Factory Man
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15
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Average rating3
The Bassett Furniture Company was once the world's biggest wood furniture manufacturer. Run by the same powerful Virginia family for generations, it was also the center of life in Bassett, Virginia. But beginning in the 1980s, the first waves of Asian competition hit, and ultimately Bassett was forced to send its production overseas. One man fought back: John Bassett III, a shrewd and determined third-generation factory man, now chairman of Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Co, which employs more than 700 Virginians and has sales of more than $90 million. In Factory Man, Beth Macy brings to life Bassett's deeply personal furniture and family story, along with a host of characters from an industry that was as cutthroat as it was colorful. As she shows how he uses legal maneuvers, factory efficiencies, and sheer grit and cunning to save hundreds of jobs, she also reveals the truth about modern industry in America.
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This would have been a much better book with some balance, because the story of the Bassett family is actually very interesting. But the author's premise seems to be that globalization is evil, and so there is no time spent on what the alternative to globalization is. Furthermore, although there is some mention that what the southern furniture makers did to the northern US manufacturers is exactly the same as what the Asian manufacturers have no done, this point seems to get lost. And that's partly, I think a question of race. Somehow globalization is worse because it is ASIANs who are engaged in the lower-cost manufacturing.
The author also seems to use “Chinese Communist” as an epithet, as if the paternalism of the Bassett factory town was anything different.
What saved Vaughan-Bassett was its ability to innovate in the face of competition. That's a story worth telling, but the author relegates to what is essentially a footnote.
