The Witch on the Fence,Our"Throw Away" Society, Cheap Imports/Guilt!

[KoKo]

I posted in the Lounge last night about my Cheap Witch Halloween decoration. Got little response...assumed people thought it was kind of silly that I couldn't decide whether to put a Halloween decoration out on my fence, or not, because it my get ruined in the rain. I thought I would revise my post to clarify what I was thinking because I wonder if anyone else, here, has thoughts about or has personal experience with what cheap imports from China and elsewhere may have done to the small "Cottage Industries" which used to thrive in the US until about fifteen years ago.

I used to love to sew. I've made my own window treatments, clothing, decorator pillows, and many crafts projects which I used to sell at Craft Fairs when I lived in Connecticut and New Jersey. I had several friends who used to custom knit sweaters from wool they dyed themselves from natural homemade dyes, another who made holiday door decorations out of natural dried flowers she grew or collected, and another who made incredible jewelry out of "found objects." There was a thriving crafts movement which exploded in the late 60's and lasted until the mid-'80's when suddenly a flood of cheap imports seemed to come into America as the Walmarts sprouted up and opened shop everywhere.

Most of us found that we couldn't purchase the materials and put the time in anymore to compete with the flood of "door wreaths, clothing, quilts, craft decorations, you name it....which were coming out of China and Taiwan. We couldn't understand why it cost us more to buy the products we needed fabric, glue, natural undyed wool, wood, jewelry fastenings, needles thread, yarn and other implements to assemble our products. Yet, one could buy an imported wreath from China with herbs, dried flowers and vines for about $9.99 when the time and effort to make one here in the US from our own native grown plants including the artistic creativity would have the product have to sell at a "Craft Fair" for about $30.00. (That also included the money which had to be factored in for the fee to the Fair Vendor. The same was true for my other friends with their handmade sweaters competing with a $15.00 import from China made in Acrylic but perfectly matching the Irish Fisherman Knit pattern that my friends Grandmother had taught her. Her sweater would sell for $75.00 which included the wool the dye preparation and her knitting time. The materials purchase price, plus time and feels made it impossible for us to continue to make money doing this anymore. And, gradually, we ourselves became purchasers of these "cheap" convenient and generally "well made" Chinese/Taiwan imports. And, we watched as the Craft Fairs morphed into Flea Market type "Vendor Shows" or show places for "High End" luxury imports. Some of the Craft Fairs are still out there and some folks make a living at it, but what they sell is usually "imported" even thought it looks hand made.

How much of what used to be "Home Based" or "Hobby Based" businesses that brought in extra income has been wiped out by the Cheap Imports? Has this harmed our culture in ways we aren't even aware of?
This bothers me, because I wonder by buying her, I have somehow contibuted to more of the homogenizing of America and the Cottage Industries, which may already be dead if they aren't just gasping for life out there. And if we buy it cheap do we value it less and care less when we throw it away? What have we thrown away by allowing these imports? Or, has it been a necessary change in our culture as the Repugs think? In other words the mantra that Manufacturing Jobs will never come back and we don't need them anyway, because our economy has evolved beyond that point?

Here's my Lounge Post.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's raining too hard to put my "Witch Bashing into the Fence" Chinese Purchase!

My witch is in her "Chinese Box" made by Chinese 2cents a day labor, but I just HAD to BUY HER! To
purchase the fabric and eyes, nose, hat, fabric, would have cost me more than the $9.99 I paid for in the
"after Halloween clearance bin in 2002" at my local Eckards Drug Store cost me. She's so cute! She is made
to look like she ran into my fence on her flying voyage...and she has a great costume with green and black
and a big witch hat and broom!

I used to sew, BIG TIME! But everything I sewed cost me so much after the fabric, thread, and time that I
just gave it up during Poppy's administration when I could buy it from one of the countries who supported
Poppy I's war in Gulf, for so much less than even purchasing all the items from my most cheapest of
discount craft/fabric stores.

But, I have a MAGNIFICENT WITCH! She is beautiful, and I never could have purchased here in the US
today, the supplies to make her on my old Singer Sewing Machine!

But, it's raining. Should I take a chance and put her out on my picket fence gate, anyway? Just figure that if
the dyes run in the rain and she is ruined with her wonderful peaky witch hat...drooping from the damp and
her cute little broom gets all frazzled from the rain.....that I should just "GO FOR IT?"

Figure...what the Hell....I only paid $9.99 on CLEARANCE for her.....so if she droops and runs, and
frazzles....it doesn't matter? Just "ditch her in the garbage as a throw away?"

[bobbieinok]

1. quilts

I've heard many people say that the quilts coming in from China are driving out the US home-made quilts.

[lilymidnite]

2. quilts

I now refuse to buy quilts, placemats, or anything with large quantities of hand stitching from Asia. I'd like to refuse to
buy *anything* made in Asia, but that is almost impossible.
Not only is the labor in Asia near-slave labor, it *is* driving
American crafts people out of cottage industry business.

E.N.
"The trouble with normal is it always gets worse."

[Lars39]

5. Hand-crocheted doilies are very time intensive, too.

At one time I was immersed in making heirloom quality doilies. You cannot tell me that a doily a foot across is only worth ten bucks. I also wonder how many cases of carpal tunnel syndrome are created by the mass marketing of these. :(

[newyawker99]

12. Hi enoel2!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[starroute]

3. I suspect this one is a losing battle

The Arts and Crafts movement goes back into the 19th century, after all -- and even them it was something of a rearguard action.

The trouble is that crafts of that sort are not really creative activities. From Neolithic potters repeatinging the same design of stylized ibexes for a thousand years, to present-day crafts ladies with their hand-knitted traditional sweaters, it's all replication of stuff that's already been done. And if a Chinese peasant, or a machine, can replicate the model more cheaply, that will always prevail over the person who replicates it expensively.

The only answer to this is to do work that can't be easily replicated. Be a real artist and create originals instead of replicas. If you're a craftsperson, give up the malls and do custom design for people's homes. Or find a niche so cutting edge that the replicators haven't hit it yet.

I realize that none of these helps the person who is just looking to do something easy and enjoyable that will bring in a little income on the side. But situations like the one that prevailed in the 1970s and 1980s are the exception, not the norm, and it's unrealistic to hope for things to be any different.

[JackRiddler]

7. Life is about repetitive activities!

In effect you're saying that cooking, fucking and eating (enormously repetitive activities that people have done since the Neolithic, and even a few minutes before then) are not creative hence not really worth keeping against cheaper Asian imports, should they figure out how to market these as products (oh, yeah, they did already).

You should not denigrate handicrafts in this way. Knitting a sweater is an enormously creative activity compared to working in a sweater factory, and a society of knitters may produce less sweaters, but is likely to be far happier than a society of sweater factory workers.

Maybe you need to think this through a bit.

[knight_of_the_star]

4. Go to Renaissance Faires

IF you can learn a to-period craft, you can make good money on that. I know that I'm going to and people DO buy such craft work at Faire in larger amounts than you would expect. So long as those live arts and crafts will never die!

[Tansy_Gold]

6. Arts & Crafts Fairs are booming

Seriously, and especially at this time of the year.

These people are the heart and soul of entreneurial endeavor. They are the antithesis of Wal-Mart (even if a lot of them buy their supplies at the Big W). Whether you live in a major metropolitan area or a small town, you can probably check your local newspaper and find a craft show near you this very week-end.

It's not just the gifts and decorations -- the luxuries and frivolities we've taken for granted for so many years in this country. There are lots and lots of practical, useful, everyday items you can find made by hand in the good old US of A.

I have a friend who is a potter -- she and her husband make some of their own clays and most of their own glazes. They have a kiln in their backyard and have done some of the most exquisite cups and bowls in an ordinary campfire. A lot of their prices are lower than similar mass-produced imported crap.

My mother, almost 75, took up quilting a few years ago. Her quilts will, of course, be more expensive than one of those cheap things from China or Bangladesh, but they will be better made to last longer AND because they are more expensive, they will inspire their owners to take better care of them and make them last longer. In the long run, less expensive than the cheap imported crap.

Another friend is a woodworker. He started out buying exotic woods to make finely detailed jewelry boxes, but couldn't sell them for enough to cover the outrageous cost of the wood. So he started salvaging from storm damaged trees, construction sites, etc. His day job is currently threatened by imports; his jewelry box business isn't, because nothing compares.

Another friend, who lost her job after a car accident and whose disability payments would never have allowed her to remain independent, took a space at a permanent swap meet, where she sells hand-made greeting cards with her own poems. She worried to me a few weeks ago that her price of $2/card might be too steep, until I told her I had just priced an anniversary card for my son and daugher-in-law and it was $4.95!!!

I've said it before and I'll say it again -- we can do better with less and we can buy better if we buy less. Maybe you'll think I'm an idealistic remnant of the 60s and 70s, and you'd be dead spot on, but you know what? We made some changes back then. Some real changes. We just have to pick up where we left off and pull a few more like-minded souls on the wagon.

Walk in peace and beauty,

Tansy Gold

[IrateCitizen]

8. It's 10 throw-aways vs. 1 you keep for some time...

You summed it up yourself in the end, KoKo1.

Figure...what the Hell....I only paid $9.99 on CLEARANCE for her.....so if she droops and runs, and
frazzles....it doesn't matter? Just "ditch her in the garbage as a throw away?"

Sadly, that is the thought that almost ALL of us have nowadays.

I drive my wife nuts because I NEVER want to throw anything out. When we visit my parents, it's obvious where I get it from, because THEY never throw anything out, either.

But you know what? You never know when you can use something again. When I was moving into my own apartment after college, I didn't need to buy a lot of new furniture -- because my parents had some in storage at their place. Ditto for buying new kitchenware.

This spring, before my wife and I got married, we were putting together our registry. She wanted to get new everyday place settings. But I talked her out of it, since we already have place settings that are fine. Why throw something out and then get something new that you don't need in the first place?

As for the more expensive items that you make yourself -- isn't part of the joy supposed to be making them yourself? It's the same idea as raising a garden without pesticides or chemical fertilizers. Sure, it's more work -- but isn't half the idea getting dirt under your nails and becoming "one with the earth"? Even if the handmade sweaters may cost more, isn't half the point getting that one sweater that someone poured their soul into, rather than buying five cheap ones that you will just throw away?

Personally, I have come to get much more satisfaction out of shopping at tag/yard sales and the like than going to department stores and malls, simply because you can find things that department stores don't carry -- and you know you're extending the useful life of something that is still useful, rather than just chucking it irresponsibly into the trash, bound for a landfill somewhere.

It ultimately comes down to a question of value. Do you measure the value of things strictly in how much money they cost you? Or are there certain "intangibles" that go into the equation?

Those are questions that only you can answer for yourself.

[KoKo]

22. I know, Irate! It cheapens our life experience when so much is so cheap..

How do we balance what we need with what we want, and most of us have that trade off. It's so much easier to buy it than make it when both of us have to work today just to get by. And, folks like me and you feel guilt when we buy thinking it's frivolous, but it's the way it is today. It wasn't the way it was and the "game" changed in the middle. I've had difficulty with the change.....

But, I bought my witch.........:-( Thanks for your post. We miss so much satisfaction when "everything is cheap and throw away." We lose part of why we are here on Earth I think.

[CWebster]

9. This post of yours

Is more important than you know, because you captured everything--labor issues, economic issues, social justice and cultural values, right in the microcosm of your own experience.

[veganwitch]

10. cameras at craft fairs

most import companies will send "shoppers" to flea markets and open fairs to take pictures of new crafts so they can be made over seas.

i dont buy crafts but my mom does and she only buys from people she knows.

and the import industry has done harm to crafters, mostly women with children, who rely on this work for income and something they can do from home.

[Tansy_Gold]

13. Cabbage patch dolls

I have files and files and files of odd bits of esoterica and usually I can put my hands on the most bizarre and esoteric without difficulty. Finding my shoes or driver's license is frequently another story. . . .

from Garry Barker's "The Handcraft Revival in Southern Appalachia, 1930-1990," University of Tennessee Press, 1991.

Barker was an executive for many years with various mountain handicraft organizations including the Kentucky Guild of Artisans and Craftsman, the Southern Highland Handicraft Guild, and Berea College.

<snip>
(p. 117)

When shy, creative Martha Nelson first brought her "real babies" to a Kentucky Guild Fair, none of us knew we were witnessing the beginnings of a 1980s marketplace explosion. The "Cabbage Patch" dolls, which became a national rage, evolved from Martha's one-of-a-kind creations.

Martha Nelson not only conceived the "Cabbage Patch" doll, she also created the marketing ploy which was to be so successfully used by Xavier Roberts. Each of Martha's babies came with "papers," a name, and personal history; customers "adopted" their babies. Georgia entrepreneur Roberts first saw Martha's babies at the guild fair in Berea and tried to get her to go into business with him. She refused, not wanting to see her individual artwork turned over to mass manufacture. Roberts did it anyway, and we all know the eventual result in the marketplace. When I wrote Roberts (at Martha's request) to protest his use of her designs and concepts, the response was a rapid, threatening letter from Roberts's attorney who warned me that *I* would be sued if I said more. Roberts was willing to pay royalties to Martha Nelson, but she wanted the whole thing stopped. The courtroom battle lasted for almost a decade and ended in an undisclosed out-of-court settlement.

A "Cabbage Patch" predecessor, "Nettie," sits watching me write, a wry reminder that the nost successful ever craft-to-commerce transition was totally unwanted by the original artist.

<end snip>

Capitalism and advertising, its handmaiden, have brainwashed us into believing that not only do we WANT things we don't need but that we have an inviolable RIGHT to have them. So Xavier Roberts and Coleco (IIRC) became rich and thousands of children had Cabbage Patch dolls because their mothers and fathers and grandmothers fought each other in the department stores over them. And now most of them are buried in landfills or falling apart in attics, forgotten and unlamented.

People all over the world survive -- some just barely and some quite comfortably -- with a lot less of the pure unadulterated SHIT that fills our homes. And usually there's someone getting buy with a whole lot less BECAUSE of the rampant consumption we feel is our right.

[KoKo]

20. I remember the "Cabage Patch Dolls" and the riots over trying to get one

to put under the Christmas tree! It's funny looking back. I don't think anything has been as popular since.....well maybe Barney and a giggling Elmo.

The past few years..it's been kind of dull.... But, yes.....sadly where are those "Cabbage Patch Dolls?" I never did manage to buy one!

[veganwitch]

11. cameras at craft fairs

most import companies will send "shoppers" to flea markets and open fairs to take pictures of new crafts so they can be made over seas.

i dont buy crafts but my mom does and she only buys from people she knows.

and the import industry has done harm to crafters, mostly women with children, who rely on this work for income and something they can do from home.

[KoKo]

21. Yes, Veganwitch, they stole our ideas and found folks who could make them

better and for less money. If the overseas wages hadn't been "pennies" they wouldn't have been sucessful, and if we had better trade laws in place. I'm for "controlled free trade," but what we have had the last 20 years has raised our "trade deficit" astronomically while doing what unknown harm to our people here, who could have gotten buy on their own creativity if the market was fair.

[blm]

14. That's a GREAT post, KoKo...

and I feel exactly what you are feeling. I no longer have the same joy of discovery when I see a cool holiday decoration. It wasn't so long ago they were handmade by the local craftsmen around the state. Now, I wait and go to people's homes who display their handmade wares on their front lawns. Much more satisfying.

[KoKo]

15. thanks, blm....I knew it wouldn't fit it with what's going on in GD.....

but glad some of you got what I thought was important to think about.. for average Americans...whatever.

[blm]

16. It does belong here, absolutely. Consumerism is politics

and at the very least an extension of politics at some level.

[Tansy_Gold]

17. It absolutely fits in.

The whole discussion of Wal-Mart, unions, strikes, wages, consumerism, and so on, that's all politics in one way or another.

And I think it really helps people see how some of these issues impact their daily lives in ways they might not have thought before.

[Armstead]

18. Upscale or low rent -- the middle range is disappearing

There's still an active arts and crafts scene. But more and more is is upscale and yuppified. At the otehr end of the scale are cute, cheap things made by Chinese slaves.

What's sad is that the middle level producers are being crowded out. That has larger economic implications for cottage indusdtries and small and mid-sized production here in the US.

Ultimately it's an example of how we are choking ourselves with our attitudes. We want cheap, but we don't think of why things are cheap.

(I try to buy local whenever possible, but I buy my share of imported cheap stuff too, so I'm not being self-righteous.)

[KoKo]

19. Creativity and Independence allowed many folks to survive when times were

tough. A thing to "fall back" on.

What I was trying to say was, that some of us made money while kids were young doing this. Before we "went back to work" and did our "corporate thing" it was a way of making some money to contribute.
When you take that away, you take away the money that women who wanted to be "Independent" could make "on the side."

I don't know if anyone remembers the "jelly stands" and "eggs for sale" famers wives stands on the sides of the road when America still had some tie to "independent farms." But those "farm women" made their "egg/jelly money" by having these stands and they used it for their pocket change to buy something that they didn't have to depend on their hubbies for.

Those of us who made our "art work" were trying to do something to express our creativity. When we could no longer do that we took "regular jobs." But, our "creativity doesn't have the expression or outlet it once did." We weren't "artists" but we had a leaning towards products from our minds, creativity and hands. I think our ideas were used by more "Business Oriented" types who copied us and found artists who could produce beyond what we could with cheap labor in the far East.

So, in the end, the Businesswomen and Men who saw what we did, took advantage. I don't know that that isn't a good thing, but I do know it cut lots of women and men out of the market who could use the income from their labor of their own hands and creativity to "get buy" when times got bad and you got laid off work or wanted to be home with kiddies or elderly or whatever.

It's just something to think about.

What do we fall back on, when everything is made in Far East and other places for less than we can buy the materials here? It's a change from what went on in America since it's founding.

[Tansy_Gold]

24. Seriously, KoKo, they didn't take it away

Even if a person -- male or female -- doesn't make things to sell, making those things has VALUE.

I used to make almost all my own clothes and my kids'. I still make a lot of mine. Last summer, for instance, i bought a bunch of sale fabric at Jo-Ann's and made myself eight shirts for less than $10. Those eight shirts would have cost at least $10 each in a store, even a Wal-Mart, so I contributed $70 in the value of my labor to the family budget. And I kept it out of the corporate bandits' pockets.

the big box retailers and the cheap imports have made a dent in the artisan economy, to be sure. But they haven't destroyed it.

Sometimes, we simply get too accustomed to all the "luxuries" and conveniences our incomes allow us. We don't want to give that up, and it's easier to say someone else took the opportunities away from us. My son always laughs because hubby and I have only one television and it's not a big screen one with all the bells and whistles. We don't have a second one in the bedroom, a portable in the kitchen, etc., etc. But truth is we hardly watch ANY tv, except on week-ends when it's too hot to do anything else. We've simply adjusted our lifestyle to do without constant tv.

Can people adjust their lifestyles to do without daily consumption of disposable diapers, microwave dinners, bottled water, paper plates, and the latest from Tommy Hilfiger? And if they did do without these things, in what ways would their lives be richer?

Arts & crafts are alive and well. I'd be willing to bet there's a major fair within 100 miles of your house this very week-end. I'd be willing to bet there's also a Michael's, a Jo-Ann's, a Hobby Lobby or other major crafts supply outlet within 100 miles of your house, too.

William Morris, proponent of Arts and Crafts and ardent Socialist, said, "To give people pleasure in the things they must perforce use, that is one great office of decoration; to give people pleasure in the things they must perforce make, that is the other use of it." Not all the Arts & Crafts followers were financially successful -- the story of William and Evelyn de Morgan is almost a comedy of absurd failures -- but they achieved something else, and maybe it's in their failures as businesspeople that we find their greatest legacy of success as human beings.

Tansy Gold

[KoKo]

25. Tansy, in many ways that's why I posted my feelings. For the few of us

though, there are so many who've fallen "off the wagon" of enjoying what they make for themselves, and many of their kids are complaining and their friends or peers think they are foolish. I know you aren't, and I understand what you are saying, and maybe the few of us can keep the "Arts & Crafts Movement" alive.

Maybe it's where I live, in a boom area, not the New England I came from, that has me discouraged by what I see around me of nothing but "consumerism" and "throw it away" lifestyles. It may be that. But, I know, I've not met one person in the 11 years I've lived in my Boom part of NC who would understand why I would feel guilty about ruining a $9.99 witch that I didn't make myself, but was worried about the 2 Cents a day laborer who made her..... and I didn't wan't her labor to be trashed by my actions.

Thank you for your post. Glad to know there are still folks like us out there! Although, I've succumbed to consumerism more than you, because of where I live. The compromise has not been worth it.

[Tansy_Gold]

27. "The compromise has not been worth it."

Then stop compromising! :-)


Don't put the witch out in the rain. (MacArthur Park????) Respect the worker who made her and take care of her. put her out when the sun shines, when everyone can appreciate her. Then put her away with love and care and bring her out again next year, until she becomes a tradition.

Make a companion for her, a cat or a bat. Or friends. A funny ghost. A skeleton.

But don't put the blame on "them," on the yuppies around you who spend their time and money at Wal-Mart and the other bastions of conformity. Only repukes blame other people for their own shortcomings! I wouldn't have expected this of you! :-)

Set an example. Set a trend. What worked in the 60s and 70s was that people were willing and eager and happy to buck the system, to refuse to conform. Sometimes it's scary, sometimes it takes raw courage. But it's also very, very liberating just to opt out, to say I'm sick as hell and I'm not going to buy this shit any more.


Tansy Gold, rebel with a cause

[NashVegas]

23. Arts & Crafts vs The Cult of the Blue Ducky

As other posters have said, there IS a booming market for quality crafted domestic goods. But it happens that market is on the high end, where people want *original* designs to make these items a showplace in their homes.

IIRC, the crafts market that was big in the 80s, and all over the stores in the 90s and present, is the kitsch stuff, what I call "The Cult of the Blue Ducky" — all that pseudo "country" stuff in shades of blue, pink, rust, etc, of geese walking about and little dutchmaids, what have you.. That was never part of anyone's real culture. If there was ever an historical basis for those designs, I've not been able to find it. It was really not art so much as a marketing strategy from/for/by the people who sold the raw materials and design books. A product built on strategy can be reproduced by anyone with the right equipment.

The short of it is, if you want to do it you can, but understand you will have to reach for the high-end consumer and price the average Joe out of your market. Juried crafts fairs are a good place to start.

[Tansy_Gold]

26. I beg to differ

Maybe I'm in a weird section of the country, but my mother is 2200 miles away in a very different section, and we both have first-hand contemporary (i.e., October/November 2003) experience of the vibrancy of the hand-made market.

Yes, yes, yes, there's a horrendous amount of gawdawful shlock out there. The painted terra cotta flowerpots with plastic flowers in them that a woman was hawking at $17.95 at a show I attended a couple of weeks ago is a good example. (She didn't sell any, by the way; they were monumentally ghastly.) And the painted wooden cut-outs, the grinning ducks and singing cows, it's all uber-kitsch.

But as I posted above, there is an enormous amount of originality out there, if you just look for it. Sure, some of it is high-end big $$$ stuff; but there's a lot that's beautiful and original and very, very reasonably priced, because for many craftspeople, the idea is to have people buy it, use it, wear it, whatever.

I'd rather have a house that contains a few items of quality and beauty than a house full of cheap plastic crap.