Goodbye Manufacturing: Rhode Island and Deindustrialization
The Crompton Company was a major employer of workers on the east coast until it shutdown in 1984. Photo by Joseph McCarthy.
Photo Courtesy of the Alice Mill Collection
The Crompton Company was a major employer of workers on the east coast until it shutdown in 1984. Photo by Joseph McCarthy.
The Southern Exodus
By Jalen Evans
Rhode Island was once the capital of American industrialization. Major industries such as jewelry factories, textile mills, rubber mills, water powered mills, clothing factories and many more. Cities such as West Warwick, Cumberland, Pawtucket, and Woonsocket had a huge hand into making Rhode Island the focal point of the Industrial Revolution.
As decades passed Rhode Island started to see a decline in production. Industries began going bankrupt, strong unions held power, and industries were shutting down and moving their business to places with lower wages and less environmental regulations. Thus, industries either shutdown or transitioned themselves form the North to the South.
The Crompton Company for example, which was founded in Providence, was the oldest textile firm in the country. It was operational for 178 years and employed thousands of people. When the firm filed for bankruptcy in October 1984, it caused over 2,400 workers to lose their jobs. Crompton was a heavy manufacturer of steel and automobiles. The textile industry suffered a tremendous loss when the Crompton Company went out of business, due to the vast number of individual mills controlled by the firm.
Textile factories in Rhode Island saw a massive decrease in the 1980s. Once, they were booming at an astonishing 16,200 factories in September 1979 but by September 1989, Rhode Island was down to a 15,000.
Woonsocket was known for its many successful mills. Rubber, jewelry, and spinning mills were some of the most abundant places of work. The rubber mill in particular was one of the first and most successful types of industries to start in Woonsocket. In the early 1800s, Joseph Banigan started his rubber industry, hiring exclusively Irish immigrants. It was so successful that the rubber industry went on in Woonsocket for over a century.
Towards the late 1970’s and 80’s the mills started shutting down. The owners were trying to save money and were done dealing with the labor unions that employees had joined. Most of the industry outsourced its work to the South where wages were cheaper and labor unions were not as powerful. Other industries followed the path of outsourcing their work to the south just like the rubber industry did.
One woman, Dora Wilson, worked at a rubber mill in Woonsocket in the 1970s. She was an employee at the Uniroyal Rubber Company. The work was hard and it was challenging but the pay was good Wilson said. She also received full benefits and health coverage from working at the mill. Wilson was in a labor union just like most of the people who worked there. Ultimately the mill shutdown, jobs were lost, including hers and that particular labor was moved to the Rust Belt.
Major industries left the state for essentially the same reason; to save money. Labor unions were forcing the industries to pay and treat employees better. Industry did not want to lose money and went somewhere it could prosper; the south.
Sources:
Wilson, Dora. Interviewed by Jalen Evans. Oral Interview. 48 Ollo St. Woonsocket, Rhode Island, January 10, 2015.
Jessie, Bernice. Interviewed by Jalen Evans. Oral Interview. 15 Summit St. Woonsocket, Rhode Island, January 10, 2015.
Tooher, Nora L. “Textile industry weaves pattern of exploitation.” Liz Claiborne Inc., Dec 31, 1989. Newspapers, Providence Journal/Evening Bulletin.
http://uri.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.uri.idm.oclc.org/docview/396781049?accountid=28991 (accessed Jan. 12, 2015).
Minchin, Timothy. “The Crompton Closing: Imports and the Decline of America’s Oldest Textile Company.” Journal of American Studies 47 (2013): 231-260.
Buhle, Paul. “An Oral History of Rhode Island Labor: Working People in the Postindustrial Age, 1961-Present.” Rhode Island History 46 (1987): 54-72.
Molly, Scott. Irish Titan, Irish toilers: Joseph Banigan and nineteenth-century New England labor / Scott Molloy. Durham: University Press of New England, 2008.