DETROIT –In November, 1960, only a week after John F. Kennedy had beaten Richard Nixon in one of history’s closest presidential elections, Ohio and Michigan got some good news from the census bureau.
Each state was gaining a seat in Congress, proof that the heart of industrial and manufacturing America had continued to grow and attract people throughout the booming 1950s.
What nobody knew was it was the last time that would happen, and from then on, both states’ clout would gradually decline.
You could say 1960 was the high point of both states in terms of economic and political power, and of the entire industrial Midwest.
But while it’s easy to be gloomy about the present, there are rational reasons– not just wishful thinking — to believe the future will eventually be better, even if the decline in manufacturing that has devastated so much of the region proves hard to reverse.
But first, a look back at the world that was:
Toledo’s 1960 boundaries were smaller than today’s. The city wouldn’t assume its near-final size until a wave of annexation in the decade ahead. But the area that is Toledo today then had close to its official 1970 population peak of 383,818.
The city of Detroit lost population during the 1950s, as the new freeways encouraged people in overcrowded neighborhoods to move to nearby suburbs. But it still had 1,670,144 people, the fifth largest city in the nation and one of the most prosperous.
Ohio had gained a stunning 1.7 million people during the decade; Michigan, nearly a million and a half. Some of that was fueled by the famous baby boom, but adults were still arriving from small towns and farms, counting on finding better paying jobs.
The politicians knew it; even before the 1960 census, Michigan and Ohio had a combined 45 electoral votes, far more than California’s 32. Kennedy and Nixon campaigned constantly in the two states that year, ultimately splitting them: Ohio went to Nixon, by an unexpectedly large margin; Michigan, by a closer vote, to Kennedy.
Both states commanded respect.
Today, things are much different.
The last half century has been one of staggering loss for Ohio and Michigan in relative population and political clout.
Ohio has lost a devastating nine seats in the U.S. House of Representatives; Michigan, six. When the new Congress convenes next January, the two states will have a mere 28 seats combined; barely half as many as California’s 52.
Toledo has lost slightly more than a quarter of its population since its 1970 peak; the last census counted 270,871. That looks great compared to Detroit, which has lost a million people since 1960. The populations of Ohio and Michigan each grew by barely two percent in the previous decade, compared to more than 22 percent each in the go-go 1950s. So is the Rustbelt hopelessly doomed?
Not at all, says Michael John Young, who was a Toledo city planner for years before moving to San Diego in the mid-1990s.
“I do indeed!” he said when asked if he saw the industrial Midwest, specifically Michigan and Ohio, making a comeback.
“Let me give you three big reasons why they will,” he said. “First, water will be the oil of the late 21st century. We have all we need; the Sunbelt doesn’t. Second, climate change will work to make the climate, especially the winters, more temperate in Toledo.
On the other hand, “San Diego is going to be just too hot to be tolerable.” Besides that, “the simple cost of living is outrageous,” he said. Young, who is 71, said he lives in a fairly modest house that he estimates would be worth $1.5 million in today’s market.
What would the same house be worth in the Toledo area? “I would guess about $250,000, maybe $280,000,” he said; as someone who has been concerned with housing issues his entire career, he has a good grasp of property values.
He knows, of course, that there are vacant and derelict buildings in Toledo and Detroit, some that need demolishing, others that need major renovation, and that there has been population flight. But not to worry: The infrastructure, he said, is basically there to support a comeback when one occurs. “The pipes are in the ground. In Detroit, you have all the electricity you’ll ever need.”
“In Toledo and Detroit, you can have it all.” Young, a Toledo native, isn’t a starry-eyed dreamer; he is aware of the problems, and will be the first to tell you that the Toledo area has suffered from shortsightedness and a lack of vision on the part of its leaders.
“But the ‘Rust Belt’ isn’t really rusty, and it remains a population and economic powerhouse,” he said. “And Toledo is right in the center, I’m convinced Toledo’s best days are ahead of it, and the future is getting brighter every day.”
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(Editor’s Note: A version of this column also appeared in the Toledo Blade.)
