Will trying to replicate that long-ago period really restore Pennsylvania?
The governor and his allies hope their welcome to the natural gas industry will usher in a new Gilded Age, and bring what he called "former Pennsylvanians" home to live in a renewed commonwealth, drawn by lower business taxes and fewer restraints on industry.
As the gas-industry lawyers at my table could tell you, Republican Corbett and his Democratic predecessor, Ed Rendell, have done their best to accommodate the current natural gas boom by opposing a Texas-style gas-extraction tax.
The Republican legislature is also working to ease life for pipeline companies by suppressing local zoning powers, as The Inquirer's Craig McCoy and Joe Tanfani reported last week.
I'm all for cheap gas. But wells and pipelines won't be enough to restart the state economy, which relies too much on insular hospital, school, and tourism jobs and not enough on creative enterprise and big technology-based corporations.
As noted in a recent report by Wells Fargo & Co. - the cosponsor of a substantial pre-Pennsylvania Society dinner gathering at the Metropolitan Club - Pennsylvania's economic growth still lags the national average. Gas has attracted out-of-state drillers, construction workers, and truckers to rural counties. Marcellus Shale has boosted motel rates and helped farmers pay debts with gas royalties.
But it won't do much to change the long-term growth or employment picture, the report concludes, unless it attracts huge investments in gas-dependent industrial plants.
Iron and coal brought steel and railroads, which kept Pennsylvanians working for a century. What will the gas boom bring?
