Black Monday disaster

Youngstown, Work, and Masculinity:
Youngstown, Ohio. Steeltown U.S.A. There were many names for the city in the Mahoning Valley that made its name forging steel with calloused hands; none of which aptly describe that same town today. What happened to Youngstown is not a unique story in it of itself; it befell the same fate of all American steel cities, the times left them behind. With deindustrialization the once vibrant city was reduced to a broken relic of its former self. But Youngstown’s value to us today is not in its history as a fallen city, but in the unique view it offers into the nature masculinity, and how it changed among the working class of Youngstown. It is a microcosm for the changing nature of work and the American man across the nation.

Black Monday was a social disaster that broke down the established order of working-class masculinity being based around work, and forced steel workers to reevaluate their identities in the absence of said steel. A change that was happening throughout the entirety of the country during the deindustrialization and realignment of the American economy in the 1970s and 80s. No longer did the hard labor of industrial era reinforce the traditional masculine role of the American man as the breadwinner, in its place a more modest man of the service industry was born. This changing nature of working class labor forced a rethinking of American masculinity, in a way that many blue-collar men could not reconcile. It was no longer sufficient to find one’s worth in work; as that work was no longer sufficient. What came in place of this older, traditional sense of masculinity is a plurality; no clear cut definition of what masculinity “is” can be made as it could be back then.

Youngstown:History and Culture
Youngstown, Ohio was established as a township by its namesake James Young on February 9, 1797 via a $16,085 purchase from the Western Reserve Land Company. Youngstown’s true origins however, as Springsteen would concur, are in 1803 when brothers James and Daniel Heaton established the area’s first blast furnace (used for smelting or in metal-making) and gave Youngstown its purpose and soul. Beginning with Iron, Youngstown’s favored industry of metallurgy grew significantly after its adoption. For example, between 1846 and 1872 a significant 21 new iron furnaces would be built in the Youngstown area. Most of these were built along the Mahoning River valley, as the river allowed for easy transportation of newly-produced steel down the river to buyers on the East Coast and elsewhere. Youngstown transitioned to steel production at the turn of the 20th century, and with an emphasis on local ownership of the mills (spurred by local investors) grew significantly in its production abilities and its importance to the nation. This was a very important aspect of the Youngstown system; this local ownership made sure that, regardless of the economic outlook of the mills at any specific moment, there was security in their continued existence of the mills as the owners themselves were members of the community and knew both their cultural and economic importance to themselves and their neighbors. This system proved incredibly effective, for a time the city thrived. At the start of the Great War, Youngstown was second only to Pittsburgh in steel-production. By 1927, it had surpassed its bigger colleague and led the nation. This time also saw a huge influx of foreign immigrants settling in Youngstown, the first decade of the 20th century saw over 110,000 immigrants come to the city to fill the growing employment needs. The homelands of the immigrants were varied, many of the earliest being of Anglo-Germanic decent and the later years seeing the less “desired” ethnicities of Central and Eastern Europe arriving, as well as large numbers of African-Americans. The landscape of Youngstown was one covered with the tools of metal-making. Mills and smokestacks filled the skyline. Workers homes, commercial districts, entertainment, all of it revolved around the stacks of Mahoning valley. This centrality of the mills was beneficial for Youngstown. The mills provided the community a central institution that life could be based of off. From the mill, unions were organized, sports leagues organized, even orchestras created. The fraternity that the mills fostered among the men of mills spilled over into the rest of town as well (as displayed rather accurately in the World War Two war bond film Steel Town). Children in school saw their future in iron, the housewives socialized with their husbands work mates; In Youngstown, steel was king. This idea of a tight-knit community was not only promoted by the owners and workers of the steel mills, but also by the federal government Which capitalized on Youngstown's work-based community as a means of promoting unity and the war effort in the 1940's.

Black Monday: A Foreseeable Inevitability
Black Monday, which took place on September 19, 1977, was marked by the shutdown of Youngstown Sheet and Tube (the area’s largest employer). Painful as it was (over 5,000 immediately lost their jobs), Sheet and Tube’s closing was just the beginning. The effects of Black Monday were far reaching, in a ripple effect numerous other mills and steel-related firms would shut down in the coming years. By 1982 over 50,000 jobs had been lost (in a city with a population just under 150,000), over $1.3 billion dollars in workers’ wages were lost annually, and a regional depression had sunk in over the town with a staggering 24.9% unemployment at its height. Within just a few years, Youngstown had been broken. Both in economy and soul. As a CBS news reporter would later put it, Youngstown had become “a symbol of the failure of American industry”. Shocking as this was to the people of Youngstown, from an outside perspective this catastrophe could have very readily been predicted.

Youngstown had been withering from within for years, and for a number of reasons. Technology, the American economy, and the very scale of steel industry had been advancing past the potential of Youngstown to keep up. Youngstown’s land-locked position made the town one of the slowest in the nation to restart production following strikes, as the growing scale of the steel industry now made proximity to large bodies open water a necessity for transportation (the Mahoning was a ride river, but open water it was not), the proximity of the town to the Mahoning river that had once been an asset of the town was now a hindrance. Not only was Youngstown falling behind due to changes in the natural path of the steel industry, at the corporate level Youngstown was also being “sunsetted” by its new, non-native corporate owners. This is the perhaps the most striking and important change that would lead to Youngstown’s decline. These new, non-native owners were more than willing to exchange the health of the city for increased capital. It began gradually, but over time a lack of investment and care in their Youngstown assets by these corporations would set the groundwork for the inevitable downfall. Linkon states in Steeltown U.S.A “By the 1950s and 1960s, U.S. Steelmakers began to deinvest in their steel operations and diversify into other industries. As a result they did not invest significantly in new steel technologies and lost their productivity leadership.” (pg. 48). Immigrants, once the backbone of Youngstown’s workforce (although often viewed with distrust), were no longer coming to the city, from the 1930 to 1970 the immigrant population coming to Youngstown dropped from 32,000 to just 9,000 people. This was due to the passing of new immigration laws in America, and severely cut the work force of Youngstown and compounded the issue of a declining population the city was dealing with. Youngstown had stopped growing; slowly the furnaces of Youngstown were losing momentum. Production had fallen annually since its hey-day in the in the early 20th century, and population had been steadily falling since 1930. Although there was many factors, the “straw that broke that camel’s back” for Youngstown was the collapse of one of its most valuable traits: local ownership of the mills. Since the town’s inception, as stated above, local ownership of factors of production had always been a point emphasized by Youngstowners. Not only did it make sure business leaders were in tune with the culture of the city, it more importantly worked as a safety measure against businesses leaving the area. As sated above, it was a failsafe against the very plant closures that did eventually break Youngstown as it forced and economic and social connection to the city. Youngstown Sheet and Tube was one of the last to be purchased by outside investors. Ironically, it was also one of the first to close. By 1969, when Youngstown Sheet and Tube was taken over by Lykes Corporation, virtually all of the local mills were owned by outside corporations, none of which were committed to reinvestment. Rather, they seemed content to run the old mills into decay and disrepair, until they simply could not compete on a global or even national scale. Youngstown Sheet and Tube had been a local company with deep roots in the Mahoning Valley, Lykes Corporation was a highly leveraged conglomerate with headquarters outside Youngstown with not commitment to, or history with, the local community. Lykes saw Youngstown Sheet and Tube “as a means to increase cash flow” (Pgs.48-49 Linkon). For the first time in Youngstown’s history, local business decisions in its key industry, which comprised over 90% of the town’s economy, was no longer under its citizens’ control. If Youngstown was the “capital of an industrial empire” at its height as the Chamber of Commerce had so named it in 1933 , than Black Monday was its sack of Rome; the final axe stroke that felled an already rotting institution.

The Effects of Black Monday: Consequences of Changing Masculinity and Work in Youngstown
Youngstown's fall had significant psychological and economic effects on its citizenry, most of all its working-class me. Mill work was at once both the only and best work in town. It was work that had deep masculine value; in the mills an uneducated man could expect to get good pay through physical labor and hard work. He was able to provide his family with a healthy living and at the same time hold an air of masculinity among his peers; this view was held widely in America. Many viewed, as the Washington Post op-ed writer Mark Shields did, that the steelworker was the “contemporary counterpart of the American cowboy… he worked with danger and he worked hard- no three-hour lunches with clients and customers.” This romanticized view of the steelworker was held both by the worker himself and American culture as a whole during the period of deindustrialization. Work and masculinity had become so intertwined in working-class man that when it was no longer a viable option they lost a huge part of their person.

Steel work not only provided an outlet for masculinity in the workplace, but also reinforced the masculine position of the man within the home. Steel work was very family oriented work. It favored the stable and traditional family values that were the base of blue-collar society, that the man was the provider. Through the mill, housing, insurance, and even food could be garnered. Life from cradle to grave could be lived within the structure the mill provided. Steel held deep familial value to men, both young and old. The main method of employment within the steel mill was through personal connections; sons got their jobs from their fathers, a friend recommended his drinking buddy to the foreman, another would get his at-risk cousin on the right tract by getting him working in the open furnace. The very personality of the community could be reflected through the work they did, it was as much a place of home as the house one lived in. Union halls, labor meetings, even the church itself had a distinctive connection to the steel industry. Religious leaders were some of the first to spring into action following Black Monday with the Ecumenical Coalition of Mahoning Valley , and it only takes one look at the frieze outside of St. Anthony’s Catholic Church in Youngstown (which depicts St. Joseph and a man shoveling coal into a blast furnace) to understand the true power the steel industry held over this town, economically, emotionally, and spiritually. The work was their lives.

This intense value work had in the lives of these workers can be exemplified in a poem produced in a 1922 issue of Youngstown Sheet and Tube’s in-house newspaper The Bulletin

Primary Source: A Prescription
A Prescription

From the Silent Partner.

If you are poor- work.

If you are rich- continue to work.

''If you are burdened with seemingly unfair responsibilities- work.''

''If you are happy- keep right on working.''

''If disappointments come- work.''

''If sorrow overwhelms you and loved ones seem not true- work.''

''When faith falters and reason falters- work.''

''When dreams are shattered and hope seems dead- work.''

''No matter what ails you- work.''

''Work is the greatest material remedy available.''

''Work will cure both physical and mental afflictions.''

While this poem is rather clearly shameless piece of propaganda on the part of the business owners to encourage Sheet and Tube’s employees to value work more, its words do have merit. The authors short, unemotional tone matches the setting in which it was written; this article was written for men who worked steel, not mothers, not children, but steel workers. The mill was a place of fire and danger, emotions had no place in such a high risk setting. And in this setting one could work hard and forget their worries, much in the same way an athlete uses his sport as an escape, so did the steelworker use the mill. The mill was a place of increased testosterone and masculinity, it was not a place of openness or empathy, it was a place of business. The author uses a terse tone to deliver his message as efficiently as possible; just as the worker must keep himself as plain and stoic as possible, as he has a job to do as man. In this way work was the cure, it was in this setting of masculinity that men could brush off (or suppress) the outside worries of life and focus instead on making steel with like-minded individuals. Making steel gave them something of value to do, it was a productive outlet for their anger, their worries, and their frustrations. For these Youngstowners, work really was the healer for everything. One’s whole life was born from the work they did at the mills, it was the single most important aspect of their day and it’s what gave them their resiliency; as long as they had their work, they could push on. As long as they had their work, all those other things could wait. But what happens to these same men when they lose their work, their cure for the doubts of everyday life?

First-Hand Account of Black Monday: Johnathan Steel
The collapse of Youngstown’s steel industry was shattering to psyches of many Youngstowners, but particularly the steel workers. Parkview Counseling Center, Youngstown’s largest mental health care provider had cases of spousal and child, as well as alcohol and drug abuse increase threefold in the decade following Black Monday, so much so that there were concerns for the mental health of the specialists themselves from being overworked. This incredible level of stress and anxiety that befell the now-defunct employees of the mills is rather simple to understand; they lost everything with their job.This stress can be displayed properly through a fictitious first-hand account of the jumbled thoughts of Johnathan Steel, An employee of Youngstown Sheet and Tube who was fired on Black Monday (Note: Grammar errors are present in this section for poetic emphasis):

Youngstown September 19th 1977 

''This can’t be happening, my hands are shaking. My hands are never shaking, I’ve got strong hands.''

What am I gonna do?

''How am I going to tell my wife, my kids? I’m such an idiot, if only I was smarter, if only I wasn’t so weak.''

How could they do this to us?

''I have to get out of here, there’s nothing left for me here. I bang on the chained mill doors again, harder this time. So does everyone else around me.''

''We need to get inside, we need to start the Jenny. She needs us.''

There’s so many of us!

''What happened to the union? Why didn’t the union stop this? Why didn’t they tell us? How could they just up and leave?''

''They said this was going to happen, but I couldn’t believe it.''

''The sky is covered in the soot of yesterday’s work, the ground is covered in ash of the day before that. But it’s cold ash, not the hot grey matter of new steel.''

''We need to move, we need to get out of here. But how can I? This is my home. This town has been here forever, I can’t imagine leaving this river, or abandoning the jenny.''

''How can I leave my home? Where would I go if I did?''

''There’s no soul here anymore, I can feel it. In less than a day the life has been sucked from this town. Sheet and Tube was just the first, but the others will follow till the Steel has dried up in Youngstown.''

''What’re we gonna do? ''

''All we make is steel! How could they just leave us after all we’ve done for them?!''

''I try to calm down, I’m walking home but I don’t remember leaving. My hands are shaking, my strong hands that everyone envied.''

''The peeks of the smokestacks rise above the town, my town. They are our skyscrapers, they are our pride, but they don’t work anymore. I don’t work anymore.''

''Calming down makes it worse, the more I think the worse it gets. I’m no man. A man has a job, a man can feed his kids.''

How could they take that away from me?!

''I rub my hands together, they’re worn and calloused. They’re the hands that can’t do that other work, that new work. They can’t crunch numbers or sell stocks, these are steel hands. But no one needs steel hands anymore.''

''Maybe we could make the computers? We could make the new cars? Plastics, chemicals, it seems like the damn city folk are always coming up with something new for us to build!''

''Oh wait, no, they already have someone to build those things. Somebody whose face none of them have ever seen. ''

They knew my family, how could they leave us like this?!

''I set down on the curb, the other guys just keeping walking, silently, I try to think.''

What am I gonna do?

So much of a man’s identity and masculinity were tied up in the industrial work of Youngstown. These workers were now faced with the grim reality that they had lost their position as breadwinner with their wage, not only that, but it quickly that became the skills in steel-making they so prided themselves on, the skills that their very masculinity was formed around, had very little transmittable value to new, deindustrialized workforce. As reporter Sergio Lalli discovered when speaking with an unnamed steelworker about what he could tell a prospective employer “can I tell him that I've seen men’s trousers catch on fire because they got too close to the furnace, that you wear long johns in July to keep the heat off your legs, that I've seen men faint from heat, that our crew received orange windbreakers when we set a production record?… laying off a steelworker… was like an athlete being told he can’t compete or an artist being told he can’t paint.” With no serviceable skills, the only jobs available to these men, who are essentially unskilled laborers, where jobs in the service industry. Jobs that many perceived as too feminine and embarrassing to be seen doing work that didn't involve the hard labor they were so used to.

This feeling of loss, frustration, and the foreign feeling of vulnerableness felt by these steel-workers, a group whose personalities were built upon being strong, masculine figures, is best displayed in Springsteen’s Youngstown. A somber song, almost a eulogy, which recounts Youngstown’s storied past with nostalgia and then speaks with sadness of the situation the workers now find themselves in.

Primary Source: Youngstown by Bruce Springsteen
Youngstown by Bruce Springsteen

''Here in northeast Ohio

Back in eighteen-o-three

James and Dan 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 make my pay

Them smokestacks reachin' like the arms of God

Into a beautiful sky of soot and clay 

Here in Youngstown

Here in Youngstown

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 Two

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 

And Youngstown

And 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

  From the song lyrically we can see that Youngstowners had felt abandoned by the rest of nation. In their minds they were the “backbone” of America; carrying the burdens of the country’s needs. This romanticized view of Youngstown’s service to the nation is largely present in Springsteen’s song. Starting at the birth of Youngstown in 1803, Springsteen describes how Youngstown has done its share for the country; from making the cannonballs “that helped the Union win the war” to sending their sons off the fight the country’s battles in Vietnam and Korea. To its people, Youngstown had always been the workhorse of America. Forged from heat and iron the men of Youngstown carried the nation’s burdens with a stoic grace, the learned to love what they had. Springsteen’s voice when singing of the factory skies of “beautiful soot and clay” is a beautiful rendition of this; in the same way the simple voice of a lone singer and guitar can be beautiful, so can the simple work of the steel worker and the billowing factory pillars. To Youngstowners their work was a form of blue-collar art; Youngstown was willing to do the work that the rest of the nation did not, it was what made them unique and gave them their pride and masculinity. It was what gave them purpose. They were willing to live in the heat and soot, to them it had its own beauty in its undesirableness, because in doing this work they had purpose. As Springsteen put it “I come home from 'Nam worked my way to scarfer, a job that'd suit the devil well. Taconite coke and limestone, Fed my children and make my pay. Them smokestacks reachin' like the arms of God, into a beautiful sky of soot and clay.” Youngstowners accepted they were not the smartest, or richest, but they worked hard and fed their kin. As long as they could do this, they had their pride, and they had their purpose. The musical accompaniment Springsteen uses in Youngstown parallels this stoic and masculine mindset that so many Youngstowners had; Springsteen is fine with the bare minimum of musical additives, his guitar was all he needed. This lonesome (almost mournful), masculine singing style combined with Springsteen’s powerful lyricism gives Youngstown an emotional personality that speaks volumes of the people of the town. Particularly poignant is Springsteen’s mention of the Blast Furnace “The Jenny”, which to Springsteen and Youngstowners alike was symbolic heart of the city. Once a monument to the might and fortitude of the people of Youngstown, it had become the exact opposite; a painful remainder of the worker’s lost importance. Its corpse rusting like the city as a whole, a reminder of their helplessness.

Undefined Masculinity: Efforts by Youngstowners to Replace Steel
This feeling of helplessness, effeminate attitudes towards their new options of employment, and lack of a masculine outlet led many of these men, (and their sons who no longer had a leading working father figure),  to turn to crime to release their excess masculinity in the aftermath of Black Monday. Youngstown, already a hub for organized crime (with over 75 car bombings, in 1963 Youngstown was dubbed “Crime Town U.S.A. by the Saturday Evening Post) that the FBI and local officials had been unable to root out. With the loss of the mills the problem increased dramatically. By the 1990’s Youngstown was known as the “murder capital” of the United States, with a murder rate in the top ten in the nation, and eight times higher than the national average. This growth in crime underlies the changing nature of masculinity in among industrial workers at this time. Work no longer provided the masculine release and sense of pride it once did, to combat this young men had to find a new way to express their nature, make up monetary deficiencies that were growing due to the decreased wages of service-based work (monetary security was, and is, a huge factor in masculinity as it reinforces the male position as the head of the household), and from bonds with their brethren that could no longer be filled by the union halls and work groups of the mills. For many young men the resource that provided a solution to all these was crime. This is not the only option of course, today most Americans have found more acceptable paths to direct masculinity for the post-industrial era man. One common both in literature and in reality is males taking a bigger role in home life, as seen in Jeff Vande Zande’s deindustrialization novel Landscape with Fragmented Figures, where the protagonist, Ray, puts family responsibility before personal exploration.

Closing: An Unresolved Social Disaster
On the whole the resulting new ways in which men express their masculinity post-deindustrialization vary, but in Youngstown specifically, we see the change in meaning and value of work resulting from deindustrialization had a huge impact on masculinity. Black Monday was very much a social disaster, the event itself had a huge economic impact but its legacy was that of tearing down the established identity of masculinity in working-class men. For Youngstowners, the inability to rationalize the past with the new reality of working-class labor has led to the city never reviving from its fall. This lack of recovery parallels the lack of a conclusion as to what exactly the new identity of masculinity is, there is no one clear-cut answer as there was prior to the social-disaster of Black Monday. Only time will tell what new identity will come to blue-collar men’s masculinity.