"Well I think what’s happening uh, take the auto industry. It’s a very similar thing to what Bethlehem Steel went through. In the day that Bethlehem Steel went through it, there weren’t certain funds, nobody was lining up to say ‘we’ll bail you out!’ And what happened was we had bankruptcy, but under the old style where you went through the process. You know, when you go into bankruptcy, the initial purpose is to reorganize, get rid of your debt, and come out as a reorganized company that’s stronger financially and ready to go. That didn’t work, and Bethlehem ended up being liquidated. And all the existing plants that were operating when we went into bankruptcy, they are now still functioning. But they don’t have all the costs and labor agreements, different things that the Bethlehem Steel Corporation had, so they’re able to function at different cost levels and be profitable. Detroit has been going through it for many, many years. A bigger city, but the dominance of three major companies in that city, you probably have very much the same kind of impact, and when you watch the news, you would put a face from a steelworker in Bethlehem on an auto worker in Detriot, y’know you can interchange it, and it’s pretty much the same. The difference is that the government’s trying to bail out a lot of organizations. The auto industry’s impact across the country is so extensive that I think it had to be saved. But the question would be, if you’re Ford, you’re doing it on your own and you’re doing it against the United States, somehow that has to be equalized. But you can take industries like textiles, which were a subject of import and had a great impact to the steel industry... but y’know, I think it gets repeated over and over again, and twenty years from now, thirty years from now, communities will be going through the same thing that Bethlehem Pennsylvania went through, Detriot... y’know, throughout the country. Y’know, Bethlehem Steel lasted almost a hundred years, ninety-nine years. It went out of existence and into bankruptcy and sold for a billion and a half out of bankruptcy. I think about how little it would have taken to save that.
But with a lot of other things that had to be changed... and even if it had survived another year or so, without bankruptcy, it would probably be going very well today. Because from 2003 to 2007, right before disaster struck, the steel industry... if you measured it by the price of the stock, when Bethlehem was three and four dollars, about to go out of existence, US Steel was about ten bucks a share. US Steel when from ten to a hundred and ninety five in that four or five year period. Because China began to chew up all the steel it could chew up and India became very active, and so the domestic steel industry in the United States went from three or four bucks a share to forty maybe. It went very high... maybe even eighty. And so, if Bethlehem had made it through the trough, it’s very cyclical in the steel industry. If we had gotten by that period, we would have had four of five years to generate a lot of cash to get us through the next period. But... if. It didn’t make it. Communities will always experience this. Time and memorial. Products will stop being of interest, new products will replace them or new processes. Even here in Bethlehem if, y’know, if you place yourself back at the turn of the nineteen hundreds, there was a Bethlehem Iron Company and along comes Charles Schwab, the big timer from Pittsburgh. Buys up the company. How do people feel back then? It was probably fear of change. What’s going to happen to our community? And yeah, if you look at it over a period of the whole existence, wow, what a great, colorful community. What would Bethlehem have been if, for example, Bethlehem Iron Company in 1900, and there was no replacement? And it just had to limp along. Y’know, would the three boroughs have been merged? Would it have remained separate, would it have been agricultural, who knows? So change occurs, and sometimes it’s for the good, and sometimes it isn’t. As judged by individuals. How does it impact the community, well, you could have one person on one side of the street doing very well and the one on the other side is out of a job. So, not an easy thing to go through because when you’re going through it, it’s the hardest thing in the world. If you could step back and look at what was going on before, change will always be happening, some good, some not so good."
" And the other thing you have to look at is, I’ll use as an example, right up the street here, Cantelmi’s Hardware Store. It’s been in existence three generations, at least, does well by all accounts. And when you look at the people coming in the front door, the retail and sales going on, you say ‘oh they’re doing pretty well,’ which is probably true. But often times what we don’t think about is what’s going out the back door, in bulk, to a place like the Bethlehem plant. Or the casino. The amount of money that was spent here in all kinds of different ways, at any given moment they’d run up to Cantelmi’s and have to have wheelbarrows and shovels and tape and screws, nuts, bolts, whatever. When the big company shuts down, that multiplier effect is really what becomes devastating because then you take out the small businesses. I often, one last thought, listen to the comments from people that small business creates the most jobs in the United States. Yeah when taken as a whole. And then when you ask the question well, who does small business serve? Well like at Bethlehem Steel, we supported so many suppliers and vendors like Cantelmi’s or, you name it, if that big business goes out, small business doesn’t have reason to exist. So the interrelationship of all businesses and all communities to one another in the end is probably what you have to measure. How does everyone live together and benefit from one another?"
Quoted from Stephen Donches
Currently, I am in Hanover, New Hampshire, although I keep thinking I am in Vermont, easily forgetting that the Connecticut River is the state line. Saying hello to all the rugged-faced Appalachian Trail hikers. The upper valley.
My car is in the sticks of the Pioneer Valley (Leverett), packed and ready to haul to Hampshire for move-in on Monday. My thoughts are then obviously wandering down to the Lehigh Valley as I stressfully consider my division three. Too many valleys!
The nights are getting cooler and I have a box full of possible negatives to begin printing as soon as Monday night. I can't complain.
No comments:
Post a Comment