Hillbilly Elegy

organizations, and it helped to fund the
schools. And it employed thousands of
Middletonians who, like my grandfather,
earned a good wage despite a lack of
formal education.
Armco earned its reputation through
careful design. “Until the 1950s,” writes
Chad Berry in his book Southern
Migrants, Northern Exiles, “the ‘big
four’ employers of the Miami Valley
region—Procter and Gamble in
Cincinnati, Champion Paper and Fiber in
Hamilton, Armco Steel in Middletown,
and National Cash Register in Dayton—
had had serene labor relations, partly
because they... [hired] family and
friends of employees who were once