Industry+in+PA

Pennsylvania has always been a center of the United State’s Industry. However PA has seen many changes to its many industries. Much of what exists today did not 200 years ago, when our country was founded. We did not have the technology to make things faster, cheaper, and at the same quality. The Assembly line was first popularized in 1913 when Henry Ford reworked his factory. There have been many improvements since then, including computer controls and robots in that 90-year time line. Pennsylvania has benefited greatly from these enhancements, even though we have moved hugely from the goods industry to the service industry. One of the service industries today is the financial industry. It is a very crucial industry. The finance industry is a broad range of organizations that deal with the management of money (banks, credit card companies, insurance companies, consumer finance, stock brokerages, and investment funds.) Five out of every one hundred employees are employed in some aspect of a financial category. One of the major jobs in finance is being an accountant. They handle investing company money, spending the money, saving money, and also managing the money. Banking is also one of the important jobs of the financial industry. Banking keeps the money in order and makes sure that the money is spent and saved correctly. The mining/forestry industry has declined in the business world. Modern machines, electronic equipment, and computerized networks are rapidly growing and are taking the place and decreasing then need for mining and forestry. One out of every 100 PA workers are in the mining or forestry industry, but that number used to be so much greater. PA has very special resources of fossil fuels. 94% of PA electricity comes from fossil fuels, 5% of PA nuclear power plants, and 1% hydroelectric power. Those are some of the main ways that the need for mining and forestry has decreased. Mining for stones like sandstone and limestone as well as sand and gravel give jobs to help mining industry. 60% of Pennsylvania is forest. PA has large forests and hardwood such as evergreen trees including hemlock. Forests are and will continue to be important in Pennsylvania. The PA forests have helped continue the mining and forestry industry from dying out completely. Pennsylvania manufactures have many products including pools, breathing apparatuses, mining machines, crayons, guitars, and cans. One of the things that made PA special in product manufacturing is the use of assembly lines. Henry Ford in 1913 developed the most famous version of them. The assembly line lowers the cost of the product and speeds up the process of the production. It also lowers the need for highly skilled workers since the workers don’t need to know everything about the product. However, it does have some bad sides to it like it needs more raw materials and it produces more waste. In the long run it lowers the need for workers due to robots. Pennsylvania does not only produce usable goods, but also processes raw materials such as coal, oil, natural gas, iron, limestone, water, and wood. In 1911 under the Sprout Act the Pennsylvania highway system was created. Over 8,830 miles of highway used to be controlled by the department of highway. Under the Penrose Rural Roads Act came the biggest addition to the Highway system bring in another 20,156 miles of rural roads. It is very likely to see people fixing/improving roads while driving down any major road. Roads, like the cars that drive on them, need constant maintenance. If you drive far enough, you will of course come to see one of the other types of construction: Homes and business park construction. As long as there is room to build more buildings, there will be a demand. Even though the housing economy is down, other types of buildings are still being built. Contractors build many things, like shopping malls, strip malls, and business parks. There is almost no way to outsource construction jobs, and that is why they are a pretty safe job to hold, even though they aren’t the most glorious. Social Service jobs are common everyday jobs that people perform for an annual wage to help other people. Jobs like this include automobile mechanics, cable television operators, tourist agents, nurses, teachers, doctors, cops, etc. This is the single largest group of workers. These are the regular jobs that the average person will have. People are hired for these jobs to do a service and carry out their responsibilities. National, state, and local government workers make a large part of this group. 14% of social service jobs are governmental. These workers have certain requirements to meet to obtain the job of their choice. Social service jobs are jobs that most people have. In 2005 the Department for Producing Energy and Industry was renamed to Department of Trade and Industry. Trade is when people buy and sell things from each other. Pennsylvania people are connected through the trade of goods with each other, the nation, and the world. Trade involves the buying, holding, and selling of stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, or any valuable financial instrument. One of the most important “industries” is the government end of things. From PENDOT to inspectors to the governor, these jobs are vital to everyday operation of the commonwealth. PA has many jobs relating to the smooth operation of the government and the protection of the citizens. There are many service industries that revolve around bringing important services to everyday people. These include mass transportation (i.e. bus, train, metro), telecommunications (phones, cellular devices, internet), and heating, electricity and cable television. One of the largest cable companies is based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Comcast has been providing services to Pennsylvanians for many years. They offer high quality service that keep people informed and entertained. Companies like Met-Ed provide electricity to households all across Pennsylvania. No one can deny the importance of these services in the 21st century. Pennsylvania produces many goods for the whole country and at one time was a leading producer of steel in the world. Coal and oil are also very a very important aspect of Pennsylvania history. Pennsylvania also has a very large agricultural community as well. The steel industry was Pennsylvania’s biggest industry in the 1900’s. At one point Pennsylvania was the “steel capital” of the world. Pennsylvania steel company built many important historical items of our time: the Brooklyn Bridge, the 1893 World’s Fair Ferris wheel, and the Chrysler building. Steel is used in many aspects of modern life including building frames and support beams for bridges. In the 1700’s steel was basically nonexistent because it was so expensive, and //extremely// hard to make. In the 1800’s a new way to produce steel was found, by blasting air into cooling iron it would produce steel at a much faster and cheaper rate. Pennsylvania mills were the largest after the civil war and during the war Pennsylvania’s natural resources helped to win the war. Steel is vital to the success of the nation. In the 1900’s, Pennsylvania Steel (a company) was founded in 1948. In 1980, PA Steel was one of the first to move to a computer based system. The auto industry renewed the steel Industry’s demand. Innovation has had no end in PA: Pennsylvania Steel invented FLEXOR, a very easy to work with and strong steel. FLEXOR is a type of steel that can be machined after it is hardened making it an invaluable resource in the auto industry. Steel is used in framing of airplanes, for it’s strength. In the 1700s Native Americans used oil as medicine. Settlers thought the oil was medicine after they saw the natives use it. European settlers had for years been skimming the oil seeps and using the petroleum as a source of lamp fuel and machinery lubrication. The most important oil well drilled was north of Pittsburg in Titusville, PA. In 1859 the first successful oil wells were drilled for the sole purpose of finding oil. Edwin Drake was the man responsible for that. Ten barrels were produced a day and then later that amount increased to 400 barrels a day. In 1864 petroleum became a $15,000,000 business and after the civil war 30 million barrels were pumped from the ground in one year. In 1877 Rockefeller owned most oil refineries in Philadelphia, New York, and Pittsburg. Then in 1878 Rockefeller owned nine out of every ten oil refining businesses in the United States. Later in 1890 Pennsylvania led the nation and the world in the production of oil. In 1911 the Supreme Court told him to divide his company into smaller businesses in the same year he retired with one billion dollars. Today oil is essential to every country in the world. It is one of the biggest industries and many people depend on oil. Oil is used today for fuel, gasoline, lubrication, run machines and factories, provide energy, and even in some beauty products. Oil does have some effects on the environment. Oil can spill near a coastline and can contaminate beaches and harm the marine life. Spills are caused from people making mistakes or being careless, equipment breaking down, natural disasters, or by deliberate acts by terrorists, countries at war, or illegal dumpers. Beginning in the 1700’s coal mining in PA fueled the Industrial Revolution in the United States also with the help of the Iron Industry and the steel mills in the 1800’s and now today the electric power plants. Pennsylvania is now the fourth largest coal producer in the United States. In 1995 over 69.5 million tons of coal were mined which was 6.7% of the nations production. All that coal came from 878 mining operations that employed 10,165 people. The two kinds of coal that are mined in Pennsylvania are anthracite and bituminous, but most of the coal is bituminous which is a little softer type of coal. Most of western Pennsylvania coal mines mine for bituminous coal. Some bituminous fields land over in central PA. Anthracite fields are very scarce in PA, but in parts of the northeastern and central east do have them. The environment effects of coal in Pennsylvania are polluting the streams with acid mine drainage from old mining operations. The drainage from the old mines are the single greatest source of water pollution in the state. Pennsylvania coal is used for many different things such as electric power, generation, and a coke for iron making. Coals most useful use is for heating. Coal really hit its peak in 1910 on account of people thinking that fossil fuels were plentiful, but in present time we now know how limited we are on all fossil fuels especially oil. Agriculture is Pennsylvania’s number one industry. PA has always been a leader in the agriculture/farming industry. In the 1700’s through the 1800’s almost all food came from crops and animals raised on farms. In the 1700’s most families lived on farms and raised cattle, chicken, sheep, implanted corn, hay, and wheat. Families worked long hard days and barely harvested enough for them selves. Through the mid 1900’s to present day farming has produced most of the common day foods. Beginning in the 1980’s the industry experience a lot of growth and changes. Members of this industry are small farmers devoted to making enough crops for people to eat and live off of. Today Hanover, PA is the nation’s snack capitol. UTZ is the biggest chip company in the nation found here in Hanover. Snyder’s is also a leading snack company in Pennsylvania today. UTZ has annual sales of $165,900,000 and was founded in 1968. UTZ and Snyder’s manufacture snacks like chips, pretzels, tortilla chips, popcorn, cheese curls, and pork grinds. There are many distribution centers where the foods are shipped to like Delaware, Maine, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, New Hampshire, and many more. Pennsylvania EMU farmers association (PEFA) represents as an alternative agricultural industry. This other industry serves as another outlet to watch and look over the food production in Pennsylvania. The farming/agricultural industry is very important because it is how food is made properly and humanely and how it is distributed. PA is a very lucky state because is has very suitable soils, adequate growing seasons, sufficient precipitation to conduct many farming activities. There are two farmers per every 100 workers in PA. This industry will always be big because the supply and demand for food is very essential to the people.

The Industrial Revolution helped Pennsylvania quite a bit. As mentioned before, the assembly line was a major part of this. The Industrial Revolution took place in the 1800s and proved to be a very important part of PA history and of the entire country. It made production of nearly all goods easier, and cheaper to make. On the farm it took the form of the earlier Combine versions, milking machines, and slaughter house conveyors. In the factory it took the form of the assembly line. In the workplace, it also introduced many more service related jobs, and increased the quality of life of many people. However, it wasn’t all good for everyone. Along with the pros of the industrial came the cons. For example pollution, overcrowded cities, child labor, low wages, and dangerous jobs were all negative aspects. With machines capable of doing things in half the time, the need for a large workforce was unnecessary. The machines burned lots of fuel to operate. Smaller cities experienced a decline due to many people leaving to go to bigger cities to get jobs. There weren’t enough jobs for people that weren’t of qualification. Competition for the jobs was fierce. This was a difficult time for people in the United States as well as people all in Pennsylvania. This really changed the minds of people going to work for big industries. Business in Pennsylvania will and always will be a central focus in the state.