Her best hope in Germany was a government job—prospects for woman in the private sector were dim.

But rarely, if ever, do they publicly take the argument a step further, asserting that a growing manufacturing sector encourages craftsmanship and that craftsmanship is, if not a birthright, then a vital ingredient of the American self-image as a can-do, inventive, we-can-make-anything people.

It was the most active sector of American economy