Abstract

When my uncle Joe Meraglio was discharged from the Navy after the Second World War, he, like other young men in his Rust Belt town, went back to work for the Pennsylvania Railroad. But the railroad industry was beginning its slow, painful decline, so after factory shutdowns and layoffs, he worked odd jobs as a plasterer and painter—until, finally, he packed it in and followed opportunity to the auto industry, which was thriving in Ohio and Michigan.

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