THE PUBLIC MIND: U.S. MUST NOT ACT TO CHASE MANUFACTURING JOBS AWAY

To the Editor:

Our President wants to be able to have free trade with Mexico and has voiced his desire to that effect. Some of our elected officials as well as almost all organized labor caution that this will create a mass exodus of manufacturers moving their companies across the border so that they can take advantage of the cheap labor force.

Before the words were barely out of the mouths of those that were concerned about losing jobs, Proctor/Silex announced that they were closing their plant in South Carolina and moving their operation to Mexico. While we must not begrudge our neighbors to the South a chance to prosper economically, we have to be concerned about the extent of damage that this will do to our economy. As more and more companies follow suit we are left with fewer and fewer manufacturing jobs.

While it is true that there has been an increase in service related jobs, these jobs only pay minimal wages or slightly more and, while this may be good for the young people still in school and only wanting part time work, a man or woman that has to support a family simply cannot make it on this low income. Yet we see more and more breadwinners being forced to accept this type of work. This is not an attempt to knock these type of jobs but rather to point out the direction in which our economy is going.

We were once the greatest country in the world when it came to manufacturing because the American people were the greatest and most innovative people in the world. Now the large companies that the American workers helped to build are turning their backs on our workers and taking their companies overseas. Going back to shortly after the second world war we saw the labor union start to grow in numbers because they fought for fair wages and decent working conditions for all people. As our Unions grew stronger, our economy started to grow because the people were being paid fair wages and had money to buy not only basic necessities but also the extras like appliances and automobiles and other commodities that the people in the '30s could only dream of. Soon the average worker could think about buying his or her own home and pay it off out of their wages. Now that dream is being taken away slowly and steadily by large corporations who don't mind paying their corporate executives enormous salaries while at the same time asking their plant workers to take a cut in wages or cut out other benefits that they worked hard to get.

If it is a Union organized plant they try their best to coerce the workers to decertify with the threat of closing the plant and moving overseas. If it is not a Union plant they pay whatever they please and the workers have no recourse but to accept.

When all the manufacturing jobs are gone and we are left with nothing but service jobs or other jobs paying maybe five or six dollars an hour, who will be left to buy the appliances or the cars or whatever other products are imported back into our country?

The sale of imported goods has risen steadily in the last 10 years because of the drop in decent paying jobs. The people no longer care about quality simply because they can't afford the better American made products. Soon, we will see a decline in the middle class American population, the very people that buy 95 percent of the goods and products in this country and who are the very backbone of America. With the decline of the middle class American will come the increase of lower class Americans.

The lower class is not a putdown of a group of people because lower class is simply a group of Americans that are deprived economically much like the black people were for many years and in some cases still are. The spirit of the American people will remain whether it be that they are middle class, lower class, or whatever their economic situation might be. The poor that came to this country were the very people that worked hard to make it a great nation and it will be the people that will once again rise up to make this country great again.

We must unite in our efforts to create new jobs and to keep the jobs that we do have. When men or women do not have work and no hope for the future, despair soon sets in, and out of despair comes lawlessness and opposition to established laws of conduct that makes a body of people be able to live together.

Once the people have no hope for a better society in which to live and raise their families, then the seeds of revolution are planted.

We must never allow this to take place in a country as great as America, for when we do we will cease to have God's blessing on our country and we will be on our way to anarchy and chaos.

William E. Ringpfiel

Cape Girardeau