General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: My sister found these among my mom's old things [View all]rickford66
(5,523 posts)I grew up in Scranton PA. Our neighborhood and the surrounding communities had dozens of Mom and Pop garment factories. Some large and some tiny. My Mother and three of her sisters worked at several of them and all were union shops. One of her cousins owned one also. Those owners had good, loyal workers and weren't about to get rid of the unions. A relative of my wife's was in the industry in South Carolina. All this is gone now because of the importation of cheap clothes from near slave labor. Most is junk. A label from India or Bangladesh is highly prized in place of the usual Made In China one. Mom sewed for over 25 years, retired with a small union pension and even left us with death benefit. Back about 25 years ago, I worked with a paranoid right wing gun nut. He complained about everything, especially imported goods. One day we compared what we were wearing. I had on Levis, Woolrich shirt, Fruit of the Loom underwear and socks and New Balance sneakers. All US made at that time. He was wearing all imported stuff. He also drove an imported car while I drove a North American F150. I'm sure he's in the Tea Party today. Even back then he talked about making bombs out of pressure cookers. We shop at as many local stores as possible and avoid Wall Mart and Sam's Club (never joined). We can't avoid buying imports any more but we should all buy as much as we can from local establishments to have some of our hard earned cash circulate here first.