At the end of 1936, Mydans left the Resettlement Administration and began working for LIFE magazine. One of his early assignments took him to the steel mill at Weirton, West Virginia. Influenced by his time in the R.A., he concentrated on the workers' living conditions and their work practices.
During the early 1900s, Ernest Tener Weir built modern steel mills in the upper Ohio River valley between Ohio and West Virginia. A town was built above the valley. It depended solely on Ernest Tener Weir for electricity, water, gas, sewage, and paving. The town had no municipal government of its own and no police force or fire department, except the company's. In LIFE (Sept. 13, 1937) the caption that accompanies this photograph reads: Like most Weirton streets, Avenue B is not paved and its worker homes are little brightened by sooty shrubs and vines.
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