Abstract
“The Glass City” is the nickname of Toledo, Ohio. Toledo’s football stadium is the Glass Bowl. The Glass Pavilion museum has one of the world’s best collections of glass objects. Fiberglas Tower is Toledo’s second-tallest building. References to glass are found all over Toledo. What Toledo actually lacks in the way of glass is a thriving glass industry. The factories are nearly all abandoned and the offices are mostly closed.
Barbara Floyd chronicles the rise, century-long dominance, and fall of Toledo’s glass industry. Glassmaking is an ancient craft, but until the late 19th century it required considerable skill to blow the glass into attractive shapes. The mark of a wealthy family was a cabinet filled with crystal and walls filled with windows.
The rise of Toledo’s glass industry is especially well reported in the book. Key actors made important decisions, of course, but happily the book eschews “great man” theories, focusing instead on Toledo’s economic geography assets that made a good match for glass production. Most important of these assets was natural gas, which was first exploited in Toledo in 1887. Not by coincidence, the first glass manufacturer arrived a year later. A lot of energy was needed to keep the glass molten. Coal had been the principal energy source, but natural gas proved cheaper and more efficient. Toledo’s supply of natural gas was soon exhausted, but by then the glass industry was too ensconced to consider relocating so soon after arriving in Toledo.
Into the 20th century, proximity to Detroit became an important asset for Toledo’s glassmakers. Once glass became a standard feature and closed-bodied autos replaced convertibles as the principal style, demand for plate glass made in Toledo increased rapidly.
Labor also played a key role in the relocation of glass production to Toledo. Glassworkers were highly skilled and (for the time) highly paid workers. The Glass Workers Union, founded in 1878, was strong enough to negotiate uniform national wages and working conditions. These contracts placed glass producers in New England at a competitive disadvantage. Located relatively far from coalfields, the New England firms had to pay high prices for their energy, but they could not offset higher energy prices with lower wages. After a series of strikes at the New England Glass Company, its owner, Edward Libbey, secured donations of land, cheap natural gas, and workers’ houses from Toledo business leaders. Libbey’s arrival in Toledo on August 17, 1888, along with executives and workers who chose to relocate from Massachusetts, was greeted by a band and a parade.
Libbey Glass was soon joined by other glassmaking companies; most notable were Owens and Ford. Michael Owens moved to Toledo to work at Libbey Glass and rose through the ranks there before setting up his own company in 1895. Owens is credited with inventing machinery that turned glassmaking from a skilled craft to an automated unskilled operation. John Ford founded several glass factories, including Pittsburgh Plate Glass. His son Edward moved to Toledo to build his own plate glass factory, which opened in 1899 in the Toledo suburb of Rossford. Rossford became a company town, with workers’ housing and commercial activities surrounding the glass factory.
Most of The Glass City is devoted to the many twists and turns taken by Toledo’s three pioneering glass companies. After many mergers and acquisitions, too numerous to recount here, Toledo’s three leading glass companies ended up being Libbey–Owens–Ford (best known for flat glass), Owens–Illinois (best known for glass containers), and Owens–Corning Fiberglas (best known for glass fibers). The three Fortune 500 companies built impressive office towers in downtown Toledo and contributed to the cultural and civic life of the city for a half-century.
The demise of Toledo’s glass industry came quickly. The last chapter of the book is titled “Cracks in the Glass City,” but “shattering” would probably be a better choice. The author’s anger is palpable: “A vortex of globalization, corporate greed, mismanagement, costly litigation, bankruptcy, workforce downsizing, and changing views of corporate citizenship swept the city and threatened its very foundation” (p. 188).
As good a starting point for Toledo’s demise was the acquisition of Libbey–Owens–Ford in 1986 by the British glassmaker Pilkington, which slashed production and employment in the Toledo area and eliminated the iconic Libbey–Owens–Ford brand name. The same year, Owens–Illinois was acquired in a hostile takeover by the holding company Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. Meanwhile, Owens–Corning was fighting off its own hostile takeover but ultimately was forced to reorganize under bankruptcy protection as a result of asbestos liabilities.
Owens–Corning maintains a headquarters in downtown Toledo and Owens–Illinois in the suburbs, but neither has manufacturing facilities in the Toledo area. The Glass Blowers Union merged with the Steelworkers and moved to Pittsburgh. Pilkington still operates the historic Rossford plate glass factory, though with a tiny fraction of the workforce in its heyday. Pilkington itself is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nippon Sheet Glass. A cruel irony for Toledo: Libbey–Owens–Ford executives were instrumental in creating Nippon Glass in the 1920s and preventing General Douglas MacArthur from liquidating it after World War II.
On a U.S. map, Toledo looks like an ideal location for industry. It sits at the junction of interstates 75, 80, and 90; several railroads; and Lake Erie. Though the glass industry is gone, Toledo remains a major industrial center, although for the auto industry rather than the glass industry. Barbara Floyd’s final word on Toledo’s glass industry is appropriate: “After 125 years in Toledo, in 2013 the future of the glass industry in the city appeared uncertain” (p. 212).