Hillbilly Elegy

migrants themselves. For example,
Inland Container, in Middletown, had
220 Kentuckyians on its payroll, 117 of
whom were from Wolfe County alone.”
While labor relations no doubt had
declined by the 1980s, much of the
goodwill built by Armco (and similar
companies) remained.
The other reason most still call it
Armco is that Kawasaki was a Japanese
company, and in a town full of World
War II vets and their families, you’d
have thought that General Tojo himself
had decided to set up shop in southwest
Ohio when the merger was announced.
The opposition was mostly a bunch of
noise. Even Papaw—who once