‘Steel Dreams’ reconstructs community lost to time

Youngstown Sheet and Tube in an undated photo

By Tom Welsh | Special to the Metro Monthly

Despite the fact that his grandfather was involved in one of the Mahoning Valley’s most celebrated court battles, Alan Jenkins knew little about the case until he entered law school.  One summer, while Jenkins was serving as a clerk at a local law firm, an uncle handed him a packet of old documents, with the recommendation that he “might find them of interest.”

This marked the beginning of Jenkins’ long fascination with Myron T. Wick Jr. vs. The Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company, the 1930 lawsuit that prompted a major court battle over the proposed merger of Youngstown Sheet & Tube and Bethlehem Steel. The more Jenkins researched the case, which involved some of the era’s most prominent business and finance leaders, the more convinced he became that it could serve as the basis of an engaging historical novel.

“Steel Dreams,” the novel that Jenkins wrote, owes remarkably little to family lore. Although Alan Jenkins’ grandfather, Judge David G. Jenkins, presided over Wick vs. Sheet & Tube, the case was hardly a topic of discussion within his extended family. “To his credit, I don’t recall my grandfather ever discussing his cases,” Jenkins said. “What went on in the courtroom stayed in the courtroom. Instead, he loved to tell us about his life in Wales, and he was a great storyteller.”

Jenkins observed that only one scrap of oral tradition found its way into the novel, which was recently released by Tate Publishing & Enterprises and is available at local bookstores. “Steel Dreams” includes a brief account of a conversation his grandfather recalled having with LeRoy Manchester, who served as general counsel of Sheet & Tube in 1930.

For Jenkins, the absence of family lore in the novel is significant. “Steel Dreams” represents a combination of solid storytelling and intense archival research, much of which was completed in Youngstown. “The good thing about having no preconceived notions of the case was that it allowed me to base the story on the contemporaneous accounts of the events themselves, rather than trying to reinterpret the events,” Jenkins said in an online interview.

At a glance, the case appears reasonably straightforward. In 1930, James “Old Jim” Campbell, an organizer of Sheet & Tube who was rounding out his long tenure as chairman, opened negotiations with Eugene Grace, president of Pennsylvania-based Bethlehem Steel, to explore the possibility of merging the two firms. Campbell, then 75, feared that Sheet & Tube would not remain competitive unless combined with another major steel maker. Grace, meanwhile, had been looking for opportunities to expand his steel operations into the Midwest.

Beyond their compatible interests, Campbell and Grace shared a personal affinity, which the authors suggest through imaginative reconstructions of business meetings and private conversations.

Campbell, a native of Ohltown (present-day Meander Reservoir), overcame childhood infirmities to become a college athlete and business leader. Throughout his career, Campbell took a hands-on approach to the management of his firm’s vast steel operations. In a well-known photograph, the aging industrialist poses casually with a group of rough-hewn steelworkers. His bearing betrays no hint of noblesse oblige.  These rough-and-ready qualities appealed to Grace, a former college athlete who abandoned the prospect of a major league baseball career to climb the industrial ladder. Grace reportedly commented to friends that he sometimes felt as though he had made the wrong decision.

Although Campbell was 22 years older than Grace, both men were old school industrialists who made business deals over glasses of brandy. They resented the tactics of “pirates” like Cyrus Eaton, the Cleveland-based protégé of John D. Rockefeller, whose string of acquisitions was financed with funds drawn from lucrative holding companies. These holding companies, or “trusts,” were set up with modest initial investments, but they attracted legions of investors. When building his corporate empires, Eaton’s preferred strategy was to quietly secure a controlling interest in those firms he planned to acquire.

While Eaton owned considerably less than a controlling percentage of shares in Sheet & Tube in 1930, he wielded enough clout to rally shareholders who viewed the proposed merger as a “sellout” of Youngstown’s largest homegrown industry. The disgruntled stakeholders included Myron Wick, whose late uncle, George D. Wick, had helped organize Sheet & Tube in 1901.

After the plaintiffs filed their lawsuit, the proposed merger began to appear more complicated.  The plaintiffs noted that, in the proposed merger, the valuation of shares for the two companies had been based on business figures from 1929, which bore scant resemblance to those recorded in 1930, the first year of the Depression.  Critics also questioned whether Sheet & Tube’s shareholders—including members of its board of directors—were properly notified about the merger.  Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the proposed merger, at least for opponents, was the presence of business executive Henry G. Dalton on the board of both companies, a situation that raised the prospect of fraud.

On Dec. 29, 1930, amid national media coverage, Judge David Jenkins issued an injunction against the merger.  Among others, Judge Jenkins ruled that Sheet & Tube’s board of directors had failed to vote on the merger “as a fully informed unit.”  He also determined that the merger was actively promoted by Dalton, a common director of both companies.  According to the Youngstown Vindicator, the ruling found that Dalton’s role “was a breach of trust and against proper policy,” regardless of his intentions.  At one point, Judge Jenkins quoted Matthew 6:24: “No man can serve two masters.”

Judge Jenkins also found that those negotiating the merger failed to take into consideration Bethlehem Steel’s controversial bonus system, which allocated $3.6 million to the firm’s executives in 1929.  The judge went on to question a report compiled by accountants for the purposes of the merger, determining that it “had a misleading tendency, whether intentional or not.”

One day after the ruling, the Vindicator presented the outcome as a coup for Eaton, who was hailed as “the fourth financial independent of the century who had battled ‘Wall Street’… and had won.”  The paper compared Eaton to business titans like Andrew Carnegie, Edward H. Harriman, and Henry Ford, who had successfully battled the country’s financial powerbrokers in the past.  The Youngstown Vindicator apparently concurred with Eaton’s description of the ruling as a victory for the Mahoning Valley, one that ensured the “autonomy of the midwest’s [sic] growing steel trade.”

Months later, Campbell and Grace appealed Judge Jenkins’ ruling, but the pair watched grimly as the economy continued to unravel.  Furthermore, it was hard to ignore that the U.S. public had been outraged at the prospect of two industrialists pursuing a $1 billion merger in the midst of a severe economic downturn.  On Oct. 16, 1931, The New York Times reported that Eugene Grace had canceled the merger deal, “owing to changed conditions.”

Eaton, the court battle’s presumed victor, suffered his share of setbacks in the years that followed.  Widely disseminated rumors that Bethlehem Steel would merge with Republic Steel, the steel company Eaton formed in 1930, came to nothing.  Saddled with debt, Eaton was compelled to sell Continental Shares, his most lucrative holding company, along with his substantial interests in the utility, steel, and mining industries.

© 2010, The Metro Monthly. All rights reserved.

For more articles and features, visit http://www.metromonthly.net.

Robert Fitzer eulogy

Robert Fitzer

Editor’s note: Before he died, Robert Fitzer asked Holly Burnett and me to deliver eulogies at his memorial service. The request made it necessary for me assess Bob’s importance to the Youngstown community and beyond. What follows is my eulogy from the memorial service at Bliss Hall at Youngstown State University in 2007.

By Mark C. Peyko

Today we gather to remember and celebrate the life of Bob Fitzer. We also offer our condolences to Bob’s family during this difficult time.

As a teacher, musician, public citizen and friend, Bob had an expansive definition of what constituted family.

Bob’s actual family was dear to him, but circumstances in his life would expand that definition to include colleagues, childhood friends, and a variety of kindred spirits. It is not an exaggeration to say that Bob had made the entire Youngstown community his family.

Bob said his parents – Dolores and Robert – had a profound influence on his values and outlook on life. He said he always tried to live up to their standards as a musician, teacher and public citizen.

A love of politics, art and music was fostered in the Fitzer home. Dolores and Robert Fitzer were teachers at the Dana School of Music. Both performed professionally as musicians. They traveled to Greenwich Village to absorb the art and culture of New York City. They supported Youngstown’s art and poetry culture of the early 1960s. Bob said his parents bought some of the first works produced by artists in the region.

Perhaps more important, though, was the influence of Robert and Dolores Fitzer’s social conscience.

When Civil Rights activist Medgar Evers was assassinated in June of 1963, Bob’s mother, Dolores wrote an impassioned letter to the Youngstown Vindicator denouncing racism. At the time, Bob’s dad was in Chicago for six weeks earning a graduate degree in music education.

Bob said many people called the house and said whatever vile things the anonymity of a 1963 telephone in Youngstown could allow.

At a very young age, Bob learned that standing up for one’s principles involved risk and the threat of alienation.

Against this backdrop of this time was a lot of personal family tragedy. Within one year, the Fitzer family endured the loss of two of their four children – a sister, Susie, and a brother Daniel. Dolores and Robert Fitzer also lost three of their four parents in the same year.

Yet, despite extremely difficult times, Bob said he and his sister Karen home had a home filled with love and happiness.

It was a home where Bob learned social justice and the importance of equal opportunity. It also was a place where he and his sister learned to have an open mind and an open heart.

Like his parents, Bob studied music, loved the arts, and had a passion for politics. He had deep love for the Mahoning Valley –  a sometimes unnatural love for the Mahoning Valley.

When he graduated from Northwestern University with a B.A. in music performance, his career track was in music performance not teaching. Bob envisioned performing with a major metropolitan symphony.

While in his early twenties, Bob’s parents died. He said their untimely deaths made him reassess his life. He said he looked inside himself a lot in the three years it took to settle his family’s affairs in Youngstown.

After much reflection, Bob decided he didn’t want to play “200 year old music for people in fur coats.” Bob wasn’t suggesting he wanted to play jazz or rock and roll music. He meant it was important for him to be relevant in the community in which he lived.

During this period, Bob said he deflected the well-intended comments of friends and colleagues who warned him about the dangers of getting stuck in Youngstown.

The earlier lessons of standing up for one’s principles and acknowledging the risks involved would play out numerous times during this time.

Bob’s interest in politics resulted in his running for and holding political office. He held the position of precinct committeeman in the First Ward.

He co-hosted a public affairs program on WYSU called “Commentary Café.”

He gave the Democrats for Change political movement broad public awareness through an article and illustration in Holly Burnett’s “Speed of Sound.”

However, Bob did not run for office as part of some grand career strategy. He got involved in local politics to be an agent of change.

Bob’s finest hour politically was his investigation of the Cafaro Roundtable meetings. With pen, notepad and a pair of opera glasses, Bob exposed a regular, secret closed-door meeting between one of Youngstown’s most powerful political families and local politicians and business leaders.

Most of Bob’s work was guided by his parent’s quest for social justice and equal opportunity. And for Bob, it was never simply a case of whether the glass was half empty or half full. He wanted to know what was in the glass.

From the students he taught, to the community in which he lived, Bob cared about what was in that glass.

Life’s Work: Couple finds home for activism in Youngstown

By Mark C. Peyko | Metro Monthly Editor

• Authors Staughton and Alice Lynd will discuss their memoirs at 7 p.m. on Monday, July 6, 2009 as part of the Universal Café’s Arts and Lecture Series. The event occurs at the First Unitarian Church in Youngstown.

Attys. Alice and Staughton Lynd recently published “Stepping Stones: Memoir of a Life Together,” a book that recounts their work as long-time activists in the Mahoning Valley and across the United States.

Over the years, the Lynds have taken on a number of unpopular and thorny causes – many times well ahead of the public’s awareness of or tolerance for an issue.

The Metro Monthly recently spoke with Staughton Lynd about the couple’s recent book, their lifetime commitment to social activism, and the dangers of voicing sometimes unpopular opinions.

Metro Monthly: What made you decide to want to write the book?

Atty. Staughton Lynd: Well, it’s hard to say. I’m 79, Alice will be 79 in a little less than two months. And so if there is any kind of summing up, it seemed like a good time to do it.

Metro Monthly: What do you hope readers may learn from reading about your experiences and Alice’s experiences?

Lynd: Well, a couple of things. One is to keep going. It was an observation of mine that in the sixties, we had an awful lot of sprinters and not too many long-distance runners. And I think [laughs] people may say Alice and I ran in the wrong direction or that we lost all the fights that we entered – but I don’t agree with either of those.
But one thing we have done is to keep going, so that was a general motivation.

But more specifically, I have a feeling that a lot of folks with liberal or radical ideas wind up on the West or East Coast. You know, they’re in San Francisco, or Cambridge, or New York City. And we wanted to make a plea that people who think they are pursuing a profession that’s of some use – I’m sure you feel this way, we felt that way as lawyers – take a look at the Youngstowns of this world. The medium-sized cities in-between the two coasts. And the particular term we used for what we had in mind was something we ran into on trips to Latin America. We learned of Archibishop Romero – in this case talking to Catholics – who had said that “People with a professional training should accompany those who might have need for their services.” Instead of spending all your time in an endless exchange of ideas in some rarefied university, just get out on the streets and see if you can be helpful to ordinary people.

Metro Monthly: I’ve always wondered that about you and your wife. Actually, that was one of my questions, too. But I think we should back up a little bit. Could you tell us a little bit about what brought you to Youngstown?

Lynd: Yes. I was in a funny situation at the end of the sixties, because I had chosen the profession of history. My wife was doing early childhood education and each of us ran into a roadblock. But in my case, it was being so outspoken against the war in Vietnam that I couldn’t continue as a full-time history teacher. And in Alice’s case, a lot of the funding for Head Start and early childhood education dried up in the early seventies.

Metro Monthly: O.K.

Lynd: And so we kind of looked the world over and decided to take a shot at becoming lawyers and being lawyers together and, specifically, we had been doing some oral history with steelworkers and others in the south Chicago/northern Indiana areas. The same part of the world, actually, where President Obama did his community organizing.

And one thing we ran into was the unionized industrial worker who felt he was being worked over by the employer and not getting much help from the union and was left to fight for himself. And so we had this specific project: maybe we could be lawyers to help that kind of person and, as you know very well, there are quite a few of them in the Mahoning Valley. And so, while in law school in Chicago, . . . we learned of some steelworkers in Youngstown. They worked at the old Brier Hill mill, Local 1462.

Metro Monthly: Frame this a bit. What year was this, which decade?

Lynd: This was the first half of the 1970s. I was going to law school – ’73, ’76. The question is: Where are we going to go when we get out of law school? And so we ran into these steelworkers and they were pretty broad-gauged guys. You know, they were into combatting racial discrimination in the mill and in the community. They were civil libertarians, they were concerned with peace and I figured, you know, this is the kind of person that I think I’m looking for.

I’m going to put my chips on these couple of guys and their friends in Youngstown, Ohio. And so we moved here in ’76 with that in mind and we’ve never looked back. They’re both dead now [the workers], John [Barbero] and Ed [S. Mann], and others whom we met. And I would add someone we met after we moved here, and is also now deceased, an electric utility lineman named Robert Schindler.

Metro Monthly: But when you came here, you’re coming right at the time when the mills started closing down.

Lynd: . . . It was GF [General Fireproofing] that first fall, if you remember. They had broken ground for a new plant here in Youngstown. There was a strike. The company canceled its plans and began to move out. They moved to Tennessee. And then, beginning in ’77, came every year a major steel mill closing.

Metro Monthly: A lot of people undergo career changes, but you underwent a career change where you were actually looking at controlling not only your destiny, but also really channeling your energy into something that reflected your values and your interests and your political views and everything else. . . .

You’ve had social activism and involvement in politics probably prior to the Vietnam War, but I’m just wondering what the roots of your social activism are and also your wife’s roots, too.

Lynd: Well, I would say in each case probably our parents. Not that we were carbon copies, but, for example, my dad had been to divinity school and between his first and second year at Union Theological Seminary, he was a volunteer summer preacher at a Rockefeller oil camp in Wyoming.

And he picked up the impression that the men who were working six days a week for Mr. Rockefeller were not excited about this handsome young man from the East who would spend his week visiting their wives. And so my father got a job as a pick-and-shovel laborer and preached in the schoolhouse Sunday night. And, you know, you have that kind of dad and it rubs off.

Metro Monthly: When people are socially active, do you see it as one event that may trigger an interest or is it upbringing, or maybe the culmination of a series of events? Or maybe a little of each sometimes?

Lynd: Well, I probably think people take different roads. In my case, there’s just no doubt my parents influenced me and then when I met Alice, she was a little more into an anti-war tradition than I had been exposed to. . . .

And one experience just built on the next for us and that’s why we call our memoirs “Stepping Stones,” because I don’t know it you’re a hiker, but sometimes you’re out in the woods, you come to a stream. There’s no bridge and so you make the way from one rock to the next, never knowing whether the rock is going to turn under your ankle or not. And we kind of used that as a metaphor for our lives.

Metro Monthly: I think when people are driven by causes, social justice and things like that, there’s resistance and disappointment. What do you consider your most educational disappointment?

Lynd: [laughs] Well, that’s fascinating. And I would say it was probably when – in the early sixties – I was a teacher at a college for African-American women in Atlanta called Spelman College. And on the strengths of my history writing I got invited to Yale University, which is you know like one of these movies where the guy is pitching in the cactus league and he gets a call from the Cleveland Indians.
And so I went to Yale, and what happened when I was there was that the Vietnam War escalated. I made a very controversial trip to Hanoi. And for the first time in my life, something that I assumed would be a good thing – namely getting a lifetime position at Yale University – was denied me.

And I think that was the best favor I could have received because as a lawyer in Youngstown, Ohio – a kid who grew up in New York City, son of two college professors, you know – I didn’t have much in common in the way of life experience with steelworkers, and, more recently, prisoners. But as a lawyer, that was like an invitation card. I was able to meet folks that I would have never met otherwise, so I’m very thankful [laughs] to Yale University. What did you call it, a creative disappointment?

Metro Monthly: The disappointment you found most educational.

Lynd: Well, that was it.

Metro Monthly: Getting back to the book. How long did it take to write? And I wondered about the process of doing the book. I’m sure you and your wife talked about life and work experiences.

Lynd: There had been various dry runs going back to the early nineties, I would say. I remember drafting something with a number of separate chapters, but it kind of got into high gear when Alice and I decided we were going to do this together, which is how we’ve done some of our best work.

I would say [there was] another critical point. We have three children and . . . we read our draft aloud to Martha [our youngest daughter]. And it was interesting, because things we took for granted about the 1960s, for instance, we had the feeling ‘Well, everybody knows that’ . . . and Martha would say ‘What’s that, mom and dad? I never heard that before.’ So we tried to revise in such a way that a young person today who didn’t share any of those experiences would have some clue what we were talking about.

Metro Monthly: Considering your political views and social activism, I just take for granted that there are people who disagree with you or hate your ideas. How do you deal with that in your work, when you come against someone who is so dead against what your views are?

Lynd: That’s a very good question and I need to explain [that] Alice and I are Quakers. And we’re believers in non-violence. And that’s not just a question of marching in the street with a picket sign . . . but also how you treat people who to all appearances are antagonists.
For example, in 2001, Alice and I spearheaded a class-action lawsuit about conditions of confinement at Ohio’s first Super Maximum Security Prison here in Youngstown.

And I’m here to tell you that the lawyers for the state of Ohio were initially very hostile, very suspicious. And we have a relationship of trust with those people now. I won’t go into details because I don’t want anything to happen to these understandings, but I think they feel we can help them do their job. In other words, if there’s something festering out there at the Ohio State Penitentiary – maybe something between blacks and whites or something between the prisoners in a particular cell block and certain officers, it’s in the interests of the warden to know about it and I think there have sometimes been instances where we could bring things to their attention, which we had heard from prisoners.

Well, not snitching on anyone individually, but just saying ‘Warden, we think maybe there is a problem out in the cellblock, perhaps someone could look into it.’ And that’s an example of taking a relationship which you’d think, at first glance, ‘Boy, oh boy, they should be hostile toward one another.’ The guy’s trying to run a prison filled with people they consider very dangerous, and the ACLU lawyer is trying to improve conditions, but it just so happens that I think we’ve created a pretty trusting and cordial relationship with our lawyer counterparts on the other side.

Metro Monthly: In evaluating your work, do you measure it by progress or do you see it as a series of challenges that may or not be related?

Lynd: Well, that’s a question that a person asks himself or herself. I would have to honestly say that most of the ventures in to which I put a lot of energy have not proved permanent. It doesn’t mean they didn’t accomplish anything, but as organizations or institutions, they’re no longer here.

And you could look at that and say, ‘Well, the guy didn’t get anything done.’ But, you know, an African-American was just elected president of the United States, a black man was just elected mayor of Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three summer volunteers were killed in 1964. And I was the co-ordinator of so-called Freedom School that summer [in 1964]. I was a part of opening up the world for maybe 2,000 African-American youngsters in that state. So I think I’ve accomplished a lot, although it’s difficult to measure.

Metro Monthly: Going back to the book. How long did it take to write? You said you had some dry runs or some early drafts, but this project – from beginning to end – what would you put the timeline on as far as how long it took?

Lynd: Well, I would say 15 years, but that doesn’t mean we were writing a book for 15 years. As I told you, I did a draft of my own experience. I sent it to a certain reader, that wasn’t too excited about it [laughs], so I set it aside. Later on, I sent it to a publisher – same reaction. And then, and I cannot remember exactly why, at a certain point I told Alice, maybe if we work together on it, maybe if we changed this and changed that, we can produce a product we would feel happy about. And so far, even though it’s not yet available in paperback, we feel terrific about it.

Metro Monthly: When looking back at those cool earlier receptions, do you think it all worked out for the best because you decided to wait?

Lynd: Oh, for sure, because, as I also explained with regard to our daughter Martha, if somebody tells you ‘I don’t really understand that,’ that’s helpful. You know that as a journalist. You want to try to find the words that speak to the reader’s situation. That catch his or her attention. And so that’s what I hope happened over the years. That we more and more found those words.

Metro Monthly: My last question for you: What keeps you in Youngstown?

Lynd: You know, that is such an interesting question because when all the mills closed, which had basically happened in the city of Youngstown by the summer of 1980, I [laughter] remember saying to Alice, I’m a little ashamed of it, but I said to her ‘Well, I guess time to be moving on.’ And she said, ‘Cool your jets. Let’s wait. Let’s see.’
And what happened, of course, was that by the mid-eighties, you had the LTV bankruptcy, we had retirees who were losing their health benefits, pension benefits were being reduced. We had a whole new chapter of the story.

And when it came time to retire in 1996, Alice said to me, ‘I hear there’s some talk about building something called a Supermax. What is a Supermax?’ And so a new chapter opened up. And that’s one way of describing it.

But there’s something else, as well, which is [that] my parents were both born in the Middle West. Alice’s mother comes from Cleveland. And we like the people out here. You know, we like the idea of folks getting up early and making it to the mill or Lordstown by the time the shift starts because we’ve always been people who worked hard and felt that we at least tried [laughs] to get to places on time and so on.

There is the sense of, despite my very different early childhood as the son of two university people in New York, there’s a sense of being at home, of being comfortable with the folks that we meet here. And I think some of those who have become our friends would say the same about us.

© 2010, The Metro Monthly. All rights reserved.

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