You sound like the Democrats in 1986, 1900, 1904 and 1908... They decried the loss of self employed farmers ... driven off the land and having to slave in factories for long hours and terrible working condidtions. They wanted the old style of farming to be enforced by government. Fat chance!!!
Manufacturing jobs peaked in the 1950s and have been falling ever since. By 2020 almost all manufacturing will be automated. A factory worker doing dull repetitive assembly tasks will as historical as one man making a living farming 80 acres with a team of mules.
A hundred years ago 96 percent of our population was in agriculture. Today it is less than 2 percent.
In 1955 about half our workers were in manufacturing.. today it is in the teens. In twenty years it will be less than 2 percent.
There are always those who want to stop the clock. No one has been able to do so yet.
No, they don't want to stop the clock, they want a time machine. Of course, they really don't know nor understand what life back in whatever era they envision was the real "UTOPIA", was like, but that's another subject. LOL
True. But we did not achieve that reduction through exporting farms.
BTW do you happen to know the comparable figures for those employed by government?