A magnificent city skyline arises behind a white wall of damp from factory pipes as we drive into Philadelphia. Factories, shipyards and terminals as far as the eye can see. Still, it soon becomes clear that many pipes stand tall but idle; no white damp escapes them anymore. Philly—once named “the Workshop of the World” [1,2]—is standing in the rising shadow of its closed-down factories. Why?
The decline of manufacturing industries in the US is a hot political issue of today. “Jobs” seems to be the single most important word in Congress (together with its alter ego, “Tax”). Today, Apple, with its “designed in California” trademark, and virtual business giants such as Google, Facebook and Groupon are worth more than most manufacturing companies at the NYSE. What a fallacy! How cool is an iPad if you cannot afford it? What happened to the working-class jobs of making and sustaining things and infrastructure? Philly, with its 300 years of proud industrial history, provides the best example.
As the Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia in 1776, Philly was the world’s second-largest port behind London [2]. Industries as different as apparel, shoes, bookbinding, food, furniture, silk, iron, steel, printing, chemicals, shipyards, machine tools, locomotives, pharmaceuticals, glass, jewelry, and paper have provided people with good salaries and the state with taxes for the last 300 years. This variety of industries also became the trademark of Philadelphian manufacture: customized, innovative, high-quality, and handcrafted production. Unlike other manufacturing cities, Philly didn’t specialize in any industry, nor did it jump on the mass production bandwagon [1, 2].
Herein also lies some of the answers to Philadelphia’s manufacturing decline. Its many specialized small- and medium-sized enterprises could not compete with the mass production machinery put up in other cities. As consumers got more bang for the buck in other places, the handicraft industries in Philly were doomed [2]. In the city center today, you will not see much of the great manufacturing scene surrounding the city. It is a city that has undergone rapid changes over the last 30 years. Licht [2] writes that “at a postwar height in 1953, 359.000 Philadelphians were employed in manufacture, 45 percent of the city’s entire labor force; in our own times, the number of industrial jobs has dramatically fallen to below 30.000, only five percent of the total.”
Today, most of the workforce is found in the service sector, with jobs within health, education, business services, government, financial services, leisure and trade [3]. Visiting “the city of brotherly love” makes it evident that the city has made this transition smoothly and well. The fifth largest city in the US is indeed a great city to visit and live in. I had a wonderful visit. A concern is the future sustainability of its jobs: Service jobs are much more footloose than manufacturing.
One can wonder if The Boss made subtle references to the manufacturing industry of Philadelphia as he wrote the last verse to his Oscar-winning song “The Streets of Philadelphia”:
The night has fallen, I'm lyin' awake I can feel myself fading away So receive me brother with your faithless kiss Or will we leave each other alone like this On the streets of Philadelphia [4]
References
- Bowie, J.R. (edt) (1990) WORKSHOP OF THE WORLD—A Selective Guide to the Industrial Archeology of Philadelphia, Oliver Evans Press, adapted for the internet in 2007, www.workshopoftheworld.com
- Licht, W. “Workshop of the World”, essay published 15th Oct 2011 at http://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/workshop-of-the-world/#2282
- Greater Philadelphia Employment by Industry Sector, Web: http://www.selectgreaterphiladelphia.com/data/employment/trends/employment.cfm
- Bruce Springsteen, “Streets of Philadelphia”, Theme song to the movie “Philadelphia, 1994
3 responses to “Philadelphia, once the workshop of the world”
[…] in the vicinity of Philadelphia, a city once referred to as the Workshop of the World (although Great Britain also laid claim to the moniker), the factories […]
[…] in the vicinity of Philadelphia, a city once referred to as the Workshop of the World (although Great Britain also laid claim to the moniker), the factories […]
Sad, how a great city at the forefront of American industry and which generated such wealth and pride for its people bore much of the brunt of American industrial decline. How intriguing it would be to see the City at the pinnacle of its industrial greatness.