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In Gothams Shadow
Chapter 12
Gotham's Shadow
The letter arrived in January 2001, the return address on the envelope featuring a picture of the closed Hartwick Seminary and the line “Town of Hartwick Historical Society.” The seminary had closed decades earlier, moving its resources from the rural town to the more urban Oneonta and reopening as a secular college of the same name. Just as the closing of the Cooperstown-area textile mills had only a few decades earlier, the abandonment of Hartwick by Hartwick College authorities embodied the dynamic of upscaling: larger places are considered more important, more exciting, more sophisticated. Smaller places are expendable, except as they may be important as commodified versions of a pastoral ideal that never truly existed. The college today overlooks the many houses of Oneonta, the remnants of its seminary roots demolished and replaced by a trailer park. Hartwick residents still take pride in the seminary founded by their eccentric founder; it is unlikely that the college community shares the same pride in Hartwick.
All that remains of the once proud buildings of the oldest Lutheran Seminary in the United States is the Lutheran Church and a brick monument set amid the mobile homes. There are many similar monuments in central New York, not so deliberate and none so obvious. Tourists stop their cars and photograph the tranquility of an abandoned barn not thinking of the parallel with the crumbling bricks of shuttered factories. Little towns and urban slums turn empty storefronts to their citizens. Real estate signs dot the landscape and forests are reclaiming their lands. The monuments surround us, and there is a logic to their creation.
A New York Minute A curious story appeared in the Oneonta Daily Star in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center. Realtors in Delaware and Otsego
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Counties were reporting that property sales were up, one realtor commenting, “They want a place they can go to get out (of the metropolitan area). They are looking at this area as a refuge, a safe haven” (DS, 23 Oct. 2001). It was testimony to the perception that central New York is somehow removed from the problems facing New York City.
The global economy has, of course, made such notions of a safe haven from New York and the economy it commands a comfortable illusion and nothing more. Although many of New York’s corporations will not invest in central New York, many global corporations do have a presence here. Even in the midst of this once great agricultural area, beef from Latin America, fruit from Florida, and vegetables from California are sold in the supermarkets and restaurants. The best selling maple syrups are those produced in distant corners of the country and sold in molded plastic bottles, not those collected and prepared by local craftsmen seeking to preserve a way of life. The global economy is entrenched in central New York, and it is unlikely that many local residents would seek a return to the past. But what is globalization?
In the media and even in the social sciences, globalization is too often treated as a new phenomenon. While it is undeniable that the extent of economic integration found today is quite unique in global economic history, the dynamics that make it so are neither unique to our times nor new.
Many of the more distressing issues associated with the global economy today are merely updated forms of yesterday’s problems, experienced on a larger scale and more visible than in the past. Utica’s textile companies grew through corporate concentration, but they did so during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Not surprisingly, many of the conditions associated with corporate concentration today were found then as well. The mills bought by the Utica firms were run for some time and then closed, the companies taking advantage of the lower labor costs and easier social control of the immigrant populations found in the more urbanized Mohawk Valley. Cooperstown and Hartwick were deindustrialized. Similarly, the concentration of banking in central New York resulted in less community control of those institutions in smaller communities such as Cooperstown and Hartwick as administrative functions were transferred to the cities.
The issues associated with these basic dynamics of corporate concentration, deindustrialization, and economies of scale were recognized as serious social problems only after they began to affect larger cities, such as Utica. Such works as Bluestone’s and Harrison’s The Deindustrialization of America (1982) and Michael Moore’s classic film Roger and Me (1989) concentrated on the effects of globalization on urban America because it was there where the dynamics of capitalism
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were more visible. In both urban and rural communities, the dynamics had been building for years.
The concept of “macro level forces” masks the observation by Randall Collins (1975) that such macro level events are rooted ultimately in “micro” level interactions that have widespread ramifications. Such interactions often take place at a distance from the affected communities, the effects often taking on emergent characteristics that magnify the initial interactions to global proportions.
Economic decisions are based upon the embedded relations of the relevant social actors (Granovetter 1985). As Utica, like other cities, became more dependent upon state and federal funding during the twentieth century, the ability of the city’s elites to network with and influence state and national leaders became vital to its interests. The Elefante machine was capable of this from the 1930s through the 1950s as city leaders were on comfortable terms with other Democratic leaders. When, during the late 1950s, the state Democratic leadership was in the hands of a different set of elites, Utica’s demands were seen as out of line with the city’s importance at a state-wide level. While it is unlikely that Governor Harriman ordered the investigation into corruption in Utica because of a personal grudge against Elefante (see chapter 5), the lack of a positive personal relationship between the two leaders certainly did not help the city.
The embeddedness of economic relations in social networks brings about another major consideration. Social groups generate cultures, and the subculture of social and economic elites often determines their willingness to invest in a community. Although upscaling as a dynamic of capitalism may be considered as an economic pattern, it is a cultural pattern as well. Local leaders in many communities recognize the importance of maintaining a positive image for their cities, and this is ultimately because a positive image can often attract the attention of non-local concerns. When the Utica Observer-Dispatch editorialized that the city needed to keep Zogby International in the city, the prestigious effect of people worldwide hearing the name “Utica” was one of the cited concerns (OD, 14 Oct. 2001). Similarly, the structure of urban renewal projects during the 1960s and 1970s were more the result of the cultural discourse of progress prevalent at that time than rational economic decisions. Such designs were not without critics, but the critics were ultimately not the ones making the decisions (see Jacobs 1992).
Upscaling is the dynamic associated with urban/rural relations. Rooted in economies of scale, it is tempting to consider upscaling as a deterministic quality arising from the cycles of capitalism. But the size of a city and its market is not ultimately determined by some unseen hand, but rather through very human politics that decide where
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development will take place and what policies to pursue. New York is not larger than Utica simply because of a particularly good harbor. Charleston, South Carolina, also has a fine harbor, but is closer in size to Utica than to New York. New York grew to its great size due in part to a fateful decision to build the only inland water route from the Atlantic to the Midwest, the ability of farmers from hundreds of miles away to create a surplus of food, and the ability of the city to trade not only products from its own factories but from the factories of hundreds of cities and small towns that chose to export their goods through the great port of New York. The global economy means that New York no longer relies on its hinterland for raw materials, food, or products to trade: the world is New York’s hinterland. As new trade agreements and technologies make the world smaller, central New York has discovered that its workers demand too much pay for their labor compared to those in the non-union South and the peasants of South America.
The ability of communities to adapt to economic change has been dependent upon the accumulation of past decisions regarding infrastructure and other types of economic factors. Cooperstown has been able to adapt reasonably well to change due to past decisions on the part of its elites that created the infrastructure and mythology that today serve as the basis for its tourism economy. The village has also benefited from the continued presence of elites that integrate the community with the larger society, enabling the local hospital to compete against others that have not had the same level of patronage. And such dependency upon past events is not limited to local decisions, but also upon events in distant locales. Tourism is based on the automobile, a technological development that took place quite independent of Cooperstown but has nonetheless affected the community.
In Search of Community One hundred years ago, central New York was part of that great industrial region of the northeastern United States. Spread along the major transportation corridors connecting the Atlantic Coast to the Great Lakes, the area was at the heart of this region and enjoyed the privileges of its position. The region’s manufacturing dominated the world economy, and its agriculture supported the largest city in the world (New York) and one of the most heavily urbanized corridors in the country.
It was the dialectic between technology and public policy that ultimately brought central New York’s privilege to an end. Improved
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transportation, refrigeration, and processing technology made it possible to import food from other regions of the country and, more recently, the world. Such technology ultimately benefits urban capitalists as it enables them to lower food costs and thus the “fixed” cost associated with keeping their labor alive. For rural areas in upstate New York, however, their proximity to the great metropolitan areas of North America is suddenly of dubious benefit. Urban-based companies now buy agricultural products from the least costly source and then resell them to their customers in urban and rural areas. Upstate farmers are today exposed to competition never felt before—many simply cannot compete against the productivity of the Great Plains or the low overhead of Mexico or Guatemala.
It is a familiar scenario but one normally associated with urban and suburban factory workers. More visible and dramatic, the rubble of the inner city is a powerful image that evokes no feeling of posterity. Similarly, technology has enabled business to take place nearly anywhere, enabling companies to seek out the “most favorable business climate” (Markusen 1987; Storper and Walker 1987). Increasingly, as companies leave and those left behind must make up the difference with higher taxes, upstate New York is not that place.
Public policy interacts with these dynamics. Whereas the automobile deconcentrated the population, it was policies favoring the automobile (road building, etc.) that accelerated the process. Federal agriculture policy has similarly favored larger, often corporate, agriculture concerns: a boon for urban consumers but devastating for New York farmers. The reluctance to enforce antitrust regulations has produced fewer and larger corporations headquartered in large cities; many policies have made it even easier for companies to merge. Trade policy has increasingly made it more attractive to shift production and even corporate headquarters out of the nation entirely. And all these policies make smaller communities all the more irrelevant to the overall functioning of the world economy.
Research and development is increasingly concentrated in large metropolitan areas as the same process of upscaling that so devastated Utica benefits the global cities where the companies are headquartered. Despite the Mohawk Valley’s role in the early computer industry, the scale economy of knowledgeable people found in California’s Silicon Valley was never equaled in the Mohawk Valley, so Unisys is no longer there. State and local officials today attempt to market the area as a high technology haven apparently oblivious to the fact that the basic conditions in existence when the area lost its initial prominence have not changed. SUNY Institute of Technology was recently given permission by the state to offer the first two years of a bachelor’s degree, but it is
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still not a public MIT. There is still an inadequate transportation infrastructure: southbound automotive shipping must either travel miles out of the way for an expressway or traverse the two-lane highways of Otsego and Chenango Counties, the airport is struggling to compete with Syracuse International Airport forty-five miles away, and rail has been forced to compete against heavily subsidized automotive and air travel. Perhaps most important, there is still not the concentration of industry found in Silicon Valley. Home to Xerox, IBM, General Electric, and the forerunner to Unisys, perhaps New York could have had California’s economy, but there is no way to know for sure.
Increasingly, corporations based in global cities control the fate of central New York as they export administrative and manufacturing employment in order to make their own firms more efficient. Niagara Mohawk is now a subsidiary of London-based National Grid Group, Fleet is headquartered in Boston, and WestPoint Stevens in New York. The income generated by Utica Gas & Electric, Oneida National Bank, and Utica & Mohawk Cotton Mills no longer stays in the area but rather benefits those living in London, Boston, and New York. Like other cities its size, Utica clamors for the dwindling number of manufacturing and back office jobs that can be placed in any city willing to slash the tax bill for the company. Tourism itself relies upon the scraps of global cities as their residents choose from an array of communities desperate for their entertainment dollar.
Connections A community’s connections with outside capital has always helped its economic health, especially in smaller communities with relatively little productive capacity of their own. As the global economy continues the trend of great concentration of capital in fewer and larger cities, a community’s ability to draw on its connections in such circles becomes even more important. Utica once supported itself on its own productive capacity, and one hundred years ago that capacity was impressive indeed. By midcentury, it was reliant upon the large-city owners of its corporations who gradually left the city in search of more profitable venues. In the 1990s, Utica’s economic and political power was so weakened that it struggled for several years to win approval from the state health department for a cardiac unit. State officials were content with Uticans having to travel to Syracuse for open-heart surgery. It took the election of George Pataki to finally win Utica a cardiac surgery unit.
In contrast, Cooperstown has utilized its elite connections to great benefit. As rural hospitals faced bankruptcy during the late 1980s and
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early 1990s, Bassett Hospital, backed by many of the same interests that brought the Baseball Hall of Fame to Cooperstown, was able to take over their operations. In addition, the hospital built several clinics and is now one of the largest health care providers in the region. By building clinics in West Winfield and Herkimer, the hospital now competes for patients against metropolitan Utica hospitals. When in 1999 Bassett applied for a cardiac care unit, the hospital faced little opposition outside Utica area hospitals and will likely gain all the needed permits.
In contrast, Hartwick never generated a significant level of production and was thus dependent upon its own productive capacity for survival. When the automobile made it possible for its residents to leave the community in search of selection and prices, there was no corporation, foundation, or individual willing to work on the village’s behalf (the experience of Key Bank during the late 1970s notwithstanding, although that bank eventually sold its Hartwick branch to Charter One Bank). As the smallest and least powerful of the three communities, Hartwick has also experienced the most total decline. Many residents today consider the village a “bedroom community,” which is to say that self-sufficiency no longer even enters the discourse of the community.
The political and economic dynamics found in these three communities are not limited to central New York State. Upstate New York is littered with communities sharing similar stories, as are many other regions throughout the United States. The coal-producing Appalachian Mountains, the agricultural Great Plains, and the rust belt of the Great Lakes are all summoned to mind when one considers the story of central New York. They all share in their subordination to global interests that have increasingly looked beyond their borders. Living in the shadows of the world’s greatest city no longer confers the benefit it once did. As the world economy marches on, upscaling will continue to benefit larger cities at the expense of their smaller neighbors. How long will it be before Columbus and Hartford lose ground to Detroit and Boston? Or Philadelphia and Baltimore to New York and Washington? As the concentration of capital favors the largest cities among us, how long will it be before sociologists talk of primate cities in modern societies? Like the warriors of Aztec foes, many more communities will ascend the altar of the global free market.
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