Reformers' industry ideals hearken back to Wharton

GREAT BARRINGTON -- The Rising Paper Company building, with its deep crimson bricks, twin towers, and mansard roof, is a nationally protected architectural gem of late-19th century industrial architecture.

But even its status on the National Register of Historic Places couldn't keep it a working mill. Last spring, it fell victim to the same competitive forces that have decimated non-high-tech manufacturing throughout much of the United States.

As in communities across the nation, the loss of 137 good-paying jobs was deeply felt in the Berkshires. State representatives and selectmen joined Governor Deval Patrick in seeking a new owner who would bring back the jobs, with suggestions ranging from making beer to producing artists' canvases.

"My father is turning in his grave right now," declared Christopher O'Connor, son of the former local owner of the mill, at an anger-fueled community meeting in late March.

Meanwhile, about a dozen miles away, another Berkshires institution was turning its attention to the woes of American industry. The Edith Wharton Restoration, which owns the home of the great early-20th century writer, was getting ready to celebrate the centennial of the publication of a little-known Wharton novel called "The Fruit of the Tree."

The protagonist of "The Fruit of the Tree" is a mill manager who dreams of changing the unsafe and exploitative conditions in the mills throughout Western Massachusetts. According to an exhibit about the novel at The Mount, Wharton's former home in Lenox, the writer formed her ideas for "The Fruit of the Tree" by visiting nearby mills in the Berkshires.

In the early 20th century, manufacturing wages were so low and working conditions were so dangerous that the tragic lives of mill workers were a frequent topic of conversation. In the novel, Wharton writes of "the grim law of industrial prosperity" that led mill owners to wring profits out of the sweat of vastly underpaid and underprotected workers.

Like many writers of the era, Wharton saw the problem in class terms, and "The Fruit of the Tree" seeks to demonstrate how mill owners were inexorably driven to maximize profits in order to accumulate opulent wealth, long before such concepts as "shareholder value" entered the equation.

Her reform-minded manager speaks of the ownership class as placing "a thin crust of custom above a void of thought." But by the end of the novel, Wharton argues persuasively that a reformed mill, with superior working conditions, would actually be better-positioned for success in the future, presumably because the public wasn't going to tolerate the exploitation of workers forever.

When "The Fruit of the Tree" came out in 1907, it was a thudding disappointment. Readers who had made Wharton's previous novel, "The House of Mirth," a runaway bestseller weren't prepared to confront the social issues in her new novel, which also touched on such taboos as divorce and euthanasia.

But Wharton was right about the mills. In the decades after "The Fruit of the Tree" was published, government activism, combined with unionization, turned exploitative jobs into desirable positions. The advent of the income tax ate away at many of the great fortunes, and almost all of the Berkshires' gilded-age mansions -- including Wharton's home, The Mount -- became schools or other institutions by the mid-20th century.

Now, in a new century, there are signs of a reversion to the old order.

A new generation of great fortunes has been made in the global marketplace, and the schools and institutions that own the old mansions are putting them up for sale as private homes. The John Dewey Academy in Great Barrington has put its own fortress of a campus -- a gilded-age mansion once known as Searles Castle -- on the market for $15 million. But the selling price doesn't begin to anticipate all the costs associated with running a home that would require dozens of household staff.

Meanwhile, most of the manufacturing plants that once hummed with prosperity have closed, as owners moved the jobs to places with lower-paid, and often less-protected, workers.

Wharton, whose trademark was her ability to grasp the full complexity of social relations, would be amused by the turn of history. She might also find herself wondering if the era of reform predicted in "The Fruit of the Tree" might soon be replicated around the world.

Today's reformers seek to couple global free-trade deals with enforceable standards protecting workers and the environment, even if they disrupt the unfettered pursuit of wealth.

Wharton -- like her current-day neighbors at the Rising Paper mill -- would probably be on their side.

Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond.