"Chicago Steelmaking: Dead but Not Forgotten - Activists Want to Turn Old Plant Into a Museum" is the headline to an interesting story found today, not in a Chicago paper, but in the Washington Post. Some quotes:
CHICAGO -- The stretch of southeast Chicago along Lake Michigan was built on steel. In its heyday, about 200,000 people were employed here in the steel mills and other industries related to steel production and shipping. Immigrants from Poland, Ukraine and other European countries flocked to the area, along with waves of Mexican workers and African Americans from the South, all drawn by the promise of grueling but well-paying mill jobs. * * *"Hardwoods give state many jobs" is the headline to a story today fronting the business section of the Indianapolis Star. It begins:Today, Chicago's steel industry is gone. There are still mills operating along the lakeshore in northwest Indiana, but the giants of Chicago steel have all closed their doors, from the folding of Wisconsin Steel in 1980 to the 2001 closure of the Acme Steel Coke Plant, which baked coal into coke, the fuel used to melt iron ore to make steel.
Now the vacant Acme plant, whose components were built between 1905 and 1930, is the last major Chicago steel industry structure left standing. Wisconsin Steel, U.S. Steel and the other major plants were demolished and sold for scrap metal. That was to be Acme's fate as well, until a group of preservationists, environmentalists, former steelworkers and historians stepped in to save the structure.
Indiana's sprawling corn and soybean fields have nothing on its forests, a new study of Hoosier agriculture shows. Employment and wages in the state's sawmills, furniture factories and other sectors of the hardwood industry rival those of the farms, grain elevators and food manufacturers that drive the most visible aspect of agriculture, according to an interim report released this month by BioCrossroads, a life sciences economic development nonprofit."Daniels' economic development plan will soon be tested" is the headline to this story today, also in the Indianapolis Star. A quote:Last year, one in 15 Hoosier workers -- 190,000 -- made a living from agriculture, the report says. One-fourth of those work with hardwoods. And the nearly $1.4 billion they earned in wages was virtually identical to the total salaries paid to state workers in the past fiscal year.
Not only is hardwood big, but it's surviving the onslaught of Chinese exports better than Carolina residential furniture makers, the study found.
"Very few people understand how important the hardwood industry is to Indiana," said author Ron Meeusen, BioCrossroads special projects director. "It's one of our jewels. Nobody can ship our forests to China." * * *
"Ag really ought to be part and parcel of rural economic development," said Meeusen, formerly chief of research and development of plant genetics and biotechnology at Indianapolis-based Dow AgroSciences
The Hoosier hardwood industry is scattered across the state, although virtually none of it is in Central Indiana. Most activity centers in southern Indiana's forests of oak, hickory, cherry and walnut. A secondary pocket is in northern counties, including the Mishawaka area.
Potential for hardwoods is so great that half of the six recommendations for helping agriculture will focus on the industry, Meeusen said. When released in January, the detailed hardwood recommendations will promote global marketing and branding as well as improving forests and manufacturing technology.
But it's not just the legislative package that Daniels said is key to turning around the state's economy. On par with that effort, he said, is his promise to improve the efficiency and operation of state government -- making sure, for instance, that state workers respond quickly to businesses considering a move to Indiana or expansion at their current plants.An accompanying story surveys the "Incoming governor's ideas for adding jobs." Posted by Marcia Oddi at December 27, 2004 06:19 PM"The single biggest change that we can make throughout state government is to reform and reshape it and to fasten the attention of all state employees on economic growth. . . . More money in the pockets of Hoosiers is the goal of every member of our administration," Daniels said. "It is the most important thing we can do."
In the coming months, however, the package of bills Daniels takes to lawmakers will be among the factors that generate the most attention and help determine how his first year in office is graded.
"He needs to have one or two notable successes that are his own initiatives," said Bill Blomquist, a political scientist at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. "It doesn't have to be everything. But when we're sitting around at the end of April sorting out the winners and losers, he can stay off that losers list by having (successes) he can point to."