Irons on Fones-Wolf, _Glass Towns: Industry, Labor, and Political Economy in Appalachia, 1890-1930s_

[eh.net-review at eh.net]

Published by EH.NET (October 2007)

Ken Fones-Wolf, _Glass Towns: Industry, Labor, and Political Economy 
in Appalachia, 1890-1930s_. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 
2007. xxviii + 236 pp. $25 (paperback), ISBN: 978-0-252-07371-7.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Janet Irons, Department of History, Political 
Science, and Economics, Lock Haven University.


It is unusual for an historian to give equal weight in the same book 
to two different topics: the micro-world of the transformation of the 
labor process on the one hand, and the macro-world of political 
economy on the other. Yet that is what Ken Fones-Wolf, professor of 
history at West Virginia University, accomplishes in his book _Glass 
Towns_. Using West Virginia as his setting, the author traces the 
rise and fall of what he calls the "development faith," a belief in 
the promise of a high-tariff, high-wage economy as a path to 
prosperity. Embraced by the party of Lincoln, this faith is 
contrasted with the low-wage, low-tax economic strategy pursued by 
West Virginia (and southern) Democrats during the period of 
industrialization. _Glass Towns_ chronicles the clash in these two 
economic visions when, at the end of the nineteenth century, 
communities in northern West Virginia recruited high-wage glass 
factories to their towns.

In contrast to West Virginia coal interests, who were absentee owners 
and had little commitment to local prosperity, local Republican 
political leaders in northern West Virginia counties sought 
industries whose profits would be recycled back into the community. 
Glass factories, protected from competition by a high tariff and run 
by highly paid craftsmen, fit the bill. Fones-Wolf draws on the 
recent insights of economic geographers to identify the motivation 
for the glass plants to relocate to these towns. The northern 
panhandle and the upper Monongahela valley had access to 
transportation, to skilled labor from nearby Pittsburgh, and most 
importantly, to pockets of natural gas which would prove ideal for 
powering glass factories.

The impact of the migration of Belgian and French-born glassworkers 
to these rural West Virginia communities is a story all by itself, 
and Fones-Wolf does not neglect the social and cultural implications 
of the glass industry's relocation there. But the author (and the 
reader of EH.Net) is more interested in chronicling how the promise 
of the development faith subsequently became undermined when the high 
wage structure of the glass industry was eroded by mechanization and 
deskilling. This change process, the most complex part of the book, 
is carefully traced by means of case studies in three glass towns: 
Moundsville, Clarksburg, and Fairmont. Each represented a different 
branch of the glass industry and in each case the way that the labor 
force was restructured by technology was different.

In the most disappointing outcome -- the glass bottle industry in 
Fairmont -- mechanization deskilled the labor force to such an extent 
that the craft workers left or accepted new positions in the plant, 
and the low-skilled workers who took jobs there did not earn wages 
above the average state wage level. Despite some initial progress in 
local economic development, firms from Ohio and Connecticut built 
large factories there and dominated the local economy, a cruel 
epitaph for a development faith whose promise was the local character 
of the industry. Not incidentally, it was also in Fairmont that the 
coal industry had the greatest political influence.

In the most successful town, Clarksburg, deskilling did not 
fundamentally undermine the need for the most skilled craft workers 
for at least a generation. The story of Clarksburg, especially, 
illustrates how aware the author is that this is not simply a story 
of Republican versus Democratic political economies. Belgian craft 
workers in this "craftsman's paradise" formed unions and cooperatives 
and developed a rich cultural and political presence which finally 
led to their breaking with the party of Lincoln and embracing 
Socialism or even Democracy. Workers thus became sometime allies, and 
sometime foes, to the two main political parties, contributing a 
third and complicating vision.

The structural underpinnings for a political economy based on high 
wages disappeared almost completely by the 1920s in all three 
communities, and the model for worker power which rose in the 
following decade was that of mass-production unionism linked to the 
Democratic Party, not skilled craft unions tied to a Republican 
political elite. As Fones-Wolf writes, the mass production workers in 
the 1930s "elbowed aside those skilled workers who had struck 
bargains with Republican politicians and employers who had tried to 
buy labor peace with sops to a skilled craft elite" (p. 176). 
Although the craft unions were pushed aside, it is nevertheless true 
that there was greater receptivity to unionism as a whole in towns 
like Clarksburg where craft unions had once flourished, than in 
Fairmont, where unionism in the glass industry had to wait until 
World War II.

_Glass Towns_ is a deft combination of astute analysis and incisive 
reporting. The author hews to the parameters of his topic, producing 
a thorough, carefully argued work. As I tried to determine what else 
I had read that explored experiments in high-wage economic 
development in similar depth, I was reminded of the book _Worked 
Over_, by Dimitra Doukas, about the town of Ilion, New York [1]. Like 
the glass towns of West Virginia, Ilion prospered because the high 
wages of craftsmen in the gun industry there were recycled in the 
community. This recycling of income was made possible by the town's 
geographical isolation. And like the glass towns, Ilion's prosperity 
was undermined by mechanization and deskilling, triggered by the sale 
of the gun factory to owners outside the community. Both of these 
works uncover something of a hidden history, suggesting that we are 
beginning to shift our emphasis in the way we describe the contours 
of economic change in the U.S. in the late nineteenth century.

A reading of _Glass Towns_ also provokes questions about its place in 
international debates about political economy. Here I was reminded of 
the classic work by Fernando Ortiz, _Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and 
Sugar_. "Tobacco has created a middle class," Ortiz wrote, while 
"sugar has created two extremes, slaves and masters, the proletariat 
and the rich." If coal was Appalachia's sugar, owned by outsiders, 
committed to keeping wages low, then glass towns had the potential to 
be Appalachia's tobacco-based communities, what Ortiz called "the 
abode of free men" [2].

For a generation, perhaps, the glass industry did produce a middle- 
class in these West Virginia towns. However, Fones-Wolf's conclusion 
emphasizes the failure of the development faith to take permanent 
root. In part this failure stemmed from a tragic coincidence of 
forces: since the glass industry was mechanizing even as it was 
migrating to the natural gas fields of West Virginia, the faith that 
glass would transform northern West Virginia may have been misplaced 
from the start. But one could also argue, and Fones-Wolf does, that 
the sheer size and weight of the coal and energy sector in West 
Virginia overwhelmed the possibility of a political economy, based on 
glass, that would support self-sustained development. It would be 
interesting to know how these conclusions compare with the outcome of 
similar contests in other parts of the world.

While it is of great value to search for a broader geographical 
framework within which to place the story Fones-Wolf has told, one 
need not go far to find meaning from _Glass Towns_. It is startling 
enough to learn that in a place with the historic reputation of West 
Virginia, the promise of self-sustaining development took root to the 
extent that it did.

References:

1. Dimitra Doukas, _Worked Over: The Corporate Sabotage of an 
American Community_ (Cornell University Press, 2003).

2. Fernando Ortiz, _Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar_ 
(originally published 1947, reprint, Duke University Press, 1995).


Janet Irons teaches labor history at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania.

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