Made in Usa

America manufacturing is rich and ripe with stories regarding and under what set of circumstances did she get started on her way with men like Ford in automotive and Carnegie in steel and Rockefeller in petroleum and Kennedy in finance as this new money intermingled with the old money provided by the Roosevelts, Cabots, Lowell, Forbes, and Astor families. And, then there were others who created industries like:

Lorillard in tobacco

Vandebilt in railroads

Baker in chocolate

Ames in blacksmithing

Browne in printing

Cigna in insurance

Jim Beam in alcohol

JP Morgan Chase in banking

Dupont in chemicals

These “Titans of Industry” as they are called are also referred to as the men “who built America.”

And it is that phrase, ladies and gentlemen, that bothers me the most because these so-called Titans build nothing... absolutely nothing.

The cheap labor that they hired and sometimes beat to work, actually build America allowing them to get rich in the process.

I also find it rather humorous as well when we realize these Titans did not lift a finger nor experience any of the dangers nor endure any of the harsh environment in order for them to perform this so called building of America.

But, this is how our world works and it just must accepted from time-to-time as just the way it is and move on.

But, America is the land of opportunity for those without money or resources to become very wealthy and it happens all the time, however, it is just a lot easier if you are born into money.

But, let's accelerate our little magical journey forward in time to right around 1945, just after the Allies defeated the Axis in WWII. America was a manufacturing dynamo, pumping stuff out like there was no tomorrow in sight. The work week was reduced from 50-60 hours down to 40-45 hours so that we could put more people to work.

Since there was no more war to fight, American no longer really cared about quality (as they had when making bombs) as much as they cared about quantity and supplying the rest of the world with everything that America could manufacture.

Fortunes were made and lost and made again, as people from all walks and facets of life tried to enter and play the game.

In 1950, my parents purchased a little house in the suburbs of Alexandria, Virginia for right around $18,000 I remember my father boasting about when he sold it 50 years later for just under $1,000,000 and brand new appliances were purchased for the new kitchen which entailed a stove and a refrigerator and perhaps a dish washer was added later. The refrigerator and and stove were replaced 25 years later when my parents decided to refurbish the kitchen but not because they were not working properly but because they would not be a good fit for my mother's new design.

And so another story was born in the early 1990's when my dad sarcastically told the story of remodeling in the 70's mentioning that there was nothing wrong with those appliances that in fact those damn appliances had lasted another 20 years.

This was American Manufacturing at its best and could be touched by NO ONE else in the world until the 1980's when it all started going to hell in a hand basket.

There is no such thing as American Manufacturing in the sense of the type of manufacturing that made us a great country and super power. Today, we assemble and provide services... other countries do the manufacturing.

But what distresses me is the fact that everything you buy these days comes with an extra warranty package that you can purchase for an extra charge.

I remember asking the sales clerk the first that an extra warranty package was offered to me, was there something wrong with the item that I had just or was about to purchase which is why she/he offered that to me? Did they suspect that this product was not going to last very long?

No... no... no... just added precaution they would say.

Well guess what America... just about every product I have purchased since that first warranty package was offered to me had to be taken back several times to be fixed or replaced. Of course, I had the extra warranty so there was no additional charge to me but that is not the point, is it?

What is wrong with America and Americans that we can no longer build like we used to build in the 1950's?

That was a rhetorical question.

I worked as a CSR for Whirlpool during some of those years I was unemployed looking for work and we were told during our training that close to 90% of what was being sold by Whirlpool even under other names would be coming to us to set up factory warranty service and that we should be very careful about saying anything that could be construed as negative towards the company.

Now here's an interesting marketing concept shared from the standpoint of a hypothetical scenario. What if you were manager at Fortune 500 company and you were responsible for all domestic market sales; and suppose, that your domestic market was saturated and there was not enough new customers who needed your appliances or whatever simply because you built them too damn good.

What if you stopped manufacturing at that level of functional quality?

Well...

you would have an increase in service calls

you would have a decrease in good will

you would have a decrease in net income

customers may buy substitutes from competitors

you may have an increase in sales

And, what if all the managers of companies that were responsible for domestic sales got this same idea at the exact same time?

Bingo... you would have America.

Sometimes, when I am particularly feeling nasty, I will accuse my plumber of intentionally not fixing it correctly so he will have to return to the house sometime in the future and charge me another house call.

Seriously, that's a lot... Plumber, electricians, and carpenters are just as expensive as general surgeons are these days.

On a lighter note, I have always been told (by whom I cannot remember) not to buy anything that was assembled by Americans on a Friday or a Monday.

Why?

On Fridays, all they are thinking about is all the partying they will be doing over the weekend and on a Monday, they are either still hung over or high from all the partying they did over the weekend.

I don't think that this generalization, while humorous, applies across the board.

But there is a problem here in America with the American worker and I suspect the problem is American Management.

Most all of us, I would suspect think that Steve Jobs was a visionary and inspiration leader in the way he built Apple and Pixar. More of his net worth came from Pixar than from Apple. But, those who worked at either place would tell you that they hated to work for Stever Jobs because he was a tyrannical leader.

How many more Steve Jobs type leaders are there out there?

I have worked for about half a dozen myself over my lifetime and I can tell you that I learned very little and it was no fun and I got out from under as quick as I could.

So, what is wrong with American Management?

Sounds like a future article to me...

Notation About the Title: There was a small village in Japan that was making products that would be shipped to American and the little town changed its name to Usa, so it could use the Made in USA label