[PRCo] Re: Demise of Steel industry in Pittsburgh

[Herb Brannon]

To the chagrin of some, this is why I sometimes call Cleveland "New Pittsburgh." The steel industry here declined along with that in Pittsburgh. The original company (I forget off the top of my head) shut down. LTV bought the operation and ran with only one of four mills. LTV then demolished one of the mills leaving two idle and one operational. LTV then went bankrupt and folded. ISG then bought the mills and eventually had the one back to about 65% of what LTV was operating. LTV then wanted out of Cleveland and sold out to Mittal. Mittal is a real success story for US produced steel. When Mittal started they had to one mill and within six months opened a second. They then build new mills beside the old ones and now the place hums away will cold rolled running off the production lines and onto a constant stream of trucks, Great Lakes and ocean going ships, and rail cars. They even started their own railroad called the Mittal Millworks Railway. Also now in Cleveland three
 other steel mills (smaller operations than Mittal, with one being new and two were existing facilities) are going 24/7. Why can be summed up by one word, "transportation." Cleveland has the highways, railroads, and lake/ocean going pier facilities to ship the raw materials in and the finished products out via several methods. The Mon Valley had river shipping and railroads. The highway system was not in the best interest of cheap, efficient shipping. The river method was limited and extremely slow, and the railroads vanished. Every day here in Cleveland the trucks are in solid lines coming into the mills empty and leaving full of rolled steel. The railroads (NW and CSX) built two new yards to handle the rail cars needed for raw products in and finished products out. And the lakefront docks are busy with products being loaded onto ships from all over the planet while the Whiskey Island and Cuyahoga River port facilities are going 16 hours a day with mostly raw products. I
 suspect the "new" big money types in Pittsburgh wanted a more "sophisticated" place to live so what I refer to as the "neutering of Pittsburgh" took place in the 1980s. No longer would the working class have the buying power and status they once had. The change was too fast and took too high a toll in human misery with the mill closings, etc. As I said I called it the "neutering" of Pittsburgh. The big money types really are afraid of all that testosterone prevalent in the working class and took the necessary steps to clear away the barriers to their vision of how the world should be with 2 and 1/2 economic classes, rather than the usual three. Cleveland, however, just keeps calling itself the "poorest" city in the US and keeps the New World Order off our doorstep. It sure brings back memories, though, to see that Cleveland sky lit up at night with that red glow made possible by American workers. 
   
  
robert simpson <bobs at pacbell.net> wrote:
  John;
............ I sensed a feeling of doom for our once thriving steel industry. The steel industry has gone the same route as our beloved streetcars and exist only in our memories.

Robert Simpson
from Krazy California



Herb Brannon