Ask laid-off workers what is to blame for the woes, and they point to imports, low wages in China, the strong dollar, production moving overseas, President Bill Clinton for embracing the North American Free Trade Agreement and President Bush for focusing only recently on the crisis.

Robert White, a laid-off steelworker who voted for Mr. Bush three years ago, said: "He's slowly getting his eyes awakened to what's going on. The air has been going out of the balloon for a long time, and he's trying to stop it. But the air is almost out of the balloon."

In the last three years, Stark County, which includes Canton, has lost 3,500 factory jobs, more than 10 percent of the total. Two years ago in Massillon, just west of Canton, the lone rubber glove factory in the nation shut, moving production to Malaysia and India and throwing 200 people out of work. Last year, Hess Management of Austin, Tex., shut the Danner Press printing plant, costing 325 workers their jobs, and 700 steelworkers at Republic Technologies on the east end of town lost their jobs when Republic filed for bankruptcy.

This year, an automobile parts company laid off 150 workers, and Hoover, a division of Maytag, 200. Last week, the largest employer in the region, Timken, warned 1,300 workers at three ball-bearing plants here that their jobs were in danger unless costs were reduced.

"If you draw a line across the top third of this state, the manufacturing part of the state, you see a lot of pain, anger and frustration," said John Russo, director of labor studies at Youngstown State University.

Mr. Greathouse, a wiry, muscular man who went into factory work after dropping out of Kent State University, asked: "When you have C.E.O.'s who think of moving jobs offshore, what are you doing but terrorizing the people who lose their jobs? This is a form of terrorism, also. The country is getting weaker and weaker."