Speech #930344179

In electronics. there was a loss of 109.000 jobs between 1966 and 1972. according to Labor Department figures. In shoe manufacture. jobs declined from 233.000 to about 200.000 in the past 5 years. While the figures on job loss reveal part of the problem. they tendby their impersonalityto conceal the human dimensions of the tragedy. The people employed in laborintensive industriesthe hardest hittend to be drawn largely from the Nations marginal populations: black. Hispanic. poor white. recent immigrant. To these people. the laborintensive industrywith its openings for unskilled and semiskilled laborwas the gateway to the econom. As these plants collapse. the hopes of these people collapse.