Empty Mills: The Fight Against Imports and the Decline of the U.S. Textile Industry [Hardcover]

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 Americas biggest industries.Timothy Minchin is professor of North American History at La Trobe University. He is the author of six books, including Fighting Against the Odds: A History of Southern Labor Since WWII and Hiring the Black Worker: The Racial Integration of the Southern Textile Industry.

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 theselã"