Introduction
Script from an episode of the television show M*A*S*H, 1981.
From the Jamie Farr Scripts, manuscript collection MSS-024, at the Ward M. Canaday Center.
“Wholly Toledo: The Business and Industry that Shaped the City” examines the history of our community through the evolution of its economy. It is not a pretty story, or even an optimistic one. Rather it is a story in many ways typical of similar industrial cities in the American Midwest like Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Erie, and Youngstown. These cities too experienced the rise and fall of the great industrial heartland. But Toledo’s story is also unique. The business and industry leaders (and the workers) who made their lives and fortunes in Toledo shaped who we are as a city, and made us different from all of those other rust-belt locales.
Today, Toledo may be the punch line of satirical songs like “Saturday Night in Toledo, Ohio” (which, in case you are not familiar with the song, describes the experience as “like being nowhere at all”), but at its core it still has much to be proud of, and much to build upon. It is unlikely to become the “Future Great City of the World” as Jesup Scott dreamed in 1868. Even its future as the “Glass Capital of the World” is in doubt, as today China produces 45 percent of the world’s glass. But Toledo is what it is, and knowing how it succeeded and where it failed may help us understand—and better shape—where it is headed.
On the surface, the themes presented here are sobering. Since the late 19th century, Toledo has gone from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, from a period of growth to one of steady decline, from large to somewhat smaller, from union to non-union, from local ownership of its major businesses to outside investor control. This is reality. But if we look at our city today, we see important marks left by the great industrial and commercial leaders that continue to make for a good quality of life in spite of these trends. A first-rate art museum free to all that is the legacy of the founder of the glass industry. The continued commitment of numerous business-related service organizations—many started more than 100 years ago—to give back to the city. Beautifully designed buildings that bear the names of their wealthy benefactors. Vital social service agencies endowed by philanthropists decades ago that continue to serve the community’s neediest. Parks and public spaces supported by some of the city’s most prominent families. And a university—the dream of a business man in 1872—that provides a top-quality education at a reasonable price to many Toledo residents, and thousands more who attend from other cities, states, and countries. These are but a few examples of how what we are today reflects our past. [Read the complete Introduction]