By David Trumbull
October 2000

Would you believe that the textile industry in Massachusetts is thriving and is poised to do even better? 

As another free-trade agreement goes into effect October 1, New England's textile manufacturers ask, "What does this mean for my company?" 

The answer: It's going to be exciting for our already thriving textile industry.

The textile industry, with its 13,000 workers in Massachusetts, and an equal number in the other five New England states, is preparing for the biggest change in textile and apparel international trade regulations since the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect in 1994. 

Yet unlike the vigorous and vocal debate over NAFTA in the early 1990's, the Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act has received little attention outside of a few trade specialists on Capitol Hill. 

Twenty-four nations located in Central America and on islands in the Caribbean are about to get a tremendous trade benefit until now available only to Canada, Israel, and Mexico (the three nations with which the US has existing free trade agreements for textile products). These nations will be able to ship the US unlimited amounts of clothing with no import duties and no import quotas. 

Sew what?
Historically, garment production has been one of the key industries for poor nations seeking to develop their economies. Already, even before the Act has taken effect, the nations of the Caribbean Basin ship us 17.5% of our wool apparel imports. Weaving wool cloth for garments is a traditional New England industry and our local textile mills are very interested in these imports of garments made of competing cloth.

Analysts treat ladies wool blazers and overcoats as a leading indicator for the wool textile industry. We imported over 4.5 million of these coats in just the first half of the year 2000. The Caribbean island nation of the Dominican Republic produced 17% of these coats. That is no surprise. You might expect that, in the case of labor intensive industries such as garment sewing, there would be a lot of  imports from low-cost sources off shore. 

What may surprise you is where the Dominicans get the cloth for their coats - the US. The $15 million worth of these coats imported from the Dominican Republic contained $10.8 million worth of U.S. cloth! 

The data are similar for Costa Rica ($1.1 million worth of men's sportcoats imported into the U.S., containing $900,000 worth of US fabric) and Guatemala ($2 million worth of women's trousers, using $1.2 million worth of U.S. fabric).

The import tariff on women's wool coats is nearly 20%. In addition, the US has quotas limiting the number of coats any country can send to the US. Starting October 1, garment makers in those 24 beneficiary countries of the Caribbean Basin will be allowed to send unlimited quantities of coats, with no import duties provided - and this is very important - provided they use fabric woven or knit in the U.S. of yarns spun in the U.S. That is what has Bay State textile mills excited. 

More Mills Than You Can Imagine
"Textiles? Do we still have any textile mills in Massachusetts?" Yes, more than you imagine. Do you sew at home? If so you likely use fabric printed in Webster at Cranston Print Works. Headquartered in Cranston, Rhode Island, this mill does most of its rotary screen printing of cloth in a typical modern mill building in Webster.  

The key to the success of New England textile producers has been continuous innovation in styling and quality goods that only a skilled workforce can produce. A studio of designers in New York is constantly employed in developing new artwork for Cranston printcloth. This is not your grandfather's textile mill. "We are a chemical processor whose end product happens to be a textile product," says Cranston manager Len Rudolph.

Soon the winter season will come in, bringing multitudes of bright-red, velvety holiday bows. They are typically tied and packaged in the Far East, but most of the velvety flocked material for the bows is manufactured in Chelsea, where Synthon Industries produces Christmas ribbon twelve months of the year. 

"I get a lot of strange looks when I tell people what I do," says Edwin Martin of Fifield Company of Hingham. "I flock," says Ed. Flocking is the art and science of sticking fine fiber dust to a cloth (or other) surface to create a sort of velvet-like material. New England is the center of the flock industry in North America. Combined, Microfibres, Inc. in Rhode Island, Intermark Fabric in Connecticut, and Spectro Coating Corp. and Hub Fabric Leather, both in Massachusetts, produce the majority of the flocked upholstery fabric made in the U.S. Those plush sofas and recliners you see in the furniture stores are usually covered with flock, not velvet. You see, flock is both cheaper and more durable than the velvet it was created to mimic. Over half of the New England production of flocked upholstery is for export overseas.

Cubical-dwellers may give little thought to the many millions of yards of cloth consumed every year to make office divider panels. The cloth is woven at Guilford of Maine, one of the world's largest producers of panel cloth. Last year, Interface Interior Fabrics, the parent company of Guilford of Maine and Toltec Fabrics, closed a factory in North Carolina and relocated those jobs from a low-wage, low-skill area to Massachusetts. Interface has since invested a quarter of a million dollars to train weavers of office upholstery fabrics at its Dudley, Toltec Fabrics division. 

Aaron Feuerstein was universally, and justly, applauded for rebuilding Malden Mills Industries, Inc. in Lawrence after a December 1995 fire - the greatest industrial fire loss in Massachusetts history. He always maintained that keeping hundreds of textile jobs in Massachusetts rather than taking the insurance money and moving south or overseas was good business sense. He could not replace his skilled Bay State workforce in a low-wage, low-skill region. 

Recently Malden Mills, Enterprise Coatings of Rhode Island and Tweave Industries of Norton announced a three-way alliance directed at developing innovative new Polartec fabrics for the outdoor apparel industry. This is just the latest example of the process of continuous improvement that helps keep the New England textile industry competitive in the global market for fabrics. 

Teach a Man to Fish
Lake Chargoggagoggmanchaugagoggchaubunagungamaugg, said to be the third longest place name in the world, is a Nipmuc Indian phrase usually translated (very loosely) as, "You fish on your side of the lake; I fish on my side; no one fishes the middle." It is also the most distinguished geological feature of Webster, a medium-sized town on the Connecticut border in central Massachusetts. Webster has been a textile mill town ever since it was founded in 1812 by Samuel Slater, father of the American industrial revolution, 

It is tempting to view jobs in the world economy much as fish in a lake. Every fish you catch is one less for me. A more accurate economic model is dynamic, recognizing that each job that is created in turn contributes to the creation of still more jobs. In the past decade, low-skill jobs have left the U.S. seeking lower wage rates in Mexico. At the same time that we are losing these jobs, our unemployment rate declined to a peacetime record. 

Since the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect in 1994, Quaker Fabric Corporation has grown to 2,400 employees at 11 plants, making it the largest private employer in Fall River. Quaker designers unveil at least 400 new and different styles every year. That innovation, combined with aggressive development of export market sales, has made Quaker the world's largest producer of chenille yarn and of jacquard upholstery fabrics. Quaker upholstery fabrics are now sold in 45 countries, with Mexico being one of its largest consumers.  The company is now building a new $10 million facility in Fall River that will employ an additional 700 to 800 workers. 

Clyde Barrow - not the 1930s bank robber, but a University of Massachusetts researcher by the same name - recently published a study of the textile industry in Massachusetts. He concludes, "The prospects for the Commonwealth's textile industry appear promising, especially if the state's firms continue to invest in the latest production technology, basic information technology, workforce training, and export development." 

Textile jobs in Massachusetts? Yup, we got 'em. And, far from being battered by imports, they are supplying the garment, furniture, packaging and other industries in other countries. Skilled workers and employers who will invest in worker training are what keep those jobs here. Teach a man a skill and you've given him a livelihood. 

(The countries in the Caribbean which will be in the new Act are: Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Costa Rica, Dominica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Montserrat, Netherlands Antilles, Nicaragua, Panama, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago.)

David Trumbull is employed by the Northern Textile Association.