Okay, I'd like to point out two things:

A: "Communist Chinese" is a fact, not a prejudicial stereotypical statement. China is indeed communist.

2: Redneck American is a prejudicial statement made by someone against prejudicial statements. What's wrong with that picture?

That being said, a friend of mine went to China to look at a furniture factory. He owns a lumber mill and furniture factory in North Carolina, but determined that it would be cheaper for him to ship the wood to China and ship the finished furniture back to the states.

While he was touring the factory, he noticed several things:

No toilet facilities. Employees used the north wall of the building. At the end of the day, someone hosed the area down.

No safety devices on the machines. For example, in redneck America, OSHA requires two safety buttons on a lathe... one on each side of the machine that need to be pressed before the machine will run. This prevents the worker from losing fingers and hands. In China, there were no safety buttons, (or safety glasses, or anything else for that matter) so when an employee was injured he was laid off and someone new was hired. There were people lined up at the door for jobs, so this was no problem.

The workers were paid about 25-50 cents a day as near as he could figure.

So regardless of how well crafted your forks are, do you really want forks that were made through what essentially amounts to slave labor? Is it fair that companies in this country have to conform to basic standards that raise the price of manufacturing?

Just something to think about from a redneck American.

Az