I've been looking for fabric made in the U.S. I knew it would be difficult, but I didn't realize how difficult it would be. I mean, shouldn't there be an artisan out there who specializes in this?
According to the National Cotton Council only 5% of fabric in the U.S. was domestic in 2007. That was down 10% from 2005. There are no statistics for 2008-2009. I wonder if ANY fabric is produced in the U.S. anymore.
Now, our cotton industry was built around slavery so I have somewhat mixed feelings about cotton in the states. On one hand cotton was a major contributor to the growth of our nation. On the other hand cotton fell apart a long time ago. After the Civil War the south was already having problems with their economy due to the international drop in cotton prices, so the problem with cotton isn't really a new problem. But still, isn't it a bit odd that we have almost no domestic fabric anymore?
3 comments:
Think wool.
Its not odd at all. Textiles, like a lot of manufacturing type industries, requires large amounts of unskilled labor. Unskilled labor = not high paying. As a society we put very little value on that kind of labor and spend countless resources educating our kids for "better" jobs--engineering, technology, finance, anything you need a college degree for. And even those folks who do work in the existing manufacturing industries in this country demand high salaries and benefits packages, which drives up the cost of the finished product.
At the same time, consumers want inexpensive clothes, and aren't willing to pay for both the labor of manufacturing the cloth plus the labor of manufacturing the finished clothing. They want the $5 tshirts, not the $100 ones. There's a reason that haute couture costs what it does, as those are the clothes that are individually crafted, with handmade details and custom-designed fabrics and trims, etc--hand labor by skilled people costs $$.
So, textiles move to places where there are many people willing to work for a wage low enough to produce cloth cheap enough for a clothing manufacturer to sew into a garment for that $5 rack to make the US consumers happy (we've got to make those high salaries from all the tech jobs go even farther, you know).
So yeah, no surprise that there's not much of a textiles industry in the US. And with government focus on preparing students for high tech jobs, etc, there's not going to be one.
I'm sure there are artisans who try to work with local fabrics and materials (or at least organic ones, which isn't quite the same thing I know), and probably plenty who go with recycled materials (re-weaving yarns from sweaters, etc). Have you tried checking Etsy and flea markets and boutique shops and places like that?
Yes, I know that unskilled labor is a textile problem and that I would be unlikely to find much material made in the U.S. And I'd rather we import cloth than return to slave labor or sharecropping in the states. But I was hoping to find an artisan and I can't. Maybe I'll stumble upon one someday, but they're not on the web.
But if we have NO unskilled labor force anymore doesn't that affect our economy? I'm not an economist and REALLY struggled with economics classes in college, but don't we need all sectors of employment for our economy to keep strong? Can we have a country with no industrial base?
As a localvore I'm not opposed to international trade, but I want to get as many locally produced goods as possible. I think it probably reduces the need for shipping and all the CO2 created in international trade and enables our cities to better survive market fluctuation. Again, I'm not an economist, but I'm a bit suspicious that almost ALL of our goods are made from materials that come from another country, produced in another country, and are the product of a company operating in another country.
And, just to get on my soapbox once more (I know, I know, I have a bunch of soapboxes) as a note about unskilled labor, we're constantly struggling to teach kids that agriculture is NOT unskilled labor. Working on a farm is honest work that's incredibly rewarding and requires huge amounts of knowledge. Many good farmers have master's degrees in agriculture (think Kelly).
But in our society physical labor is almost taboo. Everybody has to have an easier, less labor intensive life than their parents did. And I don't blame people, I mean it's nice to have the luxuries we have today. But I just can't see that it's sustainable.
I really want to live in a sustainable way so that I'm relatively unaffected by the problems that I suspect someday we may face. But even now I wonder if it's really worth swimming upstream.
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