Empty Mills

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.

• IntroductionChapter 1: A Troubled Industry in an Era of ProsperityChapter 2: Mobilizing Against the Import ThreatChapter 3: Import Escalation and the Build-Up to H.R. 1562 Chapter 4: The Most Important Battle: The Fight to Pass the 1985 Textile BillChapter 5: A Resounding Blow: The 1987 and 1990 Textile BillsChapter 6: “Us is Spelled U.S.”: The Crafted with Pride in the USA CampaignChapter 7: Looking Beyond Our Borders: The Industry in the Era of NAFTA and GATTChapter 8: A Tidal Wave: The Collapse of the Industry in the New MillenniumChapter 9: Fighting Back: Lowell, Massachusetts and the Long Battle against Deindustrialization in the NorthChapter 10: “It Knocked This City to Its Knees”: A Case Study of Deindustrialization in Kannapolis, North CarolinaEpilogueBibliography

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.