On the night of July 19-20, 1977, a series of violent and torrential thunder storms stalled over
the watersheds of the Little Conemaugh and Stony Creek rivers unleashing a flash-flood into
the heart of Johnstown that killed seventy-seven peo ple and did $300 million worth of
property damage. Two months earlier, an inter nal Bethlehem Steel study had
recommended the complete removal of steel-mak ing from the city. The plan called for the
elimination of all furnaces," leaving only some rolling mills and fabricating units and only four …

THE deterioration of labor-management relations in Little Steel prior to World War II, which
resulted in industrial warfare during the strike of 1937, illustrates the failure of paternalistic
welfare capitalism as an anti-union device in the steel industry. At issue in the 1937 strike
were neither wages nor hours nor working conditions. Rather, the Steel Workers Organizing
Committee (CIO) sought recognition as a bargain ing agent, and the legitimacy conferred by
signed contracts. In Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the SWOC campaign to secure a contract …