The subjects profiled for these pieces are found in the daytime bars, fast food lines, and the least desirable neighborhoods of communities created and destroyed by coal or steel. Deployments into heartland communities almost always follow a storyline of decline and despair. and Dayton, Ohio in the Midwest, reporters have filed stories that typically chronicle the anguish of these once prosperous cities. There is no field guidebook dictating what qualifies as the Rust Belt. Mondale’s reference transformed into “Rust Belt,” a term the press has since bestowed on the Northern and Midwestern regions of the country experiencing the maladies of a post-industrial economy. “Reagan’s policies are turning our industrial Midwest into a rust bowl,” declared Mondale. The president had lifted quotas on steel imports, which negatively impacted an already imperiled industry. During the 1984 presidential campaign, the Democratic candidate railed against Ronald Reagan’s trade position in a speech to steelworkers in Cleveland. The Rust Belt largely owes its ambiguous designation to Walter Mondale. Their population centers, far from their peak, sit atop Appalachian plateaus, straddle sleepy rivers, and command turbulent lakes. The region’s geographical lines, subject to perpetual debate, include cities and towns built by the natural resources that fueled America’s industrial revolution. They call the wide expanse from the Northeast to the Upper Midwest the Rust Belt. Anne Trubeck, Belt Publishing, 256 pages. Detroit emerged as the center of the American automobile industry, and became the home of the so-called Big 3 automakers: Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler.Voices from the Rust Belt, ed. Cleveland became the home of the Standard Oil Company in the 1860s, and was also a notable transportation hub. Buffalo became the largest grain port in the world. Pittsburgh was known as a center for steel manufacturing, dating all the way back to the U.S. Later on, General Motors built a plant in the city, as did Bethlehem Steel. Baltimore became a mecca for the production of metal and ship-building. In fact, it became one of the largest railroad centers in the country, and served as a base for the manufacture of freight and passenger railroad cars. Other important cities in what was once the focal point of American industry include Baltimore, Maryland Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Buffalo, New York Cleveland, Ohio and Detroit, Michigan. cities that became part of America’s Factory, and later, part of the Rust Belt. The last of the old time rust belt steel mills that is still in operation today in Cleveland, Ohio.Ĭhicago was just one of the major U.S. The Illinois and Michigan Canal, which links Lake Michigan with the Mississippi River, helped make the Windy City the transportation center of Illinois by the 20 th century. For example, Chicago’s proximity to the Mississippi River and Lake Michigan enabled a steady flow of both goods and people. In addition, the area that is now referred to as the Rust Belt had a very good transportation network in the form of waterways. There was also a plentiful supply of labor in the region, as people immigrated from Europe and the U.S. The region became America’s industrial center, owing in large part to its natural resources, especially iron ore and coal. All these nicknames denoted the region’s importance for the U.S. In the 19 th and early-to-mid-20 th century, what is now known as the Rust Belt was defined by other nicknames, including Factory Belt, Steel Belt, or Manufacturing Belt. Ever since, the term “Rust Belt” has been used to refer to the once-prosperous industrial heartland of the U.S. In 1984, Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale called this declining region the rust bowl, though he was misquoted by the media, who thought that he said rust belt.
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