And anything else these days which is poorly made and/or designed. (Which most products made in third world countries, not just China, are.) Besides, with our economy in the worst recession of my lifetime, I’d rather support Americans and American-made products with my money rather than sending it out of the country. And of course, who knows whether that cheap third-world import was made in sweatshop conditions that Abraham Lincoln would not approve of. I have nothing against Chinese people (or the people of any other country for that matter), what I don’t like is the exploitation of third world labor by large greedy US corporations, and the inflated profit margins, lost jobs, and reduced product quality that results.
I’m trying to find some safety pins and string to attach tags to my made-in-the-USA Lincoln T-shirts, that basically have my business card on the front and a little story about how and why they were made on the back. I think it gives them a nice, human touch, that goes to show that my shirts were made by a human being who cares about Abraham Lincoln and spends time creating quality artwork instead of by some big, out-of-state company selling cheap, tacky souvenirs.
Unfortunately, I can’t find any safety pins that are NOT made in China! You’d think for an item that cheap, it’d cost more just to ship it from China to the U.S. than it would to make it in the U.S. But nooooo, it has to be made in China! (And no, I’m not shopping at Wal-Mart for these, or any other big box store for that matter. I hate those places with a passion.) I want to only use U.S. suppliers for my T-shirts and anything that goes along with them. I love and admire Abraham Lincoln and so I feel I must adhere to his morals and ideals, so it makes me angry that I can ONLY find “Made in China”.
Cracked Made in China Shoe
All this, and I’m walking around doing my photography project (and of course, dealing with my T-shirts), in shoes that are only about 6 months old. They’re literally falling apart. The tread on the bottom of the shoes is mostly gone. They have HUGE cracks along the bottom, where the sole and the walls of the shoe meet. Guess where they were made? In CHINA, of course! They’re not even worth the $20 I spent on them at Target. Shoes should last longer than 6 months. Next time, I’m going to buy a pair of New Balance shoes made in the USA. I walk a lot, so I need good walking shoes – it’s my primary mode of transportation, since I live near downtown Springfield, and I go there most days.
Busted Made in China zipper
Oh, and I also have a bag I carry around with me sometimes I got at Target too. My sister helped me sew a picture of Lincoln on it (taken from an old, but faithful, Lincoln T-shirt) to personalize it. I’ve gotten lots of comments on it. The picture is fine, but some of the zippers on the bag are broken, and it’s starting to develop a few holes. It’s maybe only about 1-1/2 years old. And of course, it’s made in China (except for the Lincoln picture obviously).
And I don’t need to tell you about the $150 “Circuit City special” home theater in box system that never worked right that my mom got me for Christmas a few years back, do I? It was made in China, too! But it could never play DVDs without skipping on the smallest miniscule scratches, and on CDs, after playing for about 30 minutes, it’d start to sound like the singer (and the music) was underwater. And the center speaker only worked half of the time (it had a loose connection). Total waste of money. It’s since been replaced by a good set of Logitech 5.1 speakers connected to my Audigy 4 sound card and a cable running from my video card to my TV.
This T-shirt, which I designed myself, is over 5 years old.
What really riles me is that some shops want me to sell my Lincoln T-shirts, that I often spend over 50 hours per design creating, and have printed at a high quality local printer, for the same price as the poorly made and designed chintzy third-world junk that probably costs like $1-$2 to make. They act like art is free, and like labor is free, like all the work I do to create them means nothing, and that quality can be had for the same price as the cheap stuff. Well, I’ve been doing Lincoln T-shirts for years (and wearing Lincoln T-shirts even longer) and I can tell you you get what you pay for. The cheap, chintzy, third world country-made shirts are made of the thinnest possible fabric, the printing is the lowest possible quality and looks like it’ll fade/bleed/crack after a few washings, and it looks like the designer only spent maybe 1 hour on it using clipart. Meanwhile, I have Lincoln shirts I’ve made and Lincoln shirts other local artists have created that have lasted me 5 years or more, still going strong, and aside from a little fading, they still look fine. (And of course, the designs are INFINITELY better.)
I’m done with cheap junk. I wouldn’t take it even if it was free. Problem is, companies like Wal-Mart and the other big box stores (and companies like Event Network which runs the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum gift shop) want it to be your only choice. Heck, sometimes IT IS the only choice. They want fatter profit margins, so they buy the cheapest junk possible and resell it at high markups (Event Network marks up stuff about 800%, seriously). Because they control so much of the retail market, the stuff that’s priced somewhat higher, but is much better quality is eliminated from the market, meaning other local retailers couldn’t stock it even if they wanted to. Indeed, part of the reason I like to do Lincoln T-shirts is to provide a quality alternative to the cheap junk for local retailers.
If Lincoln was alive today, I think he’d be incredibly angry at our state of things. He would not approve of sweatshop labor or other exploitation in third world countries, or of anything that doesn’t last. Reading about him, I always get a sense he had an appreciation for things that lasted. He even fixed stuff that busted – one of the stories often told at the Lincoln Home (not every ranger tells this story) is that one of the legs on his desk broke, and somebody told him that he should get a new one. Well, Lincoln essentially said that the desk was still perfectly good otherwise, so he put a new leg on it and said it was as good as new. How much of today’s junk is repairable or serviceable in that manner?
Over 21 years old, and it still works.
The amazing, and sad, thing is how far we’ve come in the last 15 years. Growing up in the 80s, I remember how you could expect things to last. Many of these things I still have today, and they still work, too. A lot was still made in the USA, and if it wasn’t, it was made in Japan, Canada, or Western Europe. “Cheap” was an insult. Ever since the early 1990s, when Wal-Mart and the other big box stores and free trade agreements came, we’ve been shipping jobs overseas trying to “beat the system” by buying stuff at cheaper prices (where the true costs are hidden). Cheap electronics, cheap clothing, cheap housing, cheap loans. Buy now, pay later. Now, that’s catching up to us. And I’m sick of it. I want quality goods at reasonable prices supporting ideals Lincoln would believe in, not cheap. I stumbled on this book, Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture, the other day while googling around. I haven’t read it, but it sounds like it illustrates our problem. Cheap is too expensive – it costs too much in the long run.
I can’t afford cheap.
