Drew an old factory today. In St. Louis. I did not go to St. Louis to draw it, although I would not have minded. It’s a pretty neat place!

Whenever I think of factories, I always think of the terrible things that go on in them. The children who worked (10-14 hours PER DAY) hours during the Industrial Revolution, inhaling God only knows what, getting mauled or killed by the huge machines instead of playing outside or going to school, simply in order to make things cheaper for consumers. Thank goodness for child labor laws.

And then there’s the more recent argument about how removing all of the production to China has created job loss in America, and how Chinese workers are being treated poorly. Move the problem away and it’s easy to forget about it. Plus we all love our cheap (and not so cheap, I’m looking at you Apple! Although… I do love your computers. So I’m a hypocrite.) products, and if we don’t have to think too hard about what’s going on behind the scenes we can enjoy our multitude of cheap junk in peace.

And yes, I know that this sort of mass production is necessary for the way we are used to living and gives jobs to a lot of people, but if that way is causing problems for the world by consuming our resources and creating terrible working conditions for people, I think we need to have a paradigm shift. Quality over quantity, less is more, reduce and reuse; all of these maxims hold a strong message that we need to adopt as a society if we want to continue living in free, healthy world.

But anyway… let’s focus on the facade (this is an old electrical plant I think… not something like a textile factory):