Friday, February 25, 2011

Textiles = gone gone gone

     According to a story in the Wall Street Journal Tuesday, the high cost of cotton is killing what's left of the sock industry in Northeast Alabama, especially in Fort Payne.



 

      It reminded me of an NPR story some years back about Wal-Mart and socks. The reporter was in Fort Payne and visited the local Wal-Mart, where lots of Ft. Payne citizens were buying socks...made in (fill in the blank overseas country where folks make .15 a day)...instead of the products made in their own backyard..the point being that the locals didn't make the connection between the jobs dying at the local factory and their own purchasing.

    

     The entire textile industry is pretty much gone from Alabama these days...leaving behind empty old mill buildings and unemployed mill workers. It was the subject of an old "For The Record" I produced on APT in 2005.

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