and confidence typical of youth, look forward to subduing the God of Steel. With the student body so vitally interested in the C F iff I, it is only natural that with the publication of its twenty-fifth yearbook, Central high school should pay tribute to Pueblo's greatest industry, the manufacture of steel. Page Twenty one , f ' . - y 5: I , I- -. - A , ,,f- K , lg. Z? - I- gal, ' f -if ..::5, lm T521 -L- I ff! ' ' X J ' 4 X .Q 1 A ff C95 f za- 1 gi, i so z -..'..- 'E , 0 . i :. .. - .