I still have my prospect book which I carried with me in my daily sales calls for more than 25 years. It has about 125 pages of customers and prospects totalling about 1,500 possible clients and customer accounts. There were also many more smaller accounts that gave us an order or two a year that are not listed .

They told us that our heavy industry was outdated in the globlal economy and that is the reason why we lost it. However, as I page through my old sales book, note about 80 percent of all the companies are gone.  These are companies that lasted at least 30 years.  Only a few companies were in heavy industry. There were manufacturers in almost any category you can think of. Many were in high tech, electronics and even areospace.  The gobalist free traders told us our economy is converting to a service industry but almost on every page of my call booklet is a service oriented company that went out of business including major data systems houses. Later, about a 1,000 systems houses and computer dealers went out of business in just a tri-state ares.  Just randomly opening the middle of my call booklet ,  I find - railroads, transportation, chromium, cable, alloys, building supplies, calculating, electric components, aircraft parts, textile, clothing, machinery, computer, computer media, medical systems, chemical, rubber and I can go on and on with all the industries that lasted many years until  the free traders came and told us it  was over.

Many of these companies employed 5,000 or more workers. Today, it makes big news when the last remaining steel company adds 100 more workers to about a 1000 total where once at least 15,000 workers made a middle class living.  In my call booklet, I also noted about a hundred sub-manufacturers thrived off the steel mills in various production processes.  No one brings up the secondary businesses and factories  that fed off the major industrial corporations.  I also have some old computer media and components compatible lists and booklets. I carried these with me to find the compatible items for the computer centers of all these companies. Virtually none of the computer supplyer and manufacturers are left. This vast sector has been exported too.  In the 1960s I serviced many large family super markets  across the city - there were about 200 who were in busines many years. They too are gone.

The new Tea Parties can protest and talk as much as they like but nothing good will happen until we set our priorities right.  We must first acknowlege that free trade and globalization have stolen our way of life from us and is the major cause of our economic crisis.


It is sad to read about a  transit bus rider complaining  about a bus route being cancelled. She must walk a mile to catch a bus to get to work and walk down a street where she said she most likely will get mugged.  I recall a time when I jumped streetcars everywhere and it took less than a half hour to get downtown traveling seven miles. I recall when I took it everyday to my job at a large advertising art agency on the Public Square with robust traffic everywhere. The same applied when I called on the large advertsing agency just a few blocks away and sometimes it took me longer to get to the accounts than hopping on the  downtown shuttle buses, because of all the congestion of traffic and people on the streets.

Later I worked at another downtown building for an international airline with airline offices up and down the street.  We had a airline community in just a block or so with hundreds of airline workers.

Later, I had our regional computer office just north of the public square and was able to call on major national and international corporate offices for a whole day at a time without leavlng the downtown area.  I walked into giant data processing centers without even needing any security pass for two locations.

When traveling from the west side of town to the east side, I had to go around the city because it was not practical to use any of the main streets through the center of town because of all the traffic and business.  Today, the fastest way to drive from the west side to the east side is straight through the city even though there are more new highway surrounding the city. 

Today, when I drive down many of these main streets, I have to just look ahead because there are too many reminders of what was once in our busy thriving city.  Now I see the empty factories and offices which I once called on.  I see a third world looking country too where I once serviced many large family super markets.  Some of the few much smaller stores that are open, have security bars on the windows.  Other new businesses represent a dead society of temporary help and casual labor offices with payday loan stores seemingly everywhere.  

All of the real businesses have vanished.  And it is even dangerous to visit a cemetery where a family member is buried.

Our political leaders and economists let this happened and I have to wonder why. I have to also wonder why no one seems to want to talk about the past as an example of what could be possible today.  They award tax money to stadiums and arenas but never any to build a new local factory. The mayor celebrated the opening of a Walmart in the steel industry graveyard where thousands once made a middle class wage where they were able to raise even a large family in a nice home of their own plus help put their children through college.  Now  there are fewer retail workers at Walmart with many  having  to seek government assistance to survive.  The  people vote and approve the opening of gambling casinos as a way to boost the economy.  There is even a school to teach the unemployed  workers how to shuffle cards for to get a job.

The public does not protest these things but idolize sports stars like LeBron James who wears the Nike emblem and gets millions of dollars promoting Nike where workers make only 20 cents per hour and their factory team leaders make less than $50 a month.  They do not make enough to buy just one pair of Nike shoes.

Is this who we are now.  Is human nature on trial?  Is it human nature to shop for the cheapest price no matter what?  Is it human nature to shop yourself out of a job?

All the jobs and businesses endeavors I enjoyed are gone with only one exception and that company is owned directly by foreign government.  I  look through my old files containing the thousand  customers and active prospects , I once enjoyed. They are no longer anywhere to be found. They have vanished off the face of the earth as if they never existed.  With this in mind, I begin my story......