scranton philadelphia industrial history twentieth century 1992

7/22/2019 Scranton Philadelphia Industrial History Twentieth Century 1992

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T H EPennsylvaniaMagazineO F H I S T O R Y A N D B I O G R A P H Y

Large Firms andIndustrial Restructuring:The Philadelphia Region1900-1980A T THE TURN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, Philadel-phia boosters proclaimed their city the world's workshop,a common boast of manufacturing centers yet one that onthis occasion involved minimal stretching of the truth. Philadelphialed the nation in textile production, ship and locom otive building, anda dozen other categories; it also contained firm s covering nearly nine-tenths of the Census Bureau's industrial classes, being the pivot around

which a regional production com plex had been articulated. R ecognizedby the Census as an "industrial district," the city and its seven adjacentPennsylvania and New Jersey counties had generated a propulsivemom entum that reached into virtually every cranny of the manufactur-ing system.1

This research was supported by grants from the Rutgers University Research Council and theNew Jersey Historical Commission. The author also had superior research assistance atthe Woodrow Wilson Center, Smithsonian Institution, provided by James Luko of GeorgeWashington University.1See U.S. Bureau of the Census,Indu strial Districts: 1905 Bulletin no. 101 (Washington,1909) .

T H E P E N N S Y L V A NI A M A G A Z I N E O F H I S T O R Y & B I O G R A P H YVol. CXVI, No. 4 (October 1992)


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1992 INDUSTRIAL RESTRUCTURING 4 2 1continued to send forth diverse goods that found their way into bothcoastal and international trade well before the flowering of internaltransport networks. Handling these commodities had the double effectof creating modest, if vulnerable, fortunes for city merchants andprized surpluses for outlying producers, both of which contributed tothe city's early reputation as a supply center for quality consumergoods. Whereas light-weight items long continued to be imported, theheavierstuff, especially furniture, soon was locally crafted. Further,processing the vast stocks of grain from rural districts pressed millerstoward mechanical innovation, notably the renowned Oliver Evans,whose continuous process model for grinding flour prefigured aspectsof what would later be known as the "American system" of massproduction.3

In the long run, however, it would not be Evans-style devicesthat would exemplify Philadelphia's approach to production. Instead,consistent with the custom work that made its furnishings desirable,the city would become a locus for batch and specialty manufacturingon a grand scale, not a site at which bulk outputs of staple productsformed the base for profits. By the 1830s and 1840s, textiles andmachinery had joined older craft trades as Philadelphia leaders, theformer meeting demand for styled fabrics and the latter respondingto the city's strategic spatial relations with the construction of thePennsylvania Railroad. Fancy goods and locomotives, machine toolsand carpets flowed from Philadelphia with apparent ease by mid-century. In 1860, the city featured as many textile workers as didfamed L owell and held the nation's most extensive network of "heavy"metalworking establishments.4The Civil War showed the capacity of Philadelphia institutions toadapt to the North's needs for munitions, uniforms, blankets, and

3 Diane Lindstrom, Econom ic Development of the Philadelphia Region 1810-1850 (NewYork, 1978); Thomas Doerflinger,A VigorousSpirit ojEnterprise (Chapel Hill, 1986); DavidHounshell, From the American System to M ass Production(Baltimore, 198 4); D onald Hok e,Ingenious Yankees(N ew York, 19 90) ; Thomas Cochran, Frontiers oj Change(Ne w York,1982) ; Bruce Laurie, Working People oj Philadelphia 1800-1850 (Philadelphia, 1980).4 Philip Scranton,ProprietaryCapitalism(Ne w York, 198 3); Matthew Gallman,M asteringWartime (New York, 1990); Historical and Comm ercial Philadelphia(New York, 18 93);TheBaldwin Locomotive Works(Philadelphia, 1 92 2); Da vid Tyler, The mericanClyde: A Historyoj Iron and Steel Shipbuilding on the Delaware from 1840 to World War I (Newark, 1958).


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4 2 2 PH ILIP SCRANTON Octoberwarships, as well as provisioning and transporting its forces. Thoughthe effects of the war's disruptions on economic development have notceased to be debated, the city's old links with southern trade andsentiment were indeed severed.5 Its future lay within the industrialcrescent from Boston through Cincinnati and Chicago, by meetingvaried demands for producer and consumer goods attuned to therequirements of transport and manufacture and the vagaries of style.As immigration surged, Philadelphia exercised a selective magnetismon skilled factory veterans who frequently arrived already alert to thescores of potential employers in dozens of sectors and often with theirown visions of proprietorship. Th is latter course was a rocky one du ringthe economic fluctuations over the quarter century after 1873, whenbooms and depressions followed one another at a chilling pace. Still,Philadelphia industry was schooled in variation and seasoned to risk.Its leadin g figures ha d crafted both specialty produ cts and a variegatedcollection of specialized institutions that circulated knowledge ormoney and served to reproduce or enhanc e skills. T h e F rank lin Insti-tute, the private textile school, design and business academies, theWharton School and public manual training high school, the down-town Bourse, Manufacturers' and Engineers' clubs, the CommercialMuseum, and at least a dozen banks and regional trade associationswere the offspring of local industrial interests, as were an array ofdurable, company-based apprenticeship programs.6

By 1900, manufacturing development had also vitalized most ofthe sm aller cities and towns in the counties adjacent to the m etropolis.Chief among these was Camden, New Jersey, situated directly acrossthe Delaware from Philadelphia's central business district. Camden'suncluttered waterfront drew investors who established the New YorkShipbuilding Company's sheds and ways there, adding dramaticallyto an industrial concentration that already sported the Campbell food

5 Gallman, Mastering Wartime chaps. 9-115 Stuart Bruchey, Enterprise(Cambridge, M A ,1990) , 254-59. The development of Southern cotton yarn spinning capacity after 1880 andits gradual upgrading toward finer counts and better quality goods restored the Philadelphiaindustrial link by 190 0. Southern mills supplied h uge volu mes of yarn to the city's expand inghosiery, lace, towel, and upholstery companies.6 Russell Weigley, ed.,Philadelphia: A 300-Year History (New York, 1982) , 428-36, 471-83 j Ho w ell Harris, "Getting It T ogether," in Sanford Jacoby, ed.,M asters to Managers( NewYork, 1991), 111-31.


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1992 INDUSTRIAL RESTRUCTURING 4 2 3plant and sundry textile mills, machine shops, and furniture work-rooms. At nearby Pennsylvania sites (Chester, Bristol, Norristown,Coatesville, Pottstown), similar clusters of works and mills took root,centered on textile or metalworking, most spectacularly in and aboutChester where by 1918 ships, weapons, locomotives, yarns, and fabricswere all produced.7The eight-county region, which reported 171,000 manufacturingworkers in 1870, accounted for 311,000 in the 1900 Census. Whilelarge enterprises had emerged, the importance of small operations tothe regional economy was indicated by the presence of 40,000 of thatyear's employees in shops with less than $5000 worth of output (13percent), a proportion matched only by New York among majorAmerican cities. As the Census did not thereafter include such tinyfirms, their later significance cannot be gauged. H owever, the 27 1,00 0workers numbered at bigger companies rose to 340,000 by 1909,swelled to 465,000 in the fevered 1919 boom, then slimmed to anaverage of 370,000 for most of the 1920s. The Great Depressionpushed 100,000 operatives into unemployment by 1933, but half ofthem were back at work two years later during the first wave ofrecovery. As with earlier conflicts, World W ar II demand drew indus-trial employment to new heights, passing a half million. Postwarrecessions made incursions into these totals, but by the early 1950s theaggregate figures looked terrific. With the Korean struggle in process,regional manufacturing employment reached its historic peak of626,000; and through 1970, the aggregates oscillated with the econ-omy, ranging from 533,000 to 583,000. Sadly, the next fifteen years,1970-85, were an unmitigated disaster. Over 180,000 jobs vanishedby 1985, when the eight-county industrial work force slipped below400,000 for the first time since the 1930s.8 The city proper fared

7 Textile entrepreneurs from Philadelphia and the close-to-hand Upland and Rockdaledistricts were early industrializes at Chester. They were in time joined by Baldwin's gradualrelocation of its traction plants to Eddystone (and siting of wartime gun and ammunitionworks there) and by the yards of what became Sun Shipbuilding. See Anthony Wallace,Rockdale (N ew York, 19 78 ); Philip Scranton and Walter L icht, Wo rk Sights: IndustrialPhiladelphia^ 1890-1950 (Philadelphia, 19 86 ); and New York Shipbuilding Corporation,Th eNew York Shipbuilding Corporation: A History and Record(New York, 1931) .

8 Glenn McLaughlin, Growth of mericanManufacturing Areas(Pittsburgh, 19 38 ); Sum-mers and Luce, Economic Development 17-18, 232-34.


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4 2 4 PHIL IP SCRANTON Octoberworse than its surroundings, suggesting that there are, at a minimum,three dimensions to an alyzing the dynamics of industrial restructuring:temporal, spatial, and sectoral characteristics. Regional aggregates hintonly at the temporal shifts and are opaque on the other counts. It ishoped that somewhat greater clarity can be achieved in this paper byblending analysis of cohorts of the region's largest firms with a narra-tive that reaches beyond them toward their less prominent brethrenand the wider business environment.9

Industrial Philadelphia was a city of specialists strongly concentratedin the textile, apparel, and metalworking trades, which together ac-counted for three-fifths of manufacturing employment in the earlytwentieth century. Three rosters of the largest regional firms (Tables1-6) show this sectoral dominance in the 1900s, 1920s, and 1930s andthe centrality of the city to the production system. Throughout thesefour decades, Philadelphia's share of metropolitan industrial employ-ment ranged from three-quarters to two-thirds of the area total, propor-tions closely matched by the top fifty group except during the GreatDepression. The gradual suburbanization of production, obvious atBoston or Pittsburgh (where only 27 percent of industrial jobs couldbe found in the core city in 1929), was much less pronounced in thePhiladelphia region before World War II. This differential can becredited to the spatial structure of the batch manufacturing format aswell as to the city's historical political geography.10Philadelphia's industrial neighborhoods, packed with mills andworkshops, and their sectoral diversity fostered networks of interdepen-dence at the local leve l that featured both informal and formal contactsamong firms making complex or seasonal goods, a pattern of "rela-

9 As Sanford Jacoby has recently outlined, accounts of significant change in the businesssystem generally follow one of three lines of explanation. The internalist approach stressesshirts in organizational and technological resources at the level of the firm, following the leadof Alfred Chandler. Th e environm ental argum ent focuses on contextual factors: labor supply,state-business relations, costs of capital, or structural changes in demand. The argument forcontingent factors stresses situational complexities and abjures social science-like searches foroverarching principles of development, instead seeking to document mid-range patternswithout a presumption of universality. This study is located in that third domain. See Jacoby,Masters to Managers introduction.

10 Summers and Luce, Economic Development 210; McLaughlin, Growth 129.


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1992 INDUSTRIAL RESTRUCTURING 4 2 5tional contracting" common in industrial districts possessing manyspecialized, partial process firms. Links between spinners, dyers, de-signers, and weaving and knitting enterprises were central to a dis-integratedformat for production, as were parallel connections betweenpattern-makers, alloy metal firms, foundries, machine shops, and ma-chinery builders. Peopled by thousands of homeowning skilled workersresiding near factory spaces that could be rented "with power," thesedistricts long proved ideal sites for locating new enterprises. Theywere more elaborate variations on the printing or apparel clusters ofManhattan, the jewelry nexus at Providence, or the furniture centersof Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Jamestown, New York. So long asdemand for final goods continued to be diverse and robust, and techni-cal innovation supported profitability, the spatial propinquity of spe-cialist firms could yield a collective prosperity. Their vitality into the1930s reinforced the city's leadership of regional manufacturing.11

At the same time, Philadelphia's industrial complexes continued tohave room for growth within the county boundaries, a consequence ofthe 1854 annexations that created a political unit embracing over 125square miles of territory. Just as Disston Saw had removed from itsoriginal location near the downtown to virgin terrain along the Dela-ware at Tacony in the late nineteenth century, so too could latermanufacturers expand by building new facilities beyond Frankford inthe northeast, above central north Philadelphia, or below the built-upareas of south and southwest Philadelphia, open sites that also wel-comed incoming branch plants of nationally prominent corporations(e.g ., General Electric). Thus, unlike Newark or Providence, Philadel-phia was long immune from witnessing the placement of most newregional factories beyond its political boundaries in separate jurisdic-tions.12

11 Oliver Williamson, TheEconomic Institutionsof Cap italism(N ew Y ork, 198 5)} M etropoli-tan Survey of New York, The Printing T rades(Ne w York, 192 5); H owell Harris, "LittleDrops of Water, Little Grains of Sand,"Technologyand Culture (forthcoming); Philip Scran-ton, "Diversity in Diversity," Business History Review 65 (1991) , 166-207.12 Harry Silcox, "Henry Disston's Model Industrial Community," Pennsylvania Magazineof History andBiography114 (1 99 0), 4 83-5 15; Floyd Parsons, ed.,New Je rsey: Life Industriesan dResources (Newark, 1928); Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Division of Industrialand Municipal Research, Industrial Survey of Metropolitan Providence(Providence, 1928 ).


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4 2 6 PHIL IP SCRANTON OctoberSectorally, the first two tables give a sense of the industrial scenein this century's first decade. O f the twenty firms with over a thousand

employees, thirteen operated in Philadelphia, including six of the topeight. At the peak of its prowess, Baldwin Locomotive headed the list,having moved far beyond its early links with eastern railways to supplyengines to the Santa Fe and carry on an extensive international trade,includ ing heralded exports to the previously impenetrable British mar-ket.13Un like Cramp's and N ew York Ship, which engaged in extensivecontracting for vessel components, Baldwin was nearly self-contained,working up the bulk of the thousands of parts that comprised itsinnovative Vauclain compound or Mallet locomotives. Midvale, Dob-son, Disston, and Stetson were similarly integrated, which accountsfor their huge work forces, yet none of them mass produced staplegoods of the sort that flowed from Pittsburgh steel or Fall River textilemills. Midvale focused on alloys and armor plate, using its extensivemachine shops to fashion armaments and ship engine crankshafts.Dobson spun and dyed most of its own yarns for the hundreds ofstyles it offered in carpets, suitings, and household fabrics, but like itsCivil War predecessors was able rapidly to shift into "governmentgoods" when preparedness again became the watchword. Even thoughHenry Disston's Sons made their own crucible steel and boughtapplewood by the carload for saw handles, each of their products wasthe result of skilled handwork and special orders were executed withprecision. Stetson covered the hatmaking process from pelts to boxes,but as well sent forth scores of styles that changed seasonally andsustained the company's reputation for fashion and quality. The biggestfirms,however atypical as to size, were thus perfectly consistent withthe regional prevalence of batch and specialty enterprise.14Custom and batch processing likewise pervades the rest of the roster.In leather, Philadelphia firms stood at the top end of the trade, tanningkid and glazed leathers for women's shoes and purses, bookbinding,and fancy work, in contrast to midwestern plants that worked heavyhides destined for men's work shoes, power belting, or butchers'

13 Charles Rous-Martin, "English and American Locomotive B uilding,"EngineeringMaga-zine 1 7( 18 99 ), 545 -61 . See also H. K eith Trask, "Latter-Day Developm ents of the AmericanLocomotive," Engineering Magazine 38 (1909-10) , 195-214, 342-60.14 Scranton and Licht, Work Sights;Philip Scranton, Figured Tapestry(New York, 198 9) .


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1992 INDUSTRIAL RESTRUCTURING 4 2 7aprons.15 Brill matched Baldwin's international reach in outfittingoverseas traction companies along with meeting domestic demand forstreet cars, while the Bromleys mirrored D obson's diversity in the thirdgeneration of their textile enterprises, adding upholsteries, curtains,and lace to their beginnings in carpets.16To be sure, a minority of theleading firms oriented their activities to bulk manufacturing (in steel,Lukens, Tidewater, Worth, and John Wood) or continuous flow pro-duction (Atlantic Refining and Sprekels Sugar), but overall 34 ofthese 50 firms lay outside the world of industrial throughput androutinization and employed five-sixths of the roster's total work force.Equally important, like the city's thousands of smaller companies, thevast majority of its great firms were locally owned and operated,partaking of a personal or proprietary managerial style quite distinctfrom the bureaucratic hierarchies pioneered by railroads and broughtinto m anufacturing circles by "modern business enterprises" like Stan-dard Oil or Du Pont.17 Both these features would alter during thenext quarter century.Sectorally, regional leaders occupied twelve of the Census's twentyStandard Industrial Classifications (Sector Classifications), with onlytwo sectors that commonly included very large firms being absent(chemicals and rubber).18As Table 2 illustrates, twenty-seven compa-

15 For more on the regional leather trades, see Yda Schreuder, "The Impact of LaborSegmentation on the Ethnic Division of Labor and the Immigrant Residential Community:Polish Leather Workers in Wilming ton, D elaware, in the Early Twen tieth Century,"Journalof HistoricalGeography16 (1 99 0), 402-24.

16 Both John Bromley and Sons and Lehigh Manufacturing in Table 1 were Bromleyfamily firms, as were several smaller firms. See Philip Scranton, "Build a Firm, StartAnother," Business History (UK), forthcoming.17 Alfred Chandler, The V isible Hand (Cambridge, MA, 1977). Chandler developed theconcept, "throughput," to indicate the achievement of economies of speed in production bymeans of both technical and organizational reductions in cyc le times for transforming materialsinto finished goods.18 In paper goods, the merger that created International Paper added one very largecompany to a trade chiefly composed of individual mills or smaller groupings. However, thediversity of paper product markets quickly exhausted the economies of scale that might havebeen imagined to derive from building immense plants. At least through World War I,International Paper was little more than a holding company for many average sized factoriesand had trouble achieving profitability, as a Bureau of Corporations inquiry showed. SeeInterview Summaries and Reports, Paper Trust Investigation, Bureau of Corporations, Rec-ords of the Bureau of Corporations and Federal Trade Commission, Record Group 122,National Archives, Boxes 817 and 818.


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428 PH ILIP SCRANTON Octobernies having two-thirds of the top fifty's employees stemmed fromtextiles, metalworking, and transportation equipment} and the groupas a whole represented one-fourth of the metropolitan work force, therest of whom (225,000 strong) were distributed among some 9,000other firms. Moreover, Philadelphia was plainly the industrial hub;72 percent of the largest firms and three-quarters of employees in thetop fifty were centered there.Despite two recessions (1907-08, 1913-14) and war era inflation,Philadelphia industries advanced on multiple fronts through 1920. Intextiles, th e techn ically sophisticated produ ction of silk full-fashionedhosiery and cotton lace pivoted nationally around the activities ofpioneering mills in Kensington and Frankford, and American Viscosesituated its first sizable rayon fiber pla nt at M arc us H oo k, n ear Che ster.Both Brown Instrument and Leeds and Northrup carved out durableterritories in scientific instruments, while General Electric and Wes-tinghouse invested in major facilities for heavy electrical and marineengine m anufacturing in south Philadelphia an d L ester, just southwestof the city limits. Baldwin, having outgrown its inner city shops, sunkmillions into a new factory complex at Eddystone, again near Chester,and, like Midvale, reaped millions in wartime contracts. The transat-lantic conflict kept existing Delaware River shipyards filled to capacitywith orders; it also spawned Stone and Webster's famous subsidiary,Am erican Interna tional Shipbuilding Corporation, for m as s produc-tion of vessels at Hog Island.19 Despite a series of confrontations withworkers an d the persistence of sweatshop subco ntracting in the ra gtr ad e, the regional industrial system seemed poised for exte nd ing itsachievements on all fronts.20

Instead, the 1920s roared only selectively among the divisions ofarea manufacturing. Two of the three most important sectors stagnatedor declined, while notable advances were made elsewhere. For differ-ent reasons, both shipbuilding and locomotive construction faltered.

19 Scranton, Figured Tapestryr; W .C. Mattox, Building the E mergency Fleet (Cleveland,1920); Westinghouse Marine Engineering Wo rks, Machinery25 (1918-19), 538-44,789-96; David Keller, StoneandWebster 1889-1989 (NewYork, 1989 ), 99-110; Scranton andLicht, Work Sights William Vogel,Jr. ,Precision Peoplean dProgress (Philadelphia, 1949).20 O n apparel trade conditions, see Elden LaMar, The Clothing Workersin Philadelphia(Philadelphia, 1940);andCommissiononIndustrial Relations,Final Document and Testimony(11 vols., Washington, 1916), 4:3003-3171.


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1992 INDUSTRIAL RESTRUCTURING 4 2 9Standard Two-Digit Census Industrial Classifications

Sector Industry Description20 Food and Kindred Products

Includes meat, dairy, grain, btkexy, sugar, packaged go od i, beverages.21 Tobacco Manufactures22 Textile Mill Products

All goods from yam , weaving and knitting mills, plus fabric finishing establishments.23 Apparel and Other Textile Products (includes Hats)24 Lumber and Wood Products25 Furniture and Fixtures26 Paper and Allied Products27 Printing and Publishing28 Chem icals and Allied Products

Includes phaimaceuticals, soap , paint, and plastic m aterials.29 Petroleum and Coal Products30 Rubber and Miscellaneous Plastic Products (fabricated)31 Leather and Leather Products32 Stone, Clay, and Glass Products33 Primary Metal Industries

Includes ferrous and noo-fcrroui, and foundry good s.34 Fabricated Metal ProductsIncludes tools , hardware, forgings, ordnance, cans, and plumbing good s.35 Machinery, Except ElectricalIncludes engin es, machinery for farms, construction, production, and mining, m achinetools,pumps, office machines, refrigeration, and sewing m achines.36 Electric and Electronic EquipmentIncludes distribution systems, industrial and household equipment, radio, TV, andcommunication dev ices, electronic components and parts.37 Transportation EquipmentIncludes motor vehicles, railway, ships, aircraft and space transportation, parts and

38 Instruments and Related ProductsIncludes engineering, sc ientific, optical, and medical instruments, photographicequipment, and clock s.

39 Miscellaneous Manufacturing IndustriesResidual, covering jewelry, toys, sporting good s, musical goods, office supplies, and artmaterials.

Source: Office of Management and Budget,Stand ard Indu strial ClassificationManual:1972(Washington, D.C., 1972) Division D: Manufacturing.


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43 PHILIP SCRANTON October

Table 1SO Largest Industrial Firms, Philadelphia Region, 1902-06Name Location* Products Employment Sector61. Baldwin Locomotive

2. William Cramp & Sons3. N . Y. Shipbuilding Co.4. Pencoyd Iron Works5. Midvale Steel Co.6. John & James Dobson7. Henry Disston & Sons8. John B . Stetson Co.9. Atlantic Refining Co.10.Phoenix Iron Co.11 .Robert Foederer

PHLPHLNJPA

PHLPHLPHLPHLPHLPA

PHL12.Am erican Cigar Co . PHL,NJ13.Southwark Mills14.J.C. Brill Co.15.Imperial Woolen C o.16.Neafie & Levy Ship Co.17.Eddystone Mfg. Co.18.Spreckels Sugar19.John Bromley & Son20. Keystone Watch Case Co.21. Hoopes & Townsend22.Camden Iron Works23.Joseph Campbell Co.24. Lukens Iron & Steel Co.25. Tidewater Steel Co.26. LehighMfg.Co.27.J.P. Mathieu & Co.28.Enterprise Mfg. Co.29.W illiam Sellers & Co.30 . S.B. Fleisher & Brother31. Bement Miles Co.32. James Dunlap Carpet Co.33. Laird, Schober & Co.34 .Hero Fruit Jar Co .35.Abr. Kirschbaum & Co .36.B rown, Aberle & Co.

PHLPHLPHLPHLPA

PHLPHLPHLPHLNJNJPAPAPHL

PHLPHLPHLPHLPHLPHLPHLPHLPHLPHL

LocomotivesShips/EnginesShipsStructural SteelArmor/Alloy SteelCarpets/WoolensSaws/Files/ToolsHats (felt & straw)Petroleum ProductsStructural SteelLeather (kid/glazed)CigarsCottons/WorstedsStreet carsWoolen Yarn/ClothShips/EnginesCotton PrintingSugar RefiningHousehold FabricsGold/Silver GoodsNuts/BoltsMachinery/PipeCanned FoodIron/Steel PlatesSteel PlatesLace/CurtainsLeather (kid/glazed)HardwareMachine ToolsWool/Worsted YarnMachine ToolsWool CarpetsStyled ShoesSheet Metal NoveltiesMen's ClothingSilk H osiery

11,0247,1004,0003,0003,0002,9332,4252,1502,0551,8091,7681,6731,4891,4701,3251,2401,2201,1901,1851,1471,1001,0101,000

980895867835800796750710705700700681680

373737343322342329343121223722372220223934352033332231343522352231342322


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99 INDUSTRIAL RESTRUCTURING 4Table 1-Cont inued37 . Jno. Bailey Co. PHL38 . FoUwel l Bros .& Co. PHL3 9 . Penn Iron Works PHL4 0 . W orth Bros .& Co . PA4 1 . Hoyle, Harrison&Kaye PHL4 2 . Teutclman Bros .&Faggen PHL4 3 . Henry Roelofs& Co. PHL4 4 . P i l l in g &Mad eley PHL4 5 . Samuel Fretz PHL4 6 . John W ood Bros . PA4 7 .E.T.Steel& Co . PA4 8 . W e l s b a c h L i g h t C o . NJ4 9 . Victor Talking MachineCo. NJ5 0 . M c N e e l yCo. PHL

Cordage 672 22Wool/Worsted Fabrics 670 22Engines/Machinery 648 35Steel Plate 624 33Upholstery/Fabrics 607 22Shirts 600 23Hats 600 23Seam less Hosiery 600 22Umbrellas 600 39Sheet Iron 600 33Worsted Yarns 600 22ClothGasMantles 600 22Phonographs/Parts 600 36Leather (kid) 599 31

Location: PHL-Philadelphia; PA-Pennsylvania Suburbs; NJ-Ncw Jersey.Standard Two-Digit Cent us Industrial Classifications (see table)Sources: CommonwealthofPennsylvania,Thirteenth nnualR eport of the FactoryInspector (Harrisburg, 1903);Industrial Directory of New Jersey(Trenton, 1906).

Table250 Largest Industrial Firms, Philadelphia Region, 1902-06EmploymentbySector and LocationSectorFoodsTobaccoTextilesApparelPetroleumLeatherPrimary MetalsFabricated MetalsMachineryElectrical GoodsTransport Equip.Miscellaneous

FirmsPHL11

12414143042

PA002000420000

NJ111000001110

EmploymentPHL1,1901,023

12,4834,0312,0553,9023,0005,0252,154

021,413

1,747

PA00

1,820000

3,0995,809

0000

NJ1,000

650600

00000

1,012600

4,0000

Total2,1901,673

14,9034,0312,0553,9026,099

10,8343,166

60025,413

1,747

ofTop 50

32

2052581441

332

Totals 37 8 6 58,023 10,728 7,862 76,413 99Percent of Top 50 Employment 76 14 10Top 50 Firms Percent of Total Regional Industrial Employment 24

Sources: Table1andCensus ofManufactures(1905);Philadelphia Industrial Districts(Washington, D.C ., 1909 ).


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43 PHILIP SCRANTON OctoberTable 3SO Largest Industrial Firms, Philadelphia Region, 1927-28

Name Loc. Products Employment Sector1. Baldwin Locomotive2. N.Y.Ship3. Victor Talking Machine Co.4. Atlantic Refining Co.5. Curtis Publishing Co.6. Edward Budd Mfg. Co.7. Viscose Co.8. John B . Stetson Co.9. Campbell Soup Co.10.Atwater Kent Mfg. W orks11.E lectric Storage Battery12.Collins & A ikman Co.13.General Electric Co.14.Westinghouse Electric Co.15. AberfoyleMfg.Co.16.Sun Shipbuilding C o.17.Bayuk Cigars, Inc.18.Henry Disston & Sons, Inc.19.Lukens Steel Co.20.M idvale Steel Co.21.Vacuum O il Co.22.Apex Hosiery23 .S.B.&B.W.Fle isher , Inc .24.J.G. Brill Co.25.Consolidated Cigar Co.26.B ulletin Co.27.Gotham Silk Hosiery Co.28.Phila. Storage Battery29.Congress Cigar Co.30.Philadelphia Inquirer31.Freihofer Baking Co.32 .Bethlehem Steel (Worth)33 .General Baking Co.34.Stephen Whitman & Son35 .John Bromley & Sons Inc.36.Laird, Schober & Co.

PANJNJ

PHLPHLPHLPA

PHLNJ

PHLPHLPHLPHLPAPAPA

PHLPHLPA

PHLNJ

PHLPHLPHLPHLPHLPHLPHLPHLPHLPHLPA

PHLPHLPHLPHL

LocomotivesShipsPhonographs/PartsGasoline, etc.PrintingAutomobile BodiesRayon YarnHats (felt & straw)Canned FoodRadios/Elec. ProductsElectrical SuppliesUpholstery FabricsElectrical SuppliesTurbines/PartsCotton Yarn/ ThreadShipsCigarsSaws/FilesIron/Steel PlatesIron/Steel ForgingsOil RefiningSilk H osieryWool/Worsted YarnsStreetcars/PartsCigarsDaily NewspapersSilk HosieryElectrical SuppliesCigarsDaily NewspapersBread/Bakery GoodsIron/Steel PlatesBread/Bakery GoodsBoxed CandyLace GoodsStyled Shoes

7,5237,5007,1005,9844,7354,6694,3354,0803,6003,2633,1673,0462,7622,4432,2432,1532,1462,1081,9331,8201,7951,7691,6541,6531,6091,5621,5121,4731,4481,4411,3811,3611,2891,2491,2441,228

373736292737222320363622363622372134333429222237212722362127203320202231


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99 INDUSTRIAL RESTRUCTURING 433Table 3--Continued37. James Lees & Sons38. Pheonix Iron Co.39. McClintock Marshall Co.40. DupontCo.41. H.C.AberleCo.42. Sun Oil Co.43. Triumph Hosiery Mills44. GHP Cigar Co.45.National Biscuit Co.46. Pennsylvania Sugar Co.47. David Lupton's Sons Co.

PAPAPA

PHLPHLPA

PHLPHLPHLPHLPHL

48. American Engineering Co . PHL49. WelsbachCo.SO.Abr. Kirschbaum Co.

NJPHL

Wool/Worsted YarnStructural MetalsStructural Iron/SteelPaints/VarnishesSilk HosieryGasoline, etc.Silk HosieryCigarsBakery ProductsSugar RefhingRoofers SuppliesMachinery/PartsGas Lamps/HeatersMen's Clothing

1,2141,2071,1671,1641,1561,1151,1131,0971,0931,0881,0431,0311,000

961

2234342822292221202034353423

Sources: Industrial Directory of New Jersey: 1927 (Trenton, 1928);SixthIndustrial Directory of Pennsylvania (Harrisburg, 1928).

Table 450 Largest Industrial Firms, Philadelphia Region , 1927-28Employment by Sector and LocationSectorFoodsTobaccoTextilesApparelPrintingChemicalsPetroleumLeatherPrimary MetalsFabricated MetalsMachineryElectricalTransport Equip.

FirmsPHL5472311102243

PA0030001022011

NJ1000001001011

EmploymentPHL6,100

6,30011,4945,0417,7381,1695,8941,288

02,6652,851

11,02513,845

PA 00

7,792000

1,1150

3,2942,374

02,4432,153

NJ3,60000000

1,79500

1,0000

7,1007 ^0 0

Total9,7006,300

19,2865,0417,7381,1698,8041,2883,2946,0392,851

20.56823,498

% ofTop 508517471813521821

Totals 35 10 5 75,410 19,171 20,99 5115 ,576Percent of Top 50 Employment 65% 17% 18%

Top 50 Firms Percent of Total Regional Industrial Employment 32%Source: Table 3.

100


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434 PHILIP SCRANTON OctoberTable5SO Largest Industrial Firms, Philadelphia Region, 1934-35

Name Loc. Products Employment Sector1. RCA Victor (VTM ach.)2. Atlantic Refining Co.3. Philco (Ph. Stor. Battery)4. Viscose Co.5. N.Y.Ship6. Edward Budd Mfg. Co.7. Curtis Publishing Co.8. John B . Stetson Co.9. John A. Roebling's Sons10. Bayuk Cigars, Inc.11. Ford Motor Co.12. Campbell Soup Co.13. Apex Hosiery Co.14. Electric Storage Battery15. Sun Oil Co.16. Westinghouse Electric Co.17. Lukens Steel Co.18. Continental Distilling19. James Lees & Sons Co.20. Sun Shipbuilding Co.21. Vacuum Oil Co.22. Bulletin Co.23.AberfoyleMfg.Co.24. Gotham Silk Hosiery Co.25. Henry Disston & Sons26. General Baking Co.27. S. Makransky & Sons28. Quaker Hosiery Co.29. Atwater Kent Mfg. Works30. American Tobacco Co.31. Freihofer Baking Co.32. Philadelphia Inquirer33. Consolidated Cigar Corp.34. General Electric Co .35. Kieckofer Container Co.36. Sinclair Refining Co.

NJPHLPHLPANJ

PHLPHLPHLNJPHLPANJ

PHLPHLPAPAPAPHLPAPANJ

PHLPA

PHLPHLPHLPHLPHLPHLPHLPHLPHLPHLPHLNJPA

Phonographs/RecordsGasoline, etc.Radios/PartsRayon Yarn/ThreadShipsAuto/Truck BodiesPeriodicalsHats (felt & straw)Wire/Wire RopeCigarsAuto PartsFood ProductsSilk HosieryElectric SuppliesGasoline, etc.Turbines/PartsIron/Steel PlatesWhiskey/LiquorsWool/Worsted YarnsShipsPetroleum ProductsNewspapersCotton Yarn/ThreadSilk HosierySaws/FilesBread/Bakery GoodsMen's ClothingSilk HosieryRadios/PartsCigarsBread/Bakery goodsNewspapersCigarsElectrical MachineryCorrugated BoxesGasoline

10,0005,8225,1784,0003,9153,5332,9842,9372,5812,4682,3212,2582,2092,1482,1462,1422,0511,8431,7511,6601,6331,5101,4911,4811,4171,4151,4071,2731,2111,1591,1271,1061,0861,0621,0201,010

362936223737272334213720223629363320223729272222342023223621202721362629


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1992 INDUSTRIAL RESTRUCTURING 435Table 5-Continucd37. Collins & Aikman Corp.38.Sharpe & Dohme, Inc.39. Phoenix Iron Co.40. Baldwin Locomotive41. Pennsylvania Sugar Co .42.Florence Pipe Foundry43.Surpass Leather Co.44. McClintock Marshall Corp.45. Congress Cigar Co.46.Congoleum Nairn, Inc.47 . Container Corp. of Amer.48. U.S. Pipe & Foundry49. Stephen Whitman & Son50.Charles Cochrane Co.Sources: Industrial Directory of New Jersey for 1934(Trenton, 1935);EighthIndustrial Directory of Pennsylvania (Harrisburg, 1935).

Table650Largest IndustrialFirms,PhiladelphiaRegion,1934 35EmploymentbySectorandLocation

PHLPHLPAPA

PHLNJ

PHLPANJPAPHLNJ

PHLPHL

Upholstery FabricsPharmaceuticalsIron/Steel PlatesLocomotivesSugar RefiningPipe/Hydrants, etc.Leather (Curried)Structural Iron/SteelCigarsLinoleum/Oil ClothCardboard/BoxesIron Pipe/CastingsBoxed CandyWool Carpets & Rugs

1,00199098398197195094292790086186 082582180 2

2228333720343134213926342022

SectorFoodsTobaccoTextilesApparelPaper GoodsPrintingChemicalsPetroleumLeatherPrimary M etalsFabricated MetalsElectricalTransport Equip.Miscellaneous

FirmsPHL PA53621311101410

00300002020130

NJ11001001003111

EmploymentPHL PA NJ6,1774,7138,1734,344

8605,600

9905,822

9420

1,4179,5993,533

0

00

7,2420000

3,1560

3,0340

2,1424,962

0

2,258900

00

1,02000

1,65300

4,35610,000

3,915861

Total8,4355,613

15,4154,3441,8805,600

99 010,611

9423,0345,773

21,74112,410

861

% ofTop 5096

164261

11136

2213

1Totals 29 12 9 52,170 21,397 24,963 97,64 9 101Percent of Top 50 Employment 53% 22% 25%

Top 50 Firms Percent of Total Regional Industrial Employment 31%Source: Table 5.


18/48

4365 PHILIP SCRANTONTable 7SO Largest Industrial Firms, Philadelphia R egion, 19S6

Name1. Philco Radio Corp.

2. BuddCo.3. Westinghouse Electric Co4. RCA5. Kaiser Metal Products6. Curtis Publishing Co .

7. U .S. Steel Corp.8. N.Y.Ship9. General Electric Co .10.Lukens Steel Co.11. Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton12.Campbell Soup Co.13.Sun Oil Co.14.Rohm & H ass Co.15.Atlantic Refining Co.16.Piasecki Helicopter Co.17.ITE Circuit Breaker Co.18.SK F Industries19 . Minn.-HoneyweU(Brown Instruments)20.Heintz Mfg. Co.21.Triangle Publications(Phila. Inquirer)22.Leeds & Northrup Co.23.Sun Shipbuilding Co.24.Firestone Tire & Rubber25.Bayuk Cigar Co.2 6 . Y a l e & T o w n e M f g . C o .27.Socony M obil Oil Co.28.MidvaleCo.29.Alan Wood Steel Co.30.Crown Cork & Seal

Loc. ProductsPHL Radios/PartsPAPHL Auto Bodies/RR Cars

. PA Electrical MachineryNJ Radios/PartsPA Aircraft/Parts

PHL PeriodicalsPAPA Steel Sheet & TubeNJ Ships/Repairs

PHL Electrical MachineryPA Iron/Steel PlatesPA LocomotivesNJ Food ProductsPA Gasoline

PHL Specialty ChemicalsPAPHL Gasoline, etc.PA Aircraft/Parts

PHL Electrical EquipmentPHL Bearings/PulleysPHL InstrumentationPHL Auto PartsPHL Newspapers, etc.PHL InstrumentationPA ShipsPA Tires

PHL CigarsPHL Electrical MachineryNJ Petroleum Refining

PHL Iron/Steel ForgingsPA Sheet Iron/SteelPHL Sheet Metal Goods

Employment11,7873.73515,52210,28410,569

8,000*6,8365,0881.1076,1956,1875,5505,2774,9164,8194,500*4,3422,0902.1114,2014,1664,0183,6753,2323,0883,0373,0363,0062,7632,7072,7042,6942,6502,5262,4052,376

Octc

Sector36

3736363727

333736333720292829373635383727383730213629343334


19/48

99 INDUSTRIAL RESTRUCTURING 437Tab le 7 -Con t in u ed3 1 . Ford Motor Co .3 2 . Scott Paper Co .3 3 . S.F. W hitman & Son3 4 . Link Belt Co .

35 . John B. Stetson Co .36. Bul let in Co.37. Merck & Co . , Inc.

PA Vehicles/PartsPA Paper Tiss ues , etc.PHL Bo xe d Candy

PHL Machinery/PartsPA

PHL HatsPHL NewspapersPHL PharmaceuticalsPA

38. Cu neo Eastern Press39 . Bethlehem Steel Co.4 0 . H. Daroff & So ns, Inc.4 1 . Radio Condenser Co .4 2 . Dis ston DivVH .K. Porter4 3 . Gulf Oil Co .4 4 . Standard Pressed Steel C o.4 5 . Tasty Baking Co .4 6 . Container Corp. of Am erica PHL Boxes/Cardboard4 7 . Sm ith, Klin e & French PHL Pharma ceuticals4 8 . Doehler-Jarvis Div/Nat'l. Lead PA4 9 . Am er. Ma chine & Metals PA5 0. Sinclair Refining PAest imatedSources: Fourteenth Industrial Directory of Pennsylvan ia (Harrisburg, 19 56) ;Industrial Directory of New Jersey for 1 956 (Trenton, 1957).

PHL Printed G oo dsPA Structural Ste el

PHL Men's ClothingNJ Electrical Supp lies

PHL SawsPHL Ga soline, etc.

Specialty H ardwareBaked Goods

PAPHL

Aluminum ProductsInstrumentationGasol ine, etc .

2 2912 2652 1911 168885

2 532 242 91 1967541 951 9481 8741 8511 8251 8221 7831 7281 6911 6561 5831 5511 5331 412

37635

378

734336349346834389


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4 3 8 PH ILIP SCRANTON OctoberT h e surfeit of ships laun che d d urin g the war, followed by scaled-downnavy construction during the era of partial disarmament, unsettled theshipbuilding trades. Though New York Ship stabilized as one of thenational Big T h re e (along with Fore River in M assachusetts andthe Newport News yards), Cramp's closed down, as did several otherDelaware River enterprises, until World War II brought a brief re-vival. Baldwin management erred doubly, expanding capacity at atime when shaky railroad finances thinned motive power equipmentorders, and retaining a commitment to refining steam traction, just asthe superiority of diesel and electric locomotives was being established.Ex perie ncin g setbacks in the 1920s, the com pany slipped into receiver-ship during the Depression and never recovered either its vauntedstatus or its technical momentum. In textiles, the inventory depressionof 1920-21 brought a seemingly permanent shift in market powerrelations that radically eroded profitability.21

Hence by the late 1920s, the big firm roster (Tables 3 and 4) showssubstantial effects of these shifting tides, as well over half of theoriginal group slipped from the rungs of regional leadership. Simpleinspection of the tables provides several clues to the pa ttern of chang e.Employment in the fifty largest companies in 1927-28 was more than50 percent higher than the comparable earlier figures, whereas theaggregate regional industrial work force had increased only 22 pe rcen t.Further, the smallest firm in the later group was half again as largeas in the century's first decade. Clearly, differential rates of expansionplayed a major role in the patter n of additions and de letions, a pheno m -enon to which sectoral limits to firm growth and larger vectors ofmarket and technological change both contributed.

T h e textile industry exemplifies on e dimension of this restructurin g.Of the fifteen 1902-06 textile com panies, eleven either con tracted orexpa nded insufficiently to hold the ir places (thou gh two of these wouldreappear on the Depression-era roster). Hoyle, Harrison and Kaye andthe great Dobson family firm had liquidated entirely, the latter's agingchieftain having failed to school an effective successor. The persistentmiseries of the woolen trades, which were bringing annual losses toNew England's giant American Woolen, had battered Folwell, which

21 David Palmer, "Organizing the Shipyards" (Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 1990);Scranton and Licht, Work Sights.


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1992 INDUSTRIAL RESTRUCTURING 4 3 9also buried its founder, and the stagnating market for seamless hosieryundercut Pilling and Madely's specialty. Even so, ten textile firmsqualified for the 1920s list, including seven arrivals. Gotham, Tri-umph, and Apex all shared in the full-fashioned silk hosiery boomthat enlivened the knitting business, while Viscose had become aleading creator of synthetic rayon yarns that fed a related vogue inwoven goods. The shift in the furniture trades toward fancy cottonupholstered seating (from wool mohairs and leather) brought richreturns for Collins and Aikman and yarn supplier Aberfoyle, whichalso provided fine counts for lace makers. At Norristown, L ees playeda role comparable to the city-based Fleisher mills in filling a segmentof national dem and for fine worsted suiting yarns.22Thus did turnoverat the top in textiles mirror the industry's wider trends, in whichtechnical innovation and materials substitution drove older and lessadroit companies to the wall and afforded fresh openings to accumula-tion for firms capable of aggressive adaptation.Seven of the 1902-06 top ten industrials reappear in Table 3, yetfour of them dropped well down in the standings. At Disston Saw,employment had fallen a third, while in steel both Midvale andPhoenix had made even more drastic cuts. Midvale's shrinkage isunderstandable in a period of slack military and shipbuilding demand,but the Phoenix slide, given its orientation to structural shapes, ispuzzling during one of the nation's great high-rise construction surges.The fourth, Brill, had expanded its work force about 15 percent, butlost rank due to the greater gains of other firms. The Americanwave of street railway system-building had ended, but equipmentreplacement and BrilPs international connections sustained it throughthe Depression. This cluster represented sectors whose growth surgeshad largely come in the decades after 1880 , whereas the new arrivals,both overall and in the top ten, figured heavily in more recent phasesof the Second Industrial Revolution.The chemical, electrical, and automotive industries reinforced themomentum initiated by metals and machinery manufacturing in thelate nineteenth century, and their regional penetration was substantialby the 1920s. Not only did Atlantic Refining soar from twenty-third

1Scranton, Figured Tapestry passim.


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4 4 0 PH IL IP SCRANTON Octoberto fourth place, it was joined by two other petroleum processors andDu Pont's expansion of the old Harrison paint works, exemplifyingthe force of chemical expertise in manufacturing. Moreover, VictorTalking Machine burst from forty-ninth place to third, carrying theflag of electrical engineering and the new consumerism. It too wasjoined by national newcomers (General Electric and Westinghouse)and local initiatives (Atwater Kent and Electric Storage Battery) tobuild five sectoral representatives into the hierarchy of the reg ion's topfifteen employers. Further, the Budd Company's service as a makerof body panels and other components for Detroit auto corporationsbrought it to prominence. Finally, the area's swelling population andthe extension of roads for rapid delivery favored the expansion of foodprocessors. Campbell entered the top ten on the strength of a nationalrestructuring of marketing, while three bakeries and one confectioneryfirm stretched similarly toward spatially-extended sales opportunities.23

Unlike the situation at the turn of the century, however, these largeenterprises were not simply the biggest members of a sectoral cohort,rising above a host of smaller colleagues, as in textiles, cigars, apparel,or machine and foundry work. Nor were they necessarily implicatedin a network of midsize specialists and contractors, as in ships an d toolsor textiles. Inste ad, this grou p's executives an d m anage rs embrace d t hetwin imperatives of minimum efficient scale and integration that cameto be watchwords in continuous flow and mass assembly trades. Theformer entailed starting with capital-intensive and huge facilities toachieve economies of scale and standardization. The latter implied avolte-facefrom Philad elph ia's old networks of contrac ting and ma rketexchange, installing a preference for bringing inside the company allsegments of the production sequence. Where Fleisher stood at theapex of scores of spinning m ills, some as sma ll as two d ozen emp loyees,there were no forty-man refineries. This in turn suggests that, as thecentury proceeded, the region's largest firms become gradually lessrepresentative of the aggregate, though perhaps more reflective ofnational patterns.By 1927-28 the top fifty cohort was substantially transformed.Alm ost half its mem bers (2 4) w ere bulk or mass producers, em ploying

23 Susan Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed (New York , 1989) ; Richard Tedlow, New andImproved (N ew York, 1990) .


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1992 INDUSTRIAL RESTRUCTURING 4 4 145 percent of big plant work forces. The regime of skill and versatilityremained central to the activity of thousands of smaller companies,but it was no longer as visibly dominant. Mean employment amongthe group reached 2,411, and the median had doubled to 1,609 sincethe turn of the century. Philadelphia's centrality as a site for majoremployers was eroding; 10 percent fewer big company operatives nowlabored inside the metropolitan core, even though the raw number ofits top fifty firms hardly altered. This in turn indicated that outlyingmajors had experienced a faster pace of expansion. Indeed, suburbanleaders more than doubled in mean size (2,678 vs. 1,328) while thecity average had risen but 43 percent (2,154 vs. 1,506). Equallysignificant, the group as a whole advanced to a 32 percent share of allregional industrial jobs. Overall, the first twentieth-century cycle ofindustrial restructuring had involved the pursuit of both versatilityand scale advantages, aggregating for the largest firms a substantiallyincreased portion of total employment. W ould the impact of depressionfurther this concentration? How would clusters of versatile specialistsand standard or staple goods makers fare respectively?

Review of the regional leaders in 1934-35 (Tables 5 and 6) makespossible some preliminary responses. First, though the top fifty heldtheir own with 31 percent of area manufacturing employment, thecrisis did not promote a second round of aggrandizement. On thewhole, job loss was about as severe inside the elite as outside; indeed,at later benchmark points, the leading enterprises never surpassed aone-third share of job control.24As always, in moving from groups toindividual cases there are wide divergences in performance. If, onaverage, regional manufacturers shed about 20 percent of their workersbetween 1927-28 and 1934-35, representing an upturn from the 1932trough, even among the largest firms the Depression had sharplydifferent consequences.For example, nine of the nineteen "originals" from 1902-06 thatwere still among the late 1920s leaders fell off the chart by themid-1930s, four of them textile mills. Fleisher yarn liquidated inbankruptcy after a failed effort at restructuring, and Welsbach wounddown its operations, reeling from the shrinking demand for its cotton

24 It must here be allowed that were wartime em ploym ent figures at the firm level av ailablefor 1918 and 1944, one might well discover a higher, short-term share.


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4 4 2 PHIL IP SCRANTON Octobermantles for gas lighting. Aberle hosiery, after bitter labor conflicts,entered a slump that it could not reverse, but the several Bromley lacemills consolidated to endure through the subsequent six decades as anappreciably smaller concern. In steel, Midvale and Bethlehem(Worth) cut staffs radically, struggling with the flaccid demand fortheir specialties (which would revive after 1938), but Kirschbaum,Brill, and the Laird, Schober shoe company were playing out a losinghand. Unlike the steel plants, none of the three would return to thetop fifty, shrinking cyclically after World War II until they shut theirdoors.25 At all these operations, work force reductions outpaced theregional average.

Among persisters, i.e. companies present in Tables 3 and 5, therewere comparable stories of distress. At the extreme, both Collins andAikman and General Electric's area plants dismissed over 60 percentof their work forces, but in sharply different sectoral contexts. In theupholstery trades, efforts at labor-management collaboration to reducecosts and meet the expansion of southern household fabric m ills (manylocated adjacent to the burgeoning North Carolina furniture centers)failed to stanch the hemorrhage of jobs and profits. C ollins and Aikmandetermined to restructure spatially, starting new mills far from theonce-central Philadelphia upholstery districts and permanently remov-ing the places for skilled labor that had seemed so solid a decadeearlier. GE's South Philadelphia plant, by contrast, was enduring asevere cyclical crisis of demand for heavy electrical equipment, for allcapital goods sectors suffered disproportionately during the longslum p. G E was patient, though its workers had to scramble for survival.By decade's end, callbacks gave way to new hires and, into the 1950s,employment mounted to double the 1920s level and five times thatof the 1930s.26Less staggering, but still well above the regional mean, work forcesat Aberfoyle yarns, Campbell Soup, and Whitman chocolate slid athird or more by 1934-35. Here again different sectoral forces wereat work. Aberfoyle's demand was derived in considerable part fromthe health of regional cotton yarn-using firms. As upholstery was

25 S e e f ir m l e v e l e m p l o y m e n t e n t r i e s , Ninth t h r o u g h Seventeenth Industrial Directories ofPennsylvania ( H a r ri s b ur g , 1 9 3 8 - 1 9 6 5 ) .26 S c r a n t o n , Figured Tapestry. F o r G E ' s 1 9 5 0 s e m p l o y m e n t , s e e T a b l e 7 .


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1992 INDUSTRIAL RESTRUCTURING 4 4 3prostrate and lace running slack, with southern yarn mills eager forsuch contracts as could be had at almost any price, its current andlonger-term prospects were unpleasant, to say the least. The two "foodgroups," like GE, faced present, but not necessarily future, miseries.In depression, mass consumption of prepared soups was bound to flagas households rediscovered the virtues of home-canning, and purchasesof Whitman's Samplers similarly faded once every dollar was moreclosely counted among the middle class. Both firms would rebound,CampbelPs stunningly, once the long downturn ended.A number of top fifty companies closely matched the regionalmean, as might be expected. For example, Budd's linkage to Detroit'sfortunes and efforts to develop passenger railway car capacities keptits employment close to the average. More interesting were those greatfirms that experienced few obvious difficulties or actually expandedas others were slipping. Both Atlantic and Vacuum in oil refiningshowed roughly stable employm ent in Tables 3 and 5, a clear reflectionof the fact that though Americans bought far fewer cars, they drovethe ones they owned nearly as much as ever. In silk hosiery, Gotham'swork force held stable and Apex's employment advanced some 25percent, testimony to these firms' ability to match efficiency and style"points" to the pattern of market price declines. More impressive byfar was the blossoming of work openings at RCA Victor and Philco(formerly Philadelphia Storage Battery), the product of a double effectfrom radio's having seized consumers' imaginations. Philco explodedfrom about 1,500 to over 5,000 workers in seven years, and Victoradded 41 percent to its plant complement. Philco's relatively cheaptable sets hit a price-conscious market perfectly, and the provision ofnetwork broadcasts of popular and classical music boom ed both RCA'ssales of records and players, even as other purchases were foregone bystraitened buyers. As Avner Offer has noted, the rate of radio's adop-tion was far more rapid than that of autos or telephones, a phenomenonthat boosted both Philco and RCA, but in tight money the samecircumstances proved disastrous for Atwater K ent. The latter's expen-sive floor and table models were increasingly shunned as Philco'scheap substitutes proliferated, leading to Kent's appalling 60 percentemployment decline, 1927-34, and presaging its eventual closure.

27

27 Patricia Cooper, "The Faces of Gender: Sex Segregation and Work Relations at Philco,192 8-19 38," in Ava Baron, ed., WorkEngendered (Ithaca, 1991)j Avner Offer, "Gratification


26/48

4 4 4 PHIL IP SCRANTON OctoberAt the regional level, the real erosion of the central city as a favoredlocation for large firms (Table 6) stands out. Indeed, in 1934-35,

Phila delp hia's share of area industrial em ploy m ent was eleven p ercent-age points higher than its share of jobs at top fifty firms, suggesting agrowing dep arture by the largest companies from their older pattern ofreliance on central locations.28Smaller enterprises remain ed a powerfulcomponent of city manufacturing, but were far less significant in thesuburbs. Evidently, developments in textiles29 extended into otherindustries. In regional textile production after World War I, thesector's suburban section had a scale distribution skewed stronglytoward large firms, while in the city, companies with from five to fivehundred workers provided the bulk of employment. Comparably, inmid-depression, twenty-one ou tlying firms am ong th e top fifty covered40 percent of all suburban manufacturing positions, whereas the othertwenty-nine Philadelphia operations accounted for but 26 percent offactory places at the center. The suburban surge was led by RCA'sdepression-defying performance, actually a twin-cities phenomenonthat gave New Jersey big firms their highest share of top fifty employ-m ent at any of the six measuremen t points docum ented here. A fullersuburbanization of production, in the small town or greenbelt sense,had not yet materialized.

A m on g the ne w faces in the 1927-28 roster, seven fell below thelower 1934-35 cutoff line, all but one of which had stood near thefoot of the earlier ranking (places 40 or lower). One was a hosierymill, two others cigar makers, all squeezed by harsher competition oreroding product demand. Only one of these discards (Nabisco) wouldreturn to the leading group, like Campbell and Whitman buoyed byconsumers' return to purchasing crackers and cookies rather than mak-ing their own or abstaining. New arrivals in the 1934-35 leading groupwere more temporally than sectorally significant. The Bromleys hadstarted a hosiery mill that was solidly capitalized from the familyfortunes and successful until the threat of unionization led to animp rovide nt relocation of investm ent to Ten nesse e. Anoth er oil refiner

and Prudence," paper presented to the Center for Historical Analysis, Rutgers University,1991.28 M c L a u g h l i n , Growth 1 2 9 .29 Scranton, Figured Tapestry T a b l e7 . 1 .


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1992 INDUSTRIAL RESTRUCTURING 4 4 5and a Ford parts plant, a post-Prohibition distiller and several pipeand box makers also surfaced, suggesting the increasing significanceof flow and standard goods to enterprises at the largest scale. With thespectacular decline of Baldwin, from 7 ,500 to less than 1,000 workers,it is hardly speculative to assert that firms making relatively staplegoods were holding their ground better than those committed to spe-cialty, batch, or custom production.Companies devoted to such versatile and skilled-labor-intensivemanufacturing in 1934-35 sustained only one quarter of top fiftyemployment, even though they constituted nearly 40 percent of theleading firms.30Though hundreds, even thousands, of specialists con-tinued to be active in batch trades, the region's largest enterprises moreand more fit the model of business modernism: organized for bulkoutputs within a national production network, if not actually branchplants or subsidiaries of its principal institutions. If any single com-pany's course signals this shift, it is Baldwin, which slid from absoluteleadership at the turn of the century to fortieth place in the 1930s andwas embroiled in a bitter bankruptcy battle that lasted through muchof the decade.31

By the late 1930s, what "big business" meant in the Philadelphiaregion had undergone a serious recoding, one broadly consistent withthe national reshaping of manufacturing. Electrical firms had over-taken heavy equipment providers as the most dynamic group. Petro-leum refining and automotive parts production overshadowed textilesand apparel. Nearly a quarter of the area's largest employers repre-sented non-local, multi-plant corporations.32 Even so, as the region30 T h e r e ma in in g b a t c h sp e c ia l i s ts , i nT a b l e 5 ,a r e fi r m s n u m b e r e d 5 , 8 , 1 6 , 1 9 , 2 0 , 2 3 ,

24 , 25 , 28, 29, 3 4, 37, 38 , 40 , 42, 43 , 44 , 48 , and 50. No te that three-fifths of them are inthe second twenty-five of the roster.31 National Archives, Mid-Atlantic R egion, Record Group 21 , Records of the U.S . DistrictCourts, Bankruptcy Case Files, "Baldwin Locomotive Company."32 D o c u m e n t a t i o n o f t h i s p a t t e r n ma y b e h a d b yc o m p a r i n g T a b l e s 1 , 3 , a n d 5 w i t hA p p e n d i c e s A . 1 a n d A . 2 i nC h a n d l e r , Scale and Scope. W h e n t h e f i r m s o n T a b l e 1a r e c h e c k e da g a i n s t C h a n d l e r ' s 1 9 1 7 g r o u p o ft h e n a t ion ' s 20 0 lar ge s t f irms, s e v e n r e g ion a l c om p an ie sap p e ar , r an g in g i n r a n k f r o m M i d v a l e ( n o . 6 , $ 2 7 0 m i l l i o n inasse t s ) t oV i c to r T a l k i n gM a c h i n e ( n o . 1 4 3 , $ 3 3m i l l i o n ) . S i x o ft h e se we r e loc a l fi rms, in c lu d in g N e w Yor k S h ipwh ic h , t h o u gh h e ad q u ar t e r e d in N e w Yor k , h ad i t s on ly p r od u c t ion f ac i l i t y i nC a m d e n . W h e nthe later pair o f t o p fifty tables arel in k e d wi t h c om p ar a b le s e t s o f A m e r i c a 's t o p 2 0 0c o m p a n i e s , 17 oft h e 6 5 f irms there can be connected , but only 5 o ft h e s e w e r e l o c a l l y o w n e d .T h e r e s t we r e b r an c h e so fn at ion a l ly b ase d op e r a t ion s , c h i e f ly inf ood , au t o , t ob ac c o , e l e c t r i c a l ,a n d p e t r o l e u m . N i n e o ft w e lv e n a t io n a l s h ad as se t s gr e a t e r t h an t h e h igh e s t - r an k e d , l oc a l ly


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4 4 6 PHILIP SCRANTON Octobermoved toward the war decade, the city, if not the suburban counties,still showed the imprint of its history of skilled labor, productiveversatility, and local entrepreneurship. Three-quarters of Philadel-phia's industrial workers plied their crafts in small and midsize compa-nies, ranging from a handful to six or seven h un dre d employees. Fewof these were externally owned; many focused on skill-demandingspecialties: machinery, styled knitwear, industrial and medical instru-ments, or technical publications. After the war, this would change.

As in other American industrial centers, the demand surge thatfilled order books and shop floors arrived well before December 7,1941.In the first year following the N azi invasion of Po land , P hiladel-phia manufacturers increased their durable goods production by athird, though payrolls rose only 12 percent, suggesting the initialend ing of short hour s work before new hiring accelerated. Defense-related contracts topped $1 billion as the United States geared upfor combat, triggering the reopening of shipyards for Lend-Leaseconstruction and multiple shifts in production lines among the region'slargest companies. Baldwin, extending its World War I capacities,m ade gu ns , tank s, shell forgings, arm or pla te, prope llers, an d dieselen gin es, while Philco focused on bom bsights, B ud d on aircraft compo-nents and munitions, and Brill on gun carriages. By 1944, industrialemployment neared half a million and many workers experienced theexhaustion and fattened pay envelopes of mandatory 4 8-hour weeks,even as over 200,000 area men and women endured comparablefatigue and different risks in the military.33

War's end, once the celebrations were over, brought the shocksof canceled contracts, sudden inflation, scrambles for conversion topeacetime outputs, and fierce labor-management conflict that becamemost heated in extended strikes at GE, Westinghouse, and Baldwinin 1946-47. Scores of textile mills shut down forever, having beensaved only temporarily by war contracts from their sector's long-termdecay. Cramp's shipyards closed a second time, permanently, whileNew York Ship found it difficult to extricate itself from its devotion to

controlled company, A tlantic Refining, which not incidentally was a continuous flow, standardproduct operation.33 Weigley, Philadelphia 637, 641-42.


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1992 INDUSTRIAL RESTRUCTURING 4 4 7military needs. Baldwin forged ahead, newly merged into the Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton Corporation, but its greatest achievements had beenlogged decades earlier. Even so, there were brighter signs availablefor the reading. The region's electrical concerns were poised for aresumption of civilian marketing and the renewal of capital goodsdemand that followed suburbanization. Its chemical plants had thecapacity to plow wartime experience into new product developmentin plastics, pharmaceuticals, and specialty intermediates; and the exper-tise of area scientific instrument firms stood ready to address complexmeasurement and control tasks that the postwar push toward automa-tion would engender. Finally, the EN I AC computer project at theUniversity of Pennsylvania suggested the plausibility of Philadelphiaas a future center for high-tech innovation, in essence a state-of-the-art scientific version of its classic pattern of spin-off, newly startedfirms at the cutting edge of industrial innovation.34These crossing vectors of restructuring leap forward from Tables 7and 8, which portray the region's largest firms in 1956, a decade afterthe transition from hot to cold war. Three observations are noteworthy.Though mean employment at leading companies nearly doubled De-pression levels (3,785; median, 2,704), there was no evidence ofconcentration, as their share of regional manufacturing jobs did notrise appreciably. In slump and prosperity, networks of non-elite firmsremained responsible for over two-thirds of industrial employment.35Second, top fifty firms in the Pennsylvania suburbs had in twentyyears nearly doubled their share of the roster's work forces (39 vs. 22percent), enjoying a buoyancy that extended neither to the central citynor to New Jersey counties, the tatter's character as bedroom suburbsbecoming gradually apparent. Third, the older specialist trades aresteadily dim inishing, especially textiles, which were then and thereafterabsent at the top and replaced by petroleum refining as the third

34 S c r a n t o n a n d L i c h t , Work Sights 2 5 7 - 6 5 ; S c r a n t o n , Figured Tapestry 4 9 6 - 9 9 ; W e i g l e y ,Philadelphia 6 4 0 - 4 1 .35 T h i s c o n c l u s i o n c o u l d b e m o r e t h o r o u g h l y r e f i n e d t h r o u g h s a m p l i n go fi ndus t r i a l d i rec t o -r ies to assess whether there were shi f t s i nt he d i s t r i but i o n o f f i rm s i ze s by em pl o y m ent a cro s st h e s e t w o d e c a d e s . F o r a l a t er a nd pa r t i a l v i e w , b a s ed o n 1 9 7 7 a n d 1 9 8 7 d a t a c o n c e r n i n gt h i r t y -o n e r e g i o n a l g r o w t h s u b s e c t o r s, s e e T a b l e 3 . 5 i nW i l l i a m S t u l l a n d J an i c e M a d d e n ,Post-Industrial Philadelphia ( P h i l a d e l p h i a , 1 9 9 0 ) .


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4 4 8 PHIL IP SCRANTON Octoberlargest cluster among the leaders, after electrical and transportationequipment.

If Table 7 is compared with its 1930s counterpart, turnover amongthe regional giants is fully as decisive as that which occurred betweenthe century's first and third decades. The number of persisters from1902-06 slims to ten; five of these were once among the top eight,but in 1956 only N ew Y ork Ship rem ained th ere, as Baldw in, Disston,Midvale, and Stetson failed to thrive in the postwar atmosphere. Onthe other hand, a dozen of the thirty-one firms that first reachedprominence by the late 1920s held their status, including five of theten largest (Philco, Budd, Westinghouse, Curtis, and GE), indicatingthe power of electrical, auto, and pub lishing developm ents, but anotherdozen slumped off the roster, half of them textile firms. The fifteennew faces in 1934-35 fared worse, with only four repeaters in the mid-fifties, non e higher than thirty-first in the rankin gs. Some offered mo restable employment in depression than firms that cut back sharply, yetfailed to possess the resources to increase their scale over the ensuingdecades. Only one of the New Deal era entrants would ever breakinto the top ten: Merck, Sharpe and Dohme, in 1980, at an employ-ment level (3,500) below the top fifty average a generation earlier.The twenty-four newcomers in 1956 reflected the sectoral reshuf-fling that appeared likely to offset the decay of older crafts. Like the1930s additions, they divided about evenly between locally grownsuccesses and branch plantations of national corporations. In basicme tals, rising sales brought Conshohocken's durable A lan W ood plan tonto the roster, whereas fresh investment at its Fairless Works madeU.S.Steel's new facility a major regional institution. Three instrumen-tation operations, all originating locally, and two aircraft plants illus-trated the momentum of war-propelled new technologies. Yet even inthe trades that had inspired the 1920s transition, rising tides yieldedother growth poles: in electrical, ITE, Yale and Towne, and RadioCondenser; Heintz in auto parts , Smith-Kline and Rohm and Haasin chemicals, and a Gulf Oil refinery. A third of this double dozenrested among the top twenty employers, and overall the newcomersaccounted for a healthy 36 percent of top fifty job opportunities(65,500). Given this prospect of continuing revitalization, the miseriesof the fabric, leather, machinery, apparel, and tool trades seemedperipheral annoyances. If the region's old sectoral stalwarts were fad-ing, new champions had surfaced. If the central city's structure of


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99 INDUSTRIAL RESTRUCTURING 449Table 850 L argest Industrial Firms, Philadelphia Reg ion , 195 6Em ployment by Sector and Location

Sector Firms Employment % of SJS lS* " * * PHL PA NJ PHL PA NJ Total Top 50 i j g g kFoodsTobaccoApparelPaper GoodsPrintingChemicalsPetroleumRubberPrimary M tls.Fabricated Mtls.MachineryElectricalTransport E qptInstrumentsTotals :

2121432003242228

0001122133125117d

100000100002105

4,8822,7043,8751,656

12,0814,8695,9490

06,2744,400

23,43313,3256,092

89.986

000

2,265l,077 b2,865b5,7542,707

13,5085,153

885b14.304T20,727

1,53370.778

4,50000000

2,6500000

9,2855,530

022.505

9,3822,7043,8753,921

13,1587,734

14,3532,70713,50811,8775,285

47,56239,5787,625

18T26Q

51228481873

2620499

18n/a6

1836216425342612808852

Percent of Top 50 Employment 49% 39% 12%Top 50 Firms Percent of Total Regional Industrial Employment 32%Sources: Summers and Luce, and Table 7.T o p 50 films' share of total reg ional employment in sector. Data available only for 1956,1962,and 1980. See Anita Summers and Thomas Luce,Econom ic D evelopmen t in the Phila-delphia M etropolitan Area(Philadelphia, 1987), Table D.3.'Branch plant of Philadelphia firm.'Includes 3 ,735 workers at branch plant of Philadelphia firm.'Does not include 5 branches of Philadelphia firms.


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450 PHILIP SCRANTON OctoberTable 950 Largest Industrial Firms, Philadelphia Region, 1962

Name Loc. Products Employment Sector1. PhilcoCorp.

2. RC A3. General Electric Co .4. BuddCo.5. Westinghouse Electric Co.6. Curtis Publishing Co .7. U.S . Steel Corp.8. N.Y.Ship9. Rohm & Haas Co.10.Lukens Steel Co.11 .L eeds & Northrup Co.

12.Triangle Publications13.ITE Circuit Breaker Co.14.Campbell Soup Co.15.Sun Oil Co.16.Standard Pressed Steel Co.17.Atlantic Refining C o.

PHLPAPANJ

PHLPHLPA

PHLPAPANJ

PHLPA

PHLPAPHLPHLNJPAPA

PHL18.M inn.-Honeywell (Brown) PHL19.Sun Shipbuilding Co .20.SKF Industries21.A lan W ood Steel Co.22.Firestone Tire & Rubber23.Scott Paper Co .24. Boeing-Vertol (Piasecki)25. Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton26 .B ulletin Co.27 .H .Darof f&S on s28.M erck, Sharp & Dohm e

PAPHLPAPAPAPAPA

PHLPHLPHLPA

Radio/TV EquipmentElectronic EquipmentComputing EquipmentRadio/TV/ElectronicsElectrical/Electronic Equip.Motor Vehicle PartsTurbines/MachineryPrinting/PeriodicalsSteel Plate & TubeShips/RepairsPlastics/ResinsSteel Plate, etc.Instrumentation

Newspapers/MagazinesElectrical SwitchgearFood ProductsPetroleum ProductsHardware/RivetsPetroleum ProductsInstrumentationShips/RepairsBall/Roller BearingsSteet Plate, etc.Tires/TubesPaper ProductsHellicoptersLocomotives/PartsNewspapersMen's and Boys' ClothingPharmaceuticals

6,4345,5091.46713,41011,2259,9598,2077,7095,5041.6037,1076,6445,8055,3054,7172,604L4584,1624,0984,0154 ,000*3,8073,1883,1823,1263,0792,9862,8992,7772,7192,5032,4362,3112,070

7511.1671,918

36

36363736273337283338

2736202934293837353330263737272328


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1992 INDUSTRIAL RESTRUCTURING 451Table 9-Continued29.General Baking Co.30.Cuneo Eastern Press31. Universal Rundle Corp.32.Bethlehem Steel Co.33 . S.F. Whitman & Son34. Mobil Oil Co.35.Burroughs Corp.36 .Bayuk Cigars, Inc.37 . American Viscose Corp.38 .Remington Rand-Univac39 . Amer. Machine & Metals40. Link-Belt Co.

42.Gulf Oil Corp.43.Midvale-HeppenstaU Co.44. Stanley Flagg & Co.45.Sinclair Refining Co.46.National Dairy Products47.Sun Clothes48.Kelsey-Hayes (Heintz)49.Tasty Baking Co.50. R.D. Wood Co.estimatedSources:Sixteenth Industrial Directory of Pennsylvania(Harrisburg,Industrial Directory of New Jersey for 1962(Trenton, 1963).

PHLPHLNJPA

PHLNJPA

PHLPAPAPA

PHLPAPHLPHLPHLPAPAPHL

PHLPHLPHLNJ

Food ProductsPrinting/PeriodicalsPlumbing FixturesStructural SteelCandyPetroleum ProductsComputing MachinesCigarsPlastics/ResinsComputing MachinesInstrumentationPower Transmission Equip.

Paperboard/BoxesPetroleum ProductsSteel Forgings, etc.Valves/FittingsPetroleum ProductsFood ProductsWomen's OuterwearMotor Vehicle PartsFood ProductsHydraulic Machinery

1,8651,8141,8001,7861,7381,6981,6241,6101,6051,5911,550

9046261,5301,5181,5031,4561,3791,3471,2921,2901,2791,2541,250

20273434202936212836383526293434292023372035

1962);


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452 PHILIP SCRANTON OctoberTable 10SO Largest Industrial Firms, Philadelphia R egion, 1962

Employment by Sector and LocationSector FirmsPHLFoodsTobaccoApparelPaper GoodsPrintingChemicalsPetroleumRubberPrimary Mtls.Fabricated Mtls.MachineryElectricalTransport Eqpt.Instruments

41214220012322

PA00011221331432

NJ10000010011110

EmploymentPHL6,1491,6103,3601,518

13,7276,0564,6850

01,4563,890

20,4089,4865,730

PA000

2,719l ,603b2,772C5,1542,777

14,2606,353

62 6 b17,924c

8,0183,008e

NJ4,00000000

1,69800

1,8001,250

11,2255,805

0

Total10,1491,6103,3604,237

15,3308,828

11,5372,77714,2609,6095,766

49,55123,309

8,738

%ofTop 5061239572863

29145

% ShareSectoralEmplymt.'21n/a61841226422412312679459

Totals 26 18 f 6 78,075 65,214 25,778 169,062 100Percent of Top 50 Employment 46% 39% 15%Top 5 0 Firms Percent of Total Regional Industrial Employment 31%

Sources: Summers and Luce, and Table 9.T o p 50 firms' share of total regional employment in sector. Data available only for 1956,1962, and 1980. See Anita Summers and Thomas Luce, Economic Development in thePhiladelphia M etropolitan Area(Philadelphia, 1987), Table D.3.bBranch plant of Philadelphia firm.eIncludes 1,167 workers at branch plant of Philadelphia firm."Includes6,996workers at branches of Philadelphia firms."Includes 1,458 workers at branch of Philadelphia firm.'Plus 5 branches of Philadelphia firms.


35/48

1992 INDUSTRIAL RESTRUCTURING 4 5 3interlaced middling and small sized firms did endure, the power ofits suburban successors seemed undeniable. The city that had been the"Arsenal of America" in wartime was steadily being transformed intoa regional complex of continuing significance, as might be expectedfrom the nation's most flexible production system.36Yet something went wrong, profoundly. Six years after the flexingof industrial muscle that the 1956 roster featured, top fifty employ-ment was off 12 percent, a troubling portent visible in Tables 9 and10. Even though forty-one firms from the previous list reappeared,for the first time a majority of the region's biggest enterprises stem medfrom national rather than local ownership (27 vs. 23). Disston andStetson, two more of the hardy originals, had faltered, and Ford, whichreduced its Chester plant's operations, slid as well, signaling the finaldecline of that once-vigorous industrial satellite. Kaiser had endedits area aircraft involvement; only Boeing-Vertol would sustain thedwindling eastern states' presence in this sector's increasingly far westproduction orientation. Regional cheerleaders might well celebrate theadvance of Burroughs and Univac, and related, sizable information-centered firms, but it was plain that the leaders were not expandingto take up the slack that continuing decay of older trades left behind.Even as sectoral diversity among the top fifty continued, withfourteen of the twenty possible census divisions present, a closer lookat the two most prominent trades should have sent a shiver throughthe regional nervous system. In transportation and electrical equip-ment, which contributed over 80,000 jobs among top fifty firms bothin 1956 and 1962, employment was critically dependent on a verysmall group of companies. The concentration ratios (right edge col-umns in Tables 8 and 10) for these sectors were the highest in theregion, and corporate decisions about future investment were beingtaken by non-local headquarters assessing competitive conditions at thenational, and increasingly, global plane. Such decisions, includingthose by refiners, the third most concentrated sector, would have farmore impact on regional industrial capacity than those by locallycentered corporations in printing, metal fabricating, or chemicals. Inthese three key industries, in which the bulk of jobs were dependent

1Weigley, Philadelphia 637.


36/48

4 5 4 PHILIP SCRANTON Octoberon a small cadre of enterprises, initiatives to downsize or vacate plantswould leave their workers with perilously few options for alternativeemployment.Though only detailed research on the region's postwarmanufacturing system can fully document the processes involved, atthis point it appears that a double dynamic was operative in theslowly building crisis of regional industrialism. The area's classic jobgenerators in the specialty and flexible trades underwent an extendedsequence of liquidations, concentrated in the central city, as theirversatile capacities were devalued in an economy driven more thanever by price competition and standardized outputs. Niche outposts ofthe old system did survive among firms in instrumentation, textiledyeing, or printing and publishing, but the momentum these sectorsprovoked and enjoyed through the 1920s was lost irrevocably. At thesame time, the growing prevalence of nationally-constituted corpora-tions in the region's second and third waves of industrial developmentleft Philadelphia and its surrounding counties held hostage to market(and political) shifts over which local actors had no control whatsoever.Pork barreling might preserve the Frankford Arsenal (for a time) andthe Navy Yard (until recently), but in the private sector, harsherrealities governed. Regional plants of major corporations, it seems,were judged both against cost-profiles of rival American regions andinternational sites and against technological and market opportuni-tiesand found wanting on either or both counts. In consequence,new investment was placed elsewhere and regional capacities wounddown toward closure.

The 1980 compilation of large firms (Tables 11 and 12) suggeststhe effects of such a process. Philco, the region's largest employer lessthan twenty years previously, was in the throes of liquidation after anineffective merger with Ford. GE, Westinghouse, and RCA hadhalved their work forces, Baldwin had vanished, as had New YorkShip.Some 46,00 0 positions in transportation an d electrical equ ipm entdisappeared among the top fifty firms, accounting for 85 percent ofthe cohort's drastic contraction. The top three firms' work force sharehad slumped to 16 percent of the leaders' employment, the lowest inthe century, and the top fifty group's proportion of all jobs dippedsimilarly to 26 percent, barely above the turn-of-the-century level.However, unlike that era, midsize and small firms were themselvesfilling the lifeboats, rather than building new avenues for productiveadvance. In apparel, printing, and textiles, the later 1960s and 1970s


37/48

1992 INDUSTRIAL RESTRUCTURING 4 5 5had been a walking disaster. Am ong the big operations depicted in thetables, mean employment had slumped to 2,300 (median, 1,600)andtwenty-six of those on the 1962 list had been replaced by appreciablysmaller companies. Only three of the 1902-06 leaders reappeared:Baldwin, RCA/Victor, and Midvale, the last of which would shortlyfall into bankruptcy. Several "high tech" firms surfaced or reappeared:in pharmaceuticals, Smith-Kline, Betz, McNeil, and Wyeth; in elec-tronics, EMS, American Electronic, Jerrold, and Ametek. These tooktheir places alongside major national enterprises that represented thepost-war deepening of initiatives from the 1920s (R CA , Westinghouse,Rohm and Haas, G E , Firestone, Goodrich and Lee tires), as well as theflourishing of information and control systems (Leeds and Northrup,Burroughs, Sperry-Univac, and Honeywell, which had absorbedBrown Instruments).

On the surface, it might appear that the regional industrial comple-ment had undergone a second thorough revitalization, comparable tothat of the 1920s, but there were four soft spots in the new situation.As a half-century earlier, the largest proportion of new wave leaderswere elements in continent-wide or international corporations. Theregion was a manufacturing site-of-convenience, and the continuationof operations at local plants depended on financial, market, technical,and governm ental factors far beyond the control of regional managers,bankers, or politicians. Indeed, the most heralded, locally originatedsuccess, Milton Shapp's Jerrold Electronics, failed to thrive as cabletelevision surged. Second, as with the 1920s arrivals, few of theseoperations relied on extensive contracting networks of the sort commonat the turn of the century in "traditional" sectors. They were chieflyfree-standing enterprises, rather than peak companies drawing on di-verse expertise lodged in smaller specialty firms, and thus their growthdid not trigger regional multiplier effects that the earlier system fea-tured. Firms concerned with control over proprietary information,focused on internalizing research and development, and fearing theeffects of shortened product life cycles were, it seems, far less willingto "outsource" and take the risks of leakage or poor quality controlthat contracting implied.37

37On this issue more generally, and for contrasts with strategies outside the United States,see Ira Magaziner and Mark Patinkin, The Silent War (New York, 1989) .


38/48

456 PHILIP SCRANTON OctoberTable llft

50 Largest Industrial Firms, Philadelphia Region, 1980N a m e Loc. Products Employment Sector1. U.S.SteelCo .

2 . RCA3 . Campbel l Sou p&

Pepperidge Farm

PANJNJPA

4 . West ingh ouse Electr icCo. PA5. Rohm&HaasCo.

6. SunShipbuilding7. Boe ing VertolCo.8. Burroughs Corp.9 . Leeds&NorthrupCo.10. Merck, Sharp& D o h m e11. Sperry-Univac12. Smith-Kline Corp.13. Franklin MintCo.14. Scott PaperCo.15. General ElectricCo.16. Firestone Tire&Rubber17. Botany "500" (Daroff)18. Triangle Publicat ions

19. H o n e y w e l l ,Inc.2 0 . Bulle t inCo.2 1 . Sun Co.22 . Tasty BakingCo.23 . CBSRecords2 4 . Ford AeroComm Corp.2 5 . B.F.Goodrich TireCo.2 6 . Ship'N'Shore2 7 . Ametek/Am. Mach. &Metal2 8 . ChiltonCo.2 9 . Te le f lex ,Inc.30 . Wyeth Laboratories3 1 . Foote MineralCo.32 . Amer. Electronic Labs.

PHLPAPAPAPAPAPAPA

PHLPAPAPHLPA

PHLPAPHLPA

PHLPAPHLNJPAPAPAPAPAPAPAPAPA

Steel Plate/TubeElectronics /TVFood Products

TurbinesPlast ics/Resins

Ships/Steel FabricationAircraft/PartsElectronic SystemsInstruments/EDP 5PharmaceuticalsDigital ComputersPharmaceuticalsMedals /Spec ia lt iesPaper/Plast ic GoodsElectrical ControlsTires/Plast icsMen's andBoy s ' ClothingMagaz ines

InstrumentationNewspapersOil/Chemical ProductsFood ProductsPhonograph RecordsElectronic Auto ProductsTiresWomen's ClothingInstrumentationPublishingIndustrial ControlsPharmaceuticalsAlloys/Ground OresComm ./Electronics

8,5006,9003 , 5 0 0 *1.500


39/48

1992 INDUSTRIAL RESTRUCTURING 4 5 7Table 11-Continued33.Progress Lighting34.Mobil Oil Corp.35 .Philadelphia Gear Corp.36.Nabisco, Inc.37 .Eaton Corp.38 .C-E Glass39 .EM S, Inc.40.Abbott's Dairies41.Standard Pressed Steel42.Owens-Corning43.Betz Laboratories44.Lee Tire & Rubber45.Dana Corp.46.Beech-Nut Foods47.McN eil Laboratories48.Midvale-Heppenstall49.SGL Industries50.Jerrold Electronicsestimated

PHLNJPA

PHLPHLNJPA

PHLPANJPAPAPAPAPA

PHLNJPA

Electric FixturesPetroleum ProductsPower System ProductsFood ProductsIndustrial VehiclesSafety GlassMedical TechnologyFood ProductsIndustrial FastenersFiberglass ProductsSpecialty ChemicalsTiresSteering/PropellersBaby FoodsPharmaceuticalsSteel ForgingsElectronic TechnologyCable TV Systems Equip.

1,4001,3871,3831,3001,3001,2601.2561,2001,1601,1511,1501,1501,1001,0991,0581.0501,0291,012

Sources:Pennsylvania State Industrial Directory for 1980(New York,

342935203732382034322830342028343636

1980);New Jersey State Industrial Directory for 1980(New York, 1980).'Several large firms (ESB Ray-O-Vac, Crown Cork & Seal, SKF) provided the directoriesonly with total national employment figures, from which regional work forces could not beseparated. This clearly limits the utility o f the 1980 roster.bElectronic data processing equipment.


40/48

458 PHILIP SCRANTON OctoberTable 12SO Largest Industrial Firms, Philadelphia R egi on , 1980Em ploymen t by Sector and Location

SectorFoodsApparelPaper GoodsPrintingChemicalsPetroleumRubberGlassPrimary Mtls.Fabricated M tlsMachineryElectricalTransport Eqpt.InstrumentsMiscellaneous

FirmsPHL310120000

. 201100

PA211241302225341

NJ100001020003000

EmploymentPHL4,2412,500

03,1005,750

0000

2,4500

2,7001,300

00

PA2 ,599 b1,5212,9002,700 c8 ,913 d1,8005,350

09,9002,2602,839

14,3699,7008,3362,945

NJ3,5000000

1,38702,411

000

9,629000

Total10,3404,0212,9005,800

14,6633,1875,3502,4119,9004,7102,839

26,69811,0008,3362,945

%ofTop 50933513352942

231073

% ShareSectoralEmplvmt.'28131538402758

scranton philadelphia industrial history twentieth century 1992

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