National Works Memories: Bill Copper

Interviewed by phone, 10 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 30, 1997

Editor's note: William J. Copper was born Sept. 23, 1914 in McKeesport, and died Jan. 5, 2001 in White Oak. He is buried in Jefferson Memorial Park, Pleasant Hills, next to his wife, Daisy, former vice president of Roy C. Price Iron Works in McKeesport.

Third-generation National Works employee

"I started there in 1937 and worked there until 1977 -- 40 years. I was 63 when I retired.

"For the first few years, I was off and on, but after 1939, it was darned steady all the time. I started when I was 23 years old.

"My father (James E. Copper, 1882-1953) was a roller and general foreman in the lower division, and my grandfather (Joseph Copper) was a puddler, making wrought iron for pipe couplings. They both came from the steelmaking city of Birmingham, England, coming here in 1889.

"I worked mostly in the seamless hot mill division, at the upper end. We didn't move from department to another, generally speaking.

'Working in the mill was easier' than climbing trees

"Before working in the mill, I worked for Davey Tree Surgeons in Kent, Ohio. Working in the mill was easier --- climbing trees was hard work!

"National Works started out making lap-welded pipe, then butt-welded, then seamless, then submerged arc welded, and finally electric-resistance weld pipe.

"I spent most of my time around bars of hot steel --- we could take a 10-foot-long steel bloom and turn it into a 40-foot-long seamless pipe.

"It was one of the strongest types of pipe made. We could go anywhere from 4 1/2 inches up to 24 inches. The product was used mostly in oil and gas producing areas, because it was the strongest type.

"It was very interesting --- but very noisy --- and there was a lot of action.

'I can still remember all the steps'

"For a while, I worked where they heated the bars in the furnace. My first job in the mill was rolling the bars. Later, I worked in the department that supplied the mandrels --- that's the part that makes the hole in the center of the pipe when you're making seamless pipe.

"Some of them were castings, but others you had to turn on a lathe, by hand. I would have to heat-treat some of the castings to prepare them for use in the mill.

"I can still remember in clear details all of the steps needed in making seamless pipe. In the first operation, you would pierce the hot bar of steel with a mandrel. Second, you expanded it. Third, you stretched it. Fourth, you rolled it thinner and smoothed it, and finally, you sized it.

"You had to do it all at one time, in a continuous operation. Once you started, you couldn't stop. When you stopped part of the mill, the whole thing stopped.

"With the seamless method of making pipe, though, you could make pipe in just about any kind of alloy you wanted.

'We went around the clock'

"During World War II, we started hiring women into the mill. And during the war, we had a lot of departments making bomb pipes, and later, things like rocket boostters for aircraft --- defense work.

"During the oil-well boom, things really picked up. We went around the clock. It was quite busy.

"How many men in my department? I'd say we had about a dozen. We had three crews, one crew each turn, but I worked mostly daylight shift.

"Some of the pipe went out by rail, some of it by barge.

"The best job I had was the heat-treating job. We used to use coke-oven gas. It was a nice, steady job. Once in a while, I was relief foreman, but I really didn't want to do that full-time --- it was too big a job.

'I think the union got too strong'

"Before I left, they weren't laying off. I had a good steady job while I was there. They were still making steel pretty well when I left in 1977.

"Yeah, we had strikes once in a while. Personally, I think the union got too strong for its own good --- but both the union and the management made mistakes. They wanted higher wages, but that drove up the cost of pipe.

"You know that book, And the Wolf Finally Came, by John Hoerr?

"Well, his grandfather was my great-uncle. We were related. His grandma was my grandma.

"Anyway, it's all true --- his writing is quite truthful. I very seldom hear from him.

"I do keep in touch with some of the guys I worked with, but it's pretty difficult."

Written by Jason Togyer from interview conducted October 1997. First published Nov. 3, 2017.

---

This article is from tubecityonline.com/steel, the Steel Heritage section of Tube City Online, P.O. Box 94, McKeesport, PA 15134.