Last week­end I bought some cut­lery for my new pad. I searched high and low for some qual­ity American-made forks, knives, and spoons and found none. Even Oneida, the sto­ried Amer­i­can brand, offered only Chinese-made products.

Today I learned that I wouldn’t have found any­thing no mat­ter how hard I looked: Oneida closed all their man­u­fac­tur­ing oper­a­tions in Sep­tem­ber 2004. Oneida exists today only as a brand for cut­lery imported from Asia and the Mid­dle East.

In the end, I set­tled for a set that bears the curi­ous mark­ing “Cam­bridge CHINA.” The pol­ish­ing is dissatisfactory—there are uncom­fort­ably sharp edges at the ends of the han­dles and around the lips of the spoons—but it’s noth­ing I can’t cor­rect in the machine shop. Too bad people’s stan­dards are so low.