Hammer to Hypertext (eBook)

The Economic Past, Present, and Future of Northern Appalachia

Joseph E. Good (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
224 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-5798-3 (ISBN)

Infos

Northern Appalachia is the backbone of American prosperity. The hills and valleys of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, and West Virginia are the motherlands of heavy industry. Over the past 100 years, the region turned from rich factory floor to disused badlands. Its people have become poorer, less healthy, and less happy. The region is somber and stunned, but not hopeless. With the right approach, Northern Appalachia can lead a new era of American prosperity.

Joseph teaches writing and rhetoric at Penn State University. He received his PhD in English from the University of Maryland and currently resides in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. A lifelong resident of the Mid-Atlantic, Joseph is inspired by the people, history, and beauty of the land. He spent most of his life in central and eastern Pennsylvania and has lived in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Albany.

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Northern Appalachia has a fascinating economic history. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Upstate New York, West Virginia, and Maryland were the early leaders of American cottage industry. The coal-rich hills and rushing rivers were a fertile birthplace for America's industrial revolution. Canals and railroads flourished. Many of America's great companies would call the region home: U.S. Steel, Standard Oil, Alcoa, and many more. The region powered America's war machine from colonial times, through the Civil War, and well into the 20th century. In the 20th century, triumphant history turned tragic. After World War II, many countries copied the success of America's heavy industry. America's modern workers couldn't compete with global producers. Northern Appalachian companies died slowly but decisively, leaving many people without work. The negative effects still linger in Northern Appalachia's industrial cities and factory towns. People are poor, unhealthy, and unhappy. To help, both America and Northern Appalachia need to get real. Everybody can move forward with wisdom and legitimacy. "e;Hammer to Hypertext"e; focuses on West Virginia's coal, Pennsylvania's natural gas, and New York's microchip manufacturing. More broadly: How can communities help themselves? And how can Northern Appalachian moxie help a dispirited America?

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Chapter 2

Millenium [1950 – 2023]

Northern Appalachia’s glory days are gone. Her crumbling factories and abandoned railroads are the fossilized skeletons of a magnificent past. Appalachians first confronted post-industrialism sometime in the midcentury and saw it completed by Y2K. With the Soviet Union crumbling during the 1980s, globalism accelerated. The availability of cheap foreign labor stretched or pushed out many of the remaining manufacturing jobs in Northern Appalachia. While labor still exists in Northern Appalachia, it is mostly utilities and logistics: warehousing, trucking, or infrastructure maintenance. Even highly “homegrown” brands like Hershey and Heinz shifted most of their production outside the United States. Industrial jobs are far below midcentury levels, when labor and manufacturing accounted for over two-thirds of urban employment. For example: In 1990, in Youngstown, OH, roughly 60,000 citizens worked in manufacturing. By 2022, only about 24,000 citizens worked in manufacturing. Youngstown is widely comparable to many cities and towns in Northern Appalachia.

The fall from prosperity to squalor was not sudden or universal. But it was widespread and decisive. Starting sometime in the 1960s, heavy industry struggled to hold against global pressures. Long-standing weakness began to show. Bankruptcies and consolidations could only hold back the greater pain for so long. Factories closed, companies went under, and entire communities lost livelihoods. By the end of the 20th century, heavy industry and manufacturing were widely defunct across Northern Appalachia. Some small operations persisted, but employment and output were a fraction of earlier levels. Governments, families, and individuals all struggled with less work, less money, and less hope.

Much of America is familiar with the issues and imagery of modern-day Appalachia. J.D. Vance’s nostalgic, somewhat mythical memoir Hillbilly Elegy captured the curiosity of readers around the world. And the later Netflix movie popularized and Hollywoodized the spectacle for non-readers. “Appalachian Fiction” is now a genuine subgenre of popular literature. Other works of non-fiction also arrived in mass media around the same time (2015 – 2023). Sam Quinones’ Dreamland told a fascinating saga of death by opioids. A dozen other best-selling books tried to uncover the injustices of the opioid epidemic, crystal meth, “black tar” heroin, and/or fentanyl. Most of those books centered on Northern Appalachia; Quinones focused specifically on Ohio. Even scholarly works like Hillary Isenberg’s White Trash tap into the same curiosity and the rekindling energy around Appalachia. And then there is the internet. Modern media like documentaries, exposés, podcasts, and investigative reports all tap into the same curiosity.

Stories like Hillbilly Elegy show a strong juxtaposition. Many Americans live in a technocratic, idealistic, google-powered society. This contrasts sharply with the humble, isolated, quaint people of the Appalachian Mountains. The rustic charms of Appalachian society can be captivating. Some experience a similar curiosity toward Amish or Mennonite communities. But in all cases, the separation between “us” and “them” is clear. And the separation is comforting. T.R.C. Hutton skillfully remarks on the “irony of Appalachia Otherness” in his article “Hillbilly Elitism.” Hutton claims that Hillbilly Elegy is intended for “a middle and upper-class readership more than happy to learn that white American poverty has nothing to do with them or any structural problems in [the] American economy.”1 The “irony,” of course, is how two groups relate in economic terms. Perhaps the Elegy readership is not familiar with the concept of creative destruction.

Few readers or watchers of Hillbilly Elegy keep all those subtleties in mind. The more palpable drama comes through tragedy. And the economic story of Appalachia is tragic in the purest way. A region rose to tremendous heights, and then fell to disastrous lows, with lots of hubris. The downfall is more than a dramatic background, though. Like any good tragedy, there is an underlying lesson. The economic issues of Northern Appalachia, including J.D. Vance’s Middletown, OH, are neither insulated nor isolated. Any region or country that overcommits to specialization, or that doesn’t reinvest in its people, can collapse just as harshly.

Below is a modern economic history of Northern Appalachia. It is, unsurprisingly, a history of decline. Three accelerants are outlined: organized labor, regional migration, and knowledge industry competition. Nonetheless, the moxie and toughness of Northern Appalachia endures. That regional attitude may spell a new era of growth.

Turning the Page on Labor

World War 2 legitimized heavy industry for a new generation. The factories of Northern Appalachia built the tanks, planes and battleships that defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. After the war, Northern Appalachia would continue providing material to power America in defense and development. Companies like U.S. Steel and Alcoa were not only huge companies, but also national defense necessities. The threat of the Soviet Union kept heavy industry in the minds of American politicians. The Korean War demanded even more military machinery. And the good times kept rolling for the laborers of Northern Appalachia.

Idealism sometimes interrupted the good times. The Steel Strike of 1952 is a pivotal moment in Northern Appalachian economic history.2 For a full year before the strike, the Korean War was raging. The steel industry was humming, and corporations like U.S. Steel were enjoying record profits. However, wartime legislation (inherited from World War 2) placed caps on yearly wage increases for steelworkers. The steel unions were both large and strong, and they felt that wartime legislation should be updated or removed. And so, the Steelworkers of America demanded a wage increase above the cap in 1951. Both the steel companies and the national government agencies rejected the union’s demand. Some arbitrations ensued, with steel companies trying to get the government to pay more for steel. The U.S. government resisted any substantial price increases while President Truman publicly supported the union workers. Steelworkers threatened to strike during all the negotiations. Frustrations came to a head, and the union decided to strike on April 8, 1952.

President Truman preempted the strike. Invoking wartime powers, Truman issued an executive order to nationalize steel plants across America. Thus, steelworkers continued to work under the implied threat of martial law. April passed without a strike. Legal conflict continued, though. Soon, the Supreme Court decided the government’s seizure of steel mills was unconstitutional. And so, 600,000 steelworkers went on strike beginning June 2, 1952. The strike was bitter and public. Politics meddled with economics. Demands increased. In the end, the workers got most of what they asked for. The steel companies also got much of what they wanted. The U.S. government was the odd man out, seeing its authority eroded and its budget demands increased.

While labor unions had been a major force in America for decades, the 1952 strike was a new high. Labor unions prevailed over their traditional enemy, the factory owners, as well as the federal government. 1952 was a triumph for the working class: People came together to pressure the powers that be and won decisively. The success of the steelworkers was widely celebrated. Soon, unions in other industries pressed harder for benefits and guarantees. Employers found themselves less and less able to deny labor demands. Pensions, union-monopolized employment, and automatic-renewal contracts were common concessions for union workers in the mid-20th century.

Increased benefits and guarantees prevented strikes and other labor unrest in the short term. But in the long term, the costs and reduced inefficiency of labor unions convinced investors and executives to explore their options. American workers were becoming ruinously expensive. Company leaders started thinking unpatriotic thoughts. Could people outside America also build steel beams? Could those steel beams be sold in the same way? Do international laborers need pensions, overtime pay, or yearly guaranteed increases?

The 1950s were the final, pyrrhic glut of industrial labor in Northern Appalachia. Economic realities then wiggled their way into labor relations. As the costs of labor increased, owners and investors could more easily justify the mechanization of labor. Machines and factory upgrades were expensive – but so were union workers. And machines didn’t strike or demand higher wages. As more jobs were replaced by machines, and as more jobs became highly specialized, the power of labor shrank. Executives and company leaders also developed contingencies for strikes or other labor unrest. Strategies might include warehousing a large supply of products to “wait out” any possible strike. A company might plan to scale down or ship out labor and materials in case of a strike. A company could also throw in the towel and simply go bankrupt. Many railroads and steel operations took this last drastic step post-1950.

As American labor relented, global labor ascended. Europe and Asia continued to recover from the shocks of World War 2. And they were eager to take a slice of the global industrial pie. Emerging democracies like Japan and West Germany developed their own global-scale industries....

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 30.8.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3509-5798-3 / 9798350957983