Post by petrolino on Jul 8, 2018 4:37:02 GMT
Sounds very much like the slow and painful decline of heavy industry here in England. 
New England also, Petro. 
My family, both sides, is from the Merrimack Valley, which was in its heyday, the Lancashire of the U.S. More generally, so was the region of New England as a whole. Every major river had textile mills, it seems, from Rhode Island and Connecticut through Massachusetts, right into Maine. Luckily, the end of an era has not killed off employment here, and most of the six N.E. states are on the upswing now economically, with a couple of exceptions. Downside: fewer jobs, gentrification (pushing out multi-generational residents, many of them lower skilled working people), an increasingly affluent and skilled population, much of it drawn from other states and now, more and more, other countries. Good for them.
My family, both sides, is from the Merrimack Valley, which was in its heyday, the Lancashire of the U.S. More generally, so was the region of New England as a whole. Every major river had textile mills, it seems, from Rhode Island and Connecticut through Massachusetts, right into Maine. Luckily, the end of an era has not killed off employment here, and most of the six N.E. states are on the upswing now economically, with a couple of exceptions. Downside: fewer jobs, gentrification (pushing out multi-generational residents, many of them lower skilled working people), an increasingly affluent and skilled population, much of it drawn from other states and now, more and more, other countries. Good for them. It's a mixed blessing for locals, and for many not a blessing at all. On the other hand, those red brick mills have been, in many places, saved, fixed up, have been turned into museums or new housing for artists and craftspeople. That part of it isn't so bad. Textiles may not qualify as heavy industry, as such. I'm not sure about that. It was certainly labor-intensive, as was the shoe industry which in many places replaced it. This was once a heavily industrial region, though, and for a while New England flirted with becoming an automotive manufacturing center, but Detroit and the Great Lakes states were better equipped for that kind of very heavy manufacturing. We didn't really have the space for that here.
In England, heavy industries and manufacturers in the north are trying to utilise new technology to improve services, lower prices and increase capacity but it's easier said than done. The textiles industry has moved towards luxury goods but I reckon that's hard to verify and generally unsustainable, depending upon how much income is craved. As for steel production, I think America's new policies will tell us all a lot.