Here I am in Northeast Ohio, North Canton, to be precise. I'm staying with my cousin and her family on our trip through the region. Canton is next door and Akron is just down the road. Youngstown isn't far away. These are some of the great cities of American industry. Or maybe it's more accurate to say, they once were. All the talk hereabouts is the evaporation of American manufacturing.
Let me give you the local case in point. The largest employer in North Canton was the Hoover Corporation. You know, the biggest name in vacuum cleaners and sweepers. They had been in North Canton over eighty years. Their mammoth plant and world headquarters covered over a million square feet. At its peak the complex employed over 5,000 people. Even up to last year Hoover provided over 3,000 local jobs.
Then TTI showed up. The Chinese appliance giant bought Hoover last year. Actually, they bought the parent company, Maytag. It's a fine illustration of effective modern business strategy. Flush with piles of American cash, TTI bought the competition and then, last September, shut it down. They then turned around and sold the land to a California real estate development company. TTI gets the Hoover name and patents, destroys the competition, and makes most of the money back on the real estate.
Their already substantial entry into the American market now stands without serious impediment. Production has been relocated to China at significant cost savings. Americans may get some cheaper appliances. They will need them too, because more and more of their high-wage jobs are disappearing. Canton used to have a populaton of 120,000. It now has 90,000. The Hoover Company directly or indirectly accounted for nearly 40% of North Canton's (population about 15,000) economy.
Free trade. Unregulated enterprise. Open investment. That's the way to prosperity, we often hear. Whose prosperity, one might ask. That's what a lot of people in Northeast Ohio are asking these days.
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