A Reassessment of Deindustrialization and the Case of Atlantic Steel
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Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University History Theses Department of History Spring 5-11-2013 A Reassessment of Deindustrialization and the Case of Atlantic Steel Timothy T. Lawrence Georgia State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_theses Recommended Citation Lawrence, Timothy T., "A Reassessment of Deindustrialization and the Case of Atlantic Steel." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2013. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_theses/69 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of History at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A REASSESSMENT OF DEINDUSTRIALIZATION AND THE CASE OF ATLANTIC STEEL by TIMOTHY LAWRENCE Under the Direction of Dr. Jared Poley and Dr. Marni Davis ABSTRACT This thesis seeks to understand the causal factors of deindustrialization in the steel industry during the late twentieth century and uses the former Atlantic Steel Company mill in Atlanta, Georgia as a case study. Using company records and secondary sources from a variety of social science disciplines, I explore the roles of neoliberalism, government foreign and domestic policies, and the world economic crisis of 1973 to reassess contemporary understanding of the concept of deindustrialization. INDEX WORDS: Deindustrialization, Steel industry, Neoliberalism A REASSESSMENT OF DEINDUSTRIALIZATION AND THE CASE OF ATLANTIC STEEL by TIMOTHY LAWRENCE A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2013 Copyright By Timothy Lawrence 2013 A REASSESSMENT OF DEINDUSTRIALIZATION AND THE CASE OF ATLANTIC STEEL by TIMOTHY LAWRENCE Committee Co-chair: Jared Poley Committee Co-chair: Marni Davis Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University May 2013 DEDICATION To my daughter Penelope ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe a debt of gratitude to many people who have encouraged, advised, and generally made positive contributions to this thesis, and to my educational endeavors in the larger sense. I would like to thank Dr. Joe Perry for encouraging me to switch my thesis topic to a study of deindustrialization, and challenging me to answer the “so what” question. Dr. Marni Davis gave me honest advice at a time when I needed it most, and showed me what great pedagogy looks like. I have had many enlightening and enjoyable conversations with Dr. Charles Steffen, and I’m grateful that he allowed me to have input into the classes in which I was his TA. Dr. Jared Poley went above and beyond what anyone could expect from an advisor, and I received more help and knowledge from him than I can express here. Three of my fellow graduate students, Mindy Clegg, Sara Patenaude-Schuster, and Dylan Ruediger made my experience intellectually richer, and their presence is an example of the positive present and future of scholarship at Georgia State. I am indebted to two old friends, Jason Deck and Joe Winograd for encouraging me to pursue my academic life, and challenging many of my ill-conceived notions. Lastly, and most importantly, I would like to thank my wife Judy, who made this thesis possible through her love, support, and encouragement. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................................... v TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................ vi LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................................... vii INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1. A SYSTEMATIC DISINVESTMENT .......................................................................... 7 What is Deindustrialization? .............................................................................................. 7 Many Shades of Causation ............................................................................................... 11 CHAPTER 2. A CLOSER LOOK ................................................................................................ 30 The Crisis of 1973-1975 .................................................................................................... 30 The Spread of Neoliberalism ............................................................................................ 34 The Reality of the World Steel Market ............................................................................. 41 Government Policy .......................................................................................................... 44 Atlantic Steel to Atlantic Station ...................................................................................... 49 CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................... 53 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................... 55 LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Evolution of the Steel Industry, 1960-2000 29 Table 2. Global Growth Rates, Annually and by Decade, 1960-2003 36 Table 3. State Business Policy That Affected the Steel Industry, 1941-1989 48 INTRODUCTION The Atlanta Steel Hoop Company was incorporated in 1901 on a large plot of land near downtown Atlanta, Georgia. The company was initially started to manufacture wire for cotton bales and steel hoops for the naval stores industry, mainly for turpentine barrels. Unlike its closest competitors to the west in Birmingham, Alabama – which were founded and funded by steel magnates from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – the Atlanta Steel Hoop Company was started by locals to supply the local demand for steel products. From the outset it was a corporation, capitalized with fifty-thousand dollars divided into five-hundred shares and sold at one-hundred dollars apiece. 1 The company, not having a furnace yet, originally purchased billets 2 from Carnegie Steel Company of Pittsburg and Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad of Birmingham. Within a few short years Atlantic Steel (the name was changed within the first decade) employed over 120 men, and had sales in Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina. In 1905, the company invested five-hundred thousand dollars on an open-hearth furnace and a blooming mill. This capital investment allowed for greater product range, and drastically reduced costs by eliminating the need to purchase billets from outside sources. The company continued to expand and diversify in the first part of the twentieth century. Atlantic Steel developed a strong presence in the agricultural, merchant, and commercial construction steel markets in the southeast. 3 The firm contracted with the U.S. 1 Charles F. Stone, The Story of Dixisteel: The First Fifty Years, 1901-1951 (Atlanta: Atlantic Steel Company Publication, 1951), 53. 2 A billet is a piece of semifinished iron or steel that is nearly square and is longer than a bloom. Bars and pipe are made from billets. A bloom is a semifinished product, large and mostly square in cross section. Blooms are shaped into girders, beams and other structural shapes. 3 The term “steel industry” is confined to producers of new, standardized, alloy steel products including a wide range of plates, sheets, coils, bars, tubes, I-beams, channels, wires, and rods. The industry is divided between two distinct government during WWI, WWII, and the Korean War to supply steel for armaments and other projects. The company also supported the war efforts by leading War Bond drives and sponsoring patriotic parades. Over the 1950s and 1960s the company was fairly stable, both in terms of management, and growth. By the mid-1960s, the company had over three thousand employees and regularly operated three shifts per day. The plant production workers formed a local union of the United Steel Workers of America (USW) in the earlier twentieth century, and by the 1960s, workers enjoyed decent wages and benefits, though there were occasional strikes and work stoppages. At first glance, the history of a steel mill in Atlanta might seem a strange choice for a focus on industrialization/deindustrialization, but the Atlanta mill–by well-timed adoption of technology in the late 1950s–was representative of the future of the industry in a couple of important ways. First–unlike the steel town Birmingham, Alabama–Atlanta is not situated in close proximity to most of the natural resources needed for integrated steel production. Iron ore, coal, limestone, and abundant fresh water are all keys to producing steel in open-hearth and basic oxygen furnaces. The original open-hearth furnace served the company well for many years, but in a move to become more competitive, installed a state-of-the-art electric arc furnace in the late 1950s. The electric arc furnace required only a good supply of cheap electricity and scrap iron; Atlanta had both. Being located at a major railroad hub, Atlantic Steel had access to railroad lines with which to quickly transport scrap from all areas in the region or nation, and Georgia Power had an extensive network of hydroelectric and coal-fired plants able to supply