Ordinarily, you sit at your desk. But looking under mine led to a discovery that caused me to “ruminate” (from “chew the cud”). But kneehole observations that aren't especially profound can inspire knee-bending prayers.

One family artifact in my Study is a mahogany pedestal kneehole desk with a top inset of hand tooled leather. My friends admire the desk, and I treasure it as its third generation owner.

The style is 19th century. But the desk was manufactured in mid-20th century. It was given to my grandfather, J. A. LaCour, Sr., when he retired from Citizens National Bank in Meridian, Mississippi. As the owner-operator of a local feed mill, my grandfather served as a bank director and the interim president of Citizens bank in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. After he died in 1962, the desk passed to my father. When my mother died in 2015, family legacy ownership (really a “stewardship”) passed to me as the third generation “J.A.L.”

I recently discovered a brass medallion affixed inside the long drawer over the kneehole. The insignia reads “Jasper Cabinet.” My internet research on the company led to interesting discoveries — and some ruminations.

Jasper Cabinet was founded in 1904 as Schaaf & Schnaus, a saw and planing mill, in Jasper, Indiana. In 1916, the company changed its name to Jasper Cabinet and started to handcraft cabinets, chests, hall trees, accent tables, and liquor cabinets. Jasper Cabinet was most famous for home office furniture. The company became nationally prominent by handcrafting wooden secretaries and desks — like my grandfather’s kneehole desk.

Fast forward one century. In 2015, rebranded “Jasper Home” built a manufacturing facility in China. In 2018, Jasper Home had 100+ stores in major Chinese cities, South East Asia, and Singapore. Jasper Home’s website features items that resemble Ikea, World Market, and Home Goods furnishings; but no handcrafted fine furniture like my grandfather's desk.

This economy is “not my grandfather’s Made-in-USA.” Ruminations?

• China and Asia are now “the factory of the world.” China has lifted millions of citizens out of poverty and has quickly built its middle class. But China’s rising ambitions to regional geo-political dominance are a grave concern.

• Most manufacturing has moved offshore. “Flat world” trade, unregulated capitalism, and supply chain economics lower production costs to companies and prices that consumers pay at Target, Walmart, or Rooms-to-Go. Is that good? Bad? Both?

• Growing income disparity and a shrinking American middle class can be traced to global economic, manufacturing trends. American manufacturing capacity, not professional elites, made the 20th the “American century.” Can technology innovation, and highly educated legal immigrants, keep America great?

• Can America educate and train blue collar workers, like the skilled artisans who handcrafted my grandfather’s desk? The decline in the quality of public education and vocational training cast significant doubts.

• Can America rebuild its middle class? The current administration proposes large-scale economic initiatives. Compare the 1930’s, when FDR promoted large federal programs to rescue Capitalism from the Great Depression, a time when dispirited American workers were vulnerable to the hollow promises of Bolshevism.

• Hoover era Republicans criticized New Deal initiatives like Social Security, the National Industrial Recovery Act, infrastructure and public works projects like the CCC as Socialism. But it can be argued that FDR was a "go-big" pragmatist, who would try anything to promote economic recovery, which only came with World War 2. Is this déjà vu? Military conflict is a helluva way to regain post-war prosperity.