American Consequences - June 2018

Their success is reflected in the names of three of Toledo’s seven historical Fortune 500 companies – Libbey-Owens-Ford, Owens- Illinois, and Owens-Corning Fiberglass. With Detroit just up what’s now I-75, Toledo also was strong in the transport and vehicle sector. In fact, for a while we were the Silicon Valley of wheels. (Although, unfortunately for Toledo, too many of those wheels were attached to buggies and bicycles instead of cars.) In Toledo, you can get stopped for driving in a straight line... Cops assume you’re too drunk to swerve around the potholes. Rounding out our Fortune 500 past were Champion (spark plugs), Questor (auto parts), Sheller-Globe (auto stampings and dies), and, of course, maker of the iconic Jeep, Willys-Overland Motors. Mergers, acquisitions, and other forms of corporate mayhem herded Champion, Questor, and Sheller-Globe out of town. And while the glass companies retain a presence in Toledo, depletion of gas and sand sent much of our glass manufacturing elsewhere. Along with a decline in natural resources, Toledo’s manufacturing “rustification” was abetted by labor becoming both scarce and expensive. Labor problems began as early as 1934 with the Toledo Auto-Lite strike – a five-day battle between nearly 10,000 strikers and the Ohio National Guard. The “Battle of Toledo” left two strikers dead and more than 200 injured.

OK, Toledo has more neighborhoods with plywood windows than we want. And rampant potholes make our streets look like a moonscape. In Toledo, you can get stopped for driving in a straight line... Cops assume you’re too drunk to swerve around the potholes. And, yes, about 70% of our central business district is comprised of vacant lots or vast parking lots. However... Although I’m not writing a Chamber of Commerce booster blast, let me explain why I think Toledo is catching a wave rather than listing like a lifeboat mired in a Lake Erie algal bloom. Let’s wash the windows in the Glass City and peek inside. Toledo became “Glass City” because it was, first, gas city. Abundant natural gas carbonating below Northwest Ohio’s Great Black Swamp attracted the New England Glass Company in 1888. Cheap energy, high quality sand (needed for glass production), and a location well-situated for transportation by water and rail lured the owner of New England Glass, Edward Drummond Libbey, to Toledo. In 1892, the Libbey Glass Company was formed. It wasn’t long before Libbey hired a glass blower and inventor of automated glass- making machinery named Michael Owens, and the pair made Toledo the “Glass Capital of the World.”

34 June 2018

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