Response: reflections on the writing of Empty Mills

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Notes

^1. For more discussion of the existing literature, see Minchin, Empty Mills, 1–3.

^2. In Empty Mills, I explore both the textile and apparel industries. These industries are distinct but they are also inextricably linked, especially as most textile workers are involved in the manufacture of products that are used to make apparel. For more explanation, see Minchin, Empty Mills, 2–4.

^3. Minchin, Empty Mills, 1.

^4. Julfikar Ali Malik and Jim Yardley, “Building Collapse in Bangladesh Kills Scores of Garment Workers” (New York Times, April 25, 2013, A1). For an informed overview of both the disaster and its longer-term consequences, see “One Year After Rana Plaza” (New York Times, April 27, 2014).

^5. See, for example, Minchin, Empty Mills, 6, 134–5, 171.

^6. Minchin, Empty Mills, 4; BLS employment data at http://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag_index_alpha.htm (accessed October 9, 2014). Under the BLS's North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), data for the textile and apparel sector is divided into three codes – Apparel (NAICS 315), Textile Mills (NAICS 313), and Textile Product Mills (NAICS 314). As was the case when I wrote Empty Mills, here I obtained overall industry employment data by adding the employment numbers in these three classifications together.

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Notes on contributors

Timothy J. Minchin

Timothy J. Minchin is Professor of North American History at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. He received his Ph.D. from Cambridge University in 1996 and has written widely on labor and civil rights history. Prior to Empty Mills, his previous books included Hiring the Black Worker: The Racial Integration of the Southern Textile Industry, 1960–1980 (University of North Carolina Press, 1999), and, with John A. Salmond, After the Dream: Black and White Southerners Since 1965 (University Press of Kentucky, 2011).