In Chapter Four of her book, Rivoli describes the path of Texas cotton to China. The production of value-added goods is not cheap because it requires manual labor. After 200 years spent overcoming manual labor, Americans are not willing to endure factory work for low wages. In China, however, there are plenty of people who need jobs and are willing to work long hours for low wages. In Chapter Five, Rivoli goes on to explain the history of textile mills, and she uncovers the inhumane working conditions associated with textiles.
I never really thought about where my clothes originate until I began reading Travels of a T-Shirt. I may have glanced at the “made in ___” label while looking for washing instructions, but I never thought about where China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Japan got their materials. Now that I know Texas farms supply China’s cotton and China sells it back to the U.S., I am discovering a lot of questions. First of all, why isn’t the U.S. making its own tourist t-shirts? If we used true-cost pricing, we would have to account for fuel and shipping costs as well as manual labor. Our country has plenty of cotton, and we have the technology to nearly bypass the need for manual labor. It seems like textiles would be cheaper to make within our own shores. My second question is: what will happen when China’s middle class rises and leaves little unskilled labor for textile mills? The price of apparel will rise, or another poor and desperate country will take up the textile industry.
The textile industry really is a never-ending race to the bottom. Britain, New England, the American South, Japan, and China have all competed in the race to find the cheapest way to produce apparel. At the same time, each country hit the bottom of humane working conditions. Every country involved in the textile industry has exploited children and women in their factories. The workers were sentenced to long days with few breaks, poor living conditions, hunger, and scanty wages. My third question: can the people of the world continue to watch while country after country takes advantage of poor people? I hope not.
After reading the first five chapters of Travels of a T-Shirt, I am beginning to form a new definition of globalization. I think globalization is a measure of the interdependence of the world’s people. Before the Industrial Revolution, the people of the world lived according to their environment. Their immediate resources dictated how they ate, dressed, worked, and traded. Now, we are not bound by geographic location, and we have forgotten how to live in our surroundings. Each country, state, or group remembers one piece of life from the past and sells it to everyone else. This is globalization.
