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CORAOPOLIS, Pennsylvania -- Ed Bigley, the business manager for the Pittsburgh Plumbers Union Local 27, says the organization has been serving the region since the dawn of the industrial revolution in the 1870s, when it came under the umbrella of the Knights of Labor.

By July of 1890, it had formed its own stand-alone union, even holding its first convention in the city, with the Pittsburgh Post reporting the event had a "sumptuous banquet" for the visiting delegates of plumbers from across the country as the 100 members of the new union marched into the room "to the pleasing strains of the Royal Italian orchestra."

The union president then, J. Counan, gave brief remarks about the importance of the plumbers' trade not just to the development of businesses but also to the overall health of the people who live and work in the city.

Counan also stressed the importance of carrying on the trade for the next generation.

Bigley said for about 100 years after that fortuitous speech reference, young men and women either in high school or fresh out of high school who were good at math and problem-solving, and who didn't mind getting their hands dirty, filled high school "shop" classrooms or post-graduation trade schools and became plumbers after finishing their apprenticeship.

"It was a career that propelled generations of young people into the American dream of owning a home while working your way up the ladder to be part of one of the most vital trades in our country," Bigley said.

That all started to change in the 1980s when high school counselors developed a mindset that looked at students who could solve a Rubik's Cube and decided they weren't destined for a life in trades and pushed them toward college instead.

Even if that narrative is somewhat oversimplified, it serves as an instructive demonstration of teachers and counselors who assumed that analytical and problem-solving skills belong only in the college classroom. In truth, those skills are just as applicable for solving a complex geometric plumbing system in a state-of-the-art hospital.

In response to the new higher education focus, shop classes emptied, and oftentimes the trade classes within a school district were sent off to separate buildings miles away from their classmates. Thus, the students who were interested in the trades were not learning them side by side with the students who were in AP history or chemistry classes.

Bigley said it makes those students "feel less than the kids taking AP classes," adding that it also "took them away from being with their fellow classmates in their home schools for activities and just the whole high school experience."

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