Photo by Kristine Larsen
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A Tale of Two Cities
By Barry Yeoman and Pat Walters, January 2009
When factories close and jobs disappear, there's a ripple effect—from the individual to the family, to the community, and, finally, to the whole country
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These are the stories of just two places, one rural and one urban, that have endured several plant shutdowns. America has many places like these, each with a story of its own.
Hometown, Pennsylvania, lies at the center of a region that once supplied much of the coal for busy factories during the dawning of the American industrial revolution. When the anthracite industry faded, factories came in and kept the area's economic engines running. Then they left, too.
Flint, Michigan, was a bustling city where 200,000 people shopped, worked, and thrived as its enormous automobile factories ran full-throttle. But over the past 30 years the factories have been closing, one by one. As the jobs left, so did the people, until the city's population had shrunk by almost half.
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Visit with residents of Hometown, including Robert Dunn (above), owner of the Hometown Farmers Market
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Photo by Ed Kashi
Hometown, Pennsylvania, a village of 1,400 people, is leafy and tranquil, with midcentury homes and a firehouse that used to host children's Halloween parties. There's a sprawling flea market on Wednesdays. Next to that, an asphalt driveway leads to the abandoned J. E. Morgan Knitting Mills plant. The factory employed 1,200 people in its heyday, when it produced most of the nation's thermal underwear. It provided jobs at a time when industries such as coal, steel, and explosives were waning. "I don't think anybody got rich working at Morgan's," says the Reverend Fred Crawford III, a local Lutheran minister. "But it was steady, and it was a livable wage."
Then, in 1999, Sara Lee bought Morgan Mills and continued producing long underwear. The new owner told workers their jobs were safe—but within a year the plant started shifting some of its production to El Salvador and Honduras. Employees who had envisioned one day retiring from Morgan Mills instead found themselves called into the cafeteria, shift by shift, to receive news of their layoffs. In 2003 Sara Lee sent the remaining 460 production workers on their way. It was the final blow.
For Remel Durilla, 60, who had worked in Morgan Mills' sewing department since she was 19, it was unfortunate timing. Her husband, George, had recently died, and her adolescent son was still living at home. "I had all this responsibility, and where was I going to get the money?" she asks. She couldn't afford to return to school, even with government help. "The numbers didn't add up," she says. Durilla eventually found a job at a Walmart 30 minutes away, unloading trucks and stocking shelves during the midnight shift. She worked a second full-time job at a liquid-soap factory, where she inspected bottles. When her son moved away from Hometown, so did she.
Part-time jobs, lower wages, midnight shifts, longer commutes—this is the new norm in places like Hometown. And it's not just workers who suffer. Even those who have never set foot in the Morgan Mills plant feel the pinch. Hometown residents are paying higher utility taxes, for instance, since the factory closed, because there aren't as many people left to support the area's infrastructure. This puts a strain on neighbors living on fixed incomes. Local businesses are struggling. For many older residents, though, the hardest change has been watching their children move away in search of career opportunities.
Two miles downhill from Hometown is the former coal town of Tamaqua, which in 1960 had 10,200 residents. Today 6,700 live there. Many young people leave after graduation. "I believe my son will end up in the same situation," says Stan Huegel, 50, a former Morgan Mills supervisor who now works at a sportswear manufacturing plant an hour from his home. "He'll go to college in two years. I don't see him coming back."
Mary Louise Zimmerman moved to Hometown in 1972. She's watched what happens when a generation leaves. "The support systems that were here because of the plant, because of opportunities—they're gone now," says Zimmerman, 63. "People who depended on a daughter, a son, they don't have them anymore, because there's nothing to keep them here. In addition to losing their income, their insurance, they've lost their family—a far greater loss than you can even account for." —Barry Yeoman
Flint, Michigan, was once America's most iconic car town. General Motors was born there in 1908, and the United Auto Workers (UAW) took root there 30 years later. As the auto industry flourished, the city's population ballooned. New shops opened downtown. People built houses and bought shiny new cars. At the end of the 1970s GM employed more than 60,000 people in Flint.
Now, though, remains of a massive automotive-parts factory lie scattered across a concrete lot near downtown. Heaps of rubble cover the former site of Delphi Corporation's Flint East plant. Until it filed for bankruptcy in 2005, the GM spinoff was the top parts supplier in North America, and the Flint plant bustled with thousands of workers. Dozens of city blocks, once home to prosperous automobile plants, look similarly desolate.
In the 1980s and '90s tens of thousands of Flint autoworkers lost their jobs as GM struggled against foreign competition. Whole complexes of plants closed. The city shrank drastically as unemployed workers left to find jobs elsewhere. People abandoned their homes. Violent crime skyrocketed. Today the city has about 6,000 GM jobs, one tenth of what it once had. "It's a classic boomtown gone bust," says Flint native Kristin Dziczek, senior project manager for the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Because domestic auto manufacturers hired few workers in the past 20 years, their workforce has aged, thus giving the UAW the opportunity to avoid layoffs by negotiating incentives for older workers to retire early. In July, Earl James, 51, was given a $45,000 buyout to retire when GM eliminated 300 jobs at Flint Powertrain North. His wife, Diane, 52, who also works at GM, hopes to stay at Powertrain North until it closes next year. The couple's two daughters are teenagers, and Diane is trying to save for their college educations.
The city the Jameses both grew up in now barely resembles the one they knew in the '60s and '70s. Diane remembers taking the bus downtown to visit shops that sold almost anything you could imagine. She'd often walk to the movie theater just a few blocks from her house. Today, it's difficult to pick out the open businesses among all those with boards over their doors and windows. And Diane says the streets are too dangerous to let her children walk alone.
Apart from the fast-food joints, the restaurants in Flint look rundown and, for the most part, empty. The city has fewer bars than it once did, and most seem oversize, stools outnumbering patrons, even on Friday and Saturday nights. Used-car lots are plentiful; Flint's residents love cars, but these days few can afford new ones. One such business occupies an abandoned firehouse, a victim of municipal downsizing. The mayor recently laid off dozens of police officers, and the schools cut more than 200 teachers and administrators. "We have a city that has infrastructure for 200,000 people," says City Council President Jim Ananich. "Now we have 100,000. You can't sustain a city that's twice as big as it needs to be."
Diane works on the north side of town, not far from her old neighborhood. "Two or three times a year I ride down the street I grew up on," she says. "The houses are boarded up. It makes me sad. They look terrible." Flint has been trying to reinvent itself, boasting new jobs in health care and education. Regardless, Diane has trouble imagining a future there for her daughters. "There's nothing here," she says. "I don't see my girls coming back to Flint." —Pat Walters
Barry Yeoman, based in North Carolina, is a contributing editor. His article "When Wounded Vets Come Home" appeared in the July & August 2008 issue.
Pat Walters is earning his master's degree in creative nonfiction at the University of Memphis.
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