From the first day of shooting to a deep dive into Milwaukee’s industrial past — the story behind the story, in chronological order.
Day One of a jam-packed schedule for our new documentary in progress! Directors John W. Miller and Faith Kohler spent today exploring the meaning of the American Dream and the lives of American union workers. So grateful to DiAndre and Annette for contributing to this story… and for the awesome shirt DiAndre gave Faith! Working with this powerhouse mother-son duo was a fantastic experience. More to follow!
Great buildings are built on solid foundations, and solid stories are built on great characters. Day Two of our shoot gave us both as we explored the life of this iconic ironworker-turned-activist. Many thanks to Randy for sharing his powerful story and inspiring journey, and for giving us a behind-the-scenes tour of his life. More to follow! Stay safe, masked, and socially distanced, no matter where you’re from or which way you pull the lever!
Once the “party of ideas” from minds like George Will and William F. Buckley, the GOP has evolved, radio personality Charlie Sykes told the Out of Reach crew. He viewed the so-called “Reagan Revolution” favorably, as it focused on growth, deregulation, and the dismantling of big government. But things have changed significantly over the ensuing four decades, bringing some successes but also consequences. And with the way the country’s two political parties have polarized, it’s difficult to even discuss the problems, let alone act in unity to fix them.
Milwaukee lost more than jobs when deindustrialization hit the city, said Wisconsin Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes. He told the Out of Reach crew that opportunities also evaporated, leaving the city segregated, with widening and worrying educational and financial divides.
Watch the sneak peek trailer on Instagram and Facebook to see both how Covid has affected Milwaukee and its remaining industry, and how small businesses have fared in these trying times.
Milwaukee during the 1930s and 1940s experienced a great influx of African American migrants during a momentous event known as the Great Migration. Over 500,000 African Americans left the South between 1910 and 1920, and by the eve of the 1930s that number had more than doubled to 1.3 million. Although Milwaukee wasn’t one of the top destinations in terms of numbers, the share of African Americans in Milwaukee born outside the city jumped significantly in just the span of a decade. The rise in internal migration corresponds with a decrease in net immigration into the country, owing to restrictive immigration laws and wartime production requiring workers in northern industrial cities.
Milwaukee was a major hub for industrial production of both civilian and wartime materials. Allis-Chalmers (11,610 employees) and A.O. Smith (6,499 employees) were the two biggest industrial employers in Milwaukee. By the time the war broke out, Milwaukee was an industrial city, with 40% of its inhabitants involved in manufacturing. The city’s manufacturing employment only increased throughout the war — from 86,400 in 1940 to 113,800 in 1941 and finally 137,700 in 1942, when the war was in full swing. Allis-Chalmers’s main contribution to the war was steam turbines for warships, worth $4.2 million in government defense contracts in 1941.
African Americans suffered the worst during the Great Depression in Milwaukee. Approximately 3.9% of all unemployment in Milwaukee was African American, despite them making up only 1.5% of the city’s population in 1934. They were also over-represented in governmental job programs, with only 49% having a job in the private sector compared to 81% for whites. In 1940, the percentage of African Americans seeking employment was more than double that of whites — 29.3% compared to 12.7%. To add insult to injury, they were often excluded from the city’s industrial job market by outdated and racist attitudes on the part of factory owners, and even when they could get a job, they often got the lowest-paying and toughest work.
Source: Black Milwaukee, Joe William Trotter Jr.
During the Great Depression many citizens of Milwaukee suffered and could not find adequate housing — and African Americans in Milwaukee had it worst. They were often forced, either by lack of housing elsewhere or explicit racist policies, to reside in the slums of the 6th district, known as the poorest and roughest section of the city. Not only were these slums small and cramped, they were also extremely unhealthy. Even during the war, when the U.S. economy was at its height and industrially flourishing, conditions for many African Americans remained poor. Dr. E. R. Krumbiegel, Milwaukee’s health commissioner, described the condition of this housing in 1944 as 45% “good,” 25% “fair,” 17% “poor,” and 13% “dilapidated.” Overall, 65% of housing was considered substandard for the time — often missing electricity, running water, or even toilets.
Source: A City at War: Milwaukee Labor During World War II, Richard L. Pifer
The American Midwest was one of the hardest-hit regions in the United States. Because of the changing political and geopolitical situation in manufacturing during the 1970s and 1980s, more and more companies were moving overseas. As a result, between 1967 and 1987, the manufacturing sector declined by 64% in Philadelphia, 60% in Chicago, 58% in New York, and 51% in Detroit. Philadelphia lost 160,000 jobs; Chicago, 326,000; New York, over 500,000; and Detroit, 108,000. To make things worse, firms moved their job sites to places far away from American metropolitan areas.
Source: Workers on Arrival: Black Labor in the Making of America, Joe William Trotter
Milwaukee’s industrial might played a large role in the development of the Manhattan Project. Starting in late 1942, Allis-Chalmers received more than sixty orders for parts related to the atomic bomb. They were contracted to make equipment able to harness the bomb’s immense power — including equipment for gaseous diffusion, the electromagnetic process that separates uranium, and large power plant equipment used to extract plutonium from uranium. Both executives and employees at the company were in the dark about the true purpose of what they were manufacturing.
Source: World War II Milwaukee, Meg Jones
In the 1970s and 1980s a heavy deindustrialization took place in many northern cities, and Milwaukee was no exception. Black workers dropped from their peak of 25% of workers in industry in 1980 to just 10% in 1990, alongside an increasing poverty rate in many northern former industrial cities. Detroit experienced the highest increase in poverty rate, jumping to 33% after deindustrialization. Black family income dropped too — between 1980 and 1990 the number fell by 15% in cities such as Pittsburgh and Detroit. With deindustrialization came the rise of low-wage retail work taking its place, and the once-numerous industrial unions changed. By century’s end, poor Black working-class women had formed the Atlanta National Domestic Workers Union of America, the Cleveland Domestic Workers of America, and more.
Source: Workers on Arrival: Black Labor in the Making of America, Joe William Trotter
During the 1970s and 1980s, Milwaukee and many other cities in the North experienced a reverse of the migration they had seen in the early 20th century, on the eve of World War I. As segregation slowly fizzled out in the South, many African Americans felt safer returning to their homeland. The 1970s was the first time more people were leaving the North than actually migrating there.
A local industrial giant, Allis-Chalmers struggled during the Depression but never collapsed. In 1931 the company reported profits of merely $1.25 million, and within a year it was reporting a net loss. In accordance with Herbert Hoover’s unofficial policy of wage stagnation, it held out longer than most companies before dropping wages and beginning layoffs. Though times were hard, the company held off on massive layoffs and continued to manufacture products. One of its large, signature products was big transformers for power management, and in this respect it was successful — constructing Building No. 7 next to the electrical shop in May 1930, which allowed greater room for construction and a 100-ton crane. Work orders fell significantly between 1930 and 1932, from $2.7 million worth of orders in 1930 to about $970,000 in 1932. Despite these hardships, Allis-Chalmers pulled through the Great Depression more or less intact; the standout was the tractor division, with $50 million in sales in 1937.
After World War II, sales for Allis-Chalmers dipped temporarily but remained excellent. In 1947 the company had $211.9 million worth of orders, and that number rebounded to $350 million, even exceeding its WWII high of $305 million in 1944. The company had repeated union problems, eventually signing an agreement with the Local 248 union on June 30, 1950, covering pensions, cost-of-living wage adjustments, and expanded vacation-with-pay programs. In 1951, Walter Geist — president through the 1930s and World War II — died and was replaced by W.A. Roberts, who took the company in a new direction. Under his leadership, the company went international starting in 1957, eventually building 12 new plants worldwide while keeping headquarters in Milwaukee, and buying up existing companies both abroad and domestically, including the Valley Iron Works of Appleton, Wisconsin, and the S. Morgan Smith Company.
Source: An Industrial Heritage: Allis-Chalmers Corporation, Walter F. Peterson
If the late 1940s through the ’50s was an era of prosperity and expansion for Allis-Chalmers, the 1960s represented a darker time. One of the biggest problems the company faced was several corporate takeover attempts by companies interested in acquiring Allis-Chalmers and its resources — all against the backdrop of the late 1960s, when the company had low profit numbers and was struggling to make a profit at all. In 1968 it reported its lowest numbers yet, with a net income of $713,000; compare that to the $26 million net income reported just two years earlier in 1966, and you see a night-and-day difference. The company fought off multiple takeover attempts: one in 1968 by Gulf and Western Industries was narrowly avoided when the FTC intervened and opposed the plan, and another in November 1968 saw City Investing offer to buy out the company — with help from Allis-Chalmers president Robert S. Stevenson, who saw his company failing and had lost hope for its survival. That deal, too, was narrowly avoided due to the failure to offer adequate compensation to existing shareholders.
Although the company suffered in the late ’60s, it made a comeback in the 1970s, with income increasing by $5 million over six years (1971–1976). This was also a revival of the global expansionist business policy started under president W.A. Roberts: A-C signed deals with several Eastern European countries, opened offices in Iran and several African countries, and even worked with the Soviet Union in a long-term technology agreement in 1975. By the end of the decade, Allis-Chalmers was back on track, ranked 164th in the Fortune 500 for industrial companies.
Sources: Managerial Vision and Craftsmanship: Allis-Chalmers Corporation, David C. Scott; An Industrial Heritage: Allis-Chalmers Corporation, Walter F. Peterson