New ghost towns: Industrial communities teeter on the edge

New ghost towns: Industrial communities teeter on the edge

Ravenswood, with 4,000 people and one big factory, is like many towns in the USA where things still are made: caught in a winter between recession and recovery, hoping the latter will arrive before the former kills the last decent blue-collar job.

Whether it's textiles in the Carolinas, paper in New England or steel in the Midwest, most industrial cities and mill towns "are on pins and needles," says Donald Schunk, an economist at Coastal Carolina University. "Day to day, week to week, any manufacturing facility seems vulnerable. People don't know if they'll be there."

That's true in:

• Georgetown, S.C. (pop. 9,000), where the closing of the local steel mill last year left International Paper as the last major private employer.

• Madawaska, Maine (pop. 4,000), where workers voted last month to take an 8.5% wage cut to keep the financially strapped paper mill going.

• Glenwood, Wash. (pop. 500), where flat lumber prices and rising land prices are crippling the forest products industry.

www.usatoday.com...

This is sad. It's sad to see the country in the shape it is in. So many people who never cared nor asked for much...they just wanted a decent job to raise their kids and live as happily as they could are on the verge of losing everything.

This is just a fraction of what is happening in this country. It's not just those in decent sized cities and larger. It's the small towns who are severely hurt.

The small towns who's entire existence is bent on one employer...as my last job was which was lost to outsourcing 3 years ago....are simply crushed when a factory shuts down.

I hope the USA can endure this....I hope that everyone can pull through the tough times we are dealing with now...and the tough times we will have in the future.

Best to all of you and your families.




[edit on 2-3-2010 by David9176]

Unfortunately there is no Michael Keaton coming to reopen the plants like in Gung Ho.

There is a way to turn it around, but not sure people can handle the two years it would take. Or would be willing to try.

reply to post by Ahabstar

Unfortunately there is no Michael Keaton coming to reopen the plants like in Gung Ho.

That's a classic! We need Michael Keaton for Prez!

Hopefully people will begin to help each other out instead of pointing fingers at one another. We are all going to have to pull together and the road will be long and hard.

I just hope the future turns out to be better than it looks right now for my daughter's sake.

Thanks for posting the article. As a middle-aged working class man, I have been seeing this same thing go on since the mid 80s. The town where I grew up in was almost totally reliant on the local mines for everything. Then they decided they could mine copper cheaper in South America and shut down an industry that was over 100 years old here.

I would say most everyone I went to school with moved away, I came back after a few years with a skilled trade, and made my living in the construction industry. Then Wall Street and the banks decided to turn that into a giant hyperflated bubble and destroyed that industry as well.

The real shame is that last two generations of middle class workers have been sold out simply for corporate greed. The men and women that actually produced something tangible are looked at like 2nd class citizens, while those folks on Wall Street and the investment banks make billions doing nothing but shifting numbers around on paper. Disgusting society this has become.