From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield. The so-called Monongahillam

miracle that built a health care economy in the ruins of big steel was built on the backs of the

vulnerable. I mean, the absolute first thing you have to say is it was hot. One of the guys came up

and took his goggles off and his skin came off with it because it was so hot.

The men and women in these industries built the most powerful union of all time.

Come to go to jobs, he was deeper separated.

Whites went to the good jobs, blacks went to the law's class jobs.

People were collectively essential and individually disposable.

This is called the free market, and it's what gives our children and their children an economic

future. Whether they were nurses or kitchen employees, these hospital workers used to be encouraged

to think of themselves as dedicated angels of mercy, and angels don't worry about money.

How Pittsburgh reveals the broken promises that drive our economy.

Coming up after this.

From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media.

I'm Bob Garfield.

You can't not start with the tallest building in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the old headquarters for United States Steel.

It's a black monolith, symbol and fortress of industrial power, soaring in the now pristine Pittsburgh sky above the confluence of three mighty rivers.

But its vista has changed.

Gone is the golden sulfurous haze, gone are the belching smokestacks, blazing furnaces,

and slag-lined river valleys snaking along the Appalachian foothills.

The industry that sustained a region,

girded the world's infrastructure,

...