CHARLEROI — For 132 years, the sound of the factory air whistle signaling the start of the work day at the plant along 8th and McKean Avenue in this Washington County borough meant all the things we associate with work: Men and women had jobs, families had food on their table, the societal fabric was strong, churches were full, and the tax base kept the schools vibrant and the community prosperous.

It was a good sound. It meant stability and aspiration. No one around here ever seemed to mind it.

Last week, the sound of that whistle was different. It was longer, 132 seconds to be exact, a number meant to mark how many years the Pyrex glass plant had stood at this location. It marked the end of the line for the plant.

The sound was mournful as it echoed throughout the Mon Valley.

Three hundred men and women are now without jobs in a town of 4,200. Last September the company, now known as the Corelle Brands, announced they would close the plant that had been one of the great innovators at its inception, when two Pittsburgh glassmaking firms, Thomas Evans & Co. and the George A. Macbeth Co., merged to form the Macbeth-Evans Glass Company in 1899.

One year later, the local newspaper boasted about the expansion of manufacturing in Western Pennsylvania as the new town of Donora was being plotted to allow for that growth. The story detailed the 16-mile strip of cities that included Charleroi, Monessen and Donora, which were now coming into a close second to their bigger Mon Valley cities of Homestead, Duquesne, Braddock and McKeesport:

“Here are located the Page Steel and Wire Mill, the American Steel Hoop’s mill, the American Tin Plate large mills, the W.H. Hamilton & Company, the Macbeth Evans plant and the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company large glass mills and now the great mills of the Union Steel Company now nearing completion at Donora.”

These groups of factories employed over 8,000 people who made good wages at the turn of the century in what was once sleepy farmland. Hundreds of houses of all kinds were being built almost overnight on rolling hills that overlooked the plants, employing real estate developers and construction workers and causing a boom in mom-and-pop grocery stores, gas stations, barber shops, schools and churches.

By 1937, Macbeth-Evans was bought out by Corning Glass Works, then the largest maker of technical glassware. The president of Corning Glass at the time, Armory Houghton, said of the acquisition, “It is logical that the Macbeth-Evans Glass Company and the Corning Glass Works should come together at this time. This move brings together two companies whose research and development has been outstanding in different fields of the glass industry.”

At the time of the merger, the plant employed 1,800 people.

The news was so big it made the front page of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette above the fold.

Today, all of those mills are long gone. Pittsburgh Plate Glass, which became known as PPG, a place that employed my father for 50 years, where he designed the furnaces that made glass, no longer makes glass. They sold that division to Nippon in 2017, marking the end of PPG’s long history in glass production, which began in 1883.

When Corning Glass Works first purchased the plant, it was renamed Corning Glass Works Macbeth-Evans Division. By the 1990s, a series of mergers, divestitures, private equity acquisitions, Chapter 11 bankruptcies and more private equity firm acquisitions had occurred. Centre Lane Partners acquired the company after a competitive bankruptcy auction approved its sale to them in their role as one of Anchor Hocking’s largest stockholders.

Anchor Hocking took over the Charleroi plant in March 2024 and announced they would close it and move operations to their plant in Lancaster, Ohio, where the company was founded at the turn of the century by Isaac J. Collins.

Not long ago, Anchor Hocking had a plant in nearby Monaca in Beaver County that closed over 10 years ago. Anchor Hocking has gone through a series of acquisitions, venture capital ownerships and bankruptcies. Today, it is owned by Monomoy Capital Partners, a private equity firm located in midtown Manhattan.

Since Donald Trump was reelected in 2024, we have talked a lot about tariffs, manufacturing and the outsize role of China in our industries, and the Corning Glass Works Macbeth-Evans Division is certainly such an example.

In fact, our uneven trade has played a significant role in the glass manufacturing collapse in this country. Up until the 1990s, the United States held its own in glass manufacturing. However, China’s aggressive export strategy, which flooded the U.S. market with thousands of goods, hit the glass industry hard.

In June of last year, the Alliance for American Manufacturing released an analysis detailing the threat Chinese imports posed to U.S. manufacturers. In a briefing by the Economic Policy Institute, the glass industry appeared well aware of the dangers of Chinese imports.

They noted that the U.S. glass industry lost almost 40,000 manufacturing jobs between 2000 to 2008. At the same time, China’s share of the U.S. market rose from 3% to 31%.

As U.S. glass and glassware plants closed, Chinese manufacturers expanded. China now leads glass production globally, exporting 28.7% of the world’s glass and glassware compared to the United States’ 6.6%.

That is a hard pill to swallow if you are from Charleroi, once known as the “Glass City,” where PPG once had one of its major glass factories.

The people here are a casualty not just of streamlining production but of China’s dominance in the market.

“Everything coming from China flooding our market is a big part of the problem. It is a disease,” said state Sen. Camera Bartolotta, who represents the borough.

The echo of the whistle lingers. The tears of the workers on their last shift remain unchecked. Everything has changed. Those who believe Americans do not want jobs in manufacturing, who do not think there is pride in what they do, should sit a spell with the people who worked here.

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