Summary

The impact of globalization on Southwest Virginia company towns had hardly received any coverage in spite of the fact that the crisis had been the worst since the Great Depression. One after the other, companies were closing up and relocating to China, Mexico and Vietnam. Twenty-thousand people in the Henry County region had lost their jobs.

John D. Bassett III of the Bassett Furniture Company, which had been the biggest furniture manufacturer in the world, was defiant -- no "Chi-Comms" were going to tell him how to make furniture. Three decades before he had been kicked out of the family business by a relative.

Globalization had saved American consumers billions. Workers in third world countries benefited from new employment opportunities. It was the American factory worker, however, that was the victim of globalization. The white collar workers often were not offered jobs with...