American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears

by Farah Stockman

In Indiana, Link-Belt’s name adorned a water tower and a fleet of trucks. Working there conveyed a certain status. “You are a member of a great industrial family,” declared an employee handbook from 1955. “The products you help make bear Link-Belt’s Symbol of Quality known throughout the world.” More than half a century later, the building had aged. Its roof leaked brown water onto the machines when it rained. About three hundred people worked on its factory floor, half the number it had been designed to hold. The plant had been bought and sold more times than anyone could count. The workers had been passed from owner to owner, just like the machines they ran. Rexnord, a Milwaukee-based industrial supplier, owned it now. But the workers still took pride in the Link-Belt name, which lived on as a brand, written in proud letters on the cast-iron housings of the most expensive bearings they made.