[PRCo] Re: Demise of Steel industry in Pittsburgh

[Fred Schneider]

Was it Republic Steel?

On Sep 11, 2007, at 9:48 PM, Herb Brannon wrote:

> 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
>
>