Cleveland — Start with this: When you call us the Rust Belt, you demean our work and diminish who we are.

To create wealth in America, we make it, we grow it or we mine it. In the industrial Midwest, we do all three. Ohio has the largest manufacturing work force in the country aside from California (which has three times our population) and Texas (more than twice our size). And we make things with dignity.

Many years ago, as a state representative, I spent countless hours at United Steelworkers Local 169 in Mansfield, a small industrial city north of Columbus. I would listen to workers who stopped in at the hall before or after their shifts. I learned how they made steel and how they built cars. I learned that strikes are always an act of back-against-the-wall desperation because workers never make up for the wages lost, no matter how good the new contract is or how briefly they are on the picket line.

They worked hard. Most gladly accepted six-day workweeks because of the overtime pay. Most of these workers, especially those lucky enough to carry a union card, had a shot at upward mobility. They owned modest houses, they could buy new cars every four or five years, and they could send their children to the local Ohio State campus or to North Central Technical College.