BUY U.S.A!
Can you actually bring yourself to refuse to buy anything manufactured outside the
United States?
You may do so, if you wish, but have your tried to do so recently? Before you go
making any rash, blanket statements on the matter, check the shelves at your local
merchant’s to see if essentials you want and need are provided with “Made in U.S.A.
labels attached.
Check shoes, for instance. Examine footwear for men, women and children and see
how many you find which are made here in the States. Oh, you may well recognize the
name as being one you remember for many years past, but when you look inside you find
that the firm making them has long since departed these shores.
China produces more shoes, I think, than just about anyone, and I take great pride
in pointing out that a pair of black dress shoes I wear - a well-known brand name shoe -
are not made in China. Of course not! They are, instead, made in India and have been for
some years.
The movement overseas has been a gradual thing but it is becoming quite
noticeable when you shop for the family’s needs.
So many articles of clothing are made in China, Korea, India, Taiwan, and I wear a
plaid sports shirt which was manufactured, not in Scotland, but in Bangladesh, which I
now find I can’t be sure I can even spell correctly. We used to see a lot of things “Made in
Hong Kong” but that was a well-established bit of politically-correct merchandising which
disappeared when Hong Kong reverted to Red China several year ago. It was an open
secret for many years that much, or most, the item we bought “Made in Hong Kong”
were actually made in China and “distributed” through Hong Kong’s established
world-wide trading firms.
Subtle little tricks are commonly used to misguide a trusting and gullible public. One
New York firm which marketed ladies’ gloves imported a line of fancy gloves from Italy.
The gloves where, as far as they knew, actually made in Italy, but before they were
marketed here, a narrow lace trim was stitched to the edge of each glove, bearing the
tiny label which, was, technically quite accurate and true when it attested to the fact
that the lace trim was “Made the U.S.A.”
Much of our electronic products origination moved to Mexico and the Orient many
years ago; to Mexico mainly in the assembly phase, but to the Orient for manufacture of
the television sets, computers, monitors, printers and other such gadgets such a
photographic equipment, supplies and attachments on which we depend so widely
today.
If you think you can get toys and such things for the children come Christmas or
birthday occasions and you expect the toys to be home-made...i.e. in the U. S. of A, you
had best think again!. Even “Lincoln Logs” are made in China these days.
One has to wonder what it might be like once free trade markets really opens up
with China. I wonder, too, if this Chinese merchandise “invasion” has hit European markets
with the same depth that we see here.
A.L.M. July 17, 2002 [c536wds]
