(The following appeared on the New York Times website February 12, 2011.)
SPOONS and forks, the metal flatware that everyone uses, are no longer made in the United States. The last factory in an industry stretching back to colonial times closed eight months ago in Sherrill, N.Y., a small community in the foothills of the Adirondacks, and 80 employees lost their jobs.
No one paid much attention beyond the people in the town itself, even though the closing represented the demise of an industry that had flourished in this country for generations. Paul Revere, in fact, was a flatware craftsman.
Losing an industry or ceasing to manufacture a particular product, in this case stainless steel flatware, has indeed become a fairly frequent event. Just in the last few years, the last sardine cannery, in Maine, closed its doors. Stainless steel rebars, the sturdy rods that reinforce concrete in all kinds of construction, are now no longer made in America. Neither are vending machines or incandescent light bulbs or cellphones or laptop computers.
Less noticeably, American manufacturers are importing more of the components that go into their products.
Something else is gone, too. “We had a storehouse of knowledge and skill built up in these workers and we can’t use it now,” says James Jordan, president of the Interstate Maglev Project, promoting a high-speed rail technology that uses special magnets to levitate and propel trains. Maglev was invented in the United States, but equipment based on that technology is manufactured and used today in Japan.
The full story appears on the New York Times website.