In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Chapter 7 Steel Industry in Decline Today Pittsburgh is a vibrant, modern metropolis shaped by mountains and the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, which merge at “the Point” to form the Ohio. Home to world-class universities and museums, Pittsburgh features culture in its highest (and sometimes lowest) forms, as well as scores of ethnic neighborhoods that add flavor, color, and texture to one of America’s great cities. Set the clock back fifty years and a different Pittsburgh emerges. Steel mills dominated the landscape, strung along the riverbanks for miles with their blast furnaces continually aglow. U.S. Steel became synonymous with Pittsburgh, although New York City had been the company ’s corporate home from the very beginning. The reorganized U.S. Steel that emerged in January 1951 was headquartered in Pittsburgh, and in 1952 it moved into a gleaming forty-one-story skyscraper at 525 William Penn Place.1 The “Big Steel” company had at last found its home in the “Steel City.” The relationship between U.S. Steel and U.S. Coal and Coke Company still existed, despite changes in corporate organization and names. Gary continued to thrive or wilt depending on the decisions that now came from Pittsburgh. As the health of the American steel industry in general determined the well-being of U.S. Steel, so did it also affect the well-being of every man, woman, and child in Gary. What made the U.S. Steel–Gary connection so crucial in the 1950s was that the American steel industry’s health was not good. The industry showed great vigor at first. Business indicators in fact pointed to growth and prosperity. But the indicators proved deceptive. What soon became obvious as the 1950s wore on was that the industry had begun a slow but inexorable decline. The Steel Industry Roller Coaster, 1960s–1980s The integrated sector of the steel industry experienced one blow after another during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.There were occasional glimmers of hope, if not signs of vigorous health, but they were illusory. The steel industry in reality had taken an economic turn for the worse. “The seeds of future problems for the American steel industry were sown in the 74 Steel Industry in Decline choices made during the expansion of the 1950s; the harvest was reaped in operating losses, plant closures, and the lay-off of tens of thousands of workers through the 1970s and 1980s.”2 The industry’s ailments were numerous . Some existed independently, but most affected or were affected by the others. When ailment A came into play, then ailment B was activated , and then ailment C, and so on, as if the entire steel industry were a living organism infected by some uncontrollable virus. Steel imports significantly eroded the strength of the integrated steel industry. Wage demands and wage concessions also played a part, as did economic recessions , upheavals in the energy industry, environmental activism, and “new information-based ways of generating income that did not consume steel.”3 And there was more. One analyst saw many of the industry’s woes as self-inflicted through its failure to prepare for the long term, its failure to invest in technology, and its heavy investment in overpriced raw material.4 Other analysts regarded the steel industry’s troubles as part of a broader shift in the U.S. economy, “away from the basic manufacturing industries that have dominated and defined U.S. economic growth since the turn of the century. In the case of steel,” the analysts added, “this shift began as far back as the 1950s, when growth in steel consumption slowed, and was clearly underway by the 1970s.” These same analysts, reviewing conditions from their retrospective perch in the early 1980s, concluded, “Over the last thirty years, the American steel industry has been transformed from a symbol of industrial might into a symptom of industrial blight.”5 There were signs that the American steel industry was destined to boom as the 1960s began. The Vietnam War required steel for armaments . Construction of the interstate highway system required tremendous amounts of steel, especially for bridge construction. And President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society pumped money into the economy that encouraged building and buying—buying that oftentimes meant automobiles and appliances made of steel.6 But the positive signs failed to tell the whole story. Many of the manufacturers building steel products now demanded lighter steel, which meant essentially less steel, and some traditional steel users were beginning...

Share