Long before automobiles roll off the assembly line, their many components are manufactured by a sprawling constellation of smaller businesses that supply the makers of finished automobiles. This automobile supply chain began in the 1920s within the Detroit metropolitan area, and by the 1960s had swollen to embrace an area roughly 600 miles in radius with its core remaining in southeast Michigan. The story of how the automobile supply chain developed during the first half of the twentieth century, and why it took the specific spatial and economic form that it did, are the subjects of a dissertation project by Kevin Moskowitz, PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Arlington.

To uncover his story, Moskowitz dug into the archives of the American Iron & Steel Institute and the National Bronze & Aluminum Company at the Hagley Library. The latter firm supplied cast cylinder heads and other engine components to Detroit automakers from its location in Cleveland. The company boomed when orders were large, but struggled during the automotive industry’s periodic downturns. While WWII gave the firm a boost, rampant racism, white supremacy, and nativism lead to attacks against the company, its integrated workforce, and its German-American management. The ups and downs of this firm, while unusually well-documented, offer insight into the wider world of the twentieth-century automobile supply chain.

In support of his work Kevin Moskowitz received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more Hagley History Hangouts and more information, visit hagley.org.

Detroit Muscle: Automobile Manufacturing and the Middle West with Kevin Moskowitz

SPECIAL THANKS to my good friend, Australian new music trombonist extraordinaire, Simone de HAAN.

‘the Symphony Orchestra” 

some extinctions are sweet
see the saprophytic
symphony orchestra
where our much will have more 
is forever at war 
with the speed of sound
morbidly obese strip miner 
of the past with superb technique 
like the humble sex worker who 
mimics true love perfectly
sad swan-song of the beautiful
young conductor decomposer-in-chief 
baton hard sharp pointed erect
leading its troops straight into 
the motionless oblivion of moist muck
the happy food of hungry worms

IMAGE: An actual sign in SNAKE RIVER COUNTRY along the CANNABIS HIGHWAY, spectacular gravel mountain bike road from Richland to Huntington, OREGON

Detroit Muscle: Automobile Manufacturing and the Middle West with Kevin Moskowitz

Hagley Museum and Library

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