Remember the Alamo

Industrial Alamos and Martyrs of De-Industrialization

               The great de-industrialization of America has been blamed on poor, incompetent management and greedy, lazy union workers, and capitalists’ refusal to invest. They were said to lack the creativity of the founding owners, managers, and workers, but the opposite was true. Those founders and workers had their government behind them. In the early 1980s, the industrial centers came under attack by dumped cheap imports. At LTV Steel’s Pittsburgh Works (which had made steel for over 140 years continuously) the drilling pipe semi-finishing works had the largest and newest electric furnaces in the world. Yet, the finishing mills could purchase dumped semi-finished Brazilian steel blooms cheaper than the raw materials! even if everyone worked for free. The works set a world’s record in the production rate and quality of blooms, but could not compete with dumped steel prices. The union and management made endless concessions and creative new processing approaches as they waited, hoping their government that had always flooded the works on Election Day would help protect them from dumping. The help never came. The same was true for Akron’s Firestone tire plant, and New Jersey’s Mahwah Ford Plant and so many others. BUT 40 years later a wave of Trump voters would remember the Alamo.