Seeking to recruit scientists and engineers to its Schenectady plant near Albany, New York, General Electric (GE) produced a pamphlet in 1926 touting the city's “unusual beauty” and the setting of “one of the world's great industrial centers . . . home of technical men who are pioneers in the advancement of electrical science, and of skilled artisans who embody these ideas in actual machinery” (p. 185).
By the 1920s this sprawling complex was called “Electric City,” which is also the title of historian Julia Kirk Blackwelder's book that examines Schenectady's culture of technology from 1892 through the 1950s. At its core were technical men—engineers, scientists, and craftsmen, in order of prestige—who “engaged in a team effort to produce technologically advanced material goods that served society and led to corporate profits” (p. 1). For GE, ideal technical men “maintained orderly private lives and pursued moral and physical fitness through exercise best enjoyed in team sports or in engagement with the great outdoors” (p. 3).
The first three chapters focus on key executives and technical employees, the following three on major occupational groups, while the final two situate the story in the context of the “Great Plant”—where employment grew from a few thousand in the early 1890s to fifteen thousand in 1910 and peaked at forty thousand in 1950—and Schenectady's industrial growth. For context, the last two chapters should have been placed at the beginning of the book. Interwoven throughout are discussions of welfare capitalist practices.
General Electric was created by J. P. Morgan in 1892. Its board chose Charles A. Coffin to head the new company; Coffin hired Edwin Wilbur (E. W.) Rice Jr. to oversee production, marketing, and employee relations. Rice's brother Martin was put in charge of public relations. The Rice brothers, both trained as engineers, were mainly responsible for the construction of the plant's culture and corporate branding. E. W. Rice earned numerous patents and engineering awards and honors during his long tenure (1892–1922; Martin's lasted until 1932). Another key figure was Albert Rohrer, head of the plant's training department, which offered apprenticeship training to craftsmen and “The Test,” a rigorous two-year training and socialization course for student engineers that ran from 1892 to 1961.
While these men shaped the culture, Charles Proteus Steinmetz, the “Wizard of Schenectady,” was the icon of GE's brilliance in engineering and its values of civic service and family stability, despite being a political radical, a bachelor, and physically deformed. Martin Rice turned Steinmetz's intellectual and technical gifts into legend—a lone wolf genius, unrestrained by corporate bureaucracy—similar to that of the “Wizard of Menlo Park,” Thomas Edison, who was never employed by GE but deliberately incorporated his persona into its culture. During his short life (1865–1923), Steinmetz, a German refugee, made many technical contributions, including finding a mathematical solution to the problem of power loss in AC motors (“hysteresis”), which saved GE time and money in product design. Two Swedish-trained engineers—Ernst Berg, who managed Steinmetz's lab, and his brother Eskil—assisted Steinmetz in both his work and his personal life. All of these men “illustrate the presumed corporate loyalty of technical men, an implied social value of engineering, and men's affections for their electrical work” (p. 85).
GE's Schenectady culture, however, centered primarily on engineers but impacted craft workers, industrial workers, and office personnel. Skilled craft workers benefited from apprenticeship programs and decent compensation, but they were also the object of ongoing cost cutting and ethnic stereotyping. Young men of native stock born in and around Schenectady comprised the largest body of craft labor, but over time second-generation immigrants joined their ranks. GE's industrial labor force, which included women and African Americans, earned lower pay, faced aggressive shop-floor discipline and discrimination, and were targeted for “Americanization” programs. Status differences between craftsmen and laborers limited solidarity until the mid-1930s, when they came together in the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) Local 301. That craft labor joined the UE indicates their limited acceptance of GE's technical culture.
Though not part of the dominant culture nor primary recipients of welfare benefits, women were a significant presence in Schenectady, comprising about one-third of the company's total U.S. employment during World War II, when they made notable job gains. Still, they faced persistent discrimination and harassment. Women worked in service, light manufacturing, clerical, and, to a lesser extent, white-collar professional positions. Despite being physically separated from one another in work and leisure activities, they joined the UE and provided crucial support during the 1946 strike that won wage hikes and seniority rights but also precipitated GE's decision to decentralize operations and move jobs—many of them held by women—out of the Northeast beginning in the 1950s. As the “age of electricity” gave way to the “age of electronics,” in which GE no longer dominated, employment in Schenectady continued to erode until it numbered just four thousand in 2012, a level unseen since the turn of the last century.
Typical welfare capitalist offerings were an integral part of plant culture: financial benefits, education and training, and especially sports and recreation. Focused primarily but not exclusively on men, outdoor life was a regular feature in the lives of GE employees, where “managers in Schenectady tied corporate welfare to an appreciation for nature and individual or group sports . . . as a means of generating loyalty to the company as well as maintaining worker health” (p. 111).
Yet, for such an important component of the culture, Blackwelder's treatment of welfare capitalism—and especially sports and recreation—lacks rich description and analysis. She also leaves some important questions unanswered: What specific messages about its welfare program did GE disseminate to employees and how did they receive and respond to them? Was there a “negotiated loyalty,” as historian Gerald Zahavi found in the case of Endicott-Johnson's shoe and tannery workers? How did unionism affect GE's culture and welfare capitalism? How did GE's Schenectady culture compare with its other major northeastern plants?
Notwithstanding these shortcomings, Electric City generates an important story of the cultural underpinnings of a major American firm during the rise and heyday of industrial capitalism that will be of interest to historians of business, technology, labor, and culture.
