Loss of industry has devastated thousands, if not millions of lives throughout the world, particularly in industrialized nations. Many individuals never find other sources of employment after losing jobs they may have had for as much as 40 years. Towns and cities have been ruined, not only economically, but physically and culturally. Some cities, such as North Adams, Massachusetts, have recovered, due to the resilience, determination, hard work and activism of their citizens.
Experiences of urban decline, so-called urban renewal, and economic redevelopment are rife with educational opportunities in every high school subject area. This paper will discuss how North Adams was affected by the relocation of the Sprague Electric Company in 1986 to Mexico, how the city recovered, and how curricular concepts of marginality, translation and love, through exploration of North Adams’ history, can enrich the education of high school students.
According to Christia Mulvey, who wrote a research bibliography on Industrial Development and Labor History in North Adams in 1997 after graduating from Williams, the textile industry was the source of many jobs in the early part of the 20th Century. The Arnold Print Works was a major employer until World War II. The Sprague Electric Company, which specialized in the manufacture of electronic components such as capacitors and resistors, moved into a facility at Marshall Street in 1941. The company expanded during the next 45 years. Their 13 acre plant, two blocks from Main Street, employed as many as 4200 people (in 1968).
North Adams was essentially a company town during the heyday of Sprague Electric. Approximately 25% of the residents of North Adams worked for Sprague. The workers formed a union in order to increase wages and benefits. “Sprague physicists, chemists, electrical engineers, and skilled technicians were called upon by the U.S. government during World War II to design and manufacture crucial components of some of its most advanced high-tech weapons systems, including the atomic bomb.” (http://www.massmoca.org/about.html)
Charles Tompkins, whose interview is recounted in Disappearing Into North Adams by Joe Manning, was hired as an engineer by Sprague in 1959. “The salary was good. It was around $100 a week.” (pg 137) According to Tompkins, Sprague actually had more positions than available workforce, so they began smaller operations in Sanford, Maine and Concord, New Hampshire.
Another person interviewed for Disappearing Into North Adams, Paul Garnish, began working for Sprague Electric in 1952. Because he had graduated from the Milwaukee School of Engineering, he was hired to work in the facilities engineering department. He and his wife lived on Veazie Street in North Adams. “They had about 3500 employees working three shifts around the clock. It was interesting, because we were able to work throughout the facility with no problems at all…you always felt like you were contributing to keeping the company going and adding to the profitability of the company.” (pg 140)
Garnish worked for awhile in the Concord plant and helped build the Sanford plant as well as a new plant in Plymouth, New Hampshire. By 1969, when Sprague was at its peak, they built a plant in Wichita Falls, Texas and later in Juarez, Mexico, where labor was cheaper and restrictions were fewer.
In 1970 the union went on strike and Garnish, as a manager, had to cross the picket lines. R.C. Sprague, the company’s founder, “was really crushed by it. After the strike, he started giving the other plants more priority.” (pg 141) Tompkins said that “R.C. had promised his engineers that the strike wouldn’t cause any problems. A year and a half later, there had been all kinds of people let go.” (pg 138) The company went from 4200 employees to 400 by 1985. A newer, smaller plant was opened at Curran Street. The Sprague managerial offices are still located there today, even though the main plant at Marshall Street closed in 1986.
The gradual diminishing of the Sprague workforce, coupled with the demolition of many North Adams landmark buildings during the urban renewal movement of the ‘70s plunged the city into despair. The closure of Sprague Electric devastated the local economy. Unemployment rates rose and population growth declined. In 1986, just a year after the factory's closing, the business and political leaders of North Adams were seeking ways to creatively re-use the vast complex. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Adams,_Massachusetts) Thomas Krens, the Director of Williams College Museum of Art and later of the Guggenheim Museum, was looking for exhibition space. Mayor John Barrett III suggested the Marshall Street building formerly owned by Sprague Electric.
With community support and major contributions from the private sector, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art was established at Marshall Street. MASS MoCA opened in 1999, and North Adams is experiencing a renaissance. Tourism, culture and education have combined to revitalize North Adams.
Susan Edgerton, in Translating the Curriculum, describes a curriculum theory around cultural studies and autobiography. The concept of Marginality plays an important part in her theory. The experience of the Sprague Electric employees losing their livelihoods can be seen as a marginalization of the workforce. Unemployment certainly marginalizes many people; their self-esteem diminishes along with their resources.
Essentialism, which Edgerton defines as “reduction of ideas, phenomena, social actors to positive transcendental essences” (pg 8) is another relevant concept to the loss of industry. Workers not only take pride in their industriousness, but they often identify themselves, or describe themselves, in terms of the labor they do. Their sense of self, or essence, is strongly linked to their careers. To remove a worker from his long-term career setting is to undermine his own sense of self—self-worth, self-esteem, connectedness to community and nation.
Translation, another important concept in Edgerton’s curriculum theory, occurs when the experiences of marginal subsections of the population are described and disseminated through autobiography. This translation, when understood by the larger (or dominant) population, enriches their own experiences and enhances their education. Many connections can be made to the loss of industry in American or European cities, so the experiences described by Tompkins and Garnish can be translated into a curriculum for self-development and social reconstruction.
One such translation connects the workers of North Adams to those in England when the mines and colliery there that had been the center of the townspeople's lives closed down. In October 1992, the British government announced the largest mass layoff in its history, as it revealed plans to close 31 coal mines - more than half the country’s coal pits - and to axe 30,000 jobs. “As tens of thousands of miners faced the layoffs that haunted so many workers, the public began to question why the closures had been ordered. Today, the public is incensed over the way the government has treated the miners.” (Helen Beatty, The Price of Privatization) Students of American history can translate the experiences of the Sprague Electric workers to those of the British coalminers.
“This translation,” Edgerton writes, “cannot be understood outside notions of love…What knowledge best enables us to care for ourselves, one another, and the nonhuman world?” (pg 9-10) Surely love had so much to do with the transformation of the old Sprague Electric facility to
MASS MoCA—love of North Adams, of its people, its history, and its culture. This concept of love as a vital and overarching cause of social and economic activism has many pedagogical implications.
How did Americans survive the Great Depression? Which orators and writers through sheer power of love helped inspire us to fight adversity, endure crises and overcome hardships and hard times? There are numerous interdisciplinary curricula that stem from the story of Sprague Electric and MASS MoCA: economics, civics, physics, Language Arts, Fine Arts, and mathematics.
Local histories, recounted by those who experienced them, are natural starting points for true learning—learning that serves the highest purposes of self-transformation and social reconstruction. We all can make crucial connections, from local to global, from self to universal, and from marginal to center.
Bibliography:
Beatty, Helen; The Price of Privatization
Edgerton, Susan Huddleston; Translating the Curriculum: Multiculturalism into Cultural Stdies
Manning, Joe; Disappearing Into North Adams
http://www.massmoca.org/about.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Adams,_Massachusetts