The Fight to Save the Town

The Fight to Save the Town, Reimagining Discarded America, by Michelle Wilde Anderson, Avid Reader Press 2022

When a fire destroyed the old brick mill building housing Malden Mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the structure was not the only great loss suffered on December 11, 1995. Two weeks before Christmas thousands of workers faced loss of pay and benefits, and as they surveyed the ash-covered site it was not at all clear when - or even if - this textile business would start up again.  But Aaron Feuerstein, whose grandfather started the business in 1906, had a plan.  The late Mr. Feuerstein, a mensch, kept his workers going and rebuilt the factory, at a cost of millions in a little over one year.  

But it still wasn't enough - two bankruptcies later the company stopped production and was sold,  Headcounts of course dropped, even though the mill's main product, Polartec fleece, invented by an engineer who realized that polyester fabric could be tweaked into thick, resilient fleece, grew in market share.  I have to say that although the invention of Polartec fleece created an entirely new market, and hence more jobs for the Lawrence workers, the production operations at the factory were not quite what they could have been.  Product flows and automation needed to be reviewed and upgraded.  But as I was informed after my review visit, the concern was that more or better automation would put workers on the street, and of course, without matching increased volumes, it might have.  So Mr. Feuerstein, the ultimate mensch, chose to continue with the factory's less than perfect production methods and layout in favor of headcount that would have been reduced with newer methods.  It was quite a trade-off.

In Michelle Wilde Anderson's The Fight to Save The Town we see the sad results of a combination of forces playing against four industrial areas -Stockton, California, Josephine County, Oregon, Lawrence, Massachusetts, and Detroit, Michigan.  "In some of our poorest postindustrial places, people are fighting to make something beautiful from something broken.  May these stories restore our will to help them."

Key to the impact of this book is Anderson's use of the word "discarded" in the subtitle, because it speaks to a bigger issue, the loss of our industrial base and the human fallout from these failures.  And it's the kind of one-word description of our postindustrial base that hurts.

"Marching, marching, in the beauty of the day" (Bread and Roses Strike, Lawrence, Mass 1912)

Anderson, however, is hoping for vision and solutions.  They may not come from corporate leaders who can, as we saw with Malden Mills, only do so much. And we cannot put all our hope in political leaders, many of whom believed that moving to a customer service economy was the US next step!   But the author looks for other answers, and she is hopeful that we will see them.... soon.  I urge readers to zero in on Chapter 3, "Marching, Marching..."  for more of the hopeful events that we all want to see. 

Destiny Rodriguez, commencement speaker at Northern Essex Community College, one of the immigrant city's stories of hope, had just completed a teacher's aide training program, while mothering two kids and working two part-time jobs - YMCA daycare, and waitressing.  She made just enough money to pay her rent, although the checks were sometimes late, and she was young enough to carry school and work.  Destiny planned to keep trudging -   "I have m high school diploma, but I never attended a graduation.  This will not be my last one."

Author Anderson does not set out a single Big Solution, one that we could laminate and pin to the wall.  Instead, her stories of loss and pain and recovery, new birth - like Destiny Rodriguez', demonstrate what immigrants and their families have been able to somehow achieve, with handfuls of help, some of which comes from governmental agencies.  

Patricia E. Moody

FORTUNE magazine  "Pioneering Woman in Mfg" 

IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert

A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers,  patriciaemoody@gmail.com