Photojournalist Documents America's Manufacturing Base Gone to Scavenging Scrap Metal

[votesparks]

While many may not realize the effects of offshoring on American manufacturing communities, Dayton Daily News journalist Steve Bennish has been witness, and documentarian to a very troubling phenomenon. Bennish has documented the struggle among a populace whose economic fortunes have turned once proud middle class factory workers into roving bands of scrap metal collectors in his book Scrappers: Dayton, Ohio and America Turn to Scrap.

Bennish's photography is powerful in that it poignantly captures the lives of forgotten Americans who have turned to scrapping metal to survive with dignity, humanity and grace while conveying the serious human catastrophe that the offshoring of American manufacturing has wrought to communities like his.

Scrappers is among the most important books of our still young decade.

The book is available for purchase at: http://www.blurb.com/b/4136540-scrappers

Other reviews:

"It is a sobering, disgusting, gut-wrenching thing to see – the photographic documentation of the rendering of our middle-class manufacturing base to scavengers. It’s not easy to look at. And you should buy this book."

- A.J. Sweatt, management consultant, A.J. Sweatt Logic and Communications, Atlanta, Georgia.


"An illuminating look at the decline of the American manufacturing belt and how desperate citizens are cannibalizing their future just to feed their families."

- Marty Steffens, Society of American Business Editors and Writers endowed chair, University of Missouri-Columbia

[SharonAnn]

1. Sad. I used to live in Dayton, Ohio. It was really a manufacturing town.

6 GM Plants, 2 Ford operations and 1 Chrysler.
National Cash Register
Mead paper
Lots of foundries,
etc.

I sure I forgot some other big manufacturers.

Also, tech companies such as NCR, Lexis-Nexis, Standard Register, Reynolds & Reynolds, etc.

[votesparks]

6. Here's who is gone

GM
Ford
NCR
Frigidaire
Dayton Tire
I could go on and on.

The GM plant on Needmore Road is being replaced by a Racino, a racetrack/casino. Just what poor people need: a chance to be economically exploited by casino owners. And that project was supported by local DINOS.

[Plucketeer]

2. Metal scrapping is a big pursuit

here in California's central valley. And not just metal scrapping - cardboard, paper anything with some degree of recycle value. This is what NAFTA, CAFTA, SHAFTA and all the other "benefical" trade agreements have wrought. We're number one!

[libodem]

3. Ouch

That hurt. I must be a vampire because that was like a stake through the heart and that interview just killed me. I wish I could send that book to everyone I know for Christmas. Yes, to kill all my friends and family with truth. The truth hurts. Ouch!

[votesparks]

4. The book is excellent

the photography is something any art lover would be thrilled with, and Bennish's regular guy humanity is what really makes it shine as an important piece of work. Yes, it hurts, but the greatest pieces of journalism and art often do.

[libodem]

5. Absolutely

I'm bookmarking just in case I can afford gifts and for my own birthday. Very important work. Savagely important.

[votesparks]

7. This should be the gift

that you give to your conservative friends and/or relatives this year.

[pam4water]

8. +1 :)

[pam4water]

9. Dang I can't find it. I was readying a puff piece about how Dayton was one of the US's most

affordable cities, a couple of days ago. I think the median house price was down near $47K. The mayor said it was an up and coming tech center.

[votesparks]

10. Yeah

you can buy a house for under 10k (many times under 5k). Most have been stripped of metal though.

It's a phenomenon across the Midwest. Detroit is just not Detroit.

[pam4water]

11. Watches the Cleveland We're note Detroit Video Again.

Wonders if Obama will ever get off his ass and do something.

[jtuck004]

12. That's just not fair..

"Wonders if Obama will ever get off his ass and do something. " How can you say this? He appointed a guy who is sending $85 billion a month to banks so they can store it in the Fed and collect interest and pay themselves handsomely. That's not nothing.

Oh wait, you meant about good-paying jobs and maybe telling people we have to quit financing our lifestyle and paying the bankers to do it.

Sorry, my bad.

[jtuck004]

13. Interesting. But when people talk about rebuilding our manufacturing base, I'm not sure they get it.

What we are seeing scraps of doesn't exist anymore. Those factories that employed tens of thousands of people have been replaced by factories who only employ a few thousand and a whole bunch of modern equipment. The phones are built with workers who, after getting a college degree, make $22 a day. The drugs we pay so much for are nearly all automated, except for the part where people who have gone to school for 6 years are working on designing new ones.
The people with skills in programming and system design are doing well, those who don't have skills aren't.

He would be more correct to tell us we need to build what manufacturing will be in our lifetime, in our future. Which means somehow paying several trillion dollars to re-train tens of millions of adults for 3 to 6 years, in a completely re-designed adult format (not education, which is something different), along with tens of trillions to rebuild our factories and infrastructure, get fiber to EVERYONE's home, and have them be able to work in this century.

The alternative is failure, because that past everyone here is looking at is gone, and the rest of the world has moved on. If we try to "re-build" what we had, they will continue to outdo us at every turn, while we continue, as we are, to spend and lose the wealthy we have, slowly but surely replacing it with debt, until that crashes around us.

But people really hate facing reality. Too bad, because it is going to hurt them.