Goodyear Invades the Backcountry: The Corporate Takeover of a Rural Town

In 1990, Akron, Ohio-based Goodyear Corporation opened "the world's most modern tire plant" in Napanee, Ontario. In Capitalism Comes to the Backcountry, Bryan Palmer chronicles the machinations and manipulations the corporation used to entrench itself in a region desperate for jobs. Palmer explores the human dimensions of plant relocation, sordid corporate practices, and, ultimately, the corrosive cultural effects of corporate boosterism. He describes negotiations between Napanee officials and a secretive company, anxious to keep land costs low before it made its final move. Meanwhile the firm was successfully seeking $95 million in government subsidies. Capitalism Comes to the Backcountry is a vivid, hard-hitting expose of the workings of big business and their impact on people and their communities.

Shortly after history professor Palmer moved to Newburgh, Ont., agents of an anonymous company using only their first names started investigating nearby Napanee as a possible location for a new plant. There followed months filled with enticements aimed at the still-undisclosed Goodyear: cajoling by local politicians; a videotaped appeal from the town high school; a $32-million interest-free loan from the Ontario government; simultaneous with a run of speculation that would leave the rural community with vacant strip malls and industrial parks. Then Goodyear finally announced its plans for a new modernized tire factory. Palmer delves into the (near) past of Goodyear's Etobicoke plant a few hundred miles away, which was closed, according to Goodyear, because of the expense of staving off an attempted buyout. Palmer notes that by closing Etobicoke while keeping plans for the new factory secret, Goodyear was able to jettison a heavily unionized plant for a mechanized one with virtually no union presence. Palmer is also interesting when looking at the corporate familial philosophy that became a guiding force even in the curriculum at the high school. Palmer (Descent into Discourse) occasionally falls prey to jargon (``indicates the importance of establishing ideological hegemony and sustaining a kind of cultural imperialism as capitalism penetrates its own, once marginalized, hinterlands.'') Still, this is clearly a subject physically and spiritually close to home; and for the most part, Palmer treats his subject with a personal touch.

Copyright 1994 Cahners Business Information, Inc.