How China Ruined My Family Business
The story of Delany Flush Valves is the story of how America lost its manufacturing jobs and its middle class.
Emerald Robinson’s The Right Way is the #1 conservative blog on Substack — recommended by over 299 other Substack authors!
Emerald’s Note: This guest article is the work of my friend Gray Delany who recounts the history of how China drove his family’s flourishing flush valve company out of business over several decades. It’s the story of how countless small business owners in America were ruined by the suicidal trade policies of its inept politicians. With President Trump in office again, will America finally end its suicidal addiction to artificially cheap imports, and start making things again? This article forms the introduction to the book Reshore: How Tariffs Will Bring Our Jobs Home + Revive the American Dream by Spencer Morrison.
My father began working in the family business soon after he graduated from Wharton in 1971. Born twenty years later, I grew up knowing little about the company beyond the basics. My dad was quiet by nature, but I understood the last thing he wanted was for me to envision my own future in the family business. After he died, I came to understand why.
The tragedy of Coyne and Delany mirrors the story of thousands of once great American companies. The business was founded in New York City in 1879 by my great-great-great-grandfather John J. Delany and his partner Thomas Coyne. Originally known for its cast iron tubs, brass plumbers trim, wooden flush tanks and fittings, it was one of many small businesses started in the Northeast by the wave of Irish immigrants who arrived to America escaping the potato famine.
After Thomas Coyne died in 1910 with no male heirs, John Delany bought out his share of the business, and the company came fully under Delany family ownership, and changed its name.
In 1927, Delany achieved a major innovation with the creation of a more powerful and reliable flush valve called the Flushboy. The Flushboy produced a more forceful flush, reducing clogging and allowing for greater quantities of waste to be moved more efficiently to sewage treatment facilities. But the Great Depression started two years later.
The period was tough for Delany, as it was also for many companies, but it survived, and then expanded dramatically during World War II, thanks to contracts from military bases. It grew from a regional Northeast business to an international business, but continued to operate from the same mid-sized factory in Brooklyn it had used since its inception, and with the same small but skilled workforce.
Delany at the same time was one of an estimated 37,000 small-to-medium-sized, predominantly family-owned manufacturers in the New York metropolitan area. Manufacturing then employed more than a million people in the region, and generated an additional several hundred thousand jobs in Northern New Jersey and Connecticut, running to nearly thirty percent of the working population.
From left to right: Jack Delany, John J. “Doc” Delany, Graham Delany and A.B. Delany on the land of Delany’s proposed new plant in Brooklyn, early 1960s.
During and immediately after the war, CEO John J. “Doc” Delany patented a number of breakthroughs including the first ever rubber sleeve Vacuum Breaker in 1943, and the Regulating Screw in 1948, which improved functionality and ease of maintenance — long a defining feature of all Delany valves. In 1956, Doc patented yet another innovative trademark: the Rubberflex handle, which still today remains the only non-spring-loaded handle on the market.
By the 1970s, like many small companies in the Northeast, Delany was declining. By 1975, manufacturing employment in New York was half of what it had been two decades earlier. Andrew Battle, in his dissertation, Runaway: A History of Postwar New York in Four Factories, describes how this exodus was the result of misguided – and ethically questionable – municipal policies in the 1940s and 1950s. City officials were:
Seduced by academics who dangled ‘monumental public buildings and splendid plazas to replace the small-scale manufacturing they assured civic leaders was passé.’ (But it is also true) that industrial New York was not merely permitted to die but actively ‘assassinated’ by a coalition of planners, bankers, and real estate interests who conspired to purge the city of factories in order to increase the value of their real estate holdings and create opportunities for further speculation.
There was another critical factor to industry’s flight from the Northeast: pressure from foreign competition, often underwritten by foreign governments.
The new international economic order that emerged (post-WWII) underpinned a resurgence of both international trade and foreign investment. The stability of the system was underwritten by the economic power of the United States, whose currency served as an international reserve pegged to gold. Moreover, the US actively pursued the rehabilitation of the European and Japanese economies via loans, direct aid, the transfer of technology, and the suppression of militant, left-wing trade unionism. This aid to the capitalist classes of their respective countries was undertaken not out of charity but as a matter of both economic and political strategy. Japanese firms, which flooded the United States with manufactured goods beginning in the 1950s, helped to jeopardize manufacturing profits in a cascading series of industries. During the ensuing decades, the US doubled down on this strategy by accepting an uneven playing field, tolerating protectionism, state support for and coordination of industry, and the consistent undervaluing of currencies on the part of its (foreign) rivals while eschewing these strategies for the US economy. In this way, writes Robert Brenner in the most comprehensive economic history of the period, the US government “helped to create the conditions for the secular decline of competitiveness of US domestic manufacturing.”
Between 1969 and 1973, manufacturing profitability in the United States collapsed, falling by 40%. As Spencer Morrison points out in his own book, Reshore: How Tariffs Will Bring Our Jobs Home and Revive the American Dream, this collapse coincided with the beginning of America’s chronic trade deficit, which further undermined workers, causing mass unemployment and lower wages. 1973 was the peak of the median wage in real terms. For American workers, it has been downhill for half of a century.
Manufacturers became desperate in the face of their declining financial position. Workforces were cut, pay was cut, and working conditions declined, as did investment in maintenance and quality assurance. Accordingly, union power in the Northern manufacturing states steadily grew.
In the case of Delany, the Teamsters Union, having failed to generate sufficient pro-union sentiment among the company’s cadre of workers, shifted strategy to disrupting shipment of its goods. In response, Delany looked to relocate to the South, with its friendlier labor climate and lower production costs. A local Teamster boss publicly boasted to company president Jack Delany that he wouldn’t “get even one paper clip out of this building,” and posted toughs outside the factory to enforce the threat. But in a legendary exploit, Delany managed to get its heavy machinery through underground tunnels, before hiring a Roanoke, Virginia-based shipping company (because union control of the area was so ironclad) to move the equipment out in the middle of the night. The destination: Charlottesville, Virginia.
“If only he knew that I had the last box of paper clips in my jacket pocket that day,” Jack later recalled. At the time, Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa was serving a thirteen-year prison sentence for jury tampering and wire fraud at the Lewisburg, Pennsylvania Federal Penitentiary, a facility with Delany valves. The office joke became that: “Hoffa had to stare at a Delany valve every time he took a piss.”
A few months ago, I reached out to Mike Farrish, one of Delany’s longest tenured employees, to learn the history that my dad never taught me. We met for lunch at the iconic Charlottesville establishment, El Puerto. A self-proclaimed country boy from Buckingham County, Farrish began his career with Delany Flush Valves in 1974 in the tool room, at $2.50 an hour. The pay wasn’t much even then, but the company offered him something far more important: a chance to climb the ladder and make it a career he could be proud of.
The company invested in his future by paying for his metal trade certification. By then, Delany’s Charlottesville plant was employing 50 workers, and producing about 400 flush valves a day. When, two decades later, Delany developed the first 1.6-gallon-per-flush valve that included an adjustable regulator (enabling the contractor to adjust the water flow on site and the first battery-operated sensor valve), business increased even more. By the mid-90’s the company was employing over 75 workers, and orders were beyond the plant’s capacity. The firm outsourced work to nearby companies, Shenandoah Valley-based Virginia Metalcrafters and Cerro Fabricated Products, known for manufacturing high-quality brass, iron, and other metal reproductions for historical sites, including Colonial Williamsburg.
But the boom was not to last. In the early 1990s, Zurn Plumbing entered the flush valve market. Zurn was the first company to offshore their flush valve production to China. They had the resources for their valve division to be a loss leader while the company increased market share. Zurn’s goal was to put Delany out of business. And that’s exactly what they did.
Many date the beginning of the offshoring of American manufacturing to China joining the World Trade Organization in 2001. But the trend really began in 1979 when President Carter granted China Most-Favored-Nation-Status, dramatically reducing the trade barriers and, even more importantly, the tariffs, between the United States and China. President Reagan renewed China’s most favored nation status every year of his administration. The “race to the bottom” had begun. Many other industries were already feeling the effects and it was only a matter of time before American flush valve manufacturing became a victim.
Zurn’s best-selling valve was virtually a carbon copy of Sloan’s (the market leader) bestselling valve, the Regal. Zurn priced its valve at $32, while Delany priced its hallmark valve, the Flushboy, at $65, which was Delany’s breakeven point. It didn’t matter that Delany used higher quality fittings or that Delany’s was the only valve that could be manually adjusted in the field. All that mattered was the price. As sales began dwindling, Delany was backed into a corner. In desperation, they matched Zurn’s price of $32. Farrish asked my dad how the math was possibly going to work and was told they had no choice. They hoped to make up the difference in parts. Farrish knew this was impossible.
The problem was compounded by the internecine struggles all too common to family businesses. The boss of the firm was my grandfather, Graham Delany, then approaching 80. In 1956, he had been able to buy a house on one of the most famous streets in one of the most expensive towns in America, East Hampton’s Lee Avenue, for only $64,000. Although he recognized this kind of thing was no longer possible, he couldn’t fully grasp how much things had changed, and was unable to contemplate the changes needed if the company was to survive.
My father was then Senior VP and Head of Production, and so starved for resources that even the physical plant could no longer be properly maintained. I remember the calls that he’d get on our infrequent vacations, with word that the boiler was acting up, and they would not be able to meet their production goal for the week. As orders continued to slow, it became difficult to make payroll. The constant stress was clearly taking a toll on my father and consequently on my parents’ marriage. Arguments about money became routine; money was so tight that their debit card was frequently declined. To my mother’s annoyance, my father started chain smoking.
In 2006, my grandfather finally ceded control of the company, but it was too late. The inevitable could no longer be avoided. Farrish recalled to me the day of the mass layoff — March 15, 2006. Though everyone had known it was only a matter of time, the reality still came as a shock. My dad met with each division individually — the casting division first; then machining; then polishing and finishing; then assembly; then shipping and receiving. Many of them were old and dear friends. Farrish recalled the head of machining, coming to him afterward with tears running down his cheeks, repeating and saying, “It’s over, Mike. It’s all over.”
By lunch, there remained only eight employees in the plant from the fifty who had started the day and even they didn’t know how long their jobs would be safe. I remember my father coming home in the evening and breaking down crying. It was painful to see. Like his own father, he bottled up his emotions. He wanted my sister and me to have normal childhoods, and had kept his burden to himself. But now it was clear what it cost him.
Two years after the mass layoff, Delany did not produce a single valve. Its customers and suppliers presumed the company had gone out of business. But after we sold my grandparents’ Charlottesville house and then their East Hampton house, with the proceeds, the company was able to resume producing valves — in Asia. My father began taking brutal 14-hour flights to China to teach Chinese workers the skills that his workers in Charlottesville had long known. My father hated these trips and hated the fact it had come to this. He’d tell me with disgust about the Chinese manufacturing facility. For years the EPA was constantly on his back over the most niggling issues at its Charlottesville foundry. But in China they simply dumped their waste into the local river.
Delany struggled to get back on its feet, eking out a small profit only because my dad and his brothers were taking measly salaries. Along with my mom, I wondered if it was worth sinking our entire share of the inheritance into the company, but we didn’t really have a say; to my father, the company was everything, and he was not going to give up without a fight.
On July 22, 2016, I was at the Republican National Convention working for the Trump surrogate team when my mom called. My father had been stricken by a massive heart attack and passed away at his desk. He was 70 years old.
Looking back now on the last years of my dad’s life, I am actually thankful the Lord took him home that day. In the years to follow, as we fought the family for documents on the trust distributions and company finances, we learned that my dad had been replaced as CEO in 2012 by his brother. He never told us.
Mike Farrish retired in 2017 after serving Delany for 43 years. He told me that he is still occasionally called back into the company’s Charlottesville office to help with something or other, out of loyalty. “Half the lights are out,” he says. “It looks like the place hasn’t been swept in years. Half the doors don’t even shut properly. It is just sad.” He recalled what his colleague said through tears the fateful day of the mass layoff had never rang so true. “It is over.”
This is my family’s story — the story of one small company. It is not all that remarkable, just another tale of a once proud American family business lost to offshoring. Wall Street insists that it’s a globalized world now, and we all need to learn to compete on its terms. But Delany was remarkable to the people it served and sustained. At its peak, it employed seventy people, enabled them to support their families, and taught them skills that some used to start their own companies. This is how not only businesses but entire local economies are built. Take that away, and the communities these local economies sustain wither and die. Farrish recalled his protégé in the machining department, JD Palmer, taking the skills he honed in Delany’s machine division to open his own small engine repair and metal machining shop. He couldn’t have done this without the experience of working for Delany.
What happened to Delany happened all over America. Virginia Metalcrafters, for example, the bespoke brass manufacturer, closed its doors in 2006. It was once a mainstay of Waynesboro, Virginia. Every time I pass the facility on Sunday on my way to Church, it seems to have further deteriorated. The windows were long ago broken by vandals, and graffiti scars the walls. Recently the beautiful Victorian homes that surrounded the plant have started going to ruin, as factory workers move away and the ones who’ve stayed no longer have the money for basic upkeep.
But for the first time in many years, there is a hope of revival. With President Trump, our manufacturers finally have an advocate who is fighting for them, and trying to end our addiction to artificially cheap imports. Because the American manufacturing base has been so hollowed out, it will take time to rebuild our factories and bring jobs home. As we restructure our economy from a financial economy to a productive economy, there will be near-term pain, but if we bear it and push through to the other side, we can once again have a country with an industrial base that sustains our communities, our security, and our prosperity.
Support The Last Fearless Journalist!
“Emerald Robinson is one of the most fearless and accurate reporters in America today.” — Gateway Pundit
“She’s got balls made of titanium.” — Steve Bannon
“The best journalist in America, I think.” — Patrick Byrne
“There are a handful of heroes and heroines right now in history — and Emerald Robinson is one of them.” — Dr. Naomi Wolf
“Emerald is truly one of the great conservative writers of our times. As funny as Mark Twain and as astute as Steve Bannon.” — Viktor K.
“Some journalists write with pens, she writes with knives.” — Vicchus
“You are the female version of Tucker Carlson. You have been prescient about so many things it's almost scary.” — F. Lawrence Coleman
“You and Glenn Greenwald are the best in terms of current journalism. You and Lara Logan in terms of fearlessness!” — Mac T.
“When all is said and done, Emerald is going to be hailed as this century's Edward R. Murrow.” — Don Reed
Treason doth never prosper,
What's the reason?
For if treason doth prosper
None dare call it treason.
Let's dare. All the swine shipping jobs to China, shilling for the CCP, and standing in the way of restoring America are traitors. Let's also treat traitors accordingly.
What a story! No doubt, manufacturing will return to the US with DJT at the helm! Thank you for sharing the story, Emerald. Shame on all those who did nothing to help maintain our small manufacturing jobs. The middle class will also return!