I loved going to Bethlehem and corporate headquarters. They had beautiful young women in grey sharkskin suits that would escort you to the office of the party you had an appointment with. They were the epitome of class and very pleasant to look at.

Thanks for the link. That was a hell of a speech. I am constantly amazed that we can act in such irrational ways by looking only at the moment in front of us while, knowing that in the long run it will lead us to ruin. Just as Einstein said, we are insane to keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

The number of widgets may be up. I watch a show on cable called "How it's Made". They make a segment of how just about anything is made. My anecdotal observation is this. If you have a job where you actually make something with your hands, you have a rare and beautiful thing. Many of the factories are robotic until you get to the packaging and inspecting. So, the pad lock factory that once employed 1000 no has need for only 10 or 12. Automation is in fact a job killer. Further that that, while huge amounts of labor force were laid off in 2008, management took advantage of that moment and put more automation on line in almost every environment. So, total output is probably up while we have about a 65% participation rate. This is another reason offshore labor is not as attractive as in earlier times. Robots don't have a very large reject rate once they are programmed and running well. Cheap labor has an atrocious reject rate. If it comes to running robots here or there, it's cheaper to do it here and avoid shipping from overseas.

All of that is progress what we need is to create about 30 million careers. Jobs are OK, but what we really need is economic ladders for each segment of the population to climb. If everyone that wanted a career could have one and climb up out of the poverty trap, then selfish capitalism would have lifted more people up than LBJ's war on poverty ever has. The political problem with work is that it's delayed gratification rather than the instant thrill of spending your EBT card.

Exactly my line of thought regarding the whole thing we have going on in our nation now. Dump the alphabet soup agencies and get back to the smallest government possible with the individual States playing the role they were meant to play. The actual governing of this nation was not meant to be at the federal level. The founders knew that concentrating power at the fed level would ultimately corrupt itself. And the nation would fail. We are seeing the results of that right now.

To add insult to injury, the Cougar Mountain Lion mine near Cedar City that used to supply Bethlehem is now exporting ore concentrate to China. So not only have we exported the steel jobs, we are now helping the the Chinese to keep the jobs in China.

I've heard it said that an Executive Order by one President can be flipped by a later President. Wouldn't it be refreshing to have a LEADER that was headstrong and freedom loving enough to abolish the EPA, the war on drugs, the energy commission, and as much of the alphabet soup as imaginable. I agree that civil or construction engineers would be the authority of choice, I was just pointing out the dead end street the economy faces as long as the mindless regulators continue their craft. It was probably lazy on my part just to make them more flexible. In my wildest dream they would be gone, then there's less danger of them coming back to stop progress again. That's another interesting thing about the corruption of the language that surrounds the progressives. When they are in charge, progress stops. Look at Cuba, a 1958 Chevy is considered a new car. At the height of the cold war, the best car USSR could make had a two stroke engine, smoked like a steel mill, and on a good day was unreliable. The good news is, under this group's leadership, we now count on the Soviet's for a ride to the space shuttle we built. What a proud day for the USA. But, I believe that was part of the plan too. Diminish everything American's are proud of. Apologize to the world. Make us believe we are not exceptional. When will a leader stand and tell the people to look up, stand up, pick up their stuff, and let's go to work?

Manufacturing is the conversion of natural resources into useful products, like iron ore into steel or cotton into clothing, or the creation of things that aren't a simple conversion, like computers, robots or cell phones. That's how I arrive at my statistics. I also don't bemoan the fact that US Steel or any other firm grew to giant size; it was usually because the founder(s) saw what others didn't, especially in terms of economies of scale. Now that economies of scale are no longer important, you'll notice that the size of firms is shrinking, and the giants are joining the dinosaurs. The important thing is whether or not the business model is realistic, not whether or not the government or some other entity can control what's going on, because they can't, at least not in a positive way. Also, remember that taxes weren't an issue before 1913, at which time the giants already existed. The government just needs to get out of the way, and let the market do its thing. Period.

I work for AMPCO Metal. We have a foundry in IL. We're always looking for more ways to bring work back to the US. Just think of how great the results would be if we supported these local businesses in addition to bemoaning the loss we've already experienced. There is hope.

As long as we use unions to blackmail companys for more money they will leave America. The governments regulations are the finale blow. The highest corp. tax helps.

Hello Bradleytank,
It is a sad state of affairs. It is a scene much like many parts of my neck of the woods around Detroit... they look like something straight out of AS. Soon there will be no industry at all if things aren't changed.
I like your screen name. I have produced many military components, some for the successors of the Bradley Tank...
Respectfully,
O.A.

We can all scream about what has happened to us as the Governemet continues to grow, but remember that it is the Voter that votes in the members of Congress so, until we reverse that trend, we'll continue to slid into the abyss of Socialism.

Once we did this by Revolution, but now they have the guns. We'd lose. So, the only route is by trying to hold things together until we can get ever more "Believers" into Congress and hope we make it in time. Otherwise, we will have lost and can expect to be renamed "The United States of Communism".

It should also be noted that technology had a part to play in the decay of the steel industry here in the United States. Most steel plants in the United States were built in the 1930's based on the technology of that era. After World War II, only the United States escaped the total razing of their manufacturing sectors. So in the late 40's and 50's, new steel manufacturing plants came online around the world with technological improvements that made them more cost-effective to run. These so-called mini-mills were cheaper and more flexible than their US competitors. The US steel mills would have been driven out of business even sooner were it not for the transportation costs of the steel.

Now I do not doubt that the labor costs due to unionization and mismanagement also played a part, but one should not ignore the simple market forces of improved technology on an industry with such a high capital investment cost.

Bethlehem Steel and Inland Steel were pretty determined to stay in the game with world class steel production facilities in the US. Many of the big companies were backing off because of technological advantages of plants in Japan and Europe in the late 60's and early 70's and to their credit they kept investing. We were an engineering and construction company and did some big projects for both of these companies then. Bethlehem added both the Burns Harbor and Sparrows Point works during that period. The day we secured a huge contract from them was almost my last. On the way back to Pittsburgh after our final sales presentation and the awarding of the contract, we were in a terrible storm and our Fairchild F27 couldn't climb above it. We could have gone around but were in a hurry to get back, pick up our wives and have a great dinner at a country club so we opted to go right through. We were truly lucky to have made it back to the hangar at Allegheny County airport but the worst part was that we were consuming a lot of liquids while being thrown around and the crush to the door and the restroom when we hit ground was pretty wild. We loved what we did and took great pride in it. Sure we made money but we were building mammoth industrial facilities and it felt good. Sure people were employed in good jobs and American products were made that consumers enjoyed but we mostly thought about getting the job done, designing, erecting and starting up the facility so we could go on to the next one. What fun! No one can get that from a government check!

All great history. Agreed technology played a large role, steam engines to flip ingots, where impressive to watch, are probably not the most efficient. The annealing train trip to from Bethlehem to Steelton was probably a costly expense not incurred by competitors.
.
The expansion on a mountainside had to be creative and differ greatly from a build to suit opportunity of new competitors.

I think the montra my father taught me
Constantly compete with yourself to improve, it will guarantee your competitors the strongest foe.

In California's central valley water is the major "raw material." The governments of the U.S. and California are working to dry this up. Delta Smelt, anyone?

I'm originally from Detroit. Wanna talk about a wasteland? Plants are shells with broken windows. Supplier manufacturers have disappeared. Vast swaths of the city look like bombed out sections of Beirut. That was when I left the area in '89 and the Dems had been in power around 25 years. Now, after 45 years, that the Dems have been in power, the city is even worse and has actually gone bankrupt. Are people so committed to an agenda even though they can plainly see that it's false that they are willing to allow it to destroy the very thing that sustains them? As impossibly stupid as it seems, the answer is yes.

I lived in Bethlehem for a few years, the steel mill is now a Sands Casino and an amphitheater with the old Bessemer Converters as a backdrop. There is NO HOPE for every returning that mill to manufacturing, and you're right from tax laws to regulations, there is a choke hold on manufacturing.

Interesting post with many good points, Ron C, but why have EPA people involved in building refineries,
factories or pipelines? Looking at the EPA Abuse
web site they have done enough damage to our
economy. I'd trust a civil engineer way before an EPA bureaucrat.
bureaucrat

What you say is largely true although what is defined as "manufacturing" may have been fudged a bit to arrive at the statistic. Nevertheless, what we bemoan is not BETHLEHEM STEEL, but the environment that allowed the power of free market capitalism to produce such giants of industry. If not locked in by government backed labor agreements, tax incentives and other regulations the large aggrandizement of financial worth would have been preserved by converting to more efficient methods of production and the ones that didn't would have perished much sooner. Remember this was before the union-job preservation and crony protecting concept of "too big to fail".

It is always a pleasure to converse with people of intelligence and wit. My pitiful term paper was written in 1968. I don't know where the WSJ got their info. I suspect Fr. Hogan.

I worked in the finance dept. of Monarch Machine Tool in Ohio. When the unions would strike, office personal were expected to double on keeping production going. The dumbest of the workers seemed always to head the unions, Why is that? We would cross picket lines, cars were vandalized, but in the end, it was the idiotic plans of MBAs which brought down the company. With no idea of the industry or how products were made, in tight times, I admit, they had foolish ideas that just did not relate to what was needed. Someone who wants to innovate and get things done the best way, needs to be on that shop floor talking to the men who know. Customers want a reliable product, want it quickly, and if some modification is needed, they want that too. Often, I would come across unpaid invoices, and when I called the customer, there was a problem unresolved. You better believe I made some smoke until someone got it straightened out. No excuse for anything but the best customer service. When I left, my replacement did not even pursue past due accounts, and the MBAs were there, out to change everything. For years as a newly married, we lived across the street from Monarch, it was very sad, and still is, to see it empty. We have since moved to the burbs with land, but we both have a soft spot for that once thriving company.
The current generation are coming out of school with shiny specialization degrees, or no degree and no training. A wise professor once defined specialization as, "Knowing more and more about less and less." Pretty much fits. We are no longer a nation of well rounded individuals. One company had 200 openings in their IT business, but could not fill them. Today's computer geeks apparently could not relate to the people they were serving. They knew nothing of the fields for which they would program computers, had limited skills in communication and conversation, and lacked a desire to care about any of it. Customer service is an overlooked factor in the success of a business, and that skill is going down the tubes in this country. Read Amazon customer posts about products - they will not be repeat customers of a brand when they have had a bad customer service experience.Kids have no practical hands on skills today, with the exception of a few vocational schools, leaving them qualified for little more than McDonald's when they graduate.Actually, maybe not even that, as some cannot even mop the floor without laving a lake for customers to fall on.

Sorry. Didn't mean to plagiarize. Please edit my post with the appropriate MLS-style attribution:

"The Rise and Fall of the Steel Industry", Wall Street Journal. coaldigger. 1997.

:)

There is more manufacturing output in the US today than ever. What's been happening is that economies of scale have been shrinking, leading to a permanently lower demand for labor. Just as the agricultural sector once required over 60% of the workforce to produce crops, and today we have 2% growing more than ever, so the same is happening with manufacturing. We don't need a Bethlehem steel mill any more, where thousands worked, when we have mini mills that produce more and better product with merely hundreds of employees. Given the shrinking of the labor force, we should have more entrepreneurship taking us into new technologies, rather than bemoaning the decline of old-line smokestack industries, which were obsolete as early as the end of World War II. The only reason the obsolescence wasn't apparent was because the rest of the world had been bombed into oblivion, but when they rebuilt, the problems began to show up.