roots of Connecticut River Valley deindustrialization: The Springfield American Bosch plant 1940-1975, The

Historical Journal of Massachusetts, Winter 2003 by Forrant, Robert

Senator John F. Kennedy Weighs In The Bosch move added to a lengthy list of closings and relocations in Massachusetts and almost a year after the union's trip to Washington, D.C. Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy prepared a detailed analysis of New England's economic problems. He warned that the "defense contracts in the aircraft and electrical machinery industries and the inflated government payrolls and other activities resulting from mobilization cover up the static position of the private civilian economy of the region" and pointed out that

Even after the Korean War boom nearly 40 percent of Massachusetts' textile workers were jobless .... Instead of declining during the heavy mobilization year of 1951, unemployment increased 150 percent in Fall River, 103 percent in Lawrence, and far more in Nashua, New Hampshire, and in the Rhode Island textile mills.38

In his Senate remarks, Kennedy proved prescient in realizing that job loss would not be confined to textiles and apparel as it had been in the 1930s and 1940s.

According to the Springfield Free Press, the American Bosch Co., a permanent fixture in the industrial life in the city of Springfield, is leaving its location in that city for a free plant, free taxes for ten years, and low-wage labor in Columbus, Mississippi.39

Kennedy spoke against federal tax legislation that allowed the issuance of rapid tax amortization certificates to corporations that needed to build new plants to meet defense orders and argued that the program amounted to little more than a corporate subsidy to move jobs from the Northeast. J.P. Stevens had obtained such a certificate in March, 1951 to construct a plant in Stanley, North Carolina and a few days later shuttered a Haverhill, Massachusetts mill, putting four hundred people out of work. General Electric secured a certificate for $20 million to build a jet engine plant in Louisville, Kentucky and then determined that it required only a small area in the massive facility to build engines so filled the remainder of the factory with 19,000 jobs it removed from plants in Trenton, New Jersey, White Plains, New York, South Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Bridgeport, Connecticut. Similarly, Westinghouse received $30 million in certificates to build plants in Columbus, Ohio and Raleigh, North Carolina and shifted production jobs to these plants from Springfield, Massachusetts and Newark, New Jersey.40 In the January 1954 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, Kennedy informed readers that there were some 70 textile mills shuttered in Massachusetts and that relocations in the machinery, electrical equipment, paper, and chemical industries were underway. Work shifts tended to be subtle at first, he warned. And in only a small number of cases:

Does direct migration take place through closing New England plants and transferring their operations to southern plants? More often, firms start by operating mills in both New England and the South, then tend to abandon their northern plants in periods of decline and later expand their southern operations when prosperity returns.41