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  • Talking Steel Towns: The Men and Women of America’s Steel Valley
  • Donna M. DeBlasio
Talking Steel Towns: The Men and Women of America’s Steel Valley. By Ellie Wymard. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2007. 96 pp. Hardbound, $29.95; Softbound, $16.95.

The demise of the American steel industry has had a devastating effect on the towns the giant factories once called home. As bulldozers mow down the distinctive blast furnaces that once silhouetted the skyline, the memories are about all we have of a once common way of life. In Talking Steel Towns: The Men and Women of America’s Steel Valley, Ellie Wymard tries to capture, through oral histories, what life and work in steel towns was like for ordinary men and women. Wymard focuses on the towns along the Monongahela (or “Mon”) River Valley in southwestern Pennsylvania, especially Homestead and Braddock. At one time, the U.S. Steel Corporation owned factories up and down the Mon River Valley, employing thousands of men and women directly, as well as in the many ancillary industries and other businesses reliant upon the major employer. For the most part, deindustrialization forced many of these plants to either drastically downsize or close completely. The memories of the workers and their families will soon be all that is left of this once mighty industry.

Wymard divides her book into two parts: the men in the mills and the mills’ grip on women and children. In the first part, the author explores various aspects of the work experience. She looks at the dangers inherent in mill work, worker/management relations, ethnicity and race, and the Great Depression. In the second part, Wymard focuses on women and their work, including their work in the mills as well as the impact the mills had on their lives and the lives of their families. The stories are [End Page 275] interesting, lively, fascinating, and, at times, even frightening. Mill work was fraught with danger; death and disabling injuries were no strangers to steel industry employees. The injury or death of a loved one meant great hardship for the family in the time before Workers’ Compensation and organized labor. Working conditions also left something to be desired. Almost to a man, the workers talked about the extreme temperatures from bitter cold in the winter to boiling hot in the summer. The production floor was so hot that the workers covered it in wood and also wore wooden overshoes to protect their feet. Not only was it a nasty, dirty, dangerous place to work, the men often shared their spaces with the huge rats that came up through the sewers. As one worker described it, “It was dangerous and depressing to go into a large building with a thousand other guys—like going to prison and being trapped.” (17)

Not only was the work grueling, but the organization of the workday incurred hardships on the family. The women and children had to adapt their lives to whatever shift the steelworker had each week. One steelworker wife commented that “you were on call twenty-four hours a day. . . .You never got any rest. Kids came home from school and you’d get them all night by yourself. Then your husband comes home at midnight and is rarin’ to go and so you’re not asleep until 2 A.M.” (60). The stories reveal that living in a steel town was never easy; all of the family members bore the weight of this life on their shoulders.

Wymard’s collection of stories of life in the mill and the mill town provides a fascinating view of a rapidly disappearing way of life. While the interviewees came from the Mon Valley, their stories are similar to the ones from other steel towns like Buffalo, New York, and Youngstown, Ohio. Indeed, for comparison, one should look at Michael Frisch’s Portraits in Steel (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), which pairs oral histories with the photographs of Milton Rogovin. The stories the Buffalo area workers tell help readers to understand what happened in that community as the steel industry faded away.

Talking Steel Towns is certainly of great interest...

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