I recently published a column that dealt with MASS MoCA coming to North Adams. In the column, I suggested this stunning and imaginative museum, with all its virtues, has not become a panacea for the depressed economy of North Adams.
But I now have been looking at a documentary from 2012, “Farewell to Factory Towns?” directed by Maynard Seider, whose emphasis is much less on the museum than on the city itself. The documentary, using archival photos, some footage of the city, and interviews with residents, provides a brief history of North Adams as a “factory town” that once thrived. Though Sprague Electric Company, which dominated North Adams in the post-war era, may have provided steady work (4,000 people worked there), the wages it offered were low and Sprague fought off the formation of national unions at the plant until 1976. They acquiesced only after a bitter two-month strike that concluded with Sprague agreeing to higher wages and compulsory arbitration. Still, the Main Street was alive during the post-war era, with three movie houses and many small stores usually teeming with people who had jobs.
However, when deindustrialization hit and Sprague left North Adams, no large industry could be found to move in. It was the free-market Reagan years, and government help was no longer a possibility. The only viable idea on offer to revive the city’s economy was constructing MASS MoCA in the abandoned Sprague factory buildings. The museum turned out to be a clear success, but it only brought in 600 jobs and a number of artists who settled in the city. However, visitors who travelled to the museum, in the main, did not use North Adams’ semi-deserted downtown. So many stores failed. (Of course, this is 2012, and the town may have done better in the years that followed.)
The film sees MASS MoCA as something valuable, but no engine of economic development. Seider argues for a New Deal to manage the crisis of older factory towns. At the moment, the pandemic has undermined much of the American economy — so it’s the right moment for a New Deal to be radically expanded by the Biden administration that must move away from centrist politics. Still, it’s a very difficult feat given the narrow Congressional majorities held by the Democrats.
Seider argues for the need of powerful unions and social movements to get behind a new national policy which would involve spending on infrastructure construction, and creating a more equitable tax policy. And though he thinks MASS MoCA has helped a bit, he feels no one project can save a town. As a result, Seider doesn’t put all his faith in national policy, but on the work of local organizations such as the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition, creating community gardens and co-op galleries, and just organizing the city politically.
Given our political climate, neither the changes Seider nor Biden proposes will clearly happen overnight.
However, Seider has made a perceptive film about the travails of North Adams that includes a few incisive remarks about the plight of local workers in an interview with an articulate local shop steward. In addition, there is the unobtrusive but apt music provided by the Wintergreen trio, a Berkshire-based group, featuring “Milltown Waltz,” a lovely song composed for the film by band member Alice Spatz.
