page_title: Keyser, West Virginia
section_title: Deindustrialization
hierarchical_section_title: Keyser, West Virginia / History / Deindustrialization
caption_attribution_description: English: Remains of Penn Ventilator Plant in Keyser WV
context_page_description: Keyser is a city in and the county seat of Mineral County, West Virginia, United States. It is part of the Cumberland, MD-WV Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 5,439 at the 2010 census.
context_section_description: Keyser's 20th Century economy relied heavily on manufacturing and the railroad.  The economic crises of the 1970s and early 1980s hit the town hard.  Plants in nearby cities where Keyser residents may have commuted took the early hits.  Brewery, glass, textile, and tire plants in Cumberland, Maryland, especially began to close.  The loss of income reverberated through the area economy, affecting retailers and other ancillary concerns.  Globalization sent firms in search of cheap labor.  By the 1980s, corporate raiders took their toll on employment, ultimately forcing the closure of a major tire plant, Kelly-Springfield, in Cumberland.  
  Many Keyser factories held on longer than the larger concerns in Cumberland, while reducing headcounts throughout this period.  Eventually, however, one by one, they too began to close.  In 1990, the Flex-O-Lite plant closed.  The owners - the Lukens Company - claimed it was no longer profitable with high natural gas prices and "antiquated equipment."  Laid off workers represented by the Aluminum, Brick and Glass International Union protested outside the plant when the company offered only $100 in severance pay for each year of service.  The Lukens Company made record-breaking profits that year, to the tune of $44.1 million.
  In 1995, both the Penn Ventilator and Anchor Glass plants closed.  Many blamed this pair of closures on the North American Free Trade Agreement, which went into effect a year earlier.    For Penn Ventilator, the company, like Lukens, blamed old equipment, saying it would cost $7 million to upgrade the plant and "there were no concessions the local union or management could have made that would make us competitive."    For Anchor Glass, the company cited the very same problem:  upgrades would be too costly.    Refusing to make the necessary capital investments, both companies shifted their operations elsewhere.  In 1997, after a troubled attempt to save it through an employee stock ownership program, the Keyser Garment Company closed.  While Keyser's fortunes often rose and fell with the national economy through the centuries, the town did not experience the 1990s economic boom in the same way as other parts of the country.
caption: The former Penn Ventilator plant, originally a worsted woolen mill, in Keyser.  The Ridgeley or Oriskany sandstone outrcropping known as Queens Point towers in the background.  Taken in 2005.
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