Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic

by Sam Quinones

“It took individuals to say, ‘No more,’” Davis said. “‘We’re not going to lose any more jobs and we’re not going to lose another industry in this town.’ We were the last bastion of what was a great shoe industry: shoelace manufacture. And we were going to let it go.” Three floors of the plant were empty. Davis took that to mean there was room to grow. By the time I visited, Davis said, Sole Choice had three hundred customers—up from twenty-four. Forty people had their jobs back and more were coming on. The company exported shoelaces to thirty countries, including China and Taiwan. “The outsourcing mentality has cost us millions and millions of jobs. We have now done that for thirty-some years and we have literally destroyed our manufacturing base in this country. It’s all been about money, the mighty dollar. The true entrepreneurial spirit of the U.S. has to be about more than that. It has to be about people, relationships, about building communities. Money—that comes. You’ll get that eventually, but happiness comes from these other things.”