In The Cradle of Industry and Liberty

and a half later from a city of manufacturers
to one of service providers. Between 1953 and
2014 Philadelphia went from 365,600 workers
engaged in manufacturing, over 45 percent of
its private sector workforce, to 23,000 workers
in manufacturing, just over 4 percent of total
private sector employment—a staggering
reduction of over 90 percent. While it is
understandable that city leaders of the 1970s,
witnessing the loss of one major industry
after another (100,000 manufacturing jobs
were lost in the 1970s alone), would want to
do everything possible to stem the tide, such
efforts were bound to be futile. Larger economic
and societal changes were underway at
this time that would make the transformation
of Philadelphia’s economy all but inevitable.
The reasons were many. In general, manufacturing
in post-World War II America was
leaving the industrial cities of the Northeast
and Midwest for the South or abroad, where
labor and other costs were lower. Manufacturers
that did stay local often moved to the suburbs
where they could build new open-floor facilities
that were better suited to modern industrial
processes than the older multi-story factories
of the city. The biggest factor for Philadelphia,
however, was a fundamental change in consumer
tastes and patterns of consumption in
the post-World War II era that directly impacted
the city’s signature manufacturers. Stetson
declined when men stopped wearing hats, for
example, while the city’s extensive tapestry rug
industry suffered from the growing popularity
of wall-to-wall carpeting. In particular, the
emerging demand for cheaper, mass-produced
standardized goods worked against the many
Philadelphia specialty manufacturers that
made high-quality products. Disston’s finely
crafted saws could not compete in price with
the cheaper mass-produced tools sold by Sears
& Roebuck and other retailers, a scenario
that played out across many Philadelphia
industries in the late twentieth century.
Labor issues were a major factor as well.
Unions had become quite powerful in
Philadelphia by the mid-twentieth century
and confrontations with management were
increasingly common. There were long, bitter
strikes in the city’s manufacturing sector that
proved costly to both workers and employers.
Some companies opted to close or relocate
rather than cede to union demands. At the
same time, significant increases in automation
and industrial efficiencies in the
late twentieth century meant that it took far
fewer workers to achieve the same levels of
production as in earlier periods. Combined,
these multiple forces would have a profound
impact on American industry overall and
on Philadelphia manufacturing in particular.
A LONG, SLOW
TRANSFORMATION
As noted in the previous chapter, the first
signs of decline in Philadelphia manufacturing
began to appear in the 1920s and then
intensified in the depression years of the
1930s. World War II brought a revival in
manufacturing, but it was temporary. One
by one in the post-war period, Philadelphia’s
great manufacturers fell silent. Some closed
or moved out of the city soon after the War,
others lasted into the 1970s and 1980s, and
a few made it into the 1990s or early 2000s.
But eventually, they all were gone (with
the exception of Disston, which continued to
@
Top, left: Demolition of the Stetson Hat
factory at Fifth Street and Montgomery
Avenue in Kensington in 1979. Stetson
made hats at this location for almost 100
years before it closed the factory in 1971
and moved out of the city. The company is
still in business, now in Texas.
PHILADELPHIA EVENING BULLETIN COLLECTION,
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
RESEARCH CENTER.
Top, right: Demolition of the Baldwin
Locomotive plant at Broad and Spring
Garden Streets, 1937. Baldwin was
among the first of Philadelphia’s major
manufacturers to leave the city, moving to
nearby Eddystone, Delaware County,
beginning in 1906. The move was complete
by the late 1920s and the Philadelphia plant
was demolished a decade later.
PHILADELPHIA RECORD COLLECTION,
HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA.
CHAPTER FIVE
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