The gargantuan statue of a dining-room chair that graces the centre of Martins-ville is a tribute to the legacy of the local furniture-making industry. That legacy is grim, however: for decades, local factories, bested by foreign competition or automating to keep pace with it, have been shedding workers or shutting up shop altogether. Earlier this year American of Martinsville, a 100-year-old furniture manufacturer whose headquarters overlooks the giant seat, declared bankruptcy and closed its local factory, eliminating 225 jobs. Another local firm, Stanley Furniture, recently laid off 530 workers. Two other big local industries, textiles and tobacco, are equally sickly. Unemployment in the town, which was already 9% before the recession, is now 20%.
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