I found Hillbilly Elegy a far more readable story, this one was way over my head when business and economics was discussed. I agree with much I did read i both books, however, and I can understand how these smaller, desperate towns actually voted for Trump. The Rust Belt in general is still in trouble. What I keep wondering though is what I see in my society. It totally confounds me that most new homes are now priced well over $200,00.00 and still climbing, even in these collapsing towns and cities. So who exactly are these people who can afford them and what do they do for a living in these areas that have no work??? I'd love to know so I can tell my kids to get skills for those jobs!
But, not to disparage these books. Both are fine reads, well researched and written (oddly, both take place in towns in Ohio.. don;t other states have towns like these???). any rate. Lots of the info is spot on and both books compliment each other very well. Glass Houses is an interesting read about a town I've passed through on several occasions and hope to visit again soon to take another look.

The death of a formerly prosperous manufacturing town is nothing new but Brian Alexander is an expert chronicler of the story of one town in particular, Lancaster, Ohio, a town built by glass manufacturing, was once a thriving community with a multi-layered society. Now, Lancaster is a town in trouble, beset by drug addiction, poverty, and a serious lack of opportunity. Alexander tells not just the hard-luck stories familiar to anyone who has been following the economy but also the complicated business machinations that basically ensured that the town would lose its industry. Alexander shows how something that is just a line on a balance sheet to someone miles away, can irrevocably shatter a community.

I thought I would do a post about two new nonfiction books based geographically in the Midwest, but with much larger implications.

The first, GLASS HOUSE by Brian Alexander, tells the story of Lancaster, Ohio, home to Anchor Hocking Glass. And it was a good home – a factory town where workers and executives lived near each other and where a life, including local sports teams and free holiday turkeys, centered around the company. That, at least, was true in times like 1947 when Forbes devoted an issue to the city as an exemplar of American enterprise. And through the late 1960’s, Anchor Hocking employed 5000 in a town of 29,000 – a staggering proportion. Since then, as the cover aptly conveys, a downward spiral ensued.

Alexander is an award winning journalist who grew up in Lancaster and who subtitles his book "the 1% economy and the shattering of the All-American town." In the past 30 years, Anchor Hocking has gone thru Chapter 11 (twice) and recapitalization, been owned by numerous entities and led by a variety of CEO's, faced foreign competition and "big box" store pricing pressures, all while undergoing name changes (Global Home Products, EveryWare, and Oneida Group). As a result, there was a definite retrenchment in its workforce and benefits, the loss of a local identity and increase in drug abuse. GLASS HOUSE will make an interesting companion read to Hillbilly Elegy for our students with both speaking to these negative trends, their political impact, and changes in life near the Appalachians. GLASS HOUSE received a starred review from Kirkus and was recently profiled by a wide variety of media outlets: NPR, Christian Science Monitor, Slate and The Wall Street Journal.

Links in the live post:
http://www.npr.org/2017/02/06/513713606/glass-house-chronicles-the-sharp-decline-of-an-all-american-factory-town
http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2017/0223/Glass-House-views-the-rise-and-fall-of-US-industrialism-through-one-town
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2017/02/brian_alexander_s_glass_house_about_lancaster_ohio_reviewed.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-death-of-the-all-american-town-1487364666

And this online post continues with a review of THE DEATH AND LIFE OF THE GREAT LAKES by Dan Egan

“GLASS HOUSE: THE 1% ECONOMY AND THE SHATTERING OF THE ALL AMERICAN TOWN” is a shocking expose of the exploitation and looting that robbed the citizens of Lancaster Ohio of their livelihood and economic security. Journalist Brian Alexander with historical and corporate research went behind the scenes and studied the destructive greed and evil of corporate piracy the workers left behind. This once thriving economic region that represented the nostalgic Norman Rockwell era to one blighted by severe poverty and criminal activity that traveled up and down US 33—aka as the “Heroin Highway”.

Anchor Hocking (est.1905) Lancaster, Ohio was the largest manufacturer of glass containers in the US, merged with N.Y. based Cap and Closure in 1937. By the 1960’s employed over 5,000 workers at several locations, manufacturing baby food jars, beer/liquor bottles, bakeware, glassware etc. However, in 2014, Brian Gossett, 4th generation to work at Anchor Hocking was earned $21,000 USD per year with no pension or 401K. He lived with his parents. Police officer Eric Brown, retired senior glassmaker worked 30 years at the plant, felt like a “Trojan” who carried the weight of the community on his shoulders fighting endless crime that plagued Lancaster.

Prior to the arrival of the CEO’s that represented the new business model of corporate acquisitions, business shareholders, private equity firms representing a global economy that brokered assorted business/manufacturing investments, Anchor Hocking had been bought and sold numerous times since the 1986 Newell take-over. The effects were immediate, with plant closures, lay-offs, and asset stripping. The new corporate owners knew absolutely nothing about plant/equipment maintenance, business management of companies. As companies were bought sold and/or combined with others, the focus was for high profit performance in these company corporate deals, buy-outs or take-overs.
There was a union strike, though it had little effect. Shareholders demanded a 15% worker pay cut, certain jobs would be paid less, with steep cuts in retirement benefits. The Reagan Administration 198l tax cuts that raised the value of dollar, making Anchor Hocking glassware more expensive and foreign goods cheaper for American buyers. American workers and the unions that represented them suffered a tremendous loss when The NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) went into effect on January 1, 1994. The effects of US factory closures were immediate as the manufacturing base was moved to places like Mexico or China.

From 1987-2004 Anchor Hocking had 6 CEO’s—not one of them lived in Lancaster. Prior to 1987, in the 82 year history of Anchor Hocking all 4 executives lived in Lancaster, supporting community and civic engagement, their children attended public schools. In 1988 voters failed to support tax increases that would have helped fund public schools and road maintenance. In the 1990’s Lancaster school students passed 10 of the 27 requirements. In 2000, 4th and 6th graders failed 9 out of 10 proficiency tests. On February 27, 2003, the Lancaster Board of Education voted to approve a 100% tax exemption to Newell, at a loss of $50,000 USD depriving schoolchildren of desperately needed educational funding.

By 2003, so few workers remained in the Flint Glassware Union, they were unlikely to be changed into office workers manning keyboards in the new economy. Newell sold Anchor Hocking in 2004 for 310K to Fienberg, the founder of Cerberus (est.1992). Newell took the workers 401K retirement investment funds with him! How this was legally allowed remains a mystery. In 2004, Fienberg reportedly paid himself a 75K in 2004. Although Cerberus made a sizable profit on Anchor Glass Container IPO within a year the Connellsville plant closed leaving 250 unemployed. Burdened by heavy debt, investor lawsuits, it went bankrupt in 2005. Although Everywhere Global was drowning in 400K, paying high interest on loans, forced to lease the distribution center it used to own—this never stopped its CEO’s from collecting generous salaries, stock options, and millions in bonuses. All this while demanding severe pay cuts and loss of benefits for frontline workers.

“Lancaster’s social contract had been smashed into mean little shards by the slow motion terrorism of pirate capitalism”
Alexander interviewed many employed and unemployed living in Lancaster. A few hoped to leave to avoid the heavy drug culture that seemed to have a one way ticket to prison. Family breakdown was common, as some parents used and sold drugs with their children in the car. As a society we must come up with a better plan to help those in need—and accept these urgent economic conditions did not occur because of the Chinese, Mexicans, or other minorities. ~ With thanks to St. Martin's Press via NetGalley for the DRC for the purpose of review.

Journalist Brian Alexander is a native of Lancaster, Ohio, a city highlighted by Forbes in 1947 with the proud, post-war pride declaration, "This is America."

Now it's one of many towns in America's Rust Belt that's fallen victim to plagues of misfortune in recent decades - the restructuring and eventual closures of big companies, leading to economic bust and rampant opiate abuse. These towns were once industrial powerhouses, now reduced to low-paying work that barely pay the rent for most, forcing them to wait tables after they finish full-time teaching jobs.

Alexander offers an insider's look into his hometown, the book focusing solely on what went wrong in one place, but as he points out, "whatever had happened to Lancaster had happened everywhere else, too." Just one example in a recognizable formula. If it served as a microcosm defining postwar industrial boom America in 1947, then today it's just as illustrative of where America's hurting.

Lancaster's biggest employer was Anchor Hocking, a Fortune 500 glassware company with global reach. We see how this booming company was able to save itself financially through corporate maneuverings, but left the town of its founding utterly broken.

All the usual culprits are here: foreign manufacturing undercutting American prices, Mexicans bussed in to do basic jobs cheaper, cut taxes meaning not enough money left over for public schools, corrupt politicians, corporate private equity raiders running amok, overworked and exhausted native sons and daughters, too many minimum wage or below it jobs, frustration and desperation turning to drugs and drug trafficking, babies born to impoverished parents on drugs and welfare.

As Alexander puts it, "The people of Lancaster, largely in the dark about the goings-on inside Anchor and EveryWare...developed theories about how the situation had become so dire. Some blamed China, Mexico, and cheap imports. Some suggested that Anchor Hocking was just old and tired, ready for the fossil beds. Maybe it was the housing bubble and the recession, or the unions, or Obama. It was complicated, that's for sure."

Then, inevitably, come drugs. Unable to connect the dots between economic wreckage and drug use and trafficking, the residents are confused, angry, unwilling to try to understand. It's not only them; again, this is a familiar narrative in small towns throughout the country, with a disproportionately high concentration of them in this and nearby areas.

"It was always the drugs. The drugs had come into Lancaster from the outside. And the weaknesses and moral failings of the drug takers led to their committing crimes. The story was neat, symmetrical, easily understood. There seemed to be an almost desperate need to preserve it as dogma. Believing in it was as necessary as believing in the rightness of America, because if you didn't adopt the story, you might be forced to consider the idea that something had gone rotten in the heart of the all-American town - and, just maybe, in America itself."

There's an eerie sense of foreshadowing because we know how this all turns out, what the frustrations and anger and resentment and exhaustion are leading to. Donald Trump is mentioned and you just knew it was coming - these were all his pain points that he hit on constantly along the campaign trail, and most of the people in these impoverished regions, were downtrodden and desperate enough to buy it hook, line and sinker. But you see what they're facing, where they've been and what their choices and options look like. And it doesn't look good. There's an idea that people should just abandon these failing, floundering towns, but that's not always economically sound or financially feasible. And because they just didn't want to. This was their home, their family's home, the way things always were and what real alternative exists?

"People worked hard, but most believed they'd made a fair deal. You could walk off the high school graduation stage on Saturday and walk into a plant on Monday, where you could stay for the next forty years. The company would make you a mechanic, a millwright, an electrician, a machine operator, a mold maker, a salesman. You'd do bone-wearying work, but there were the perks, too, like the company softball, baseball, golf and bowling teams; the company choir and drama clubs; the insurance and pension.

You'd never get rich, and you'd bitch about management and fat cats, but you could buy a little house on the west side, then maybe over on the east side or out in the country, and maybe a boat to fish from on Buckeye Lake. You could get married. You could pay for your kids to attend decent state universities. Best of all, you could stay in the town where your kid's fourth-grade teacher had taught you, too. If you bought in, obeyed the rules - spoken and unspoken - paid your taxes, loved your town and your country, that was the bargain on offer."

Alexander effectively breaks down the clung-to concept of American nostalgia. This was something Trump harped on constantly. There's this idea that it was always better, simpler, richer in some vague sometime before. He deftly shows that this just isn't so. We're certainly facing a wrecked economy thanks to the greed and manipulations of the 1%, which we see here in the progression of Anchor Hocking's convoluted buying and selling, orchestrated by Cerberus Capital Management, that internationally-reaching corporate goliath.

This makes a great companion read to J.D. Vance's 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy. Glass House is denser, more business-focused, but Alexander still gives it a great literary spin and has a knack for showing the personality of a place and its characters. To be fair, I'll admit I was completely lost with eyes glazing over in a few sections that detailed the corporate buyouts, trades, bankruptcies and the general economic nitty gritty. I tried to follow, I really did. The only college class I ever got a D in was Economics 101 (in case you're wondering, that counted as passing so it was ok.) I'm not proud of that, nor of being unable to follow everything in this book that laid out the business side of things.

But there you have it and I guess it's worth a warning for casual readers like me who are interested in the political repercussions and what's going on in small town America that's gotten us where we are, and what options exist for fixing it, that maybe, try as you might, you still could get a little lost. (It's okay guys, we have other talents and we might be dumb but we're still not trying to wreck this economy like certain mamalukes currently lurching around the White House.)

This isn't an uplifting book. There just can't be a positive message in reportage like this, because it's even clear to my economic peabrain that these events don't have any easy fix. As much time and hard work as it took to build up Lancaster and other cities like this, corporate greed and the 1% were able to tear it down much quicker, and coming back from it doesn't happen in a day.

GLASS HOUSE a story that shows the more base side of capitalism, where short-term profits are paramount, and people are just things in the way. The story is not a fun read--it's actually quite sad, and unfortunately, there isn't a cheery ending. Nevertheless, this tale is a story that needs telling, and a discussion worth having. The events documented in this book are sure to bring up lots of questions--especially regarding the ethics of corporate buyouts.

Brian Alexander explains what happened to Anchor Hocking Glass Corporation, a historic company in the town of Lancaster, Ohio. (The company is called "Hocking" because of the nearby river.) At one point, the company had 5,000 employees in Lancaster. For decades, Anchor and Lancaster had a good relationship. In times of crisis, the town and the company worked together. For example, in the 1970s, when there was a national shortage of raw material, "Anchor Hocking put out a call. Families loaded their cars with every bottle, jar, and tumbler they could spare."

This mutually beneficial relationship began to change in the 1970s as manufacturing began to dry up. Lancaster saw "steel mills in Youngstown, the NCR (National Cash Register) Corporation in Dayton, and the GM plant in Lordstown lay off thousands."

With Anchor Hocking, it wasn't a question of shipping jobs overseas. In the glass business, production is not so easily shipped off to China. (The logistics of making fragile glass is not at all the same as making electronics.) Nevertheless, businesses like Anchor got a lot more competitive: "Big-box stores like Walmart, with their intense pressure on suppliers to reduce wholesale prices, nibbled away at Anchor’s margins."

GLASS HOUSE relates the story of what happens after repeated leveraged buyouts from sharp businessmen, each looking to extract profit to justify the deal. The buyouts included big names such as Carl Icahn and Cerberus Capital. Most of these "financial engineering" deals were designed to extract as much cash as possible from Anchor--no matter what else the cost. New management was " laser-focused on bottom-line performance."

All the buyouts and reorganizations eventually led to contentious union disputes, with management demanding concessions from the union. Several bitter strikes took their toll, and the union ended up making sizeable concessions.

Each buyout also created turmoil, confusion, and lowered moral. As one example of a morale-killing decision, new management was appalled at the high salaries paid to good sales people. They thought it outrageous that their best sales people made more than they did! So, the new management eliminated commissions, and "approved a decision to turn the sales force into salaried employees—effectively mandating a severe pay cut."

The town of Lancaster was ever optimistic (naive?) that each new buyout would be all for the better: "Lancaster was a place of strong belief. . .if everybody just worked harder," things would somehow work out. "There was an expectation of some renewal, some better outcome,”

All in all, I found GLASS HOUSE a fascinating, if sad read. The pages are filled with stories of hardship and suffering inflicted on the residents of Lancaster. It seems to me the central issue illustrated in this book is, "Do corporate managers have any responsibility to society, or do corporations serve the shareholders' exclusively?"

I found this book easy to read--with just one exception: I found the ownership history of the company so bewildering, I could have used a chart showing me how ownership had changed.


Advance Review Copy courtesy of the publisher.

BookFilter review: What happened to the heartland of America, the small towns that were once the backbone of the country and now seem like its biggest problem, riddled with opioid addiction and crumbling factories? Journalist Brian Alexander looks at his home town of Lancaster, Ohio, a town once dubbed by Forbes as the Norman Rockwell ideal of small town life, anchored quite literally by the Anchor Hocking factory that made glass baking trays and measuring cups and glasses and other well-made items you could find in every household in America. He gently makes clear that Lancaster -- once proudly known as the whitest town in America -- wasn't so idyllic for everyone -- women looking to work outside the home, people of color, Catholics and so on weren't exactly popular (and gays weren't even acknowledged at all). Still all in all it was pretty good for the people who were visible, from blue collar workers to top executives. Business leaders and factory workers might belong to the same social club and drink in the same bars. Everyone knew everyone else and the town proudly and wisely invested in itself by building a good hospital and hotel and schools and the such -- and by investing, we mean raise taxes. Alexander shows how that all fell apart in a decades-long tale that jumps back and forth from the hollowed out community of today (including drug addicts and weakened unions and disheartened cops) to the vagaries of the past. It's almost comical how every ill of past years is visited on the town like a plague, from Carl Icahn greenmailing the "glass house" factory into forking over tons of money to corporate raiders and private equity firms that don't even have the decency to split it up and sell it off. They just show up, take over, pay themselves to consult and walk away with tons of cash while leaving a decent business over-burdened with debt. Then someone else comes in, demands more worker concessions and does the same thing. Alexander keeps widening his scope. He looks at companies run by people who have no roots in the town their company is based in to malignant businesses that feed off poverty, like pay-day loan sharks to discount stores. He watches as judges chide addicts for personal failings while the wife of the mayor is jailed for embezzlement and gambling away stolen funds. Frankly, the story loses its focus time and again, with the scope becoming so broad that it all becomes fuzzy, like a scene in a movie in which the camera pulls back and back again, farther and farther away until you can't really see anything. A lengthy few chapters detailing the dizzying financial firms raping and pillaging their way through Anchor Hocking is followed by a scene with one of the people Alexander follows for years. But the main effect is that you'd almost forgotten about this or that person when they pop up again. His righteous anger is searing and his reportage is vivid and detailed. If the story gets away from him by the end, it's a poignant echo of how a functioning community has escaped the grasp of Lancaster and perhaps America as well. -- Michael Giltz