The day I made this photograph, I noticed that there were several displays like this at one of the Walmart Supercenter stores in Fort Wayne. The box proclaims that Walmart is investing in American jobs by selling American made products, including the paper towels shown here.

When the first Walmart opened in Fort Wayne more than 20 years ago, the stores were full of signs touting the company's commitment to selling American made goods. The signs often featured a product along with a statement of how many American jobs were created by Walmart selling the item.

Those signs eventually went away, and in recent years Walmart has developed a reputation as a company that sold only Chinese made goods. That's never been entirely true, since most grocery items (both food and household cleaning products) sold in the United States are still made here. The non-grocery departments, however, have become places where it is hard to find American made products. That is, unfortunately, true of most retail chains, though Walmart has gotten most of the bad press about it.

A lot of people ask me why I care about buying American made products. I have never worked in a factory, nor has anyone in my family during my lifetime. What most people don't understand is that a country that produces nothing is not really wealthy, and a poor country cannot support artists and other intellectuals.

In addition, I worry about the future of my students. They can't all by engineers and financial analysts. There aren't enough of those jobs, and many people can't do them anyway. That doesn't mean they deserve to be left in poverty. They deserve a decent life, and that can only come when our country begins making things again.

6-23-15

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by Christopher Crawford

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