James Polczynski
Souls of Iron tells the remarkable story of a multi-generational family iron mining and manufacturing dynasty in Central Pennsylvania which began before the Revolutionary War and lasted until shortly after WWI. The story begins with the arrival in Philadelphia of a sixteen-year-old immigrant with two months worker wages in his pocket. By the time of his death in 1825 he was one of the wealthiest iron masters in Pennsylvania. Through the next four generations his descendants splintered into separate businesses all of which were purchased by Bethlehem Steel for tens of millions of dollars. The family weathered multiple scandals, great recessions and one great depression, five wars, and radical changes in technology. It is a tale of ambition and sacrifice, of family division and close-knit bonds of love and devotion, of industrial growth and catastrophic loss, of great joys and unbearable pain.
