by Macy, Beth
Lumber and furniture movement at the Port of Virginia: Virginia’s number one export is lumber; its number one import is furniture, much of it crafted from the exported logs and lumber, according to Jeff Keever, senior deputy executive director of the Virginia Port Authority, interview by May-Lily Lee on Virginia Conversations, WVTF Public Radio, August 3, 2012. In 2013, the top Virginia export was soybeans, followed by logs and lumber, according to the Governor’s Conference on Agricultural Trade, March 6, 2014.
Chapter 23: Copper Wires and Pink Slips
Interviews: Richard McCormack, Lee Gale, Kay Pagans, Wanda Perdue, Coy Young, Spencer Johnson, Mindy Fullilove, Wayne Withers, Mary Thomas, Kim Adkins, Allyson Rothrock, Rob Spilman, Frances Kissee, Kim Wheeler, Octavia Witcher, Mary Redd, John Bassett, Lane Nunley, Matt Barr, Jane Bassett Spilman, Larry Brown, David Autor, Richard Freeman
“Some bones broken will forever be weak”: Quoted in Allison Glock, “Natasha Trethewey: Poet in Chief,” Garden and Gun (October/November 2012).
63,300 factories closed: Richard McCormack, ed., ReMaking America (Washington, DC: Alliance for American Manufacturing, 2013).
Poor media coverage of unemployment: Jason Linkins, “The Media Has Abandoned Covering the Nation’s Massive Unemployment Crisis,” Huffington Post, May 18, 2011.
Acknowledging unemployment caused by offshoring: Thomas Friedman, The World Is Flat (New York: Picador, 2005), 264.
Unemployment where Friedman lives: Peter Newcomb, “Thomas Friedman’s World Is Flat Broke,” Vanity Fair, November 12, 2008. In March 2013, the unemployment rate in Bethesda, Maryland, was 4.9 percent.
Veteran with PTSD who committed suicide by cop: Beth Macy, “A War Within,” Roanoke Times, October 23, 2011.
Martinsville/Henry County once very prosperous: Ben Beagle, “Boom Wipes Out Unemployment in Henry County,” Roanoke Times, February 24, 1963.
Job-loss numbers: Number of jobs in 1990 were almost double the number in 2010 in Martinsville and Henry County, according to “Labor Market Statistics—Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.” The Martinsville unemployment rate was 21.9 percent in January 2010, according to the Virginia Employment Commission.
Data for free/reduced lunch in Martinsville: Virginia Department of Education statistics, http://www.doe.virginia.gov/support/nutrition/statistics/free_reduced_eligibility/2011-2012/divisions/frpe_div_report_sy2011-12.pdf.
Harder for poor people to go to college now: According to Stanford sociologist Sean F. Reardon, the achievement gap between rich and poor children born in 2001 was 30 to 40 percent larger than for those born twenty-five years earlier (quoted in Joseph Stiglitz, “Equal Opportunity, Our National Myth,” New York Times, February 16, 2013).
Henry County’s commuting workforce: Spencer Johnson, “2010 Commuting Patterns in Martinsville-Henry County,” Martinsville–Henry County Economic Development Corporation, provided by Johnson in e-mail to author, February 15, 2013.
Martinsville now a majority-minority community: 2010 U.S. Census data compiled by Beth Macy, “Lingering Racial Divide Clouds Foundation’s Efforts,” Roanoke Times, March 18, 2012.
StarTek jobs in Martinsville offshored to the Philippines: Beth Macy, “The Reality of Retraining,” Roanoke Times, April 22, 2012, and Amanda Buck, “Trade Act OK’d for StarTek,” Martinsville Bulletin, February 29, 2012.
Small-business man begging for Harvest funds to make payroll: Macy, “Lingering Racial Divide.”
Rob Spilman admonishing people not to “cry in our beer”: Ibid.
Dismantling of Old Town factory: Ginny Wray, “Bassett Furniture Relic Coming Down,” Martinsville Bulletin, August 27, 2009.
J.D. plant arson: Alison Parker, “Henry County Man Sentenced for Starting November Fire at Bassett Furniture Warehouse,” WDBJ7.com, June 13, 2012. Crane was sentenced to one year and one month in prison and fined $970,000.
American of Martinsville’s abrupt closing: Duncan Adams, “228 Lose Jobs in Henry Co. After Factory Shuts Down,” Roanoke Times, April 28, 2010.
Fieldale history: Dorothy Cleal and Hiram H. Herbert, Foresight, Founders, and Fortitude: The Growth of Industry in Martinsville and Henry County, Virginia (Bassett, VA: Bassett Print Corporation, 1970).
Importance of textile industry to Virginia: “Henry County Presents Towels to Legislators,” Roanoke Times, March 2, 1962.
End of textile industry in region: Jamie C. Ruff, “Pillowtex Closing 16 Plants, One in Virginia—Files for Bankruptcy,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, July 31, 2003. Pillowtex closed all sixteen of its plants, ending jobs and benefits for 16,450, including those in Henry County.
Closing of MasterBrand: Debbie Hall, “MasterBrand Cabinets to Close Here,” Martinsville Bulletin, August 3, 2012.
Four in five Americans will live in poverty: Hope Yen, “AP Exclusive: 4 in 5 in US Face Near-Poverty, No Work,” Associated Press, July 28, 2013.
MIT study: William Mauldin, “China Imports Punish Low-Wage U.S. Workers Longer,” Wall Street Journal, July 22, 2013.
30 percent increase in disability: David Autor, interview with the author, October 1, 2013. Autor was also featured in “Trends with Benefits,” This American Life, March 22, 2013, available at http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/490/trends-with-benefits.
Chapter 24: Shakedown Street
Interviews: Joe Philpott, Rob Spilman, Lee Gale, Minnie Wilson, Maxine Brown, Charlotte Lane, Joe Dorn, John Greenwald, Wyatt Bassett, Jake Jabs, Keith Koenig, John Bassett, Richard Ledger, Bruce Blonigen, Mark Drayse, Gary Hufbauer, Shirley Johnson, Bonnie Byers, Doug Bassett
Bedroom plants rendered obsolete: Rob Spilman, interview with the author, and Heath E. Combs, “Duties Often Reinvested,” Furniture/Today, April 22, 2007.
Bassett Furniture sales on the upswing: In February 2013 Rob Spilman said the company was on track to sell $300 million in 2013.
Bassett Furniture sales growth: Jay McIntosh, “Bassett Rebounds to Profit as Sales Soar 31% in 1Q,” Furniture/Today, April 8, 2013. The company grew 22 percent in fiscal year 2012, Rob Spilman said.
Bassett Furniture’s hedge-fund investments: Roddy Boyd, “Furniture Company or Hedge Fund?,” Fortune, February 29, 2008.
Vagaries of Bassett Furniture dividends: Quarterly stock dividends went to a more modest five cents per quarter following the IHFC sale, according to Rob Spilman.
Countries that protect domestic industries: Germany and Switzerland have sophisticated apprenticeship programs, and Germany and Japan have policies that protect industries and encourage innovation; see Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, The Betrayal of the American Dream (New York: PublicAffairs, 2012). Nobel Prize–winning economist Michael Spence cites the benefits of Germany’s salary and wage limits and worker protections in The Next Convergence (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011).
John Greenwald’s hypocrite claim: U.S. International Trade Commission in the Matter of Wooden Bedroom Furniture from China, October 5, 2010, http://www.usitc.gov/trade_remedy/731_ad_701_cvd/investigations/2009/wooden_bedroom_furniture/PDF/Hearing%20(review)%2010-05-2010.pdf.
Elkin plant closing: Devetta Blount, “400 Out of Work, Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Closing Elkin Plant,” WFMY News2, Devetta Blount, Dec. 1, 2008. The factory rehired fifty employees the following year for its factory and distribution center.
Companies seeking countries other than China to import furniture: Andrew Higgins, “From China, an End Run Around U.S. Tariffs,” Washington Post, May 23, 2011.
Georgia retailer phone conversation with Joe Dorn: U.S. International Trade Commission sunset review (2010): 193–99, available at https://edis.usitc.gov.
Dormitories not needed alongside every Vietnam factory: Richard Ledger, vice president of importing for Stanley Furniture, interview with the author.
Antidumping laws are bad economics: N. Gregory Mankiw and Phillip L. Swagel, “Antidumping: The Third Rail of Trade Policy,” Foreign Affairs (July/August 2005).
Cost of antidumping duties per j
ob saved: Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Jared C. Woollacott, “Trade Disputes Between China and the United States: Growing Pains So Far, Worse Ahead?” Peterson Institute for International Economics Working Paper, December 13, 2010.
Not a single cell phone is made in the United States: Richard McCormack, ed., ReMaking America (Washington, DC: Alliance for American Manufacturing, 2013), 20.
Concentrated disadvantages of trade: David H. Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon H. Hanson, “The China Syndrome: Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States,” American Economic Review 103 (March 2011): 2121–68; available at economics.mit.edu/files/6613.
Byrd Amendment “must go”: Paul Meller, “WTO approves sanctions on U.S.,” New York Times, September 1, 2004.
Duties collected now go into U.S. Treasury: Since the Byrd Amendment was repealed by Congress in 2006, with implementation effective October 1, 2007, the collected duties have gone into the U.S. Treasury, not to the petitioner companies; see Paul Blustein, “Senators Vote to Kill Trade Law,” Washington Post, December 22, 2005. California representative Bill Thomas, a Republican, got the repeal attached to the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005.
America’s trade deficit with China: U.S. Census Bureau, “Trade in Goods with China,” www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html#2005.
Tripling of food stamps, shifting of jobs from manufacturing to retail: McCormack, ReMaking America, 30–31.
90 percent of commercial litigation: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Federal Tort Trials and Verdicts, 2002–2003, as quoted by trade lawyer Kenneth J. Pierce in a memorandum to Joe Dorn.
Amount of duties collected: Joe Dorn, interview with the author, December 19, 2012.
Decline of Chinese imports: Wyatt Bassett, interview with the author, August 6, 2013, and Charlotte Lane, interview with the author, September 17, 2012. The decline was also documented in “U.S. Furniture Imports Slump In 2013,” published in the Import Genius, citing the Timber Network’s “Market Report,” July 2, 2013.
Closing of Dalian Huafeng’s American warehouses: Heath E. Combs, “Great River Trading Closing U.S. Furniture Warehouses,” Furniture/Today, July 21, 2011.
He YunFeng’s focus on emerging Chinese middle class: Clint Engel, “U.S. Buyers See Potential, Challenges at Dalian Show,” Furniture/Today, June 24, 2007.
Chapter 25: Mud Turtle
Interviews: Tim Luper, Shirley Johnson, Doug Brannock, John Bassett, Jim Stout, Doug Bassett, Linda McMillian, Sheila Key, John Nunn, Tim Prillaman, Jessy Shrewsbury, Ray Kohl, Jill Burcham, Susan Clark, Joe Wilson
Brouhaha between hospital and insurance company: M. Paul Jackson, “Doctors’ Practice Tries to Ease Fears, Blue Cross–Baptist Clash Has Worried Some Patients,” Winston-Salem Journal, April 22, 2005.
Vaughan Furniture employment: John Vaughan, “History of Vaughan Furniture Company,” reprinted in Galax History online at galaxscrapbook.com, June 30, 2012.
Press release on closure: “Vaughan Furniture to Close Galax Plant,” Carroll News, March 19, 2008.
Tourism up by a third: Ray Kohl, interview with the author, March 29, 2013.
Blue Ridge Backroads: The show is also available at www.blueridgecountry98.com.
Social services figures in Galax: Susan Clark, Galax’s Department of Social Services director, interview with the author, March 29, 2013. According to the Virginia Department of Education, 62 percent of Galax schoolchildren qualified for free or reduced-rate lunches.
Chapter 26: The Replacements
Interviews: Micah Goldstein, Chase Patterson, Al Jones, Neil MacKenzie, Wanda Perdue, Richard Ledger, Jerry Hall, Rob Spilman, Dini Martarini, Jim Febrian, Elok Andrea, Kusnun Aini, Allen Jubin, Bruce Cochrane, Katie O’Neill, Fachrudin, Kristanto Siswanto, John Bassett, Jim Stout
Stanley Furniture domestic employment: Debbie Hall, “Stanley Holds Last Local Annual Meeting,” Martinsville Bulletin, April 19, 2012.
Stanley’s switching crib production from offshore to domestic: Timothy Aeppel, “A Crib for Baby: Made in China or Made in USA?,” Wall Street Journal, May 21, 2012.
Crib recalls: “Stanley Furniture Recalls Cribs Due to Entrapment Hazard,” Home Furnishings Business, June 2008.
Stanley’s layoffs in Robbinsville: “Stanley Will Lay Off 200 at N.C. Plant,” Furniture/Today, December 17, 2006.
Indonesian economy: I. Made Sentana and Farida Husna, “Indonesia’s Economic Growth Slows,” Wall Street Journal, February 5, 2013.
New Ashley plant opening in North Carolina announced: Based in Arcadia, Wisconsin, Ashley Furniture, the world’s largest retail brand of home furniture and accessories, is investing $80 million in a new upholstery-manufacturing and import-distribution center in Advance, North Carolina; see Rana Foroohar and Bill Saporito, “Made in the USA,” Time, April 22, 2013.
Niche markets stand a better chance of being domestically made: “Here, There and Everywhere: Special Report on Outsourcing and Offshoring,” Economist, January 19, 2013.
Resurrection and fall of Lincolnton Furniture: Cameron Steele, “Lincolnton Company, Praised by Obama for Bringing New Jobs, Closes,” Charlotte Observer, January 4, 2013, and Karen M. Koenig, “Lincolnton Furniture Shuts Down,” Woodworking Network, January 4, 2013.
Cause of disaster mud pinpointed: “Scientists Blame Drilling for Indonesia Mud Flow,” NBC News Asia-Pacific and Associated Press, June 11, 2008.
State of furniture making in Indonesia in early 2014: Richard Ledger, interview with the author, January 28, 2014.
Chapter 27: “Sheila, Get Me the Governor!”
Interviews: Doug Bassett Lane, John Bassett, Bill Stanley, Doug Brannock, Sheila Key, Tim Prillaman, Ray Kohl, Susan Clark, Tripp Smith, Reau Berry, Wyatt Bassett, Keith Koenig, Jake Jabs, Mike Micklem, Pat Bassett, Marc Schewel
Economic incentives: Beth Macy, “Vaughan-Bassett to Add 115 Jobs,” Roanoke Times, January 27, 2012.
Unveiling of big chair in downtown Martinsville: Debbie Hall, “Big Chair Is at Home,” Martinsville Bulletin, September 20, 2009.
Furniture employees in Martinsville/Henry County: Virginia Employment Commission, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, third quarter, 2012.
Same wood coming back across the ocean: Jeff Keever, director of Virginia Port Authority, Virginia Conversations, WVTF Public Radio, August 7, 2012.
Shareholder equity value: Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Company annual report, 2012.
Litigation over Byrd Amendment duties: Nick Brown, “Byrd Amendment Doesn’t Hurt Free Speech,” Law360.com, October 29, 2010.
Update on Ashley case: In August 2013, the United States Court of Appeals for the Twelfth Circuit voted two to one against Ashley and in favor of the petitioners, ruling that companies had to have voted for the petition in order to lay claim to any of the Byrd money funds.
Epilogue: The Smith River Twitch
Interviews: Pat Ross, Harry Ferguson, Rob Spilman, Jim Franklin, John Bassett
Traditional parting gift for the winner of Martinsville NASCAR race: Fast Freddy Lorenzen won the first Martinsville clock in 1964 when he ousted Richard Petty and Junior Johnson, according to Ryan McGee, “The Timeless Victory: A Victory in Martinsville Means the Most to NASCAR Trophy Lovers,” ESPN.com, accessed January 2, 2014, http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?id=4011608.
Ridgeway clocks made in China: Grand Furniture executive George Cartledge III, interview with the author, May 24, 2013.
Reverend Moses E. Moore’s parents: Gleaned from the Henry County Cohabitation List, recorded in February 1866, when the government sent a Freedmen’s Bureau official to each county in Virginia to record blacks by name. If the man of the household took his common-law wife to the courthouse—enslaved blacks had not been allowed to marry—the marriage was then legalized on a list that included information about prior slave ownership. Only a handful of Virginia’s county cohabitation lists survive. In 1976, Henry County’s was found in a dumpster outside the Martinsville jail by a part-time Bassett librarian and g
iven to a black educator to transcribe, according to Pat Ross and recounted in Henry Wiencek, The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 176–80.
Mulatto furniture worker: As described in Wiencek, The Hairstons, 18, quoting Squire Hairston on his mulatto forebears: “They were born from the masters by the kitchen women. They would take our mothers and get children just like they wanted to.”
Fall festival now held at Old Town: Beth Macy, “Bassett Is a Factory Town—but with No More Factories,” Roanoke Times, September 13, 2013.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue: The Dusty Road to Dalian
PART I Chapter 1. The Tipoff
Chapter 2. The Original Outsourcer
Chapter 3. The Town the Daddy Rabbits Built
Chapter 4. Hilltop Hierarchy
PART II Chapter 5. The Cousin Company
Chapter 6. Company Man
Chapter 7. Lineage and Love
PART III Chapter 8. Navigating the New Landscape
Chapter 9. Sweet Ole Bob (SOB)
Chapter 10. The Mount Airy Ploy
Chapter 11. The Family Elbow
PART IV Chapter 12. Schooling the Chinese
