What goes around comes around or isn't life grand

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Puakinekine
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What goes around comes around or isn't life grand

Post by Puakinekine »

As the great granddaughter of a "Lowell girl" and a life long appreciator of textiles, I enjoyed reading this article. The re-gearing/modernization/third industrial revolution of American manufacturing is fascinating to me as an historical process. It is encouraging to think that perhaps more people will be able to have decent work with decent pay and benefits. It is good news as an investor and a consumer.
As costs were rising in China, Airtex was also getting a new message from some of its clients: They wanted more American-made products.

Health care clients wanted medical slings and other sensitive medical products made domestically to ensure quality. Retailers did not want to pay overseas freight costs to import bulky items like pillows, and they wanted more flexibility in turning around designs quickly. As Airtex considered production in Vietnam and elsewhere, it became concerned about safety and quality issues — and increasingly interested in the American alternative.

“The opportunity for domestic business right now is unbelievable,” Ms. Shields said. “Either we start to bring it back here, more of it, or we start going to places that are marginally unsafe.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/30/busin ... neral&_r=0
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aja8888
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Re: What goes around comes around or isn't life grand

Post by aja8888 »

With all those new jobs showing up after decades of offshore labor making those goods, how does a manufacturer expect to see people falling at his doorstep to do that low end labor?

[OT comments removed by admin LadyGeek]
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nisiprius
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Re: What goes around comes around or isn't life grand

Post by nisiprius »

Puakinekine, did your great grandmother live long enough for you to talk to and did you ever hear stories about the mill days?

The intertwining of history is interesting... I worked in the early 1990s for a couple of years at a high-tech startup, and the CEO happened to mention that New England was one of the best places for a startup. I asked why, expecting him to say something about MIT, but instead he said it was because the start of the industrial revolution took place in this area--Industrial Revolution Factory Version 1.0 in the Blackstone Valley, around Uxbridge I think; Version 2.0 in Waltham; Version 3.0 in Lowell and 3.01 in Lawrence--and even over 1.5 centuries there was a legacy, in the form of large numbers of small independent machine shops where prototypes could be built.

Later, in a somewhat larger high-tech firm, I saw this validated. Yes, of course the electronics came from wherever electronics does come from, and the optic was in fact done in Rochester, New York, but a substantial number of the internal mechanical parts--rollers of special alloys with special finishes, etc.--were in fact manufactured relatively near the high-tech firm, in small machine shops.

The funny thing is that Route 495 has a sign celebrating Lowell as the birthplace of Jack Kerouac (and James McNeill Whistler). I don't know much about Whistler, but during his life there was no love lost between Kerouac and Lowell.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness; Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.
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aja8888
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Re: What goes around comes around or isn't life grand

Post by aja8888 »

I grew up in the Naugatuck Valley in Connecticut where most New England watch and clock manufacturing took place from the late 1700's on up. I worked in the brass and copper industry in a plant that was built in the late 1800's. This area was considered "The Brass Center of the World" at one time. I was back there last year and all the old factories are closed and in their places are shopping malls and scads of Duncan Donut shops. :wink:

The textile manufacturing was long gone from Connecticut before I was a young boy in the 1950's.

There may be a renaissance coming in manufacturing, but it won't be in New England.
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LadyGeek
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Re: What goes around comes around or isn't life grand

Post by LadyGeek »

Sorry, but this discussion is not about investing; nor does it fit in any other forum. This thread has run its course and is locked. See: Forum Policy
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