Editorial: Americana Lost

Revolution Cotton Mill (Photo by Gary Mock of textilehistory.org)

Editor’s Note: Although I didn’t start DeadJournalist.com until 2006, I’ve been publishing – loosely – under the DeadJournalist guise since 2002. With the fifth anniversary of the DeadJournalist.com Web site two months away, I will be re-visiting the archives and posting some my editorials that pre-date this site. This is one I feel strongly about because its subject cuts to the core of who I am. Even though it was written seven years ago – before the economic bust – I was concerned about the future of the American worker. – Chuck

Editorial: Americana Lost
Originally Posted : Dec 20, 2003
by Chuck Norton

If you haven’t seen the documentary “The Gleaners and I” please do so because you’ll learn something about yourself.

With the holidays nearly upon us I find myself in, for lack of a better term, a pickle. I’m torn over capitalism.

I make a fine living buying low and selling at a competitive price. But at what price? I sell apparel – which to you may not seem like selling arms to Iran – but if you understand the plight of the American textile worker, you’d understand my position.

Did you know that more than 400,000 jobs have been lost in the Southeastern United States since 1990?

No, not overall, but in the textile and apparel industry specifically.

More than 300,000 of these jobs were not replaced. Many of you might think the immediate enemy might be overseas labor, and while that was initially true, now many of these jobs are lost do to technological advantages and improvements due to efficiencies.

This isn’t just happening in the traditional labor industries. Now with high-tech jobs such as computer programmers, digitizers, etc., also feeling the brunt of outsourced jobs I ask this question: Isn’t it time that we worried more about those of us here than those of us there?

This may come off as an extreme left or an extreme right view, but I’m just expressing my concern that the global economy has the potential to have detrimental effect on the bulk of the American working poor.

As a good friend reminds me, technology isn’t an enemy, and I’m not saying it is. Technology has created exponentially more positive value than it has eliminated. And competitive balance is more important now than it has ever been.

However, the next time you go to the store and spend $30 for a “retro-fashion” tee that you could have found at a thrift store for $0.99, think about what you could have done with that $29.01.

But I thank you, because that might have been one of the shirts I was paid to sell. And thus, the crux.

Editor’s Note: If you want to learn more about the history of the US textile industry in the American South, I highly recommend Gary Mock’s fantastic Web site TextileHistory.org.