M A Y 1 9 9 6 ![]() VASECTOMYfor Adam Smithby Thom Ward | |||||||||||||
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No one's notified the workers shares have been split, the factory sold. Frames are still being welded, transmissions bolted to engines, acetylene torches lit gold like the light from miners' helmets on groaning timber. Coal is still chiseled, and dust spun into lungs. No one's posted signs: Road Out. Bridge Out. Danger Ahead. Fingers black with dye, young girls disappear in looms. Women boil metal, pour it steaming into molds. Day fused to night, millions of laborers, backs crooked and hands cracked, manufacture bottles, canisters, and cogs, replicating product that will never reach foreign markets. Soldiers turn semis back at the border. Executives charter planes, shift funds into Swiss accounts. How long before word of this hits the factories, the mines, the wicked textile mills? What good, what possible good, is supply without demand?
Copyright © 1996 by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All rights reserved. The Atlantic Monthly; May 1996; Vasectomy; Volume 277, No. 5; page 99. |
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