In sorrow and anger: textile giant Arnold Lorber rails against nation's vanishing industrial might.

The year was 1982, a recession year, and Arnold Lorber, chairman of the Gardena-based textile giant Lorber Industries wanted some leeway from his bank, First Interstate.

"Everything was overcollateralized, I just wanted some extra time," he recalls. Lorber asked to reschedule interest payments. The bank wouldn't bend.

Later, on the same day that his bank politely refused to extend terms, he drove along Figueroa Boulevard with the First Interstate loan officer. Through the car window, they saw an office building for sale.

The bank officer asked if Lorber would like to buy the building. "I said I didn't have any money," remembers Lorber.

The banker persisted. How much would you pay for the building if you had money? he asked.

"Five million dollars," answered Lorber, counting the number of fingers on his hand.

The loan officer replied, "Oh, we'll lend you the money."

It was then, Lorber says, he realized something was adrift in the American capitalist system. "You have bankers that will lend on commercial real estate, but not to build a factory. Now we have a city full of empty office towers, and you can't buy American-made capital equipment."

As a result, says Lorber, 61, the American standard of living and technological sophistication is falling. Societal stress results -- a shrinking economic pie increases tensions among the different groups in the country.

When Lorber talks, Angelenos might want to listen. Lorber has lived all over the world, and seen societies collapse before.

As a Jewish youth in Czechoslovakia, a young Lorber wore a Nazi uniform as a disguise, bringing food to hideaways. His father was taken into a forced labor camp and never seen again. Asked if he has nightmares about his World War II experiences, Lorber answers, "I dream about it, I think about it, day or night. It is always there."

After World War II, Lorber started a textile plant in Czechoslovakia, only to have it seized by the Communists. He fled to Venezuela and then, finally, to the United States, going again into the textile business. Over the years he modernized his plant and now employs 500. Sales exceed $100 million a year.

Since coming to America, Lorber has also married, fathered three children, become active in Jewish charities, and speaks about America in the super-patriotic tones of those who have found refuge and success.

Lorber is youthful in appearance -- he looks ten years younger than his age, and has a full head of hair, which he attributes to "good real estate." His recipe for staying young? "I stay interested in things. You are young as long as you want to learn." People who say life is boring are in fact boring to be around, Lorber says.

He even says that America eventually will grope its way to a "Second American Industrial Renaissance," although when he is asked how this will happen, he falls silent.

Indeed, Lorber now buys all his textile-printing equipment from overseas, in stark contrast to 20 years ago, "when everything built in America was the best."

And Lorber's equipment today might have been provided by the United Nations: There is huge textile-dying and printing equipment from Holland, Austria, Germany and Japan.

America's enemies in World War II -- verily, the nations that made life hell for Lorber -- are now providing cutting-edge textile printing capital equipment to the textile printing king.

In Lorber's factory, computer-guided lasers engrave images on large, eight-foot-wide "drums." These drums, filled with ink, then roll upon, and release ink upon, large bolts of cloth. Several drums, acting in succession, can ink several colors onto a single bolt of cloth, with great precision.

Vats of ink, 52 gallons each, litter the premises.

Lorber's state-of-the-art equipment is his forte: It allows Lorber to conduct a quick turnaround on printing orders -- a turnaround that overseas printers, due to shipping problems, cannot match. "If somebody needs something done in three days to three weeks, they come to me," he says. "If they can wait longer than that, they can go overseas."

While Lorber likes his equipment, it distresses him that it is mostly imported. "I am telling you, it is so simple. You don't need office buildings, you don't need lawyers. If a country has no industry, it is a poor country. If it has industry, it is a rich country. If it has high-quality industry, it is a very rich country. What else is there to know?"

If American-made capital equipment were available, Lorber says he would buy it -- buying overseas causes problems.

He explains, "You lose easy access to spare parts, technical assistance. Relations between the machine builders and industry needs are strained," he says.

Yet America, by Lorber's view, does not support manufacturing as do the Germans and Japanese, particularly in the financial arena. "In Germany, you can get long-term financing for capital equipment. You can get a 20-year loan, and three-year hiatus on interest payments. They understand to just to build a factory and get it up and running takes several years. Here, they want you to start making the monthly payments right away."

Japan, to jump-start its economy after World War II, had the Industrial Bank of Japan, a lending institution devoted to factories, Lorber notes.

Even with little, Israel offers more in the way of tax breaks and subsidized factory space than America, says Lorber.

An extensive traveler (and conversant in nine languages) Lorber, advises Americans to get tough on international trade and to consider how other nations improved their industrial bases.

"We are not a wealthy country any more. We can't live in the grandeur of noblesse oblige," he says. "Our industrial base is in a shambles. People see no future."

Lorber says the United States must find ways to free up capital for factories and to allow banks to make loans to manufacturing, an inherently risky activity.

Lorber cites another example from his own history to make a point. In the 1980s, he wanted to build a textile plant in California that would convert cotton -- the state's largest crop -- into textile cloth.

Lorber had been importing the textile cloth from India, Pakistan and other nations. He talked the idea over with banks, but could find no lenders.

Soon after, the Japanese constructed a textile plant in Northern California, and began milling the cotton. "They could find the financing," he says. "I could not."

For America to compete in the future, Lorber urges trade and bank policies that create a stable environment for domestic manufacturers.

"Nationwide, we just need a few hundred, or maybe a thousand, industrialists," he says, "people who re-invest, who don't bleed money out of their plants. Every time a successful factory is created, imitators also set up plants, and supplier networks emerge. A round of new factories -- state of the art equipment -- that's what America needs."

SNAPSHOT

Arnold Lorber

Native of: Kosice, Czechoslovakia

Current residence: Beverly Hills 

Age: 61

Education: no formal degrees