I was trying to figure out why I am writing this on Father’s Day – but when I awoke this morning, this is what was on my mind.

In 1978, I began a new job as I was hired as a Product Manager for Wamsutta Mills. Wamsutta designed and manufactured sheets, pillowcases, comforters, bedspreads, towels and more and soon I began to travel down to Lyman, SC to visit our mills where football field-sized buildings housed our hundreds of workers who were operating the huge machinery – various looms and industrial sewing/stitching machinery – to manufacture the finished product of our New York Design team.

What I did not realize then is that I was witnessing the beginning of the end of the American manufacturing workers. I remember talking with Dottie who was my point-of-contact for all the line workers and also discussing projections and capacity with Jim B., who managed operations for my product lines: the comforters, bedspreads and towels. Many really nice, dedicated Southern workers who worked hard and straight and true.

I was the guy from “up north” as they might have said about me or the “Yankee from NYC who has come down to check up on us.” They all made me look good. And I appreciated their talents and dedication to getting our products to market on time.

Back then, there was a “White Sale” at all the fancy department stores – Bloomingdales, Lord & Taylor, Macy’s and each region of the USA had its own name-brand department stores: Neiman Marcus,  Dillard’s, Filene’s, Nordstrom and so many more. But all these White Sale events were conducted four times a year and with all these different retail chains demanding a few special designs exclusive to them, getting the factories to produce so much different product four times a year required a lot of forecasts. That was my job – to work with Sales and with my team down in Lyman to get the orders straight to make sure we hit Market with enough inventory.

The workers in Lyman were great and we never missed an order. Now they are all gone, American manufacturing replaced by offshoring, cheap labor costs and robotic manufacturing. Sigh. I know, progress.

After reading Factory Man by Beth Macy, a wonderful book recounting how all our U.S. manufacturing jobs disappeared, so many jobs in South Carolina were lost as textile mills and furniture makers began turning to China in the 1980s. Of course, it wasn’t just SC – it spread to the entire U.S. manufacturing workforce. The trickle soon became a tidal wave and U.S. factories began closing and outsourcing to China, Viet Nam and other Asian countries.

While we decimated whole regions of the U.S. (most heavily Appalachia and the rest of the Southeast), we helped raise the standard of living for people in Asia. Now, there are thousands of immense factories throughout Asia that manufacture and supply American retailers with furniture and clothing and other goods, shipped over unassembled in containers by ship and when necessary, the product is assembled at the retail store by warehouse workers.

Back in 1978, my boss told me I was going to be doing a lot of travel and that I should get an American Express card. (Today, my Amex says Member since 1978). I began flying on a regular basis back and forth to Lyman. It seemed exciting at the time. My job was to make sure my projections were able to be met by Dottie, Jim B., and their hundreds of manufacturing workers.

Looking back, those days were the height of success for all the mill workers and also for all the furniture manufacturers. I left Wamsutta in 1980 and by the mid-1980s, it was bought in the merger-crazy era of LBOs and takeovers. Wamsutta was purchased by Springs Mills and many of the jobs were eliminated as more modern factories were built and later, the manufacturing – and the jobs – went overseas. In 2012, Bed, Bath and Beyond acquired the rights to the Wamsutta name and licenses products under its name.

The jobs never came back, of course. Nor were they replaced by other companies or industries. Many dedicated, skilled factory workers had nowhere to go – except move out. Their towns turned into ghost towns. No one hired them because there was no company to hire them. We all know about the meth crisis that is wiping out families in many regions and this is one of them. With despair in place of a job, many lost hope. Politicians can make promises but they cannot create jobs. Years later, when I was in the furniture industry, customers would come into a furniture store and demand Made in the USA furniture and solid wood only. After they got over the price shock, the customer would quickly “see the benefits” of buying a bedroom suite or dining room set made in China. All of a sudden, wood veneers looked good instead of solid wood.

No one is guilty – it is a global phenomenon. We all want it now, want it cheap and want it to be made solid. Sorry, you cannot have it all.

But on Father’s Day, I’m thinking about all those great workers who labored hard and created exactly what we told them to produce and with the quality that came in on budget.

They and we could not have known that they would be replaced by foreign employees working for $40 per month. Our workers, contrary to popular belief, were not making top dollar – they did not price themselves out of the market. The Chinese did that for us.

I applaud all the efforts we sometimes read about to bring back American manufacturing. According to Business Insider, Made in America: these are some of the companies bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. (7/9/22), “almost four in five corporations have already shifted production to the U.S. and at least 15 percent are considering it.” The report says General Motors announced $7 billion in investment in four plants in Michigan. Other companies include GE (announcing $2 billion in U.S. plants including a water heater plant in SC), Intel ($12 billion on building two new chip factories in Phoenix, AZ) and US Steel ($3 billion steelmaking factory in Osceola, AR). Other major companies moving in the same direction include Nucor, Generac Power Systems and Lockheed Martin.

It is not enough to offset the continued overseas labor drift but it is a start. After all, what led to American Exceptionalism and the American Century was jobs, manufacturing and innovation mixed in with a lot of know-how. We need to get back to that model. We cannot export all our jobs. Jobs create incomes which leads to disposable income and taxes which keeps the country running.

As Forbes reported in To Bring Back U.S. Manufacturing, We Need to Invest in Advanced Technologies (3/8/23): “Restoring U.S. manufacturing needs to be a north star for our economy. By investing in and incentivizing innovative forms of advanced manufacturing…the U.S. can begin building back its capacity in ways that can transform the country and better position the economy for growth.”

It is obvious that the manufacturing jobs for the future will require more tech skills. That’s okay. Education, solid training programs and motivation (not whining about past jobs lost) will help the American worker to begin to rise again. And that is my Father’s Day wish, for all dads, moms and young people.

Chris Ebel
6/18/23

Photo Credit: @Three Lions