4,000 textile jobs lost

A textile mill company is shutting down operations in South Carolina and Alabama, and the job losses will be significant:

Avondale Mills expects to put about 1,900 South Carolinians out of work as it closes all its fabric and yarn mills in Graniteville, the cradle of South Carolina's textile industry.

Altogether, the company will eliminate 4,000 jobs from Alabama to Graniteville as it attempts to sell its business, renegotiate its debts or shut down through liquidation, Avondale spokesman Stephen Felker Jr. said Monday.

The company says increasing imports and declining sales over the past decade contributed to the decision, but the tipping point was a train wreck and a chlorine spill that killed nine people and injured hundreds:

The Jan. 6, 2005, crash caused a leak of chlorine gas from derailed tankers, killing nine people, injuring 250 and forcing the evacuation of 5,400 people.

The company's mills were shut down for weeks. Since then, Felker said, he and other company officials have tried to get Graniteville's operations back on solid footing.

"We realized it just wasn't going to be possible," he said.

The tragic train wreck notwithstanding, increasing global competition probably made these jobs obsolete years ago. Although some Southern states are seeing a resurgence in manufacturing jobs, they come at a high cost to taxpayers for incentives. After moving from an agriculture-based economy into the Industrial Age, the South tried desperately to hold on to those jobs while the Information Age passed us by on its way to India, when we should have been preparing for the... what's next age?