AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY: ACT TWO

...According to Edward Wingenbach, then president of Local 68, Mack Truck issued a "letter of understanding," proposing that workers accept a moratorium on wages, holidays, and vacations in return for a new contract at the end of 1977 and retroactive to the beginning of the year...

...Eroding the local tax base in order to establish the proper business climate—the road generally taken by self-reliance—is no longer a solution...

...The meeting, held on March 1, attracted approximately 120 people...

...Mack, who said he supported the changes ushered in by assembly-line conversion on the grounds that such cost-effective measures were necessary if SCM was to continue to compete in the portable-typewriter market, was appointed by management as president of the committee system...

...Self-reliance of this type is simply passivity dressed up as a welcome to the corporate genie...

...In Cortland, the capacity for suffering at this point does appear endless...

...Such visible indicators of the company's generosity, however, obscure the narrow scope of its benefits to its workers and the community...

...And as Dreiser discovered 60 years ago, this tragedy plays well in Cortland...

...Yet two weeks later, 200 more workers were notified one week in advance of the elimination of their jobs...

...The billboard reads: "Business and Industry Wanted: Plentiful Labor, Land, Water, Accessibility...

...None of the organizers were workers at SCM, but concern for the survival of their community and the plight of the workers led to their attempt to put pressure on local politicians to take responsibility in meeting the crisis that faced the people of Cortland...

...Dreiser examined about a dozen similar murders before selecting it as the basis of An American Tragedy...

...Morale is rapidly deteriorating...

...During his imprisonment and while awaiting his execution, Dreiser's character Clyde Griffiths receives two books, Robinson Crusoe and Arabian Nights—the first celebrating the selfreliant man who in difficult circumstances and with nothing but his own resources fashions a decent life for himself, the second portraying an imaginary world where wishes are fulfilled and aspirations met by a magical genie...

...For one thing, the company had eliminated over 700 jobs since December...

...More distressing was the systematic blacklisting of Brockway workers after the closing (see Aronson and McKersie, "Economic Consequences of Plant Shutdowns In New York State," New York State Employment and Training Council, 1980...

...Finally, a group of SmithCorona workers, after having requested and received permission from management, launched a petition drive aimed at having the federal government agree to purchase more American (that is, SCM) typewriters...

...Wingenbach said he believes that the decision to close probably resulted from the relative uselessness of the Cortland plant, which was small and outdated, for Mack's larger operation...

...The community's seeming support for such punitive action, sometimes blatantly expressed in letters to the editor in the local newspaper, testified to a competition among neighbors that has served to inhibit effective labor organization in Cortland...

...Dreiser relieves Clyde of responsibility for his act, portraying him as caught up in forces and moved by events over which he has no control...

...In Wingenbach's view, the Brockway workers' failure to settle on a contract before the closing stemmed from their refusal to believe that the company would ever leave...

...Despite the growing respectability and legitimacy accorded the campaign after the meeting and the continuation of massive layoffs, job terminations, and pay reductions induced by the ensuing bumping, the complete inactivity of SCM workers continued...

...In this context, CCIC organizers could gather little support from wary and confused workers...

...Finally, when calls for a city-council sponsored public hearing to discuss the feasibility of prenotification were met with silence or refusal, the CCIC organized its own public meeting for that purpose...

...Two specific instances of conflict in Cortland's recent past shed much light on how the paternalism instituted by Wickwire, with its consequent paralysis of the work force, has permeated the social, political, and economic fabric of Cortland life...

...In the bars they frequent, the layoffs are described as maternity leaves, the result of getting "fucked" too often by SCM...

...In the novel, Dreiser tells the story of Clyde Griffiths, a man driven to murder by the dream of upward mobility, social acceptance, money, and success...

...Its decision to close in the spring of 1977 spurred a conflict that divided the community and pitted worker against worker, resurrecting deep-seated jealousies and misapprehensions that have continually undermined attempts to unify the Cortland work force...

...SCM now is the largest employer...

...IT SEEMED SO truly a story of what life does to the individual—and how impotent the individual is against such forces," Theodore Dreiser wrote about An American Tragedy in 1927, two years after its publication...

...In Clyde's story, Dreiser wants us to see the boundless capacity for suffering that makes the persistence of the American dream possible, and he wants us to recognize, too, that "sometimes even the mediocre and the inefficient attain to a classic stature when dignified by pain...

...In addition to SmithCorona, it holds controlling interest in Glidden Paints, Proctor-Silex, and Durkee Foods, to name a few of its subsidiaries...

...186 • The second, more recent instance of labor conflict concerns the shutdown of the Brockway Truck assembly plant in 1977...

...This large, profitable, highly diversified multinational corporation started in the Cortland area...

...Statements of support 184 from Senator Martin Conner and Assemblyman Frank Barbaro, chief sponsors of the prenotification bills in the state legislature, also were presented...

...SCM's plant-closing announcement in June '82 was no surprise...

...Dreiser's point is obvious enough: the ideology of self-reliance guides the pursuit of the American dream, especially in rough times...

...Five years after the shutdown the scars remain...

...Keep that genie comfortable and he will do it for us, fulfill our every wish...

...By 1915, Wickwire Bros., Inc., had expanded to include a plant for drawing and weaving wire, a rod-rolling mill, an open-hearth steel mill, and a blooming mill...

...In the aftermath of the first wave of job losses, a small group of Cortland residents formed a grass-roots organization calling itself the Cortland Community Interest Campaign (CCIC...

...Friendly politicians, a supportive press, and an extraordinarily docile work force combine to make Cortland a fertile American ground for corporate investment—but it's not nearly as attractive as Honduras, Costa Rica, Brazil, and Singapore, where SCM now does much of its investing...

...Both instances illustrate the forces at work that have prevented effective change in the past and live on to make the present conflict with SCM profoundly difficult...

...Cortland County: A Great Area to Grow With...

...In important respects, Cortland's business climate, given the present realities of American society, is probably as good as it can be...

...He soon was caught and tried, and in 1908 he was executed...

...Another noted that she was threatened for circulating a petition in support of a non-smoking area in the cafeteria...

...Mack, who had openly condemned the wildcat strikes attempted before the committee system was established, said he believed grievances were finally being answered under the new system...

...Neither the community at large nor its workers in particular show any willingness to deploy defensive measures, never mind an interest in creating an innovative response to corporate and political insensibility...

...The closing means that at least 400 of the more than 900 workers at the plant will lose their jobs and the remaining work force will be retained at other plants...

...During the labor trouble that resulted from the ensuing reduction of pay and the shorter, more rigidly scheduled work breaks, the International Union of Electricians attempted three times to bring their organization into the SCM plants...

...The 18-month advance notice provided by SCM in its latest announcement is the result of this pressure...

...Accordingly, the head of the country's Industrial Development Agency, armed with tax abatements and lowinterest loans, warns the community that support for a modest prenotification bill will frighten the industry genie away...

...For another, in February the local newspaper had reported the boast of Paul Elicker, the firm's chairman and president: "Since I have been chief executive of SCM, we have terminated some three dozen operations, and I can assure you we will not hesitate to do so in the future if it is necessary and appropriate...

...Cortland is like most other 187 communities in the United States: we have no socialist legislators, no effective wide-based community and neighborhood organizations, no rebellious workers...

...The Local rejected this compromise and engaged in an unauthorized strike on January 20, 1977...

...The local newspaper attributed SCM's plight to high taxes, government regulations, and the Department of Commerce's failure to enforce antidumping legislation regarding import goods...

...Dreiser's tale of Clyde Griffiths is a fictionalized account of the well-publicized 1906 Chester Gillette murder case...

...In its aftermath, the local newspaper significantly qualified its outright opposition to prenotification in an editorial that urged the city council and the county legislature to hold public hearings for the purpose of opening and fully considering the proposal...

...Ranked the 200th largest corporation by Fortune, SCM reported a 1981 profit of close to $57 million...

...By April 4, 1977, the plant was closed, the workers had no contract and, according to management, the unauthorized strike voided any previous agreements regarding severance pay and transfer rights...

...On June 30, 1982, SCM Corporation, the parent company, announced its intention to shut down one of its five area plants within the next 18 months and relocate its operations to an existing Singapore facility...

...It included presentations by two local organizers, a representative from the United Brotherhood of Electrical Workers' local in Buffalo, and by long-time activist Paul O'Dwyer...

...Soon after the committee system was dissolved, SCM management appointed Mack the official liaison between management and all SCM workers in the five Cortland area plants...

...The bottom line, he said, was that most people were reluctant to take money from their wages to pay union dues...

...Throughout the century of Wickwire reign, numerous labor struggles and attempts to unionize were either thwarted or contained...

...When asked to sign a petition in support of prenotification for Smith-Corona workers, a former Brockway employee refused, saying "they didn't support us when we were in trouble, why should we support them...

...Not even the clergy, the Democratic party, or any popular "liberal" personalities offered active support when approached by the group...

...After announcing a decision to strike for higher wages in July 1968, Frank Lorenzo, the president of Local 2371, complained to the local paper that Wickwire was "20 years behind the times in wages," paying an average of $2.18 per hour...

...The company employed more than 1,500 people and its physical plant covered a 36-acre area on the south side of the city of Cortland...

...Brockway, a subsidiary of Mack Trucks of Allentown, Pa., had brought fame to Cortland as producer of the "Huskie Dog," known to many as the Cadillac of tractor trailers...

...Perhaps they are hidden from view by the large billboard recently erected by the city council as a key element in its $30,000 "let's pull ourselves up by our bootstraps" campaign to attract new industry...

...American self-reliance issues from passivity...

...it's a story suggesting that, so far, Reagan's policy and the exacerbation of corporate irresponsibility it fosters do little to promote conditions for a revitalization of our democratic spirit...

...Gillette disposed of this "problem" by drowning the woman...

...He went on to give the unmistakable impression that SCM had stabilized its Cortland work force and that further cutbacks were not anticipated...

...Cortland's story may be far more significant than Santa Monica's...

...The shirt factory no longer exists...

...Comic effect often results when people persist today in calling for the genies and in waiting humbly for a reply...

...Ya Gotta Believe" is her message, and if we do, Cortland will become as prosperous as Orlando...

...Clyde Griffiths is as much victim as victimizer in Dreiser's characterization...

...Presenting themselves as philanthropists and public benefactors, the Wickwires focused attention on their numerous contributions to the 185 community...

...Now rich uncles are in short supply and corporations demand, in addition to deference, cheap labor costs on the order of the 97 cents an hour that is the average pay in Singapore...

...But there was one problem183 Grace Brown, an impoverished mill hand pregnant with his child...

...A rural community relatively sheltered from the effects of America's "industrial revolution," Cortland welcomed with pride the sudden success of the new enterprise and accepted the Wickwire family as harbinger of a new and modern era...

...Workers at other Cortland plants virtually gloated over the closing and accused their Brockway counterparts of "driving the company away" by "asking for too much...

...For workers in Cortland and in the many places like it throughout the country, the 1980s promise to be grim...

...The Gillette murder case was far from uncommon in Dreiser's day...

...Gillette, a poor-relation minor official in his uncle's prosperous Cortland shirt factory, began courting the daughter of one of the town's socially prominent families and soon regarded marriage to her as essential to his rise to the top of Cortland's elite...

...By-laws were set up according to traditional union procedures, and the new "company union" was allowed to meet on company time...

...Several years before the company closed down in 1971, United Steel Workers' Local 2371 gained a foothold in the plant but was unable to achieve significant gains...

...In addition to the financial hardships endured by the Brockway workers after the closing, the community's response to their plight was disturbing...

...Conversations with these workers reveal a web of coercion and control that effectively prevents them from organizing or making their complaints heard...

...By not accepting a contract, he said, "we played right into the company's hands...

...it, too, illustrates the constraints placed on Cortland workers...

...Workers on the assembly line, most of whom are women, tell stories of intimidation and harassment, of noisy and hazardous work conditions...

...Moreover, attempts by the Local to save the plant were met with scorn and disdain...

...In addition, the proposal included provisions for severance pay, and transfer with seniority to any of the six Mack plants in the Mack council of the UAW...

...Donations to the local hospital and park, art exhibits from their priceless collection, the visible splendor of their mansions, and the mere presence of their "high society" made Cortland a place to be noticed...

...There was no indication that business was suffering...

...The circumstances surrounding that birth illustrate a rather typical scenario, which greeted many industrial pioneers in the late 19th century...

...Our story is equally common...

...Although the council and legislature persisted in their refusal to give the proponents of prenotification a hearing, these small signs of minimal support along with the successful petition drive and the negative publicity SCM received as a consequence of the meeting pressured the company to act in a more responsible manner...

...Similarly, the leader of the minority party in the county legislature publicly pledged to canvas his Democratic colleagues in an effort to get them at last involved in the issue...

...After the controversy around assemblyline conversion abated, Mack noted, "people gradually accepted that this is the way it's going to be...

...What was surprising, given SCM's well-known custom of informing affected workers (here some with 10 or more years seniority), only hours or days prior to layoffs and job losses, was the 18months advance notice that was eventually provided by the company...

...According to Wingenbach, the union sought help from local as well as state officials, but to no avail...

...Mack said he feels SCM workers rejected the IUE because "they didn't really understand what the union was...

...Dreiser's primary concern, Irving Howe has written, was with the "tragedy of human waste: energies, talents, affections all unused...

...After rejecting management's proposed cost-reduction plan, which included a two-year wage freeze, more management discretion in assignment of work, and exclusion of Brockway bargaining units from all master agreements between Mack Truck and the UAW, the UAW attempted to reach a compromise between Local 68 and Mack...

...Clyde Griffiths had two genies, a long-lost rich uncle and a wealthy girlfriend, through whom he hoped to rise from poverty to small-town elite...

...THE OLD GENIES, long-lost rich uncles and profit-making corporations, once fulfilled wishes and expected little more than deference 188 in return...

...Reaganomics will continue to be met with little resistance...

...The response to SCM's decision to close the plant and thus continue its prodigious contribution to a local unemployment rate hovering around 13 percent is instructive to those of us searching for silver linings in the cloud of Reaganomics...

...Settled amidst rolling farmland, Cortland remains small, rural, antiunion, and politically conservative...

...During this time, Local 68 of the UAW was in the process of negotiating a new contract with management...

...This response, much like the more general response of the community, to SCM's reprehensible and destructive behavior —passive acceptance founded on inchoate anger, fear, and frustration—has its roots in Cortland's history of labor-capital relations...

...According to John Mack, an SCM employee from 1952 to 1968, the IUE won the support of many workers but ultimately was voted down...

...During that period, SCM attempted to quell labor turmoil by setting up a committee system whereby each work area (about 100 people) elected individuals to represent it before the management...

...I think that they are doing the responsible thing," declared Cortland's mayor, whose observation in the aftermath of the December job loss—"the people of Cortland are used to being laid off"—implied that there is little to worry about...

...The proposed law calls for one year's notification before the closing of a firm employing more than 500 people and includes provisions for severance pay, continuation of health benefits, retraining programs, and a community assistance fund from which low-interest loans could be drawn by individuals and small businesses to help cope with the problems created by the loss of a major employer...

...Cortland today has one genie, the large corporation...

...The tragedy, of course—and in this case it is a peculiarly American tragedy—is the insistence on seeing a solution where none exists any more...

...For the 500 former Brockway workers, years of working for future security were as good as lost...

...One woman told of how managers would disperse small groups that congregated during lunch or coffee breaks in the weeks after the prenotification issue emerged, fearing they would be discussing the matter...

...The first incident involved Smith-Corona itself in the late 1950s, when the corporation merged with Marchant Calculators, Inc., to form the present SCM...

...It stands unobtrusively on the outskirts of Cortland, on Route 81, as an invitation—a plea, really—to genies passing by on the road from Syracuse to Binghamton to save the town from execution...

...However, the local newspaper editorialized that the idea of prenotification is "unreasonable and unrealistic," and the mayor, local business leaders, and the Chamber of Commerce quickly and vehemently recorded their opposition to it...

...According to Lorenzo, many Wickwire workers had to "moonlight" in order to earn enough to live, while some collected welfare to supplement their low wages...

...But as the comic relief dissipates, the American tragedy is revealed...

...These reductions are part of a trend that began in December 1981, when SCM announced, with short notice, the elimination of more than 500 jobs...

...Dreiser cuts through the shallowness of that American dream and takes us to turn-of-the-century Cortland to see the dark side of the spectacle of America on the make...

...Today, of course, America is no longer on the make...

...With the expansion in ownership and management came the conversion from bench-assembly to assembly-line production...

...The consequences of Wickwire's paternalistic grip were harshly experienced by those who tried to challenge the company for the unsatisfactory working conditions, poor treatment of workers, and low wages that prevailed beneath the veneer of social responsibility...

...Located in the geographical center of the state, Cortland has undergone only superficial changes since Dreiser's visit in 1925...

...SCM strives diligently, with the assistance of Senators Moynihan and D'Amato, to make the Japanese the scapegoat in this affair, despite a government study, carried out in response to SCM's charges, which determined that Japanese dumping of typewriters on the American market amounted to less than 0.5 percent of the dumping margin...

...Rumors that Mack Truck might terminate operations at Brockway began circulating in November 1976...

...To date, this has been the workers' only collective response to the loss of their jobs, the diminution of their income, and the threatened destruction of their community...

...Cortland's birth as an industrial community dates back to the 1870s and the success of Chester and Theodore Wickwire, natives of the city whose small hardware business spawned the development of a $3 million conglomerate that was to produce a quarter of the world's wire cloth by 1928...

...In this setting, Cortland became a company town whose workers stood ready to obey, respect, and trust their generous benefactors...

...In April '82 another 200 jobs were abolished with less than one week's notice...

...Much of this human waste results from continued adherence to conventional solutions that long ago lost their capacity for resolve...

...In taking this action, SCM was responding to a small but wellpublicized community movement to hold it accountable for the consequences of its investment decisions...

...How much longer it will remain in the area is not at all certain...

...pride has long since gone...

...Yet for fear of losing a job or jeopardizing the jobs of family members at SCM, none actively participated and all but a few refused to endorse the petition...

...Through Dreiser's pen, Grace Brown's murder comes to represent the uncontrollable destructiveness unleashed in the pursuit of the American dream...

...One of the several SmithCorona executives in attendance joined with the head of the Cortland County Industrial Development Agency to oppose the concept of prenotification on the now familiar but mistaken grounds that it is not feasible, restrictive of free enterprise, and a disincentive to industry...

...Though the committee system "worked smoothly" for over a year, the National Labor Relations Board, at the request of the IUE, declared it unlawful since it was not initiated by the workers themselves...

...The meeting received extensive television, radio, and press coverage in and around Cortland...

...The group's first step was to petition the city council to consider supporting the prenotification bill...

...If the past is any guide, the majority of those still with jobs will suffer substantial losses in wages and benefits...

...but the dream can be realized only with the assistance of a genie who will secure for us what is beyond our reach...

...The CCIC attempted to organize its efforts around the issue of prenotification, focusing on a bill currently alive in the state senate...

...In less than a week, 2,000 area residents endorsed the petition and organizers gained confidence that the issue would at least be considered on the local level...

...Maintaining the proper business climate becomes the solution to the problem...

...We find in such passive acceptance ground for the American tragedy...

...Up to the point of the meeting, not one SCM worker could be persuaded to actively assist in the effort to mitigate the company's abuses...

...In any event, the legacy of passive acceptance, which underlies the community's toleration of corporate irresponsibility, was strengthened by the abusive treatment accorded the Brockway workers...

...In living rooms and bars, outside supermarkets and the unemployment office, many SCM workers expressed hostility toward the company and support for the prenotification effort...

...Firms such as SCM and Pall Trinity Micro "wouldn't touch Brockway workers," exclaimed Wingenbach...

...Moreover, their apparent regard for the work force, reflected in job-safety programs, the existence of emergency hospital services at the plants, and "gifts" such as a $7.50 bonus to employees in 1935 were acknowledged by many in the community...

...and Cortland's mayor applauds a plant closing while the other politicians remain silent bystanders, the local newspaper urges the slashing of taxes and regulations, and the county legislature begins its deliberations on the plight of Cortland with the testimony of a local teen-ager who has recently returned from Disney World...

...Yet the American dream, in all its tragic dimensions, continues to be sustained in end-of-the-century Cortland...

...signs of pain-wrought dignity, however, are difficult to come by...

...According to Mack, this new arrangement worked for a couple of years...

...With the plant closing, Smith-Corona's entire labor force will be reduced to 2,800...

...orders were plentiful, profits were good...