The Travels of a T-shirt in the Global Economy; Book Summary

Chapter II

The history of cotton production in the U.S. began with the entrepreneurial developments in the production of cotton cloth and yarns in England. When the first cotton textile factories started producing clothes that the poor could afford, the price of cotton lowered dramatically. The lower prices created more demand for textile mills, which in turn caused England to need more cotton. At first the Americas didn’t seem like a promising source of cotton, but by the 1830’s the American South became the world leader in cotton production. Most of their cotton was sent to England, less than 30 percent stayed in America. The production of cotton in America was aided by slavery, which had been abolished in India by 1843. However, slavery in America was abolished in 1863, so it had another 20 years of cheap labor over its main competitor.

When the plantations started spreading west across America there was a problem with growing the cotton. Only Upland cotton would grow further west, but that kind of cotton was much harder to remove from its seed then the preferred, Sea Island cotton, which would only grow along the coast. As plantation owners tried working with the Upland cotton they realized that unless something was invented that could remove the cotton from the seed than England’s demand for cotton couldn’t be supplied. In the fall of 1792 a man named Eli Whitney, a Yale graduate and a very innovative man, was staying for a few days on a plantation during his trip from New York to Savannah, Georgia. When he heard about how cotton growers needed something to remove the cotton from the sticky Upland cotton seed he thought that he had the solution. When his invention worked the cotton boom quickly progressed.

Even after slavery was abolished in America, they still had a way of continuing to produce large quantities of cotton. It was called “sharecropping”. Sharecropping is essentially loaning your land to another man, who had to use it to grow cotton. The landowner would give the man food, a home, and even the right to hunt and fish. In return, the man who grew the cotton would pay for the things that were provided to him, and the land rent, with the money he got from selling his crop. A lot of the time the man would barely break even, or he wouldn’t be able to pay off his loan, so the next year he would start out in debt. Sharecropping was legal, but it still provided a way for Americans to have cheap labor for growing cotton.

When Americans started going farther west, into Texas and Oklahoma, the farms grew larger, and the profits got bigger. People owned large quantities of land; some had many hundreds of thousands of acres. When farms were that big the owners didn’t like to take risks on whether or not they would have a big enough labor force. So instead of building their farms where the people were, they built the people were the farms were. On the ranch, the owners would create a small town for their workers to live in year-round. When the land needed to be planted, the farm needed to be weeded, or the cotton needed to be picked, the land owner would have workers at his disposal.

Chapter III

As cotton farmers moved even further west in the 1920s and 1930s they began to bring tractors with them, so that what used to be done by a mule could be done with a machine. You don’t have too feed or clean up after a tractor, so the tractors saved farmers time and money. Though, by using tractors even though you lose ten hours of labor in the winter, you also add 30 hours of labor in the fall due to larger crop yields. As technologies advance and machines take over some of the labor of weeding we have less work to do in the spring and summer. However, the introduction of fertilizers causes crop yields to skyrocket, so another 30 hours of labor is added in the summer because farmers still have to handpick their cotton. Finally, when the harvesting of cotton became mechanized farmers only had a little bit of labor in the spring and summer because of the weeds that would grow close to the plants.

In 1942, just before the civil war, a lot of men were needed in the army, so more labor was needed in America to pick the cotton. To fix the labor problem, Congress authorized the Bracero program, which allowed Mexicans to enter the United States for short periods to work in agriculture. The Bracero program lasted until 1964 by which time 90 percent of farms were cultivated mechanically. When Congress created the Bracero program they supplied the demand of the farmers. What the farmers wanted was labor on demand, knowing in advance what the labor would cost, and a guarantee that the labor would be productive. The Bracero program met all these needs.

At first, when the harvesting tractor was invented the farmers would have to wait for a cold freeze so that the cotton plant would die, and the cotton could be brushed from the plant. This was a big problem for the cotton farmers because as soon as there was a cold freeze they all had to work as fast as they could to get their cotton picked. If there was wind, hail, sand storms or rain, the cotton could be ruined, so right after the first big freeze all of the farmers in that region started their tractors, and started picking cotton. Though, because everyone was picking their cotton at the same time, the trailers that held the cotton would have to wait in line at the gin so that the farmers could empty their trailers, and get back to harvesting. Scientist finally made chemical compounds that would turn the cotton plant brown and crunchy. Now farmers can decide when and where to harvest their cotton.

When we found out that chemicals could be made that killed the cotton plants, why not weeds and insects? At first we couldn’t make herbicides that only killed the weeds, and when we finally did the weeds could learn to adapt to it, so every few seasons or so a new one had to be used. It was also hard to develop an herbicide that was even half environmentally friendly. One of the most effective herbicide is the chemical compound glyphosate. Known as Roundup, this chemical compound was used in a lot of Texas by the mid-1970s. For Roundup to work effectively it had to be used correctly because it is a nonselective herbicide, which means that it will kill any plant.

In 1993 a huge achievement was made. The same company that made Roundup genetically modified a cotton plant that could withstand the application of the Roundup herbicide. This meant that farmers could spray their entire crop with Roundup and only the weeds would die. The catch is that farmers aren’t allowed to reuse the seed from the plant, so every year everyone has to buy their seeds from the same company and herbicide from them too. I think that this is quite a monopoly over the cottonseed, but since they created the seed they are allowed to paten the seed. Soon following this seed the same company made a cotton plant genetically modified with the gene of the natural bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis in the cottonseed. These bacteria are toxic to several of cottons’ pests. With a plant that can kill its own enemies, and can survive a fluid that kills its opponents. The Bt cottonseed is a marvel of engineering.

Chapter IV

Cotton growers have learned how to not spare any piece of the cotton, cottonseed, or even the junk that goes with it to the gin. Only 24 percent of the material brought to the gin is cotton. Forty percent of it is what everyone sees as junk, sticks and trash. They are able to mix the sticks and trash with molasses and feed it to cattle. The seeds are 36 percent of what goes into the gin, and all of the Bt cottonseeds are used as cattle feed as well. Regular cottonseeds however are taken apart to make cottonseed oil, which is used as a replacement for corn syrup in a lot of snack brands, seed meal, which is used as animal food, the seed hull, which is put in fertilizers, and “linters”, which are used in a lot of hard plastics and cushioning.

Growing cotton in other parts of the world is much harder than growing it in the U.S., not because of the climates, but because of the prices. Farmers in the United States are usually paid 3 to 15 percent more than the average cotton price, but in places like West Africa farmers are usually paid half of the average market price. Plus, in West Africa the crop yields per acre are half that of Americas.

When the Bt cottonseed was introduced to China, farmers were able to reduce their pesticide/herbicide usage from around 20, to about 8. Though, when pests that were minor problems before became major problems because there was nothing to stop them from growing and spreading, their pesticide/herbicide count went to around 18. With no one to tell them that they needed to plant some regular cotton with the Bt cotton the farmers who used the Bt cotton in China began losing money because they had to buy new seed every year.

Chapter V

American cotton usually leaves the compress in a truck, or by train. It is taken to the coast where it is put onto a ship and sent to china. When it gets to China it is put in another truck, and driven to a cotton yarn factory where it is cleaned and smoothed into a soft flat blanket. Then, it’s carded, and drawn into a rope about an inch in diameter, called a sliver. The slivers are wound onto a can, and from the can are fed into the spindles and twisted into yarn. The yarn is spun onto large bobbins and is then shipped to a garment factory. In the garment factory the yarn is woven into long strips of fabric, which are cut into pieces that will soon be sleeves, fronts, backs, and collars. Those pieces are sent to the sewing room, where they are sewn into the T-shirts that we buy in our stores today.

As more and more of Americas T-shirts are made in China, their price has been going down, so there has been some concern about how the shirts are made. Most people who have done in-depth research about China’s clothing production think that there are some concealed sweatshops in China. Sweatshops are places where people work long hours for little money. They are illegal, but whoever owns the sweatshop(s) make a lot of money because their prices and costs are lower than all of their competitors.

Chapter VI

The first country to produce a smart system of making cotton cloth was China. They held the lead until at least 1750. By the late 1700s Britain took the lead, and by creating new inventions that made more cloth in the same amount of time they were able to hold the lead for quite a while. They maintained the lead by keeping their cloth making technology a secret. They were so determined to keep it a secret that they wouldn’t even let skilled textile operatives leave the country. Though, in 1810, Francis Cabot Lowell, an American, traveled to England with the hope of bringing back the textile technology. He was successful, and America became the new world leader in producing cotton cloth in 1820. By the 1930s Japan became the new leader, and though it faltered during WWII, it remained the leader until the 1970s. Then, Hong Kong was the largest exporter of clothing, but not for long because China was waking up from the Cultural Revolution, and with much lower wages they were able to sell their clothing for less too. China still leads in clothing exports today.

The reason that a country that had just received the textile technology after another country has had it for years (ex: America and China) could become a world leader in the export of clothing is because they can offer it for much cheaper, so people would buy it from them instead. This race to make cheaper and cheaper clothing started in America, where the mill owners would give low wages to women who were tired of farm life. That is why Japan became the next world leader in clothing exports, because the mill owners were able to pay their employees less, so the clothing was less, which in turn caused more demand for the cheap clothing. This is why there are believed to be so many sweatshops in China.

Chapter VII

Starting in the 1950s the Chinese had a system for classifying people according to where they live. The hukou that most Chinese belong under is rural hukou. These were people who were required to remain in the countryside and produce food. They were hardly ever allowed to travel to a city, and if they were, then they couldn’t even buy any food there. To buy food in a city you had to have an urban hukou. Because the hukou is passed down from generation to generation, the rural hukou began to grow in size, while the family still had the same plot of land. This created quite a surplus amount of people living in the countryside, and many of the woman didn’t like working long hours in the heat on the farm. When textile mills began sprouting up along the coast the government realized that they needed cheap labor to make cloth and clothes that they could sell for lower prices than their competitors. By letting rural hukou woman come and work in the mills both sides were happy. The government had cheap labor, and the woman got out of the sun and into a factory. Though, there were still many restrictions that the rural hukou factory workers had. As in, they ate the food provided to them from the factory, curfew, and they had to sleep together in dormitories. The factories didn’t provide less work or more pay, but they did allow rural hukous to live near, and go into cities. Cities provide many things that the countryside cannot, and that was why many women preferred living and working at a factory, rather than a farm.

Chapter VIII

Because of activists, the conditions in most of the textile mills across China have improved tremendously. China’s government has made codes that factories have to follow, about how much they have to pay their employees and how to get rid of waste. Their rules are so strict that a traditional textile and clothing mill won’t pass in the southern half of the country. Plus, because of University students, the factories in China are checked regularly by inspectors sent from America to make sure that they’re following all of the guidelines. Chemicals like PVC and phthalates couldn’t be used to make the pictures on shirts; instead a plastic made from corn is used.

There was a study done about how bad for the environment a T-shirt is, and the found that hardly any of the pollutants in a T-shirt’s life are from the production phase. Most are from the shirt being washed and dried by the owner. Over 60 percent of the shirts environmental impact can be reduced by simply washing it with colder water, and letting it dry outside instead of in a dryer.

Many factories in China are moving to poorer countries so that they’ll be able to pay their employees less, and charge the same. Also, poorer countries tend to have looser rules on pollution, quality, and working conditions. Though, the U.S. and most other countries are now putting requirements in their contracts with overseas T-shirt manufacturers, so one way or another most T-shirts have to be made by a fairly paid employee in good working conditions.

Chapter IX

After the T-shirt is made, it is shipped back to America, where it ends up in a screen-printing factory. In 2007, 95 percent of shirts purchased in the U.S. were made overseas. In July 2003, many organizations banded together, to save American jobs, by demanding that restrictions be placed on the amount of Chinese clothing that can be imported. The restrictions were made, so that the American cloth and clothing manufacturers didn’t have as much competition in the American market, but there’s still enough to cause American made apparel businesses to close. Nowadays the rules governing apparel imports into the United States change almost daily. Most cotton T-shirts that don’t meet the requirements for “preferential treatment” are charged an import tariff of 16.5 percent.

Until 2005, imports an additional 40 countries were limited under the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing. On January 1, 2009, the quotas for apparel from China were lifted. When this event occurred, the U.S. apparel industry was expected to rapidly disappear. Most people are happy that the limits were put in effect for dozens of categories of Chinese textiles and apparel because this means cheaper clothing products in American stores.

Chapter X

Neither America nor China likes the rules governing imports of T-shirts into the United States. Though, the U.S. is still the world’s leader of free trade. The cotton weavers began to complain about Asia’s cheap fabric around the end of WWII, so in order to quiet them the Eisenhower administration persuaded Japan to “voluntarily” limit its exports of cotton textiles to the United States. Because Japanese exports to the United States were limited, this gave other countries (especially, Honk Kong and Taiwan) the opportunity to supply the U.S. Market.

Between 1956 and 1961, imports of cotton goods from Honk Kong rose by nearly 700 percent. This caused American cotton weavers to complain, again. So in the 1960 presidential campaign, JF Kennedy promised Governor Ernest Hollings of South Carolina that he would work to limit Hong Kong’s imports to America. Kennedy fulfilled his promise by instituting the Short Term Arrangement on Cotton Textiles as temporary assistance to the U.S. cotton weavers. This gave Washington, D.C., the power to negotiate cotton textile import limits to protect the U.S. industry. It also covered more goods than the original Japanese V.E.R. Of course, as the global production of cotton goods began to increase, so did American imports of cotton goods too. To protect the American cotton industry, once again, the Kennedy administration created the Long Term Arrangement for Cotton Textiles, effective from 1962 to 1967. This also covered more countries and more products than the previous Arrangement.

Chapter XI

As employment in the textile industry of the U.S. is going down, the production is staying steady or even rising. This goes true for most other American industries as well because of technological advance we can make more, with less. The same fact is true in China too. Textile job losses were the most severe of any industry in China because technology can take the place of people for less money.

Tariffs and quotas no longer help the American textile market survive, but instead, help smaller countries, by limiting the number of T-shirts, and the profit, that larger countries can have by sending their products to the U.S. Some people think that we should get rid of the quotas entirely, so that Americans can have much cheaper clothing from other countries. The problem with doing that though, is that thousands of American textile workers would get laid off. Most economists think there is a way to lift the quota, and still make everyone, except for the smaller countries, happy. The compensation principle should help provide the textile workers with enough money and time to find another job. The author also points out that with the destruction of old jobs comes the creation of new ones. For instance, since the textile production in the United States is dwindling, jobs are created to slow down the death of the American cloth industry. Also, as T-shirt imports are rising, more jobs are needed to control the flow of the imports.

Tariffs are usually higher for smaller countries that export their products to larger ones compared to large countries exporting their products to another large country. However, quotas are usually set lower for larger countries than they are for smaller ones. It appears that if the quotas were lifted then China would completely dominate the apparel market, so small countries try to support the quotas. It is predicted that if the quotas were lifted then there would be about 30 million job losses world-wide as a result of China taking over all of its competition.

Chapter XII

In 2005 the quotas were lifted for a little bit, and the U.S. was flooded with Chinese apparel. To put on restrictions once again, in the same year, a quota proposal was taken to the House of Representatives. It passed by one vote, and lasted from 2006 to 2009. In the trade data for the 2005 through 2008 period most small countries did pretty well, and the biggest losses were in large countries. As of mid-2008 China had plenty of quota left and quota prices were falling. By 2007, China was purchasing more than twice as much cotton from America as the U.S. textile industry.

This problem has occurred more than once; in the early seventeenth century cotton clothing was introduced to England. This caused England’s wool market to take a big hit. Parliament tried to do anything it could to revive the wool market, but cotton ended up winning the hearts of the public. However, Parliament was able to restrict imports to only plain cotton, but this didn’t stop people from wanting colors, so England figured out how to print and die cotton cloth. This put more and more woolen workers out of work, so they decided to fight back. The workers action forced Parliament to make all cotton clothes and furnishings that were imported illegal. Englanders needed a way of producing large amounts of cotton at a cheap price, so innovators created ideas about how to manufacture more. They came up with power looms, spinning jennies, and factories. These inventions launched the Industrial Revolution, which started the growth of cotton in America. So really, we can thank all of the woolen workers, who attacked and plundered the streets of London 300 years ago, for everything that we have today.

Chapter XIII

The used clothing businesses give away much of its clothing to other countries. Between 1995 and 2007, the United States exported nearly 9 billion pounds of used clothing and other worn textile products to the rest of the world. Most of these businesses are locally or family owned. The surplus clothing industry has customers in more than 100 countries. During most of the past decade, the U.S. has been the world’s largest exporter of used clothing. Used t-shirts that are exported to other countries are usually sold in markets.

The U.S. textile recycling industry consists of thousands of small family businesses, many now in their third or fourth generation of family ownership. By 2008, the competitive landscape was far more intense than it had been just a few years earlier. In 2004, used clothing businesses in America could buy unsorted truckloads of clothing for about 5 to 7 cents per pound. By the summer of 2008, this price had approximately doubled from the competition among the increasing number of buyers. During this same period, the price of new t-shirts from China fell by half.

The clothes that arrive at the used clothing business are sorted into many different categories: skirts, men’s pants, household materials, jeans, t-shirts, etc. This sorting task requires much more skill and attention than in earlier days. After the clothes are sorted they are either shipped to places like Japan, France, or Africa. Some types of clothing are more valuable to certain consumers than others. A perfect-condition Mickey Mouse t-shirt is worth a lot in Japan. Africans prefer darker-colored clothes that hide dirt better. Also, old band or “event” t-shirts are worth much more in Japan. Today, used clothing businesses sort clothing into more than 400 different categories.

Chapter XIV

Since American women buy more clothes than men AND take better care of their clothes than men. Buying woman’s clothes is much cheaper than men’s clothes. Even though they live in Africa, people there have the same fashion sense as we do in America. Blue jeans are high end items and are often examined more for its fashion features. The more fashionable style, the more money the business can get for the blue jeans. T-shirts from America are the most popular and highly prized articles of clothing. The college and professional sports team shirts are popular all over Africa. Winning team shirts can fetch higher prices.

In the world of used clothing, researchers found consumers seek out “new” clothing that is wrinkled and musty smelling. A freshly pressed or clean smelling garment cannot possibly have spent weeks or months in a compressed bale in a warehouse or shipping container; therefore, it is the more wrinkled and musty clothing that is likely to be “new” from America, while the fresh-pressed and clean-smelling clothing is more likely to be “old” (that is worn or pre-sorted in Africa). Ninety percent of the value of a bale of used clothing comes from 10% of the items.

Chapter XV

Not all countries allow imports of used clothing. More than thirty countries ban the imports through prohibitions or numerous bureaucratic walls. Some of these laws were established to try to save local textile industries. When North Carolina lost its textile industry it was lost to low wage workers in China. In comparison, the African textile industry was lost to high wage earners in America who have so many clothes that it is given away for free. Other industries in Africa are created by the clothing imports. These include traders, importers, sorters, launderers, and tailors. All these jobs could add up to more than were destroyed.

There are “formal” and “informal” sectors of African economies. The “formal” sectors were many times operated under bad governments. Some people think the “informal” sectors should be more encouraged. The definition of “informal” to some people, are those businesses that do not look American.

Some people think U.S. clothing donated to charities should be free, but this would remove a lot of income to people in Africa. Another problem with clothing donations is that some charities are not equipped to sort, grade and distribute them, so they end up rotting in warehouses. This causes most disaster/relief organizations to nearly beg people not to send clothing to disaster areas. Some people think the Africans are humiliated and embarrassed by receiving used clothes, this is not true. Many people delight in the challenge and reward of their shrewd shopping. There’s an environmental benefit to the recycling as well.


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