WHEN in 1939, boosters of Youngstown, Ohio, set out to promote their thriving industrial town far and wide, they created a fold-out packet of postcards that billed it as “The City of Steel Mills and Parks.” The accompanying text took particular pride that “strangers riding through Youngstown at night are startled and thrilled” by the spectacle of “flames suddenly leaping to the sky, throwing the outlines of the city into relief.” With miles of mills and “thousands of men turning out thousands of tons of steel,” they continued, “Youngstown is one of the great steel centers of the world.” After praising the commitment citizens had made to Youngstown, “link[ing] their future with that of the community,” the text goes on to make a surprising claim: “The history of Youngstown is really a continuation of the story of New England.”1
The region, it was said, was settled by pioneers “largely...