And the Wolf Finally Came: The Decline of the American Steel Industry by John P. Hoerr

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 141 And the Wolf Finally Came: The Decline of the American Steel Industry. By John P. Hoerr. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988. Pp. xiv + 689; illustrations, notes, sources, index. $39.95 (cloth); $14.95 (paper). John Hoerr presents a clear and cogent account of the decline of the American steel industry in the 1980s. Two elements provide the core and the particular value of the book. The author describes and analyzes the collective bargaining process of the early 1980s and demonstrates its pivotal role in producing the severe problems that faced the industry later in the decade. He also portrays the rise, glory years, and decline of the steel industry with an emphasis on McKees­ port and other steel towns in the Monongahela Valley around Pitts­ burgh. This promotes a better appreciation of how a once-vibrant industry with an innovative technology, a large and productive labor force, and a creative management failed to adjust to changing cir­ cumstances and paid the price of its intransigence. The collective bargaining sessions come alive as Hoerr draws character sketches of the major principals, offers details about the outlooks and agendas of both parties, and presents a description of the final agreements and their consequences. These re-creations draw on extensive interviews and voluminous printed materials and include assessments as well as analysis and descriptions. For example, Lloyd McBride (former president of the United Steelworkers of America) and Lynn Williams (current president) receive accolades, while several top officials of U.S. Steel and Ronald Weisen (president of Local 1397, United Steelworkers of America, Homestead, Pa.) receive condemna­ tion. A key to these different assessments is attitude toward labormanagement cooperation. The company executives and the local union dissident took adversarial stances while McBride, Williams, and some of their business counterparts adopted the more flexible pos­ tures that Hoerr regards as essential in coping with the changing face of the international economy. But few details are provided about how the process operates. The human implications of the steel story are in the vivid depiction of life in McKeesport. At one time the industrial and work rhythms of the National Tube Works energized the city. The mill not only provided jobs but sustained the commerce of a thriving business district. By the 1980s, however, decay permeated its urban core of closed mills, a deserted business district, and an increasingly impotent local union. The human costs of industrial decline become graphic in the interview accounts of current McKeesport residents. These accounts are engrossing. However, Hoerr neglects important aspects of the process of steel industry decline. The book includes little information and analysis about the role of government, the importance of the new international economy for the steel industry, and the rise of a new steel heartland in the Chicago-Gary area. Hoerr 142 Book Reviews TEC.HNOI.OGY AND CULTURE discusses the industry’s shortsighted business strategies and briefly recounts a big mistake made in the 1950s when the domestic industry overexpanded and also built large open hearths rather than installing the more efficient basic oxygen furnaces. This was the beginning of a period of inattention to technological developments that led to increased competition from Japanese and European firms in the 1970s and 1980s and from South Korea and other developing nations in the 1980s. This coverage of technology, of particular concern to readers of this journal, is accurate, if brief, but it suffers from important omissions. Hoerr neglects the pivotal role of continuous casting in transforming modern steel technology and the effects of its slow implementation on the declining international competitiveness of the major integrated steel companies. He also overlooks the greater willingness of foreign producers to invest “patient” money in new technology in anticipation of low but long-term profits. For the technological side of steelmaking, we must continue to rely on standard sources such as: U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Technology and Steel Industry Competitiveness, 1980; Robert W. Crandall, The U.S. Steel Industry in Recurrent Crisis; Donald F. Barnett and Louis Schorsch, Steel: Upheaval in a Basic Industry; David Ault, “The Continued Deterioration of the Competitive Ability of the U.S. Steel Industry: The Development...