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Greatest Hits: Making Stuff
Survival Skills: Gregory Sullivan at Sippican Cottage has written, "Many people with skinny glasses instead of safety glasses talk a good game. They grow cucumbers in a window box and put together an IKEA shelf and then start blogging about how they've returned to their pioneer roots."
 In other words, filling a diaper is not a reason to proclaim: "Look, I just made something."
Then Mr. Sullivan discussed Norm, late of the TV show, 'The New Yankee Workshop': "Norm Abram is the penultimate example of true "Reality TV." He made real things, and encouraged others to do so. No pretense. Not a scam. The balloon boy's father will get his 15 minutes, but being part of Katie Couric's nightly geeks and freaks sideshow act is a virtual reality, not real real. He'll get a book deal or an ankle bracelet or both, but he literally contributes nothing to the sum total of world's worth."
Norm created real objects from scratch. Or repaired them. Or modified them. Or saved them from the Great Trash Heap. There is a great satisfaction in that. I didn't learn proper woodworking until I was in my late 30s.
My aunt had a mahogany drop-front secretary desk-bookcase, topped with a carved crown Chippendale-style bonnet. At age 25, I ended up with it. As was the style at the time (1968), I threw away the crown (deemed 'too fussy' by me) and slathered some hideous green antiquing stain-glop over the tired and marred finish.
By the early 1980s, I became sufficiently ashamed and embarrassed over my sacrilegious act that I set out to restore what remained of the piece. I stripped off the appalling green coating as well as many years of darkened varnish. I repaired and patched the underlying wood where necessary. I removed and refinished all the brass knobs, hinges and trim, replacing what was missing.
I spent many evenings sanding and steel-wooling the solid wood surfaces until they were silk-smooth. Then I carefully applied stain, worked it in with OOOO steel wool and reapplied more stain, working that in - repeating the process until the depth of grain of this fine wood specimen could be fully appreciated. Afterwards, I gently breathed a coat of protective urethane varnish over it. Then it was time to reassemble and realign all pieces. As a final touch, I reglazed the doors with bronze-tinted transparent Plexiglas panels.
I think my aunt would have liked the result. This piece of furniture, made in the mid-1930s, will outlive me. And, with a little TLC, my children too.
Gregory Sullivan commented on the silliness of Reality TV "accomplishments", noting, "Cubicle-bound endomorphs think a contest that looks like figuring out a subway map, a bus schedule, and an airport tote board is an 'Amazing Race'. Catching a trolley is not a bloodsport, no matter how heavy your backpack full of energy bars is."
For many, there is little sense of fulfillment because a great number of people today lack practical manual skills. They're not taught such things in school - no room in the curriculum after packing in all those diversity sessions, conflict resolution workshops and self-esteem courses. Few teenagers are able to land summer jobs where manual work (and craftsmanship) is practiced. The kind of summer job where you come home tired and sweaty - and must immediately jump in the shower to wash away your own stink - is disappearing.
I hope this nation never has to go into survivalist mode. Too many citizens - possessing neither practical skills, common sense nor calluses - won't make it. (posted 11/4/2009, permalink)
When Manufacturing Departs: Karl Denninger has written, "We ask "where did the credit go" repeatedly as consumer leverage has risen but personal consumption has risen at a slower rate. There is in fact no mystery: production was offshored to China, India and Vietnam (among others) and replaced with lower-wage "service" jobs. We have used credit as a means of masking our falling real standard of living by engaging in serial Ponzi Finance - first with the Internet Bubble and now with the Housing Bubble. But the Internet Bubble was small potatoes compared to the Housing Bubble, and we've run out of "bigger bubbles" we can blow to take the Housing Bubble's place.
As defaults mount the facts are exposed whether we want them to be or not: our earnings power has been severely damaged as a whole by the intentional off-shoring of high-quality jobs and the importation of lower-quality (and lower-wage) workers into the US and we have tried to make up for the deficiency through borrowing. But borrowed money has to be paid back - and we can't make the payments." (posted 9/30/2009, permalink)
In Praise Of Doing Something Real: Matthew B. Crawford, author of 'Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work', has written, "High-school shop-class programs were widely dismantled in the 1990s as educators prepared students to become 'knowledge workers'. The imperative of the last 20 years to round up every warm body and send it to college, then to the cubicle, was tied to a vision of the future in which we somehow take leave of material reality and glide about in a pure information economy. This has not come to pass. To begin with, such work often feels more enervating than gliding. More fundamentally, now as ever, somebody has to actually do things: fix our cars, unclog our toilets, build our houses."
I've written about this subject before and I offer the following unscientific observations:
• College was a good idea until everyone started matriculating. Universities have dumbed-down their educational programs ("Don't Flunk The Customer!") to the point where a sheepskin is meaningless. Too many college grads are morons. Employers know this and discount the value of a degree to the point where the cost of a BA - even from a low-cost state institution - will often never pay off.
• People in skilled trades - electricians, plumbers, cabinetmakers, machinists, etc. - now make far better wages than many college grads.
• Most of the unhappy people I've met are college graduates. My theory is that they were fed high expectations at the university (You're special!) which have been largely unmet in the workplace. (No, you're not.)
• I've met very few depressed carpenters. Why? Because there is something especially fulfilling about creating with your hands. Something physical - more than just a CAD rendering. Getting paid good money for it helps with that happiness thing - someone 'values' your accomplishment.
• While most cars, toasters and other appliances can no longer be repaired at home, there are still opportunities for manual creativity, whether it be modification of ordinary devices, making furniture or building a model train layout.
My advice: Learn a skill. Give your hands something to do. Someday, you may be able to make a living from it. And your creations may very well outlive you, providing joy and fascination for generations yet unborn.
Something which will never happen with, say, data entry. Or diversity consulting. (posted 6/12/2009, permalink)
Crisis In The Making: Manufacturing is vital to the economy of the United States because it is a generator of wealth. Taking low-cost raw materials (wood, baking flour, steel) and processing them to produce much more expensive items (furniture, cakes, automobiles) creates profit. This in turn produces prosperity - for individuals and for a nation.
Furthermore, if the nation's products are unique and interesting enough that people in other countries want to buy them, fresh capital is brought into the United States. Such capital can used to expand capacity, improve product offerings and increase efficiency - these things make our wares even more competitive and attractive in the world market.
In an earlier posting, I provided specific examples of how U.S. manufacturing has changed and declined over the last 50+ years.
A recent news item in the Columbian (Vancouver, WA) noted, "At least 900 jobs have been lost in the local manufacturing sector in the 12 months through April at a pace nearly six-times the overall rate of job erosion."
"One hundred jobs were cut in computer and electronic product-making just last month. At last count there were just 12,800 manufacturing jobs left here. That’s down 5,300 since April 2001, representing hundreds of millions of dollars in lost wages and benefits to this community."
Bob Baugh, executive director of the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council said that, in the past five years, the U.S. has lost 5.2 million manufacturing jobs - down from 17.9 million to 12.7 million. Of 5.2 million jobs lost, 800,000 were held by engineers and scientists - people critical to innovation and new product development.
"It really bothers me to see wind turbines made in Denmark being shipped up the Columbia River past aluminum plants that closed because of the Enron energy crisis," Baugh said. "Manufacturing in the U.S. can not be relegated to the dust bin."
Baugh warned, "Our time is up ... we are a country without a strategy when it comes to manufacturing, to trade policy, health care reform and energy production. It’s all connected. Shame on us for not having a strategy to build our manufacturing base, our export base." (posted 6/3/2009, permalink)
The Producers: When I was in grade school - in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth and cars didn't have tailfins yet, one of the subjects we learned was Geography. Much reading and memorization were required. Test questions involved not just physical dimensions: "How large is Ohio?" (Answer: 41,328 square miles) but also what was made there: "What are the chief products of Bolivia?"
In the early 1950s, Bolivia's 412,777 square miles of landlocked, mountainous terrain produced mainly bark, hides, potatoes, cacao, tin and silver. As a third-grader, I didn't fully appreciate the nuances of the goods produced but it was obvious that most of the really backward countries listed sisal and hemp as their chief products. I realized much later in life that perhaps these countries were backward because the populace spent too much smoking all that hemp instead of trying to build a stronger, more prosperous nation.
Even to my elementary school brain, it was apparent that a country must have desirable products which can be sold to other countries in order to become a major player on the world's stage. Most of these products were 'high value added': large trucks, mighty locomotives, massive extruders, huge rolling mills, etc.
America progressed from a dependent colony to a powerful independent nation because it took advantage of the Industrial Revolution and became self-sufficient. This land not only grew its own cotton; it added value by having all those 19th Century New England mills turn it into yarn and cloth. Which was turned into even higher value finished apparel in places like New York's Garment District.
In the early 20th Century - during the heyday of the trolley, J.G. Brill Co. of Philadelphia manufactured streetcars, exporting them to such locations as England, Norway, India, South Africa, Finland, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the Philippines, Chile, Peru, Venezuela and Egypt.
In 1953, more locomotives and rail cars were produced in Pennsylvania than anywhere else on earth. The Keystone State led all others in coal production; anthracite was hauled to major distribution centers along the Pennsylvania Railroad's gigantic, magnificent Horseshoe Curve in Altoona. The Pennsy was once the largest railroad in the world, carrying raw materials and manufactured goods to distribution centers for U.S. consumption and to port cities for export.
In the 1950s, iron and steel were the biggest industries in the state (Pennsylvania was the nation's largest producer of pig iron), followed by industrial and electrical machinery (think of Westinghouse making all those electrical transformers used worldwide). Also mentioned were shipbuilding, hatmaking, textiles and the brewing of beer.
Today, Pennsylvania's largest employer is Wal-Mart, followed by the U.S. Postal Service, the City of Philadelphia and the School District of Philadelphia. Shocking.
In the past 40 years, total U.S. nonfarm employment has increased by 88% (75,500,000 to 142,099,000). During the same period, manufacturing employment has declined by 40% (20,200,000 to 13,388,000). In 1969 over one-quarter of our nation's workforce were employed in factories. By 1990, the figure had declined to 16.2%. In 2009, it's 9.0%. Total manufacturing employment has fallen by more than three million jobs since September 2001.
In 2008, the top four U.S. manufacturers were (according to Industry Week): Exxon-Mobil (petroleum products), Chevron (petroleum products), ConocoPhillips (petroleum products), General Motors (automobiles). All of the oil companies are highly-automated converters of raw commodity materials, rather than manufacturers of high value-added goods.
General Motors vehicles contain lower domestically-produced content every year; many of its offerings are maunfactured outside the U.S. (Mexico, Canada, Korea, etc.) and components are made by low-cost producers in Asia. The engine of the Chevrolet Equinox is made in China; only 55% of its content comes from the United States and Canada. The Equinox is assembled in Canada.
Once upon a time, the U.S. exported everything from die casting machinery, earthmovers, agricultural equipment and, yes, trolley cars. All were high value-added products manufactured entirely here, bringing in new currency to the U.S.
Today, much of America's exported product is waste paper - shipped to Asia to be converted to shipping boxes for manufactured goods for export back to the United States. America's largest exporter, in terms of volume via container, is American Chung Nam, Inc. In a year, the Chinese company typically exports over 200,000 containers of waste paper to its Chinese sister company, Nine Dragons Paper Industries. Weyerhaeuser was the country's second largest export company, with 165,800 containers filled with mostly waste paper.
A Department of Commerce report, 'Manufacturing In America', stated: "American manufacturers are a cornerstone of the American economy and embody the best in American values. They enhance U.S. competitiveness while improving lives domestically and internationally. ... Manufacturers are full partners in the effort to build the future of the country in the marketplace for new products and ideas. Simply put, a healthy manufacturing sector is key to better jobs, fostering innovation, rising productivity, and higher standards of living in the United States."
The report also notes that "manufacturing is crucial to the U.S. economy. Every individual and industry depends on manufactured goods. In addition, innovations and productivity gains in the manufacturing sector provide benefits far beyond the products themselves. There is no dispute over the significant contribution that manufacturing makes to the U.S. economy and to America’s standard of living."
The U.S. needs to foster manufacturing within its borders. I propose four changes:
• Tort reform: The litigious atmosphere in the U.S. puts manufacturers at a competitive disadvantage with the rest of the world and tempts businesses to make or buy in other countries where costs are lower. Product liability insurance costs, health care costs (premiums are high due to malpractice insurance and litigation) and general liability costs are a crippling burden on manufacturers. Manufacturers have become outsized targets, as plaintiffs' lawyers consider operating companies' "deep pockets" of insurance and capital.
'Loser pays' legislation would stop frivolous lawsuits and drastically reduce insurance costs. (You want to lower health care costs? Start here. Such a law would probably cut your office visit bill by half. Or more.)
• Silly, thoughtless state and federal mandates should be rescinded. OSHA personnel should focus on truly dangerous situations, not harassing small manufacturers by counting up blankets and salt pills.
• The U.S. Small Business Administration should be revamped, eliminating useless programs and doing better things with your tax dollars - like encouraging value-added business development.
• We should copy the Chinese and Japanese, doing everything possible to keep the dollar low in value relative to other currencies, so that our exports are attractive and imports less so.
Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist for IHS Global Insight has said, "The age of the U.S. and world economy being driven by the U.S. consumer may be in the past. We need to become more of a nation of producers rather than a nation of consumers."
Sometimes, it seems like the chief products of the United States are now movies, porn and lawsuits. We need to change that. It's not suitable for inclusion in our geography books. (posted 2/20/2009, permalink)
Time Flies: My wife has been repairing old photo albums; many of the snapshots have come loose over the years. These old photos have brought back a lot of memories. It's hard to believe that 30 years ago, we were just taking delivery of a large vacuum forming machine - our plastic company's first major equipment purchase. We had to rent a crane to lift it off the semi.
It had traveled across the U.S. from North Carolina to Oregon in 1978, arriving on a cold, foggy late-Fall morning.
For many years, small companies have recorded major events like these for posterity; photos are saved in company photo albums or stored at owners' homes. The vacuum-forming machine was American made. When a company's manufacturing moves outside the U.S., not only are jobs lost at that particular manufacturer but, in most cases, jobs are lost at large equipment manufacturers as well. Most Asian product manufacture is done with Asian-made machinery.
Photos of the assembled machine and some of the products we made on it can be found here. And here. (posted 11/19/2008, permalink)
The Nature Of The U.S. Economy is changing. Ever-increasing productivity means fewer new jobs created. More work is done with less labor. This is a result of technology and is out of a president's control. Any president. Corporations are amoral - they do what's good for themselves (and, hopefully, their shareholders). They worry little about social policy.
Corporations readily relocate work to other locations - including overseas - whenever substantial savings can be achieved. For over 50 years, manufacturing work has been moved from high-cost locations to lower cost ones (from the Northeast to the South in the 1950s, to Japan in the 1960s, to Southeast Asia in the '80s and, now, to China).
The advent of low-cost telecommunications and the ability to send files electronically is now causing high-paying American white-collar, non-manufacturing jobs to move to lower-cost locales such as India. This trend will continue. (posted 10/29/2004, permalink)
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Disclaimer
The facts presented in this blog are based on my best guesses and my substantially faulty geezer memory. The opinions expressed herein are strictly those of the author and are protected by the U.S. Constitution. Probably.
Spelling, punctuation and syntax errors are cheerfully repaired when I find them; grudgingly fixed when you do.
If I have slandered any brands of automobiles, either expressly or inadvertently, they're most likely crap cars and deserve it. Automobile manufacturers should be aware that they always have the option of giving me free cars to try and change my mind.
If I have slandered any people or corporations in this blog, either expressly or inadvertently, they should buy me strong drinks (and an expensive meal) and try to prove to me that they're not the jerks I've portrayed them to be. If you're buying, I'm willing to listen.
Don't be shy - try a bribe. It might help.
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