The Law of Unintended Consequences as Illustrated by the Story of U.S. Steel in Duluth

99 years ago this month U.S. Steel announced the building of a steel plant in Duluth. It was not just any old steel plant. According to the Duluth News Tribune is was going to be a "MONSTER PLANT IN DULUTH." Along with the plant came the promise of prosperity for this small town that was destined to become the largest inland port in the world. Or busiest. Or something like that.

That the Iron Range was rich with iron ore was unquestioned. Getting the ore to market was being handled by railroads to the port in Duluth, and by ore ships to Cleveland on Lake Erie and on to the steel plants in Pittsburgh that would produce the girders to construct skyscrapers in New York.

But Minnesota politicians wanted a bigger share of the mining profit pie and a steel plant here would be just the ticket. There would be still more Minnesota jobs and wealth. To achieve this they decided to incentivize the building of a steel plant within the state's borders. How did the politicians induce this investment? They passed legislation to heavily tax the ore being shipped out, with one caveat. Any company that builds a plant in Minnesota would be exempt from this tonnage tax.

U.S. Steel, the nation's largest steel producer, had little interest in paying the these newly imposed tonnage taxes and was thus coerced into opening a plant here on the shores of the St. Louis River in Duluth. The plant was begun in earnest two years later and produced its first steel six years later.

Duluth did indeed grow. With a population of 52,000 in 1900, the new jobs had the desired effect, doubling the size of the city by the end of the Roaring 20's. Northern Minnesota mines would go on to produce heroic quantities of ore that went into as much as 90 percent of our war arsenal during World War II, a major contribution that indeed helped us win the war for the Allies.

But like many things in life, be careful what you wish for.

There is a scene near the end of Charlie Wilson's War in which Gust (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) tells a parable to Congressman Wilson (Tom Hanks) about a boy who gets a horse as a birthday gift. It's a great story about the law of unintended consequences.

Gust Avrakotos: There's a little boy and on his 14th birthday he gets a horse... and everybody in the village says, "how wonderful. The boy got a horse" And the Zen master says, "we'll see." Two years later, the boy falls off the horse, breaks his leg, and everyone in the village says, "How terrible." And the Zen master says, "We'll see." Then, a war breaks out and all the young men have to go off and fight... except the boy can't because his leg's all messed up, and everybody in the village says, "How wonderful."

Charlie Wilson: Now the Zen master says, "We'll see."

In the film, the application pertained to the arming and training of the Mujahideen to defeat the Russians in the 1980s. This training and these self-same weapons would later be a thorn in our own sides, as history has born out. (You can read more about the law of unintended consequences here.)

Getting back to our story... That U.S. Steel plant did eventually leave town. Times changed. And a lot of people were left by the wayside, as well as a very large quantity of spillage, debris and other aftereffects of turning ore into steel were left in our river.

At the time, many of the toxins that industry left in the nation's waterways or landfills were quite acceptable, as in legal. But so was slavery legal at one time. If we've earned anything at all from the Dred Scott decision, legal does not make a thing right.

Cleaning up the mess left behind when the steel plant left has been more than a mess. It's been an expensive mess. This section of the St. Louis River is now a federal Superfund site listed on the Federal National Priorities List, and costing millions upon millions of dollars to clean up. [EdNote: U.S. Steel has assumed most of the financial burden for this cleanup and a critical infusion of federal Great Lakes Legacy Act funds are speeding up the cleanup of contaminated sediments in Spirit Lake.]

There's another negative side effect of this U.S. Steel story. Because of the expensive and disastrous outcome here, the pendulum has swung so far the other way that it may never be possible to create jobs through the mining of natural resources again, for fear of another Love Canal... or U.S. Steel Superfund mess.

What will happen next? As the Zen masters says, "We'll see."

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Impetus for this article came from a story at zenithcity.com and the One River, Many Stories project.

Charlie Wilson's War, Revisited

"Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity." ~Sigmund Freud

In the summer and fall of 2007 (was it really that long ago?) I read two really outstanding audio books, No Country For Old Men and Charlie Wilson's War, without knowing they were in the works as big Hollywood films that would reach the silver screen later that year. Both books were superb, and though the films had flaws, both are worth seeing in a big way. Last night I revisited the Mike Nichols film adaptation of Charlie Wilson's War, starring Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Philip Seymour Hoffman... and the now well-known but then virtual unknown Amy Adams (Junebug, Enchanted, Julie & Julia.)

I don't think this film is really about how a maverick congressman (Hanks) and a maverick CIA guy (Hoffman) teamed up to win the war in Afghanistan. That's the surface grid, but underneath this film is really a revision of the spin that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War and brought the Soviet empire to its knees.

In a world of much complexity, it is natural for people to seek clear, simple explanations for everything in order to give our beliefs a firmer footing. Black and white is easier than shades of grey. If we come up with pat answers, we do not have to think about a matter after that. So the masses tend to be attracted to pat answers.

For this reason, propaganda was born. Napoleon may have been the first to use journalists specifically for the purpose of winning the masses to a point of view, a method of interpreting the events going on during his rule and reign. In those days it was called Yellow Journalism. Later it was called propaganda, a word intended to convey something positive when popularized in the decades preceding its use by the Nazis.

Post WW2 the word we use is spin. Both our major parties excel at it. Hollywood is very skilled at it as well.

Here are a few thoughts I had as I finished the film again.

1. I think it has been a cornerstone of the Reagan Legacy that he singlehandedly brought down the Soviet Union and ended the Cold War. That interpretation of history is a form of mythology. Charlie Wilson's War is but one back story which has come to prominence through a book and film, but there are many variables way beyond what our imaginations can conceive that had a bearing on how events unfolded. An argument might even be made that unions at the turn of the century helped force wages higher resulting in a stronger economy in this country leading to our not being vulnerable to Communist propaganda because of our strong middle class. Or that our geographical distance from World War 2 left our economy is less of a shambles and a much stronger nation that could outlast the grinding toll of a prolonged Cold War. In short, things are not so simply explained.

2. Corollary: the very same thing can be said about the enormous upswing in the stock market in the 90's. Clinton was president and spinners have made the case that he was the reason for this growth. The resilience of capitalism and economic actions of the Reagan administration have also been strutted to center stage as the impetus for this surge of investor confidence in the 90's. Or, it could be that a lot of Boomers were finally starting to make some serious money and sacking it away for retirement. In short, the truth is probably murkier than the explanations.

3. Corollary 2: The collapse of the economy in 2008 led to a new round exegesis regarding what went wrong and who caused it. The housing collapse, the credit crunch, the whole nine yards has been shovelled into wagon loads of blame. As with Charlie Wilson's War, there are probably back stories that won't see the light of day till many of us have passed over to the other side.

I like the subtitle of George Crile's book: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times. Hyperbole? Probably not. What scares me is how much other stuff is going on in Washington by rogues and loose cannons and the party animals of both parties. What's really going on in D.C. today? Does anybody really know?

BRIAN WALKER INTERVIEW part 2 coming within the next few days.

Two Books, Two Movies

As far as I'm concerned, it was a pretty weak year for films. What I mean is that beginning with spring there were almost no compelling movies playing at the theaters till the very end of 2007. Pirates III with Johnny Depp got a nod from critics and fans as better than Pirates II, but it wasn't enough to make me want to give up an evening or afternoon. I have plenty else on my plate, thank you. I took a chance this fall on Across the Universe, which was entertaining. But for the most part, I did my movie watching at home.

On the other hand, I have read or listened to a lot of very good books this year. One way to get more reading time squeezed in to your life is to listen to books while you commute. Any good library will offer plenty of books on CD or tape for those so inclined. This has been a habit of mine for perhaps eight years now, listening to audio books and lectures.

To my surprise, two books that I found especially engaging in 2007 were made into movies that have been released here in mid-to-late December. The first, No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy; the second, Charlie Wilson's War, by George Crile. The full title of this latter book is, Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times.

Crile's book is a remarkable read. Purportedly the true story of how Congressman Charlie Wilson led the charge to fund the Afghan resistance, the book is both entertaining and disturbing. Well researched and detailed, it does not drag. The scary part for me, however, is that it proves what I have always said about our federal government: It is too big and out of control.

For this reason alone it is an important book. It shows how Washington works.... or doesn't. Or does in spite of itself in some ways.

Like many books interpreting history, it may be a little overboard in crediting Wilson with ending the cold war (almost single-handedly). But the proposition is intriguing and has at least some partial merit. What he accomplished was no less than astounding.

So when to my surprise I saw a trailer for Charlie Wilson's War coming to theaters, I was really looking forward to it, and hoping they did not botch the story. Just so you know, the film was a superb adaptation. Tom Hanks was good, of course, and Julia Roberts played her role well, but the screen play is what made it all work. It would have been so easy to have gotten lost in the details and to have made a lengthy, wearisome but "important" film. Instead it was a tight story with solid performances throughout. Kudos to director Mike Nichols (The Graduate, Catch-22) and a big round of applause for Philip Seymour Hoffman whose range of characterizations is astonishing. The contrast between Capote and Gust Avrokotos is remarkable.

The film had any number of places where it could have become derailed. Instead, Nichols maintained the discipline necessary to make this a highly entertaining and thought provoking experience.

I'll save my comments on No Country for another day.