[Excerpt]The American steel industry is dying. 150,000 steelworkers are laid off, and thousands of them will never work in steel again. The steel companies will report losses of some $2 billion for 1982, and Wall Street analysts predict— advocate—that as much as 20 per cent of the industry's primary capacity will be eliminated. The loss of steel jobs threatens more than a dozen local and regional economies with decades of Depression-like conditions. And the worst is not likely to be over soon. Even though most people recognize that the primary cause of this situation is the misguided and mean-spirited policies of the Reagan administration, public opinion seems to have accepted a simple logic: If the industry is in such trouble, steelworkers should help it by granting concessions on wages and work rules.