EconomicsFreehold “seems to embody America’s growth from farm to factory,” according to aguide to New Jersey that the Works Progress Administration produced in 1939.

Decades later,the town became emblematic of another trend: the loss of manufacturing jobs in the northeast tolocations elsewhere in the U.S. and around the world. The shift began when Bruce was growingup, and “My Hometown” told the story of how the town suffered as a result.The farm economy began with the Lenni Lenapes, who grew beans, corn, sweet potatoesand tobacco. After the settlers arrived, potatoes became the town’s primary crop.

Its importancewas celebrated with an annual Potato Queen beauty contest, held until the 1960s.

Local farmersalso turned to raising horses and livestock and manufacturing dairy products.

Freehold’s Dutch settlers expanded the economy by going into trading. They took advantage of the town’s location on the Burlington Path trade route, which was ideal for their business. To ease the movement of goods as well as people, roads made with wooden plankswere built from the early 1800s.

Railroads followed, starting with the Freehold & Jamesburg,which became Monmouth County’s first rail line in 1853.

Factories arrived in the second half of the 19

century. The Freehold Iron Foundryoperated from 1856 until 1890. Brakeley’s Canning Factory canned local produce from 1882until 1928, when the company moved to Delaware. Stokes Brothers Manufacturing Co. madefiles, horse rasps and machinery from 1888 through the early 1900s. Arthur A. Zimmerman, achampion bicycle racer from Freehold, had his own bike-making factory from 1895 to 1901.

Geyer & Ray Rug Manufacturing Co., opened in 1900, also lasted about six years.

V. Henry Rothschild, a shirtmaker based in New York, set up shop in Freehold duringthis era. His company’s plant began operating in 1886, and he added three stories to the buildingeight years later.

By 1895, more than 1,500 people worked there.

He developed the area that became known as Texas to provide rental housing for employees and their families.

Rothschild’s factory was closed by 1904, when it was sold to Arshag and MiranKaragheusian, the only children of an Armenian textile importer from Turkey. The brothers hadmoved to the U.S. after inheriting their father’s business and starting an import-export companyin England.

The plant was turned into a rug-making factory, and A. & M. Karagheusian RugCo. began production the next year.

Karagheusian, unlike Geyer & Ray, was successful. The company made floor coveringsfor Radio City Music Hall and the U.S. Supreme Court building.

Carpet is still produced todayunder its Gulistan brand name, first used in 1924 for a line of Oriental-style rugs.

The Freehold plant expanded through the 1940s, and the company purchased the former Brakeley Canning factory for use as a warehouse. The number of employees peaked at 1,700 inWorld War II, when the company made waterproof canvas known as duck for the U.S. military.About two-thirds of the town’s population depended on the mill for their livelihood.

An industrywide shift toward tufted, or machine-sewn, carpet from the woven productsmade in Freehold marked the beginning of the end. Karagheusian first used the tufting process ata factory in Albany, Georgia, bought in 1952. Five years later, the company added a tufting plantin Aberdeen, North Carolina.

Karaghuesian began scaling back its Freehold operations in 1958, when the warehousewas shut down. Production of broadloom Wilton carpet, woven from wool, ended in 1960 and150 workers lost their jobs. The factory closed the next year, and another 400 employees were

fired. Only research and design departments and a custom tufting division, employing about 75 people in all, were left behind. Those units were shut by 1965, the year after the company wassold to J.P. Stevens & Co. for about $20 million.

Karagheusian ended up as “the textile millacross the railroad tracks” that Bruce sang about in “My Hometown.”

The closing was just one of the economic setbacks that paved the way for racial unrest inthe 1960s. Monmouth Shopping Center, an open-air plaza in nearby Eatontown, opened in 1960and drew customers away from local merchants. The center was later enclosed and renamedMonmouth Mall.

Fires damaged stores on Main Street in April 1962 and February 1964.

Bruce’s father worked at the rug mill as well as M&Q Plastics Inc., part of a wave of manufacturers that set up shop after World War II. Nestle SA opened a coffee-processing plantalong Jerseyville Avenue, near the Texas section, in 1948. Brockway Glass Co. started operatingon Route 33 in Freehold Township eight years later. Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co., or 3M, came to the township in 1957 and produced Scotch-brand audio and video tape there.

M&Q, a maker of plastic films and bags, opened on Freehold’s Bannard Street in 1956.Bruce’s father spent about three years working there shortly before the family left for California.The company relocated in 1986 to Howell Township and again in 1993 to Pennsylvania.

3M closed its factory the same year that M&Q left town. The shutdown took placedespite opposition from Bruce and others. Brockway’s plant halted production in 1991.

Only Nestle remained. The company still processes instant coffee and tea in Freehold, and the aromaof its products still permeates Bruce’s old neighborhood on Institute Street.

As companies came and went, there were several constants for the local economy.Monmouth County’s administrative offices, Hall of Records, courthouse and jail were amongthem. Douglas was a guard at the jail, now in Freehold Township.