Where did all our industry go?

At the height of production, during World War II, Greenfield’s machine-tool and cutting tool shops were humming with the activity of 7,000 workers.

Greenfield Tap and Die and the Millers Falls Co. had a global reputation for precision manufacturing, and Greenfield was the proud home to factories whose brands were well known around the country.

But what happened to those industries, which either left town a generation ago or employ a fraction of their former workforce?

That will be the subject of a day-long forum Saturday at the Greenfield Community College Downtown Center sponsored by Museum of Our Industrial Heritage.

The “Gauging the Past/Calibrating the Future” forum, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., will begin with a panel discussion featuring three labor historians who have focused on de-industrialization in this area.

Bruce Laurie taught the subject for 40 years as a history professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and writes and edits widely read books on work in America. Robert Forrant, is a former machinist who is now a professor of regional economic development at UMass Lowell and writes on metalworking in the Pioneer Valley. Tom Juravich directs the Labor Center at UMass Amherst and writes on the changing roles of unions in the workplace.

In the wake of plant closings over the past three decades that have hollowed out Franklin County’s economic base and dealt a severe blow to how the region defines itself in terms of productive value, the panel will lead an open forum on how and why the metal tool industry left and will try to offer a better understanding of what was lost and how to evaluate options before the community today.

Following a lunch break, an afternoon panel will feature people from the community who witnessed this history from a variety of perspectives.

“These were companies that were really homegrown in Franklin County that innovated, designed and built complete industries in themselves,” said Jim Terapane, director of the museum. “What we’re trying to understand is what happened to that type of company. A lot of people who come into the museum, once they understand the scale of what developed here, say, “What happened?” We’ve been struggling with how to answer that. A couple of topics we’ve never delved into completely at the museum are the decline of the industry here, and also a real study of the workers and organized labor. There are some unique stories there.”

Saturday’s program is an outgrowth of a scholar-in-residence grant from the Massachusetts Humanities Council, with which Florence researcher Tom Goldscheider dug into materials about labor history at the Greenfield museum.

“We’d like to think this is going to kick off a long-term project to study this whole topic further, and hopefully preserve it so we can continue to try and understand it, and hopefully use this knowledge to rebuild the heritage,” said Terapane, who moved to this area to work at Millitech in South Deerfield.

Once outside capital became involved in this area, with large companies coming in and buying up the local manufacturers companies, he said, “that had great influence on the decline of what had been very local. And the labor union plays into it. It depends on your perspective.”

Now, Terapane added, “We’re hoping to get a community discussion going. We’ve had some time to kind of take a look back, and a lot of people think it’s time we take another look at it.”

Goldscheider, who is presenting a talk at the Greenfield Public Library at 6 p.m. tonight on Greenfield’s labor history, said the hope for the event Saturday is “to come to some common understanding of how it came to be that this productive capacity vaporized in the space of a generation,” and beyond that, “to learn from this. We still have a lot of elements and a lot of desire to have high-skill jobs and a metal-tool industry here. What can we do to bring it back, and if we do, how can we design the model” for a successful revival, worker-owned or otherwise?