April 3, 1992

THE career of the photographer Helen Levitt, whose work is featured in a retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is curiously bifurcated. After a period of brilliant achievement in the late 1930's and early 40's, Ms. Levitt stopped making photographs for 15 years while she worked as a film editor and camera operator. Although she returned briefly to photography in 1959, virtually all the photographs she took in the following two years were stolen, and she did not begin photographing again until the early 1970's. Thus, there is a lacuna of more than 25 years in her photographic work. Moreover, the pictures she made after her return to photography are in general less interesting than her early work. But those early photographs, made in the brief period between 1938 and roughly 1942, have long been recognized as a singular and wonderful achievement. Working with a 35-millimeter camera and a right-angle attachment that allowed her to photograph people without being noticed, Ms. Levitt produced an astonishing group of photographs of children at play in the streets of New York. Made with a perfectly limpid style, these pictures capture the anarchic energy and exuberant mix of fantasy and reality that the children bring to their enterprise.

On a recent trip to the USX Corporation's largest mill, in Gary, Ind., Thomas J. Usher unexpectedly strolled into the offices of the United Steelworkers local to listen to what union leaders might have on their minds about the mill. A visit by the president of the corporation's vast steel operation to a union office might seem like business as usual. But "it was very, very unusual," said Cary Kranz, president of the local. "Other heads of U.S. Steel would never have dreamed of being in the same room with the union people. He is bringing in a breath of fresh air." Mr. Kranz's testimony itself represents a significant shift in relations between management and labor at the nation's largest steel company, which had long been characterized by criticism -- not compliments. To many, Mr. Usher, 49 years old, represents a historic changing of the guard at Big Steel, replacing the autocratic managers that President Kennedy once referred to as "a bunch of S.O.B.'s." "Our long-term interests are exactly the same," Mr. Usher said recently in an interview at the company's headquarters here. "Whether you are a manager or a member of the union, everyone wants to do a good job, and they want to provide for their families. But I think there is a growing realization that we are not going to make it without the union and the union is not going to make it without us." That realization has led to a number of changes in the way the two sides treat each other and has helped forge a big comeback for America's largest steelmakers. Although the biggest steelmakers are losing money in this recession, there has been a marked improvement in efficiency and quality. For those reasons and others the Bush Administration decided not to extend limits on imported steel. But the task ahead for Mr. Usher, who took over the steel operation in 1990, is to find ways to cause the business to grow profitably and retain customers as well as find still more ways to make better steel more efficiently. At the U.S. Steel Group, USX's steel division and America's most efficient large steel producer, there are now regular meetings with managers and union officials that cover everything from retraining and environmental progress to health-care costs. And under Mr. Usher's guidance, groups of union workers and managers have started visiting customers to interview them about their products. Slowly, the carefully drawn line between management and labor, which existed for generations, is beginning to blur. 'A Different Breed' "He is an excellent manager, and he is a different type of manager from what we have seen before," said Paul T. Sullivan, executive director for purchasing and transportation at the Ford Motor Company, a large USX customer. "From my perspective, Tom Usher is an effective manager who seems to be totally committed to getting everyone involved in the process of quality. To me, he is a different breed of fellow." Many suggest that Mr. Usher's style reflects his exposure to foreign steel companies, particularly those in Japan and South Korea. Mr. Usher, who came to U.S. Steel in 1966 as an industrial engineer and has held numerous management positions in plants and headquarters ever since, has had his executive tenure shaped by the waves of joint ventures between USX and the Pohang Iron and Steel Company of South Korea and the Kobe Steel Company of Japan. "He has been more open with customers and employees," said John Jacobson, an analyst with AUS Consultants in Philadelphia. "He has managed in a short time to create a sense of team spirit there." Mr. Usher is unwilling to acknowledge that his management style has been heavily influenced by those partnerships. But he insists that there was a need to run matters differently. "Twenty years ago, there was very little that was ever expected of anyone who wasn't in management, particularly to come up with an idea," Mr. Usher said. "Everyone looked up to the oracle on high for all decisions." Indeed, the American steel industry has long been a symbol of rigid management. Like many in American industry, steel executives gave orders to managers, who in turn passed them along to foremen who barked them at workers. Today, steel managers are more likely to have committees made up of union members and executives to discuss quality, customer service or productivity. Executives often ask workers to help in devising methods to shave minutes from one process or another. "As a culture in this company, we have asked a lot of people's backs, but not enough of their minds," Mr. Usher said. Mr. Usher's climb up U.S. Steel's corporate ladder began after he earned an undergraduate degree in industrial engineering, a master's degree in operations research and a doctorate in systems engineering, all from the University of Pittsburgh. By 1975, he had become the assistant to the general superintendent of the company's large plant on the South Side of Chicago, which he recently decided to close. Mr. Usher went on to hold posts in strategic planning and research for the corporation and became vice president for engineering for the steel business in 1984. A year later, he was a senior vice president and five years later became president of the steel division, succeeding Thomas C. Graham, who retired last year at age 63. Mr. Graham, who came to USX in 1983 after a lengthy career at the former Jones & Laughlin Steel, saw the nation's largest steel producer through its toughest years. Although Mr. Graham is credited with investing huge sums in new equipment and forging important joint ventures with foreign steelmakers, he was nonetheless widely seen inside the company and by workers as having an autocratic style of management. Facing New Tests Mr. Usher's management will be put to the test in the coming years. He is leading the steel business at a time when manufacturers like auto makers are turning away from steel to substitute lighter materials. He also faces growing competition from nonunion, low-cost mini-mill steel producers like the Nucor Corporation, which make steel from scrap. Those companies have been more aggressive about taking market share from large steel companies. Also, there will be more stringent environmental regulations. Mr. Usher said his strategy in dealing with the mini-mills was to make flat-rolled steel -- the steel for cars and appliances and the bread and butter of his company -- as inexpensively and efficiently as he can. He said he would continue to have a presence in the export market, something historically uncommon for steel companies in the United States. "He has a lot of constituents he has to keep happy," Mr. Jacobson said. "The company has done a good job of cutting, but you can only go so far in cutting. You eventually have to address the issue of how to grow the business profitably and hang on to customers and to assure that steel is going to be desired by various industries." Mr. Jacobson added that Mr. Usher's big contribution to the company would have to be in "generating dialogue with customers and workers and management so that everyone is talking to each other." He said: "But that's something that will require a shift in that company's culture. It's too soon to say how well he is doing in establishing that, but he has made a good start."

In an attempt to evade a Federal court order protecting prisoners' rights, New York City jail supervisors and guards falsified records last year in at least 85 cases and in perhaps hundreds more to hide how long it took to provide inmates with proper housing, city investigators said yesterday. A report from the city's Department of Investigation says records were altered for 85 inmates who were placed in the Manhattan Detention Complex between Jan. 1 and March 17, 1991. But Susan E. Shepard, the Investigation Commissioner, said that in a review of 2,686 admissions, records in at least 571 other cases were inaccurate and may have been tampered with by the Correction Department, the agency that operates the jails.

Two H.I.V.-positive men turn potential tragedy into desperate, uproarious celebration. And it works, miraculously.

ONE of the great gifts of life in New York City is the ever-present possibility of glamour. Longtime New Yorkers may scoff because the city is not what it was, they say; but a scan of the literature suggests that all cities have always been busy not being what they once were, at least according to their denizens at the time. In any case, those of us who came here from large suburbs masquerading as cities can perhaps more readily see that in 1992 Manhattan, there are still plenty of glamorous thrills to be had, depending on how much time and money you want to spend: a glance at the Chrysler Building, a walk across Grand Central Terminal's now gloriously Kodak-signless concourse, shopping at Bergdorf Goodman, drinks at Bemelmans Bar, dinner at Bouley.