novelnext Chapter 9 Rivers and Furnaces
Chapter 9 Rivers and Furnaces
The existence of Pittsburgh began with a geographical inevitability.
On the map of North America, two rivers converge here.
The Monongashira River, flowing gently from the south, carries coal from deep within the Appalachian Mountains.
The Allegheny River, flowing northward with rapid currents, brought timber and iron ore to northern Pennsylvania.
They converged to form a more powerful waterway, the Ohio River, which flows westward into the heart of the United States.
This triangular area is a natural strategic stronghold.
Native Americans hunted here, the French built Fort Duquesne here, and the British seized it and renamed it Fort Pitt.
Its early history is a story about furs, fortresses, and the ambitions of colonists.
The fate of this land seems to have been destined long ago to be linked with conflict and conquest.
But the true destiny brought by rivers is not military, but industrial.
In the mid-19th century, someone discovered the secret of combining the coal in this area with the iron ore in the north.
That secret name is Steel.
The flames of the Bessemer converter were ignited on this land for the first time, and instead of sparks, they spewed out gold.
From then on, Pittsburgh was no longer Pittsburgh; it became America's melting pot.
Andrew Carnegie built his vast steel empire here, fueled by the blood and sweat of coke workers.
Ship after ship of iron ore sailed downstream, and train after train of coal roared in.
They were thrown into blast furnaces, where they were melted, mixed, and quenched at temperatures exceeding 1,000 degrees Celsius, eventually becoming the skeletons of railroad tracks, bridges, and skyscrapers, as well as the armor of war machines.
From then on, the air in Pittsburgh was filled with the smell of sulfur mixed with metal.
The sounds of this city are the roar of giant hammers smashing into steel ingots and the screams of molten iron being poured into molds.
During the day, the thick smoke from the factory obscured the sun, giving the sky an eerie orange hue.
At night, the flames spewed out by the blast furnace as it dumps slag illuminate the entire night sky like the gates of hell.
This city defines itself with steel.
Thousands of immigrants were drawn to this hellfire.
Poles, Slovaks, Italians, and Irish fled poverty from the Old World and entered the melting pot of the New World.
They work twelve hours a day in extremely dangerous conditions, live in overcrowded workers' communities, filter sulfur-containing air with their lungs, and exchange their lives for a meager wage.
The gunfire of the Homestead Strike was drowned out by the roar of the blast furnaces. The workers' blood added only a negligible splash of color to the red-hot steel plates.
Pittsburgh’s glory was built on the rampant exploitation of natural resources and the brutal oppression of human labor.
It does not produce fine goods; it only produces raw materials.
The two World Wars marked Pittsburgh's golden age, transforming it into the "arsenal of democracy."
Every warship, every tank, and every shell in this country flows with the steel blood of Pittsburgh.
The power of this city has reached its peak.
Its name is inextricably linked to the power of the United States.
Then, the glory came to an end.
Because the war is over, the world has changed.
Modern steel mills in Japan and Germany produce higher-quality steel at a lower cost.
The wave of globalization shattered the trade barriers that Pittsburgh relied on for its livelihood, and the steel industry that once drove the city's heart became a bloated, outdated, and inefficient giant.
The oil crisis of the 1970s was the first blow, and the industrial relocation of the 1980s was the fatal blow.
Factories began to close down one after another.
Those once colossal machines that roared day and night have fallen silent.
The flames in the blast furnace went out, the conveyor belts stopped turning, and the huge factory was abandoned.
Silence enveloped the once bustling valleys.
This is a silence more terrifying than noise.
It means the end of work, the cessation of wages, and the death of a way of life.
A wave of unemployment swept through the entire city.
Thousands of workers, men who only knew how to make steel, men who were proud to be steelworkers, suddenly found themselves abandoned by the times.
All their skills became worthless.
Their pride was crushed by the cold, hard options on the unemployment benefit application form.
The city began to experience a large-scale population loss.
People headed south and west, seeking new opportunities in the sunny regions.
Those who remained were the elderly who couldn't leave and the young people who saw no hope.
"Rust Belt" has become the new name for Pittsburgh and its sister cities.
Corrosion not only appears on the surface of abandoned factories, but also spreads to every corner of the city, every family, and the heart of every individual.
Later, the city began its "Renaissance".
The old economic engine stalled, and a new engine was forcibly ignited.
The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and Carnegie Mellon University have become new pillars of the city.
Healthcare and education replaced steel and coal.
New glass-walled skyscrapers have been built in the city center, filled with doctors, lawyers, financial analysts, and software engineers.
They are the winners of the new era; they have brought new tax revenue and new vitality to the city.
Newspapers began to publicize Pittsburgh's miraculous transformation, from a dirty industrial city into a modern, livable metropolis with high technology and quality education.
But once you leave those glamorous downtown neighborhoods, you'll see another side of this miracle.
Those former working-class communities remain trapped in the nightmare of rust.
Shops closed, houses abandoned, and the streets were only filled with idle young people and frail old people.
Opioids, like a plague, have swept through these forgotten corners.
The previous generation lost their jobs, and this generation has lost hope.
The new wealth did not flow to the families who had dedicated generations of their lives to the city.
The fuel for the new engine is no longer coal, but the highly educated talent attracted from across the country and even the world.
The city is divided into two worlds by an invisible wall.
On one side was the light of the Renaissance, and on the other was the darkness of the Rust Belt.
This is Pittsburgh today.
A city built upon geographical necessity, glorious because of steel, and cursed because of steel.
Leo Wallace walks down a street in Pittsburgh’s South Side.
He had just come out of the library, and the conversation with Roosevelt and that grand blueprint for revolution were still burning like a fire in his mind.
But at that moment, the cold wind blowing through the street brought him back to reality.
Beneath his feet was a cracked sidewalk.
Most of the red brick buildings lining the street were built a century ago, and the walls still bear the black marks of smoke and fire from those years.
Some shops had "For Rent" signs posted on their windows, while others had them simply boarded up.
A once-thriving family-run restaurant is now locked up, with only faded menus still pasted on the glass, their prices belonging to a bygone era.
"Running for mayor of Pittsburgh."
Leo silently repeated the sentence to himself.
The combination of these words seems utterly absurd.
He felt like someone who had just learned to swim but was told to conquer the ocean.
"What should I do?" he finally couldn't help but ask Roosevelt in his mind. "I don't even know where to start. Should I go to city hall and fill out an application form? Or should I run out into the street and shout to pedestrians, 'Please vote for me!'"
Roosevelt's voice echoed in his mind.
"Of course not. Politics is not a battle, but a long positional war. Before you fire the first shot, you must first dig your trenches, find your soldiers, and figure out where the enemy's firing positions are."
"So, what should we do now?" Leo pressed.
"Forget the word 'campaign,'" Roosevelt instructed. "You are not a candidate now; you are an investigator, a sociologist. You need to rediscover this city you thought you knew so well. Look at it with my eyes, not yours."
"What do you think?"
"Go find people, go listen to them," Roosevelt's voice became more concrete. "Forget the university professors and downtown white-collar workers, go find the other half of this city, the forgotten half."
"Where should we look?"
"Go to the Steelworkers Union's dilapidated office building and see how many people are still there. Go to the Veterans Association's activity center and listen to what those young people who came back from Iraq and Afghanistan and couldn't find jobs are complaining about."
"Go to those neighborhood bars that only accept cash and listen to what older, unemployed workers talk about when they're drunk. Go to the basements of churches that provide free food to the homeless and see the expressions on people's faces after the food has been distributed."
"The first thing you need to do, Leo, is to shut your mouth, prick up your ears, and listen. Listen to the city's pain, its anger, its desires."
"Every word you say is nonsense until you know what your voters want."