Glass Towns: Industry, Labor, and Political Economy in Appalachia, 1890s-1930s. By Ken Fones-Wolf University of Illinois Press, 2007. xxviii + 236 pp. Illustrations, tables, notes, index. Cloth, $65.00; paper, $25.00. ISBN: cloth, 0-252-03131-1; paper, 0-252-07371-7.
Reviewed by Howard R. Stanger
This multilayered book "is about . . . two processes-industry restructuring and the push for economic development in northern West Virginia between the 1880s and 1920s-and the ways they intertwined to transform the social relations of the region" (p. xviii). Ken Fones-Wolf studies the glassmaking and extractive industries and situates his analyses in the context of debates among economic geographers who have tried to understand the slow and uneven economic development in Appalachia (West Virginia, really), as well as in Jefferson Cowie's work on "capital moves" and deindustrialization. Fones-Wolf argues that previous historians have paid little attention to "the local complexity of industrial restructuring or the implications of the social processes for the uneven development of regional economies" (p. xxi). His local analyses are hashed out in case studies of three glassmaking towns near Wheeling: Moundsville (tableware), Clarksburg (window-glass), and Fairmont (bottles).
Fones-Wolf s arguments and analyses are enhanced by the richness of his sources. He draws heavily upon trade journals, union records, personal papers, state and federal reports on labor and industry, local newspapers and records, and census data. He shows great command over them and knits together an excellent work that melds business and labor history, economic geography, and political economy.
Until the 1820s, glass shops in the United States were small, and skilled European workers controlled the production process. Afterward, the industry split into three distinct branches (tableware, windows, and bottles), factories grew in size, and work tasks became subdivided. A supportive tariff and limited technological change minimized disruptions. A switch from wood to coal power shifted the geography of production from the rural Northeast to the Midwest and the Pittsburgh area. This was the first of a number of capital moves. In response, skilled workers organized into unions. Manufacturers still shared with them a "craftsman's ethos" rooted in similar occupational and ethnic experiences. Both supported the Republican Party's economic policies, which ensured industry stability, profitability, and high wages.
This "dual monopoly," however, was threatened by restructuring in the 1890s-the focus of the book-when glass manufacturers again picked up stakes and moved to Indiana, Ohio, and West Virginia to exploit cheap natural gas and to adopt continuous processing technologies to increase output. A new breed of owners emerged at this time. Not part of the craft fraternity, they sought to control the industry via trusts, pools, and other combinations, and they brokered fragile truces with unions.
The three case studies provide the rich details of this larger story and serve as the heart of the book. In Moundsville, tableware dominated glass manufacture. In 1891, the large Fostoria Glass Company arrived and initially engaged in constructive labor relations with the flintglass union. Technological and organizational changes, however, gave the company greater power. Moreover, the company also exploited divisions within labor's ranks that weakened the exclusionary union. Despite wresting control from labor, employers and local boosters failed at economic development owing to the lack of flat land for manufacturing plants, a small population base, a lack of capital, and sporadic labor militancy.
By contrast, Clarksburg's French and Belgian skilled tradesmen created a "craftsman's paradise," establishing worker-owned windowglass companies and extending influence over community politics and social life. But various factors undercut union power. World War I left vacationing Belgian workers stranded in their homeland and killed off support for socialist politics. Large outside manufacturers, notably Pittsburgh Plate Glass and Libbey-Owens-Ford, introduced new technologies that virtually eliminated local competition, skilled workers, and their union. By 1920, ninety-five percent of Clarksburg's glassworkers labored inside large factories that relied on less skilled workers.
In between Moundsville and Clarksburg lay Fairmont, a coal-rich town, and home of the Owens West Virginia Bottle Company, "one of the marvels of the glass world" (p. 146). Opened in 1910, this huge stateof-the-art complex drastically reduced the demand for large numbers of skilled western Europeans in favor of less skilled immigrant Italians, southern blacks, and local whites. Company owner, and former union activist, Michael Owens, refused to negotiate with the bottle-blowers union. Unlike workers in the other two towns, Fairmont's workers exhibited little political activism. With unions in eclipse, and the open shop in effect, powerful coal operators implemented their vision of economic development.
Organizational restructuring and technological change remade the world of the worker. The number of skilled jobs, traditionally held by highly mobile western Europeans-notably male French and Belgiansfell. Less skilled male immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, southern blacks, and native-born local males fifled the void. With the exception of tableware, the number of women and children workers fell considerably. Once considered the "labor aristocracy" in the United States, skilled workers suffered relative wage declines and the fracturing of their dense kin and ethnic networks. In response, they either moved or turned to politics- first to the Republican Party, and later to the Democratic and Socialist Parties when Republicans aligned themselves with business interests- and to worker-owned cooperatives that eventually succumbed to the larger, capital-intensive firms.
Industry restructuring in the 1890s coincided with the birth of a "development faith" in West Virginia. Entrepreneurs and politicians sought to exploit vast stores of natural resources. A diverse manufacturing base, they argued, would both consume natural resources and provide business opportunities for local merchants and real-estate developers. Glassmaking figured prominently in the plan. But local and state politics redirected the path of economic development. Fones-Wolf impressively sorts out the complex politics that included interand within-party conflicts. While both Democrats and Republicans valued railroads as an engine of economic growth, in other ways their visions diverged. For example, Democrats, supported mainly by the "Old Dominion" agrarians and outside coal interests, saw virtue in a low-wage, nonunion workforce; low taxes; and a limited tariff. Republicans advocated for a diversified economy, high tariffs, and tax reform to raise revenue for public services.
The New Deal gave workers renewed hope when liberal Democrats assumed power. Glass unions were resurrected, but as a result "the glass industry (began) yet another phase of restructuring, complicated by the presence of unionism that included unskilled and semiskilled workers. This time, work rules and labor costs would be a major factor in the relocation of the industry into new areas" (pp. 178, 180). In the end, the coal operators' vision of the political economy came to dominate. It was a Pyrrhic victory that elected officials and development specialists could learn from. When the coal industry collapsed in the 1950s, the absence of a vibrant, diversified manufacturing base left the state's economy a backwater. It's a depressing story in an otherwise fine book.
[Author Affiliation]
Howard R. Stanger is associate professor of labor and human resources in the Department of Management, Wehle School of Business, Canisius College. He is the author of articles on labor relations in the printing and newspaper industries, as well as articles on the history of the Larkin Company's (1875-1941) corporate culture, welfare capitaltem, and club-based marketing practices published in Business History Review, New York History, and Enterprise & Society. He is currently examining Larkin's industrial recreation practices and the company's failed attempt at retailing leading to its demise between 1918 and 1942.
