Not every manufacturer is big. In fact as you said, small businesses are the job creators but many of those are small factories with under 50 employees. I once worked in a bindery that only had 5 full time employees and put out over a half million books per week.
HEH...this is NOT news to me, as my present company is about the same size as your book bindery. But our products are VERY "high-tech content" systems rather than high volume. We do about $1MM sales a year. We're on the same page.