One Enormous Warehouse

Back in the 70's I used to constantly coin the phrase 'Our country will become just one big warehouse'. Manufacturing in the United States was being replaced with warehouses. Instead of the U.S. striving to lead the world in manufacturing, we were settling for becoming a huge warehouse for the rest of the world's manufactured goods.

Our corporations were becoming exporters of ideas and raw materials that were becoming finished products in other parts of the world. Whether the reasons for this were cheaper labor, convenience, labor disputes, or just plain laziness, it doesn't matter. The reality was that factories became warehouses. Our jobs became less skilled (loaders and unloaders), instead of the many skilled positions that manufacturing had required.

The garment industry in our small town was a casualty of this kind of thinking. We had both a dress factory and a shirt factory. The dress factory closed around 1982, and the shirt factory closed before that. Then in 1982, the shirt factory reopened as a cutting room and warehouse of supplies. It employed about 10 people. The factory received all the raw materials to manufacture shirts, spread the material on cutting tables, and cut out the parts for the shirts. After the parts of the shirts were cut and bundled up, the thread, buttons, and all the other materials used to make shirts we're shipped to Costa Rica to be sewn together. Then the finished product was shipped back to a warehouse and distributed to stores here in the U.S.

The trend in 2014 is to change the U.S. back to more of a manufacturing country as a matter of pride. Many people are trying to buy U.S. made goods as a first choice, which has created a boom of small manufacturing firms and skilled positions to dot the American landscape.

National news programs have been highlighting American-Made products and the grassroots organizations that are digging deep to become successful to put America back in the manufacturing business.

It is going to take all of us in this country to change the habits of 30 to 40 years so that America can become what it once was in the manufacturing industry.

Buy American!