The Day Congress Killed Small Business

I love art fairs. Not for the sweet paintings of apple-cheeked chickens on the handles of whisk brooms, but for the toys. I walk through the aisles admiring lovingly hand-made trains in multiple shades of natural wood, little cars with peg people that slide in and out, wooden name puzzles, and rag dollies. There is always someone who has spent the last year carving astonishingly lovely rocking horses who are four feet high and whose warm ruddy legs are almost impossibly smooth with hand-rubbed wax. I want to touch and drink them all in, buy them for every child I know.

When Son was nearly one year old, a cousin of mine sent him a fantastic wooden train made by a toymaker in upstate New York, who also makes replicas of 1930s Packards and 1920s fire engines. This toymaker has no online presence, but I met him in person at an art fair last summer, bought presents for my nephew, and kept his flier so that I could order more as soon as possible.

In the past few years, uncertainty about the safety of toys from China, in combination with my own preference for toys that foster creative play, has steered me more and more in the direction of hand-made, local, fabric-and-wood based toys.

You may feel the same way -- wanting to shop local and support small businesses, valuing the beauty and craft of things lovingly handmade.

Did you know that as of February 10, 2009, you may no longer have the chance to do just that?

That's right. The U.S. Congress, in its infinite wisdom, passed legislation last August to mandate stringent product testing for all items sold for children -- not just toys, but also furniture, clothing, feeding items, and anything else designed to make it into little hands. Working in conjunction with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the law (known as the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act) requires that every product manufactured for children undergo testing to determine its precise lead and pthalate content, and that each product then be labeled to certify its compliance with the law. Given the numerous recalls of lead-covered toys made in China, and the recent understanding of the danger of pthalates in plastic products, this sounds like a huge step forward.

Of course, like many regulations that sound great in theory, in practice this legislation is exceedingly short-sighted and problematic. Producers of children's toys will be required by law to pay for third party testing of every single toy design they sell -- testing which can cost up to $4000 per item. Mega-manufacturers will be able to absorb the cost easily enough. Mattel, for example, annually sells approximately $1.9 BILLION in Barbie products alone, raising the cost-per-unit of Barbie junk by just pennies. This testing and certification, which also includes provisions for random batch testing of finished products as well as of sample units, might certainly help ensure fewer lead-covered toys arriving here from Chinese factories.

But the toymaker of the gorgeous wooden train set my son has

-- one crafted only from local woods, unstained, and sealed with a hand-rubbed wax finish -- would have to spend these thousands of dollars to test every different style of train car he sells at craft fairs around the country. Because, of course, according to the way the legislation is currently written, despite the fact that the engine and caboose are made from the exact same woods, through identical processes, but are simply different shapes, they -- along with every car in between -- would each have to be separately tested and certified. (If you're interested, he also has circus cars filled with removable elephants, and all sorts of other fanciful things to put between the engine and the caboose. When I saw him at the craft fair, I counted 10 different cars available, plus engine and caboose.)

The grandmother who makes one-of-a-kind children's cooking aprons from recycled fabrics to sell on Etsy? She has to have every single apron tested before she can legally sell it.

This testing is so cost prohibitive as to put crafters, local toymakers, and small businesses out of business. Even if we imagine that the New York train maker pays a mere $2000 per item for his testing, he is facing something like $100,000 worth of product testing for the dozens of styles of train cars, trucks, and antique automobiles he makes. Where does a business that depends entirely on sales at one local shop and a dozen craft fairs around the country per year come up with that kind of capital? How can he possibly pass on such costs to his customers without pricing his toys out of the market?

Even more absurd, while local toy makers and small businesses are often at the forefront of their communities in terms of seeking out sustainable components for their toys, natural ingredients for their diapers, and enviromentally-friendly items to stock their shelves, the mandate for lead and pthalates testing is NOT nuanced to exclude, for example, "natural" components that could not contain these elements. Pthalates are a chemical ingredient used in the production of plastic. How would these end up infused in sheep's wool or maple planks? There is no concievable way. And yet makers of textile toys (say, hand-knit dolls) or unpainted wooden trains will still have to pay thousands of dollars to have their toys tested for dangerous pthlates they could not possibly contain.

In addition to making no rational exceptions for "natural" components like wool or unpainted wood, the legislation does not currently allow for component testing rather than finished product testing. So, small producers who pride themselves on buying only rigorously tested and certified components -- such as all-natural, unbleached cotton stuffing or locally harvested wood -- would still have to have their finished products tested and certified, even if every part of the final toy, from glue to thread to finishing wax, has already been tested and marked with batch numbers.

This kind of redundancy in the name of safety is precisely the opposite of what our economy needs right now. With big businesses crumbling around us, the economy in shambles, and proof at every turn of the unreliable safety standards of large-scale toy manufactures, the best chance many people have of making it through this financial mess is small business. And the best we can do to help out our own communities is buy local. ONLY THIS LEGISLATION IS GOING TO MAKE THAT IMPOSSIBLE. Small businesses by the thousands will be unable to afford this testing, and in six short weeks, will thus be unable to keep their doors open legally.

Ironically, then, the very legislation that is supposed to be helping to ensure we have safer products in the hands of our children is turning out to favor only the mega-scale producers that have had problems with lead and pthalates in the past and is punishing to the point of driving out of business the very companies whose exemplary safety records make "Made in USA" a point of pride.

And one of the biggest travesties of all, in this whole mess, is that this issue is getting almost no press. I have done a lot of digging online, and I can find no coverage on major national news outlets. There are small stories, with heartbreaking details of how this will affect specific local businesses, in places like the Grand Rapids Press. There was one short story in the Wall Street Journal online back in November. And beyond that, the only coveraage I can find is on people's blogs.

During a holiday gift-giving season when the nation's economy is in such dire straits, you would think that a story about the imminent demise of tens of thousands of small-business livlihoods would be making it into news cycles. But no.

It seems to me that the only way to combat this legislation is to raise our collective voices until they become loud enough that the incoming administration recognizes what a disastrous thing this law is for local small-scale producers of toys and children's items.

Here's what you can do to help:

1. Go sign the petition sponsored by the Handmade Toy Alliance -- a collective of small-scale U.S. toy and children's product makers formed to help raise awareness about this detrimental legislation. The petition itself voices support for more stringent safety standards but calls for rational revisions to the legislation to make it possible for small producers to comply. (See their proposal here, which includes exceptions for "natural" components, certification of components rather than finished products, and revisions to the testing procedures on the basis of scale for makers who do not produce toys in "batches").

2. Go to Barack Obama's Change website, and vote for this as an agenda item that deserves immediate attention.

3. Write to your United States Congress Person and Senator to request changes in the CPSIA to save handmade toys and children's products. Use the sample letter drafted by the Handmade Toy Alliance or write your own. You can find your Congress Person here and Senator here.

4. Write a post about this issue yourself and try to get the word out.

5. Twitter, Stumble, Digg, or otherwise pass on this post to anyone you can think of who might be in the position to get more attention to this important issue.

Failing these, your only option is to RUN, don't walk, to your favorite local toymaker, and buy all the birthday presents you'll need for the next few years, since unless this legislation changes, you've only got six weeks until she or he has to go out of business indefinitely.

For more information: you can read a copy of the legislation here (which also includes testing standards for the fashion industry and many non-child-related products as well). Go to the Consumer Product Safety Commission and read their information on the bill. Check out the Handmade Toy Alliance.