Empty Mills

The Fight Against Imports and the Decline of the U.S. Textile Industry

By (author) Timothy J. Minchin

Publication date:

19 December 2012

Length of book:

352 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781442220829

With the economy struggling, there has been much discussion about the effects of deindustrialization on American manufacturing. While the steel and auto industries have taken up most of the spotlight, the textile and apparel industries have been profoundly affected. In Empty Mills, Timothy Minchin provides the first book length study of how both industries have suffered since WWII and the unwavering efforts of industry supporters to prevent that decline. In 1985, the textile industry accounted for one in eight manufacturing jobs, and unlike the steel and auto industries, more than fifty percent of the workforce was women or minorities. In the last four decades over two million jobs have been lost in the textile and apparel industries alone as more and more of the manufacturing moves overseas. Impeccably well researched, providing information on both the history and current trends, Empty Mills will be of importance to anyone interested in economics, labor, the social historical, as well as the economic significance of the decline of one of America’s biggest industries.

Introduction
Chapter 1: A Troubled Industry in an Era of Prosperity
Chapter 2: Mobilizing Against the Import Threat
Chapter 3: Import Escalation and the Build-Up to H.R. 1562
Chapter 4: The Most Important Battle: The Fight to Pass the 1985 Textile Bill
Chapter 5: A Resounding Blow: The 1987 and 1990 Textile Bills
Chapter 6: “Us is Spelled U.S.”: The Crafted with Pride in the USA Campaign
Chapter 7: Looking Beyond Our Borders: The Industry in the Era of NAFTA and GATT
Chapter 8: A Tidal Wave: The Collapse of the Industry in the New Millennium
Chapter 9: Fighting Back: Lowell, Massachusetts and the Long Battle against Deindustrialization in the North
Chapter 10: “It Knocked This City to Its Knees”: A Case Study of Deindustrialization in Kannapolis, North Carolina
Epilogue
Bibliography

Historian Minchin (La Trobe Univ., Australia) provides a thoroughly documented study about one of the lesser-known and most disastrous stories of America's deindustrialization--the decline and fall of the textile industry. Textile manufacturing was the nation's first industry, early in New England and later in the South, employing many thousands of people, mostly in small cities. Because of this, small cities were devastated when a mill closed. Little attention was given in the media to the mill closings in small cities, as opposed to the wide media coverage of layoffs in large cities like Detroit and Pittsburgh. In addition to these mills' being the major employer in a small city, a great proportion of the workers were women and blacks. Minchin also reports on the unsuccessful efforts to save the industry through union compromises and employer organization, to no avail. The effects of imports, trade deals such as NAFTA, and automation are discussed in detail. The book concludes with two microeconomic studies, one in the North and one in the South, of cities that were devastated and their efforts to recover. Abundant footnotes; exhaustive bibliography. Summing Up: Recommended.