So my niece may never go shopping with me again

[politicat]

62. Silk buttonhole twist still exists...

But it is pricey -- $6.50 for a 20 meter card. Imported, of course, but all silk is -- the US has never had a strong silk industry. I use it sparingly. That sounds like a lovely seam finish.

I won't say our textile factories were models of progress -- textile workers had truly outrageous rates of respiratory disease caused by poor ventilation and lint, and a lot of rivers got poisoned by the heavy metals in the dyes. They were in right to starve states and employed mostly poor women as a means of keeping their workforce docile. But even those conditions were better than what outsourcing our textile industry has done to the rest of the world.

I consider it a national security issue -- if we get smacked with a World War II type situation (with the shipping lanes cut off -- and it need not be a war; a dwindling oil supply or a stall in the major ocean current would do the same) we lack the factories to repurpose and the labor force to redirect. We've lost the skills and tools to support and supply ourselves. That makes us vulnerable. Most people don't realize just how critical textiles are, but they're the basis for everything from tires to tents to successful sterile surgery.