Americans Who Actually Make Things

Manufacturing is back, at least as a talking point.

President Barack Obama has been making an election-year case for a "built-to-last" economic strategy centered on American manufacturing. A recent Brookings Institution report argues that manufacturing is a powerful engine of exports, innovation, and high-wage jobs. In a feature story in the New York Times Magazine, Adam Davidson extols the resurgence of craft manufacturing in everything from high-tech precision parts for military helicopters and guided missiles to new herb mustards, all-natural beef jerky, and artisanal pickles. "Instead of rolling our eyes at self-conscious Brooklyn hipsters pickling everything in sight," Davidson writes, "we might look to them as guides to the future of the American economy."