Greed, progress & shame

I went to college in west-central Pennsylvania, just across the Ohio border. On trips to and from, Interstate 80 took me past the crumbling hulks of Youngstown's once-thriving steel industry.

It's an image I'll never be able to shake, one of the memories that fed the requiem I wrote several months ago.

As the heads of the "big three" U.S. automakers return to Washington today to plead for a $35 billion taxpayer-funded bailout, my mental picture of "Steel City, USA," silenced by greed and progress, shames their hybrid stunts and tardy promises.

* * *
Youngstown
by Bruce Springsteen (1995)

Here in Northeast Ohio
Back in 1803
James and Danny Heaton
Found the ore that was linin' Yellow Creek
They built a blast furnace
Here along the shore
And they made the cannonballs
That helped the Union win the war

Here in Youngstown
Here in Youngstown
My sweet Jenny, I'm sinkin' down
Here darlin' in Youngstown

Well my daddy worked the furnaces
Kept 'em hotter than hell
I come home from 'Nam worked my way to scarfer
A job that'd suit the devil as well
Taconite, coke and limestone
Fed my children and made my pay
Them smokestacks reachin' like the arms of God
Into a beautiful sky of soot and clay

Here in Youngstown
Here in Youngstown
My sweet Jenny, I'm sinkin' down
Here darlin' in Youngstown

Well my daddy come on the Ohio works
When he come home from World War II
Now the yard's just scrap and rubble
He said, "Them big boys did what Hitler couldn't do"
These mills they built the tanks and bombs
That won this country's wars
We sent our sons to Korea and Vietnam
Now we're wondering what they were dyin' for

Here in Youngstown
Here in Youngstown
My sweet Jenny, I'm sinkin' down
Here darlin' in Youngstown

From the Monongahela Valley
To the Mesabi Iron Range
To the coal mines of Appalachia
The story's always the same
Seven hundred tons of metal a day
Now sir you tell me the world's changed
Once I made you rich enough
Rich enough to forget my name

In Youngstown
In Youngstown
My sweet Jenny, I'm sinkin' down
Here darlin' in Youngstown

When I die I don't want no part of heaven
I would not do heaven's work well
I pray the devil comes and takes me
To stand in the fiery furnaces of hell


Founded in 1900, Youngstown Sheet and Tube once ranked among the world's largest steel companies. It ceased operations in 1977. Towering above its flagship plant in Youngstown was the Jeanette blast furnace (left) -- the "sweet Jenny" of Springsteen's lyric -- which was demolished in 1997. (Harold Finster photo, 1992)