WAY BACK WHEN `
` Do you remember when, not too many years ago, people - you and I among them - used to complain when shopping that “everything seems to be made in Japan!” You don't say that any more, do you? Now it's China. Yes. Now its China and almost anywhere else you care to name other than the United States.
If Huck Finn was around today and saw the situation he might well say:”We don't make nuthin' no more.”
He would be almost correct. At this moment, as I take a quick accounting of what I am wearing as I sit here typing this page. I find I am wearing only one item of clothing which bears the legend “Made in U.S.A.”. It's not my shoes – China. Dress shoes I will wear this evening are from India. My well-know brand of trousers were made in Korea; nor is it either section my underwear, or my socks made in China My sweater is a product of the workers of Bangladesh. The only thing made in the U.S.A is the belt which holds my pants up. It is plainly stamped on the leather - or, whatever the material might be, just behind the buckle which is of metal and which may well have been brought from far away to be fitted to the locally made leather portion of the belt. I assume that same source punched the six holes in even sequence along the hitchin' end of it, but the buckle, itself, might be from anywhere.
We had a case years go pretty much like that of women's elegant gloves plainly marked as being made in the U.S. of A. But, the tiny tag saying so was added in the seam of the cloth cuffs when they were sewn to the gloves themselves which were all imported from Italy. I have a feeling they have been having trouble finding the exact place where they can make belts and ship them some ump-teen thousand miles all at a cost lower than we can make a belt here at home.
I was scolded recently by an economist-type person who told me that it is far better for all of us to have workers in other nations manufacture the stuff we need. This, I am told, enables them to earn a living and allows the foreign workers to pay taxes and buy property as the work for locally respected “fair” wages to earn what the local owner calls good working conditions. The have a income of their own and get along in an improved lifestyle.. We no longer find it necessary for us to fork out millions of dollars in economic or political aid needed to help them subsist.
I find it to be still subject to some doubt. question the authenticity of those words and the methods actually applied. Being polite as can be, this critics simply says I am “stubborn”, but you and I both know they really “dumb”.
I'm planning to stay that way until someone shows me how this scheme works. At the moment I plan to keep right on agreeing with Huck Finn's hypothetical assessment. ”We don't make nuthin' no more!”
A.L.M. February 15, 2004 [c541wds]
