Peachy the Magazine October November 2014 | Page 121
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vilified him for bringing the petition and
numerous former customers boycotted
Vaughan-Bassett products. Nonetheless, he marched up to Washington with
the requisite 51 percent, bivouacked at
the Commerce Department and led a
triumphant campaign. Had the petition
been brought a decade earlier, before
his peers had abandoned their factories,
perhaps American furniture manufacturing could have survived. Instead, a
good deal of production shifted from
China to Indonesia, and most petitioners
used their awards not to restore American manufacturing, but rather to expand
their retail and import operations.
Still, JBIII did save his own factories and,
in turn, jobs for hundreds of workers.
He used his awards to further improve
his plants, raise wages, purchase more
high-tech equipment and reopen a
long-closed factory in Galax. While the
turncoat higher-ups in his industry may
have pilloried JBIII, his factory workers championed him and committed
to work even harder. Vaughan-Bassett
survived and is prepared to thrive as
the housing market wakes from its
derivative-induced coma. JBIII is quite
literally the last man standing, producing furniture made 100% in America,
and his persistent belief in and support
of his workers saved not only his company but also the town of Galax.
Epic in scope and piercing in the
myriad emotions it evokes, JBIII’s tale
needed to plied by a writer keen in her
craft, and Beth Macy delivered with
Factory Man, proving she deserves her
panoply of journalism awards. The tale
leaves one perplexed by the naiveté
and short-term vision of American
manufacturers, galled by the unfettered ambition and nefarious tactics of
the Chinese, frustrated by the costly,
protracted and arcane legal route to
equity, and incredulous at the vast
underestimation of the moxie of the
American factory worker. JBIII witnessed an entire industry withering on
a once thriving vine that everyone in
the corporate board rooms gave up for
dead. But the “sawdust in his bones”
told JBIII that the vine was still alive.
He believed in American manufacturing and so did the displaced factory
workers who would “crawl on their
bellies like a snake if it meant they
could bring it all back.”
Mr. J.D. wrote in his letter to his
grandson in 1937 that he hoped he
would do “big things,” and indeed
he has, and Beth Macy has as well, in
expertly telling the quite compelling
and endlessly entertaining story of
John D. Bassett III. n
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