Len Buckeridge Quotes
Windows were the first thing we made ourselves. Other products, such as cement and plasterboard, came later. Some of the factories we actually built because of union blockades trying to stop us getting supplies.
Buckeridge, Len. Interview by Andrew Burrell. "Buckeridge the builder still battling unions at 76." The Australian, News Corp Australia, 22 Dec. 2012.
This same argument was used before and since to justify protecting domestic manufacturing from foreign competition until it can mature sufficiently to compete in a global economy. One difficulty occurs if protective tariffs are imposed for this reason. The manufacturers protected never seem to reach the point where they can compete without the subsidy.
Observing the difference between politics and working in the private sector:
Fortunately for America, Jefferson did not get his wish. Jefferson did mellow on this point as he got older. See {606440} for a related quotation 27 years later.
Earlier, Jefferson was opposed to manufacturing in America as factories were a social blight in Europe which he wanted to keep out of the United States. He felt that we could import whatever we needed from Europe and not have the evils of industrialization. However, with the War of 1812, the Barbary Pirates and his mellowing when no longer President, and his willingness to change his positions as he learned more, he issued this letter. See another the following year: {615634}. His was considered such an important change of position—today we would accuse him of a flip flop— that other journals and periodicals reprinted the letter and commented upon his change. Despite his changed position, most Americans believe that Jefferson was opposed to manufacturing and industrialization for his entire life—not just the first part.
“Arsenal of Democracy” is the famous FDR phrase whereby America was able to provide weapons for the other democracies to fight Fascism. At the time, the United States had the greatest manufacturing capability of the world. When Gingrich made this quotation, much manufacturing that had been done in America had moved offshore. However, one area that did not move offshore was military weapons manufacturing where the United States manufacturing capability was thriving but America was the largest arms manufacturer in the world and exported much of its weapons. This quotation is an example of a political technique called “conflation.” Gingrich took an area where there was legitimate concern about the nation’s loss of manufacturing and implied that the problem was affecting our military and defense capability as well which was not do at all. However, while most Americans knew of the manufacturing job loss, they did not know that the defense manufacturing was the strongest in the world. So they became even more alarmed at the problem of general manufacturing loss.
Jefferson’s view of manufacturing however was small scale, craftsmen-oriented workshops, and not the large industrial efforts that were also so important in American growth and development. In early America, imports from England and Europe where the primary modes of obtaining the “comforts of life.”
The automobile assembly lines of Detroit, had been planned to be converted to factories to produce a huge supply of planes, tanks, trucks and guns which were instrumental in winning the Second World War.
America’s first political economist
Leonard Walter Buckeridge was an Australian businessman known for founding the Buckeridge Group of Companies.
