Web Letters: Canary in the Mine Shaft

Once again, we have the same tired pretense that America has deindustrialized during the time when American manufacturing grew by 270 perent, 1980 to 2007.

These are real examples:
An ice cream plant added to its capacity by half, and went from 675 workers down to 275.
A heavy equipment plant, retooling to five times previous capacity, went from 1750 workers, down to 375.
A new fastener-manufacturing plant with 250 workers was bigger than a WWII era one with 5,000 employed.
A company that used to need clerks and sales staff of seven, now with computerized sales and inventory needs only two to do the same job. (I was one of the seven.) Supermarket checkers can handle up to ten times the volume with barcoding labels. (I did that one the old way, too, in 1960s.

Whatever this growth is, it is not de -industrialization. It is the same process by which we went from 90 percent employed directly in farming, down to about 1 percent.

John D. Froelich

Upper Darby, PA