'Made in America' in Seattle: Creating Jobs, 'One Thing' at a Time
Seattle residents line up to share one U.S.-made item that would boost jobs.
July 13, 2011 — -- You saw it.
The "Made in America" team knocking on doors in a Seattle neighborhood.
From house to house to house, we emptied homes of furniture and other household items that had not been made in the U.S.
Then, residents were hit with the real challenge: Find one thing left in their homes -- or at a store -- that had been manufactured here and that they could not wait to share with the rest of the country.
When we returned to their block -- after checking out the Olympic Uniform Co., the NuBe Green store and Cascade Designs -- the families had already lined up with their one thing.
The "Made in America" movement had multiplied in this Seattle neighborhood.
One by one, residents revealed what they had found -- simple American staples that could create American jobs if we only looked at the label before purchasing.
'Made in America': The Lodge Skillet
Debbie and her daughter brought their prized skillet. It gets more seasoned every time she cooks her signature biscuits and bacon. She's passing it down to her daughter.
"Never once bothered to look to see where it's from," she said.
It was made in America -- in Tennessee.
The Lodge Co., which made the skillet, told ABC News today that with more Americans cooking at home, it had hired two more people just this week. Lodge guarantees the skillet lasts 100 years.
That was music to our ears. So was the guitar and ukulele that others offered as their one thing. Both were made in America.
"We have duct tape," said one dad who had pulled the most versatile thing from the family's junk drawer. "We had to search for it but, sure enough, made in America."
It turns out that the same kind of tape is made overseas and brought here. The American duct tape is the same price as the foreign-made one, so why not put an American to work.
The Hartstock family plopped down its KitchenAid mixer -- the family's secret ingredient when it comes to its favorite chocolate chip cookies.
The company told us that mixer is on 65 percent of all bridal registries. Well, if all those couples got their wishes granted, that would be 1.4 million American mixers sold.
'Made in America': Houston, We Have a Request
Even the Seattle Fire Department lined up, donning U.S.-made uniforms.
And remember Olympic? We found out that if we could get just one more city -- say Houston, with its force of 5,400 -- to buy uniforms, that would create 40 new jobs right now.
And then there was Niki Trumbo jumping on her one thing -- an American trampoline, proving that an economic rebound can be as simple as every one of our one things.
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