ABSTRACT
Bethlehem Steel perfectly illustrates the production world that Marx and Engels described in their manifesto. Compared to Baltimore's new clean economy of knowledge industry, research, medicine and water-front entertainment, it seems almost implausibly distant. The example of Bethlehem Steel demonstrates why today only 10 per cent of the working population is needed in industrial production today. "Making" things was America's strength, even in peace times, and Bethlehem Steel was the proud flagship of this industrial culture. The mill's downfall came when steel could be made more efficiently in smaller "mini mills", when China embarked on steel production and when the entire United States embarked on deindustrialization on a national scale. Sparrows Point provides rich material for social historians who care about workers' rights, corporate shenanigans, profiteering, and also for those who want to describe the rise and fall of America as an industrial power.
