Steel Town

I just returned from visiting my family in Pennsylvania where I also had chance to drive through Pittsburgh – something that I haven’t done in many, many years. The city looked to be doing well, continuing its long transition from gritty, blue collar steel town into a more modern and diverse city. There are very few remnants of the massive mills that used to line the banks of the river and dominate the landscape as you dropped out of the Squirrel Hill tunnels and made your approach into downtown. I still remember the smoke billowing out of the stacks and hanging thick with grimy soot in the narrow Mon Valley. As children back in the early seventies, we used to hold our breath when passing the gargantuan structures on the parkway east as we drove into Three Rivers Stadium to see a Pirates game. Even back then the industry was beginning its rapid collapse in America, shipping jobs-- and entire mills-- off to other countries with lower labor costs, cheaper raw materials, and no environmental regulations. Except for the sports teams, Pittsburgh was a very depressing place to be during those years.

All of those memories came flooding back to me, not as I drove along the redeveloped riverfront in Pittsburgh, but yesterday here in Holland. I was dragging with jetlag from the long trans-Atlantic flight out of Chicago, so we decided to walk Sage out by the old German bunkers in Ijmuiden to stretch our legs a little before I crashed hard on the couch for most of the afternoon. The bunkers were built as part of the Atlantic Wall by the Germans to protect the water entry into Amsterdam, 15 miles inland to the east.

As we crested the dunes above the bunkers, the industrious North Sea port of Ijmuiden unfolded in front of us with its fishing fleets, warehouses, and cruise ship docking bays. And on the northern banks of the port was the sprawling Corus steel mill. I’ve never given it much thought until this latest trip through Pittsburgh. The modern, expansive facility here was churning out steel at maximum capacity, on a Sunday, even in this limping economy. Come to think of it, in the six years we’ve lived here, I’ve never seen the stacks quiet.

So, how does The Netherlands pull it off where a powerhouse like Pittsburgh failed? How has this tiny, swampy country with virtually no natural resources, strong labor laws and union influence, high social tax structures, and extensive environmental regulations managed to secure a massive steel production facility where all of the inputs must be shipped in from other countries? It’s a curious situation…