As my wife and I crawled though bumper to bumper traffic on I-78 near Bethlehem, Pennsylvania a few weeks ago, I noticed a series of flashy billboards for an enormous new casino. Apparently, it had been built on the very site of Bethlehem Steel’s major American plant. A casino where Bethlehem Steel stood? Really?

At one point in the 1950’s, the Bethlehem Steel Corporation produced 23 million tons of steel each year, employing over 150,000 people. Bethlehem Steel’s products were used to build the George Washington Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Empire State Building and the Hoover Dam, not to mention rebuilding post-war Germany and Japan. But as Europe and Asia recovered from the destruction of the war, they began to compete instead of import. American manufacturing fell behind and mills began to close. In 2001, Bethlehem Steel filed for bankruptcy.