A boost for Bethlehem
Posted on June 6, 2012 12:14 am
It was no coincidence that the Bethlehem Steel soccer team, one of the greatest in American soccer history, was at its peak at the same time that World War I was raging in Europe.
Bethlehem Steel had gotten its start as a maker of iron rails for the railroads of the mid-19th century. It gained its greatest fame from heavy construction work in the 1930s, like the building of the Golden Gate Bridge. But over the years, the work that kept Bethlehem’s mills busiest and its coffers fullest was the making of armaments. At the time of the soccer team’s peak, war production had turned Bethlehem Steel from a merely thriving company into one of the world’s industrial giants, a company with tons of money to spend on things like sports teams for employees.
The Bethlehem Steel soccer team’s record in those war years is impressive. Between the 1913-14 season and the 1918-19 season, it won the National Challenge Cup four times, the American Football Association Cup five times and its league championship four times. During those six seasons, the steelworkers won 171 games, tied 15 and lost only eight (they also won seven by forfeit).
That record owed a great deal to the fact that during those years, the Bethlehem Steel Corp. was making money at a fantastic rate. The boost that the war gave to the corporation’s prosperity is obvious in its revenue figures during the early years of the 20th century. From $14.7 million in 1905, the year after the company became a corporation, those revenues grew steadily during the years before World War I. They were $22.3 million in 1909 (the first full year of production of Bethlehem’s revolutionary “Grey beam”), and $47.7 million in 1914 (the year the war started in August). They then skyrocketed, to $147.6 million in 1915 (the year the corporation gave its first grant to the soccer team), $217.9 million in 1916, $301.9 million in 1917 and $452.2 million in 1918.
A U.S. government report after the war summarizing Bethlehem Steel’s war production included 11,000 gun barrels, 18 million artillery shells and 34,000 tons of armor plate.
Also benefiting the Bethlehem Steel soccer team was the question of the draft, which went into effect two months after the United States entered the war in April 1917. Workers involved in armaments making, of whom there were many at Bethlehem Steel, were exempted from the draft and safe from being sent to the trenches in France. The draft had considerable effect on American soccer. At one point in 1918, the Bethlehem Globe estimated that of 45,000 registered soccer players in the United States, more than 18,000 were in uniform and more than 1,000 American soccer teams had been forced to disband for lack of players.
By 1918, soccer teams were cropping up among many shipyards in New York, Philadelphia and elsewhere. These afforded players excellent protection against the draft, because nearly all of the work going on in those shipyards at that time was war related. In the summer of 1918, Bethlehem Steel officials felt it necessary to deny that any Bethlehem players were among the many soccer players flocking to shipyard teams. The Bethlehem Globe cited Billy Sheridan, Bethlehem Steel’s manager of athletics, as the source of its information when it said that “the team will remain intact….there is little likelihood of any of the players being induced to leave Bethlehem to take up work in any of the shipbuilding plants, especially as all of the players are working in munitions and having been classified as such prevents them from being drafted.” The fact that every single one of the soccer players was working in munitions was quite a coincidence–or maybe not.
Many events in sports over the years have been closely related to happenings far beyond the athletic fields, and the glory years of the Bethlehem Steel soccer team are no exception.
As always, thank you for that Roger!
BTW. Did you ever meet Sam Foulds, the original safe keeper of the US Hall of fame archives?
I met Sam several times at the Hall of Fame in Oneonta, but that wasn’t until the last few years of his life. I had corresponded with him earlier, and he gave me a great deal of help with finding information for my first big research project on American soccer history.
When Colin Jose, David Litterer and I wrote the Encyclopedia of American Soccer History, which was published in 2001, we dedicated it to Sam, who had died in 1994.
I have a post about Sam planned for later in this series of blog posts on historical subjects.
Thank you!
Great stuff, Roger, as always.
Always an interesting read Roger. While no where near the scale of Bethlehem Steel, if you follow the rails to Chicago, the first club to dominate the Chicago league was also linked the the railroad industry.
Pullman Car Works sponsored a club that dominated the early years and they won the Peel Cup 4 years straight.
Pullman built railroad cars, and the man literally built his own town around his factory by buying land about 15 miles south of the loop in Chicago. Pullman owned everything, including the churches, but when business slowed down and he cut salaries, he didn’t cut his workers rent. Federal troops had to be called in to restore the peace.
Bethlehem Steel did play Pullman in 1916 (many years after the famous Pullman strike). They met in the semifinals of the National Challenge Cup. After a 0-0 tie in Chicago, Bethlehem won the replay, 2-1, a week later in Bethlehem. Bethlehem also played another Illinois team, Joliet Steel, several times in that same era.
Fascinating stuff, as always.
A comment for RevsFanDan – Sam Foulds was my uncle. I was very close to him, and in all the years I knew him I don’t remember one single conversation (including wakes, funerals, weddings, etc.) that the subject of soccer – particularly American soccer – did not come up. He had a wealth of history and lore. By the way, I’m also a big fan of Roger Allaway’s historical blogs.
Your uncle was a great man. I wish I had had the opportunity to meet him..!
Thanks for the reply!
Check this out. simply amazing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjslkafmxHo
If your objective is to get people to see this video, you might have done better to post it in a blog that gets more hits than this one does.
Thanks Roger. Anyone who liked this article should read Corner Offices and Corner Kicks (I will plug Roger’s book so he does not have to
This makes me wonder about the effects of WWI on soccer. As awful as it may seem, the sport benefited greatly from the conflict since thousands and thousands of young European men discovered the game while it was played as a distraction from the horrors of the trenches. While the game was already huge in England by the time of the war (with matches regularly drawing tens of thousands of paying spectators), it was only from the 1920s that the sport took off in neighboring Germany, France, Italy (number of clubs and registered players increased nearly exponentially over the decade from modest pre-war numbers). In large part it was due to the exposure to soccer during the war which stirred support that had been mainly reserved for gymnastics and athletics in those countries.
Coming to the interesting numbers mentioned above. In the US, 45,000 players (approx) with 18,000 in uniform. There were some 4+ million American soldiers abroad for the War, so I wonder whether the soccer players were in the minority as regards sporting preference (notwithstanding that people did play multiple sports of course)? Probably.
The reason I bring up the point is that if the War was an agent for spreading the sport throughout Europe, it could have had the same effect among young American men. However, America only entered the war in 1917 and so the 4+ million enlisted men spent significantly less time in the wartime environment. So I imagine they would have had far less contact and exposure to soccer. Had the American involvement in the War been for a longer period of time, perhaps the number of registered players after the war would have seen an increase to the 45,000 pre-war numbers? And a consequential greater support for the game back home when they returned from the war.
A hypothesis but makes you wonder… Not that anyone would want to spend more time at war, sport is hardly a good enough reason.
Any thoughts/reactions?
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