Open Writing

The men of my mother’s family were steelworkers; as tough and inflexible as the metal they worked, and they dreamed, talked and lived steel making. They loved it and they hated it. Loved it for its drama, and the power and mystique of what was, in their day, a black art. Hated it for what the work did to their bodies and for the callous treatment they often received from their employers.

My grandfather was a fettler. His job was to clean the molding sand from massive castings with a hand grinder. From my earliest recollections, until his death some twenty-five years later, he battled and eventually succumbed to silicosis; his lungs ruined by the abrasive dust. In contrast, one of his sons rose from “tea boy,” and later, mill hand, to become a director of one of the most prominent companies in the industry. In between these extremes of fortune were other relatives who worked as melting foremen, forge operators and furnace hands.

In their time, and in my early years, Sheffield, my hometown in England, was literally a melting pot of steel making technology, as it had been since the eighteenth century. Carbon steel, stainless steel and a host of other technological innovations sprang from the pioneering work of people like Bessemer, Huntsman, Thomas Firth, John Brown, and Samuel Bailey. It was their technology that allowed local companies to profit mightily from the heyday of shipbuilding and the railroads, and from the armor plate and munitions of two world wars. In those years, the region’s economy lived or died according to the fortunes of the steel industry.

Concentrated at the eastern end of the City, the plants occupied an area so large it was a city in its self. It encompassed miles of roads, bordered on either side by open hearth furnaces, soaking pits, rolling mills, forging presses, blast furnaces and railway yards. The air was filled with clamor, and the sky dark with sulphurous smoke. A surrounding arc of coal-mine spoil heaps, like black pyramids hundreds of feet high, framed this Faustian scene. It was truly the “Dark Satanic Mills” of the Industrial Revolution.

The steel company owners had followed the successful, (for them), practice, of building rented employee housing within a short walk of the plants. The grimy, cobbled streets of row houses were often so close to the factories that they were in constant shadow from the towering structures beside them. What little sunlight penetrated the clouds of smoke and dust rarely illuminated these drab streets. My grandmother’s prized china tea service would jump and rattle with the shock waves generated by the forges and rumbling gantry cranes nearby. My grandparents lived in such conditions most of their married life until the 1950’s, and raised four children there.

The steel barons, on the other hand, had built magnificent mansions for themselves, in beautiful settings on the other side of the city. They lived their very private, elegant lives behind high stone walls. Ornate, wrought iron gates allowed only tantalizing glimpses of the houses and graciously landscaped grounds within. They had also built imposing edifices at their places of work, each one an expression of pride, power and permanence.

These temples of industry used granite and marble in profusion. Each imposing entrance was elevated above street level and the ordinary citizenry by tiers of polished granite steps. The offices were approached between massive marble columns, leading to cavernous reception areas. Richly colored decorations and gilded wrought iron embellishments added to the grandeur. From the reception level, stately staircases wound upwards to a mezzanine floor where the owners and senior directors had their offices.

All this pomp functioned under the protective eyes of impressively uniformed major domos. Many of them were retired regimental sergeant majors who had lost none of their swank and severity in retirement. The impression I was left with as a child and as a young man was that these establishments were here for all eternity.

Though I didn’t share the passion of my mother’s kin for steel making as a child, they would often take me to visit the rolling mills and melting shops. Perhaps they had the forlorn hope that I might, by exposure, acquire the desire to follow in their footsteps. Timid by nature, and softened by my sheltered suburban upbringing, the hellish working conditions and rough, burly steel workers did nothing to change my feelings.

To me, this was a “nether world” of gloomy, noisome canyons where the air was so dust-filled one could literally eat it, and the smell of hot metal and coke oven gas permeated everything. A place where the clash, grind and shriek of steel making filled the air. Steel that would finish up as railroad rails, massive boiler shells, bridge beams, gun barrels, and propellers for ocean liners and battleships. A place where the night-time sky was lit by the lurid glow from blast furnaces and coking ovens, and where the moon and stars were rarely seen. Here was fear and fascination in overwhelming doses.

Later in life, my engineering job frequently took me back into the steel plants for short periods. Though by now I was mature enough to rationalize the grime, the noise and the totality of it all, its impact on the environment and on human lives continued to disturb me. People were still occupying the row houses; some of my relatives had by now died of work induced health problems, and my grandfather was struggling through his final years with worsening respiratory illness. My abiding, if impractical, wish at that time was that the steelmaking giants would just disappear.

Later, I left England to live in the USA, at a time when British steel companies were starting to feel increasing pressure from global competition. Korea, Japan and Germany, with the advantage of modern technology, and newer plants built in the wake of World War II, were becoming increasingly competitive. Though I was aware of this on one level of consciousness, I never seriously considered that Sheffield’s steel titans could be bought down by these changes.

However, despite my feelings of confidence, their fortunes continued to decline. But surely they would regroup, innovate, rise again. Wouldn’t they? After all, they had taught half the world how to make steel. But successive bouts of nationalization and denationalization had seemingly drained the will of these once invincible institutions. There would be no rising from the ashes as there had been after past declines - the Phoenix was no more.

After many years’ absence, and with only sparse information about the state of my hometown’s economy, my mother’s death brought me back to the City. After the funeral, as part of my grieving, I felt the need to visit all the places she had lived. I wanted somehow to distill the essence of her being from the ground she had trodden. I saved her birthplace among the steel mills until last. The scene I came upon shocked me with the force of a physical blow. The grimy streets and glowering edifices were gone.

I drove aimlessly around, trying in vain to find something I recognized. Where was Barking Street where my mother was born, and the local markets where my grandmother had shopped? Where were the grimy streets and miserable row houses, the proud edifices and the towering steel plants? How could the coal spoil pyramids have disappeared? What I had been wishing for half of my life had happened, the dynasties were no more. But unlike the fall of empires, there were no ruins here, no artifacts, no landmarks, just featureless grassy knolls and meadows where grass hadn’t grown in a century.

The realization that the titans were finally vanquished did not bring me the feelings of satisfaction I had always anticipated, just overpowering sadness and disbelief. It was as if someone had taken the book of my life and ripped out half the pages. I stood for a long time listening to the gentle rustle of wind that had replaced the cacophony of steel making, and wished with all my heart that it was not so.