The End for Steel City?

Old age clobbers Youngstown

In Youngstown, Ohio, the permanent dirty haze in the air and the oily filth in the slow-running Mahoning River have long spelled money. For 85 years, Youngstown has prided itself on being the quintessential steel city, the capital of "America's Ruhr Valley" and more heavily dependent on this one industry for jobs than any other town of the same size. But now Youngstowners--and even more the citizens of neighboring Campbell and Struthers--live with a nightmare that the air will one day soon be clean and fish will again swim in the Mahoning. Last week Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., a subsidiary of Lykes Corp. and the nation's eighth largest steelmaker, announced that it will stop most production at its 76-year-old Campbell Works, moving operations to modern mills in Indiana Harbor, near Chicago.

That will wipe out 5,000 jobs directly and perhaps 12,000 in total, counting retail clerks, bartenders and others indirectly dependent on mill payrolls--a hefty proportion of an area work force that numbers no more than 200,000. And it will not be the end. A few days after Sheet & Tube's announcement, U.S. Steel said it would lay off 200 workers at its Youngstown plant. Though the company described the step as "routine," Youngstowners are well aware that U.S. Steel is seriously considering building a modern steel complex in Conneaut, 50 miles away. If it decides to go ahead, the 6,000 U.S. Steel jobs in the Youngstown area could be drastically reduced by the mid-1980s.

There are good reasons for cutting back in Youngstown while expanding elsewhere. The mills lining the Mahoning River are so old that some steelmen describe them as antiques. Bringing them up to modern standards would be an expensive job, and it cannot be put off. A few days before the Sheet & Tube decision, the Sierra Club won a federal court ruling ending the exemption that eight Mahoning valley steel plants had won from meeting federal clean-water standards.

"If the [Sheet & Tube] plant leaves, the whole valley will die," says one Campbell Works employee. "It will kill our business," adds Jim Carlucci, owner of Frank's Party Shop in a Struthers shopping center. In Campbell and Struthers, dismal little taverns near the mill gates were filled with workers morosely drinking up one last time. Most were quiet, but in Shirley's Bar in Struthers, eight angry steelworkers yelled, "We want jobs, not jackets!" They had received coupons entitling them to free jackets for helping set production records on open-hearth furnaces a day before they got their notices of permanent layoff. City officials are worried about how they can possibly replace tax revenues. Campbell Mayor Michael Katula estimates that 80% of his city's income tax collections come from Sheet & Tube and its employees.

The shock waves are being felt in Washington. Youngstown Mayor Jack Hunter, Ohio Senators John Glenn and Howard Metzenbaum and a hastily formed caucus of Congressmen representing steel communities urged President Carter to formulate a national policy to help the steel industry. Imports, especially from Japan, have badly hurt the domestic industry. At week's end five busloads of steelworkers from Sheet & Tube demonstrated at the White House and on Capitol Hill, carrying signs like STEEL VALLEY TURNING TO GHOST TOWN. What most of the protesters want are quotas on imported steel and an easing of the antipollution rules that make mills install expensive clean-up equipment.

The Administration seems in no mood to come to the rescue. How much help such moves would be to the Youngstown area is questionable. The iron ore and coking coal deposits that originally drew mills to the Mahoning valley have long since been mined out, and the inland complex can no longer compete with steel centers boasting deep-water ports. Youngstown's days as the nation's steeliest steel city seem to be over.

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