By Patrick F. Cannon

The United States Steel Corporation, once dominant in its industry, has been in talks with Nippon Steel of Japan. Nippon would buy US Steel, invest substantially to modernize its surviving plants, and permit it to keep its legendary name and Pittsburgh headquarters. The merger is supported by most of the politicians where US Steel does business, by economists and by many of the folks in the affected communities. But not  the Steelworkers Union, who don’t trust the Japanese to keep their promises.

Spouting some blather about US Steel being too important to fall into the hands of foreigners, President Biden has nixed the deal, which may well kill it. It’s a perfect example of cutting off your nose to spite your face. Japan, after all, is our closest ally in Asia, and Nippon Steel is prepared to make significant investments in modernizing US Steel’s plants and equipment. By this logic, we should force the Japanese to close their US auto assembly plants, which in 2023 produced 3.7 million vehicles with American workers. And how about those Korean companies that produced 625,000; or our German allies at 350,000? It was a purely political decision by a lame-duck president, presumably to protect the jobs of Pennsylvania union members, in a swing state. How many union jobs were at stake? Four thousand for all plants, in a company that once had 340,000 union members. And it’s debatable how many actually voted for Biden!

            I write about this in the week after New Years because – although now long in the past – my family was intimately involved in the steel industry. My mother’s father, Frank Donnelly, was general foreman – the top operations manager – for the Edgar Thompson Works of US Steel in Braddock, Pennsylvania when he retired just before World War II began. Because of the war, he was called back, finally retiring again when the war ended.  His son, Paul, would eventually hold the same position.

            Paul was the only son. Of my mother’s five surviving sisters (one died young), two were married to steelworkers. Both had trades – my Uncle Jack Rogers was a pipefitter, and Uncle Vernal Goldstrohm, an electrician. I don’t know, but I expect they became tradesmen instead of laborers through family influence. My Uncle Harry Suttman managed a scrap-metal company, which later employed my Uncle John Ratesic. The company existed primarily to feed scrap metal to the local mills. I’m not sure if my Uncle Frank Orzulak worked in the steel industry. My mother even worked for the Navy in the last years of the war testing steel produced for ships.

            In the next generation, only my cousin Jim Goldstrohm and I out of 21 cousins worked for US Steel. He worked at the same Edgar Thompson Works as his grandfather and father, and indeed retired from there. I worked in the 100-inch mill office at the Homestead Works from July to October 1956, when I moved to Chicago after my mother’s death.

            Interestingly, the Edgar Thompson Works survives, even though it was the oldest of the US Steel mills. The only other area plant still operating is the Irwin Works. When I worked at Homestead, US Steel also had mills in Pittsburgh, Braddock, Duquesne, and McKeesport on the Monongahela River (the so-called Mon Valley), and Ambridge and Aliquippa on the Ohio River. The Jones and Laughlin Steel Company also had a major mill in Pittsburgh, and there were numerous other steel-related companies up and down the rivers.

            US Steel reached its peak in the 1950s, as did Pittsburgh. Then, the decline began. American steel companies failed to invest in modern technologies, which European and Japanese producers were forced to do, as their plants had been destroyed during the war. Higher American wages added to the problem. From producing as much steel as the rest of the world combined at the end of World War II, the US is now behind China, India, and Japan in the rankings. As a result, Pittsburgh’s population declined from 677,000 in 1950 to 303,000 in 2020.

            Although I moved away in 1956, I have visited Pittsburgh regularly since then, often to visit my late brother Pete, who loved Pittsburgh with all his heart. But even he left for a short time in the early 1960s when it was nearly impossible to find work. Believe me, the tough times were bad. But the city survived and is now much more livable. You can breathe the air and see the Sun! And the unemployment rate in October was 3.3 percent, below the national average and far below the Chicago area’s 5.8 percent. And the Steeler’s actually win football games on a regular basis! Maybe it’s time to move back?

Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon