'Candy capital' gets bitten again as Wrigley shuts city gum plant

The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

Chicago-based William Wrigley Jr. Co. is the world's largest maker of chewing gum, but from here forward, not a single stick will be manufactured in Chicago.

At about 2 p.m. Friday, the historic Wrigley factory -- which has stood at 35th and Ashland since 1911 -- packaged its last box of gum. About an hour later, most of the production workers filed out for the final time, their close-knit "family" now just more nails in the coffin holding Chicago's manufacturing base.

The only work left before the Wrigley plant closes entirely is for a skeleton crew to remove the remaining equipment over the next few months.

If business ran on poetry, that last box of gum would have been a batch of Juicy Fruit or Wrigley's Spearmint, the flavors that were the backbone of one of Chicago's great family fortunes and best loved brand names.

But there is no profit in poetry, and the machines that make sugared gums such as Juicy Fruit and Spearmint had been removed from the South Side plant months ago for relocation to the company's plant in Yorkville as part of the cost-cutting effort. The only machines that remained in use Friday were the ones that make sugarless gum.

So let the record show that it was a 15-stick Plenty Pack of Polar Ice-flavored Extra Sugarfree, the kind that "lasts extra long," that Maryanne Tyler ran through her wrapping machine to bring yet another chapter in Chicago's candy-making history to an end.

Most of the plant's remaining 150 workers -- down from 600 when the factory closing was announced 18 months ago and from a high of 1,700 in the 1960s -- gathered round Tyler to watch. Many were dressed in the requisite white uniforms and hair nets. Some clapped. Nearly as many cried.

What better proof:Chicago is the city that doesn't work.I guess that's why factories are closing down.