Stephen Brown (’09) Senior Research Speech
mchristian10 April 28th, 2009
I.
I was 13 when I first realized the significance of industry in Northeast Ohio. Instead of viewing the inside of a factory for the first time, a common field trip at that age, I realized how significant industry was by how its loss impacted those around me. It was when I heard the news in December of 2000 that Cleveland-based LTV Steel had filed for bankruptcy that I realized the significance of industry in this area. After learning of this, I began to identify Northeast Ohio as a place where a once-booming industrial area has long since been in decline; but, I had yet to realize then that this post-industrial identity was not limited to Ohio.
During my research trip in Germany last July, I was wandering through an old industrial park that lay in an area known as the Ruhrgebiet, named after the Ruhr river which flows between the industrial cities to the North and the state capital, Düsseldorf, to the South. In the park, I walked along a path that was worn-down and littered with broken bottles. Going further, I came upon a towering building with rusting walls, tarnished after decades of disuse. Taking a few steps back to get a better look, I realized this giant, rusting structure, like an ancient ruin from a past civilization, had been an elevator shaft for coal mining. This shaft now stands as a relic of Germany’s industrial past, one that has long since become obsolete.
When considering its economic, historical, and cultural background, can we explain the origins of this decrepit mining shaft sitting in an abandoned industrial park?
Why was something so massive left to ruin and be forgotten? And what impact did this structure’s abandonment leave on its workers?
II.
Microeconomic theory, which is a field within economics that explains the behavior of individual producers, shows that firms facing less demand for their products rationally cut costs by reducing production in order to maximize their profits. This allows the firm to move from a situation where costs out-shadow revenue back to a point where profits are once again maximized. Previous studies on steel firm behavior under declining demand offer a variety of perspectives on how to interpret decisions made by these firms and measure their effects. Searching for better models to explain the rationale behind plant closures, Stanley Reynolds (Professor of Economics at the University of Arizona) argues firms will close plants if production costs outweigh the revenue that would be gained from doing this.
In my study, microeconomics helps us analyze the decisions made by steel producers operating older Open-Hearth furnaces in response to the economic changes of the 1970s and 80s. My hypothesis is that these traditional producers lost their market share by operating high-cost, integrated plants instead of investing in cost-saving technologies, which inevitably led to plant closure. Using time-series data from a variety of sources, the results from regression analysis and other statistical work show that OHF producers were indeed in decline during this time. It is also shown that the growth in steel production by more innovative firms helped determine the fate of the more traditional producers.
III.
To observe how industrial decline impacted society, I rely on working-class texts that were written in response to the changes taking place in the industries near the authors’ hometowns. By undergoing a process of selecting texts related to this topic, I formed a collection of poetry written by working-class authors in a place and time when this decline was hardest felt, the German Ruhrgebiet during the 1970s and early 80s. These poems deal with such issues as the conditions of a changing workplace, mass layoffs and production cuts, and the general grief over what the future may bring. By gathering texts according to their publication dates, authors’ backgrounds, and themes, a collection of poetry is formed to represent workers’ responses to industrial decline. The authors featured in this collection, Kurt Küther, Josef Büscher and Liselotte Rauner, all came from working-class backgrounds and had been long-standing residents in the Ruhr area. Each author contributes to a specific theme related to the Strukturwandel, or the structural change subgenre, which is situated within the main working-class genre. While Küther portrays an old strip mine as a relic from a former industrial past and questions his future as a coal miner, Büscher adds to this by suggesting that the mining industry has become obsolete. He casts irony on the plight of the working class during this time, when cost-cutting and mass layoffs were the norm,
and he structures his poem in a way that accentuates the separation of the government and “those above” from the workers and “those below”. I concluded this collection with an analysis of a sonnet by Rauner, who indicates that a change for the better is possible.
She introduces Marxist elements into this section and also emphasizes Büscher’s critique, that separation exists between an establishment and the working class. Her differentiated use of literary devices, though complex at times, expresses more stylistically that change, even for the better, is possible.
Each of these texts shows us one perspective on how industrial decline impacted society at this time. American as well as German society experienced this decline during the 1970s and 80s, and this collection and its interpretation serves as a lens through which to view both.
IV.
So what do we learn from this Humanities & Social Science “mixture”? First, we are able to explain a global phenomenon without necessarily taking a macro- or broader economic approach. Industrial decline, I find, is best explained through an interdepartmental effort. Microeconomics allows us to focus on those actors that were then in decline and explain the reasons for their actions. Literary analysis, especially when done in a foreign language, helps us understand how another culture is impacted by industrial decline. With the texts they produced, German studies helped me understand how working-class authors experienced and responded to the decline of industry in their own hometown. By understanding their responses in text, we reduce our own cultural barriers and realize that this cycle is not limited to our own region, but rather affects many others communities.
Another outcome is that we become more aware of how industrial decline happens, and when and where we should expect it. Decline in industry, whether it be steel or another sector, was not a spontaneous surprise. This industry’s decline took place over several decades following the end of postwar boom. Whether or not government should take a more active role in preventing this is not a question answered here, I leave that task for my next thesis.
To conclude, we more fully realize how industrial decline impacts society, and knowing this enables us to measure this impact. Northeast-Ohioans are not alone in this event, we are joined by the Ruhr-Germans and North Rhine-Westphalians who also experienced plant closures and mass-layoffs in their communities. We share this past with them as well as with other nations belonging to a post-industrial society.
Stephen Brown ('09)
