Junto Boys

It's a cliche that old men are full of old ideas. This is not always true, but when it’s true, it’s really true. Such is the case with Fritz Hollings who plans to leave the Senate, but with his own brand of reality. He has no clue as to what the information age is. To him, communication is meaningless and only factory jobs are worthwhile.

I had to make a talk on trade last week, and I looked it up and found out that at the end of World War II we had 40 percent of our workforce in manufacturing. And now we're down to 10 percent. We've got 10 percent of the country working and producing, and we've got the other 90 percent talking and eating. That's all they're doing.

We have a higher standard of living than any country in anytime in the history of the world. We import people to do the kinds of jobs that Americans won't touch anymore. Hollings needs to see people walking out a plant with dirt and grime under their fingernails to feel that people have jobs. In reality, manufacturing is just a single step in the process of bringing products to market. Someone has to invent, someone has to finance, someone has to package, and someone has to sell. None of these are inferior to the actual physical labor it takes to make something.

Hollings is unable or unwilling to realize that progress has made it possible for more people to use their minds instead of their backs. If that isn’t a step forward in the history of employment, what else is?