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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview
B-0019, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill”
Alester G. Furman, Jr., was born in South Carolina just before the turn of the twentieth century. By the time of his birth, his ancestors had lived in South Carolina for nearly 150 years. In the early 1800s, Furman's family helped to establish Furman University. Years later, Furman attended the University and later sat on its board of trustees. Furman speaks at length about his father's training as a lawyer and his early involvement in the establishment of the textile industry in Greenville, South Carolina. Furman's father went into business for himself, initially purchasing farmland for development of textile mills, and later buying and selling stock bonds in the industry. The younger Furman later assumed control of this family business. He first began to work for his father in 1914, following his graduation from Furman University. He describes the positive impact of the war on the family business, the growth of the business in the 1920s, the ramifications of "scientific management" in Southern textile industries, and the effects of the Great Depression. He also discusses the relationship between labor and management in Greenville textile mills and discusses the lack of unionization there. He also addresses changes in Greenville as a community and his activities outside of the family business, namely in relationship to Furman University, his family, and his civic activities.
Alester G. Furman, Jr., was born and raised in South Carolina, where his family had lived for generations. He describes his family's involvement in the founding of Furman University in the early 1800s, his father's role in the establishment of the textile industry in Greenville, and the evolution of the textile industry over the course of the early twentieth century.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
This is an interview with Alester Garden Furman, Jr. at his home in Greenville, South Carolina. The date is January 6, 1976. The interviewer is Brent Glass. This is the first of three parts of an interview. The subjects range from Mr. Furman's family background, his childhood and his recollections of his parents, as well as many of his business activities over the years. Why don't we just start Mr. Furman, by having you give me a little about the background of your family.
Well, my family came to South Carolina in 1755 from Esopus, New York.
They were members of the Dutch Reformed Church there. My
great-great-great grandfather Wood Furman moved down here. He was a
teacher and a surveyor. He was an educated man and he brought with him
his one year old son, Richard Furman, who is the one that we all feel is
the real head of the family that started the educational process in
South Carolina. This young man had no formal education but his father
had a good library for those days. There were all kinds of books and of
all kinds of philosophies. He learned to read Greek and Latin and he
learned a great deal about medicine. Of course, there was no formal
medicine in those days practically at all, except that another
great-great-great grandfather of mine, named Alexander Garden, was a
doctor in Charleston and the families subsequently merged, so to speak,
after one generation. Dr. Alexander Garden was a botanist and a
naturalist in Charleston. His life was written recently by two botany
Dr. Alexander Garden of Charlestown, and it's a very
interesting book. It was published by the University of North Carolina
Press.
I've not seen it, but I would like to take a look at it.
Well, it's a very interesting book. He had a son . . . Dr. Alexander
Garden was an old Tory; as a matter of fact, his properties were all
confiscated after the Revolution and he went back to England and died in
England. But his son, Major Alexander Garden, was an officer in Lee's
Legion in the Continental Army and he is the one who made the connection
with the Gibbes. And he married a Gibbes. Garden is my middle name.
A diplomat . . .
Well, he signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and
his brother, Charles Pinkney, was also a very prominent man in Charles
town. But he was a great friend of his, but he was not a member of his
church. I have gathered many hundreds of letters from the family, some
written to Dr. Richard Furman and some written by him and some of his
manuscripts. He has a manuscript there of his sermon before Congress in
1814 and he has a manuscript of 1808 of his nominating Charles
Coatsworth Pinkney to be President of the United States. Of course, that
was very small groups in those days and if you've read about it, you'll
understand. One of the things that always interested me was a letter to
him from Charles Coatsworth Pinkney that said, "Dear Dr.
Furman, I enjoyed your sermon very much today. I find that the bile is
very bad in Charleston this summer and the best specific for it is
Madeira wine and I am sending you over two cases. One case of old wine
and one case of new wine. I hope that it does you as much good as it has
done me. Your obedient servant, Charles Coatsworth Pinkney."
Well, I read that one day in the First Baptist Church in Charleston and
I said that I couldn't find where he sent it back.
Right.
Total abstinence was not part of Christianity in any place, even from the
first miracle. So, getting back, Dr. Richard Furman lived until 1825. He
was really the leader in the field of education in this state. He sent
his children to the College of Rhode Island, which is now Brown
University. He sent some to England. His oldest son by his first wife,
he was married twice, was Wood Furman and he was at one time the
Chairman of the Faculty at the College of Charleston, which was one of
the original city colleges. It was not denominational, it was a city
college. Most of the great colleges in New England were all started by
ministers of various denominations and the reason was because they were
the educated people and they saw the need of education.
I've never seen the figures on that, but that would be interesting.
Well, it's true. It's a civil war just like they are having
Right.
It's being published, I think, by the North Carolina Press.
I think that it's by Duke University.
Oh, it's Duke University.
I believe that's what Dr. Blackwell told me, but I'm not sure.
That will have something, a lot of it, in there. I have not seen it and neither have I seen the manuscript, so I don't know anything about it. Well, then my grandfather, I told you, came out of the Civil War and taught in Kentucky. He came back here and practiced law. He then became Professor of English at Clemson College and stayed there until he retired in 1912. He was then seventy-two years old. He was born in 1840.
What was his name?
Charles M. Furman. He was named for his uncle, who was president of the Bank of South Carolina in Charleston, which is the beginning of the South Carolina National Bank now. He owned quite a lot of land and did a terrific job. When the Civil War came along, Dr. James C. Furman signed the Articles of Secession. Charles M. Furman wouldn't do it, his own brother. He said that he didn't want to break up a nation that his father had helped begin. It shows you how different people in families are. They had just as many differences as could be, they didn't have to be antagonistic about it, but they felt that they should express themselves.
Now, Charles Furman, your grandfather, fought with General Johnston?
Joseph E. Johnston. He was at Greensboro when they surrendered in '65, after Appomattox.
And how did he feel about retiring to the North? Did he have any comments about that? Oh . . . he only spent the summer months up there.
He only spent the summer up there with his youngest daughter . . . well, she's living now. She is living in Massachussetts. Her son is with the American Shoe Machinery Company. His name is Charles, named for his grandfather, Charles Coles is his name and Kitty, as we call her . . . she was my father's younger half-sister but she's only two and a half years older than I am. No, four years older than I am, I believe.
And what's her name?
Coles. She's Mrs. Marion Coles. Well, going back now, my
Which president was this, now?
B.E. Geer. I'm sure that it is all written in that history, although I do not know it. Anyhow, my father stopped college when he was a junior and started reading law. He was admitted to the bar on December 21, 1888 and in that office . . . I was going to take you down there, I don't know whether you have time to do it or not, is his certificate for being admitted to the bar. It's hanging there on the wall now. The truth of the matter was, though, that he was an energetic person and while he was reading law, there was a man named Stone here who owned a great deal of land outside of Greenville and he got him to help him sell lots off of this thing and as a result of that, he got into the real estate business.
Who did he sell the lots to?
Anybody. Just any person that wanted to buy a lot to build a house.
This is around 1890, right?
1888 to 1890.
Were there people starting to move into Greenville?
Well, you've asked me something there that I couldn't tell you.
I'm just curious about why this was occurring at this particular time?
Well, we'll have to go back a little bit on that. There were people,
children of families that were able to build a newer house and they
bought the lots. The lots themselves were five or six or seven hundred
dollars. I mean, it wasn't any great big thing. Father told me very
often that Mr. Stone would say, "Alester, I need a little more
money." So, he would ask him to sell a lot and he would sell it
for five or six or seven hundred dollars and Father would make ten
percent or something like that on it. I know that he told me that in
1893 he had a partner named Mr. John F. Mitchell and they divided twelve
hundred dollars as their income for that year, six hundred dollars
apiece. That was when the big depression came in 1893. Well, as I say,
Father started in that and then he started insuring houses by corporate
insurance. Of course, around in New England and other places,
Philadelphia and all, they used to have these mutual insurance aid
things where they just paid so much in and they all had a little plaque
on the door saying that they were insured by a mutual insurance company.
Then, the corporate insurance companies started up back in those days
and he wrote insurance for these people. He was doing that to make money
while he was reading law. Well, when he got through reading law and was
admitted to the bar, he
For power.
For power. They would build them four stories high, just like they did in
New England. They didn't think about the one storey things
Was your father involved in planning these industrial communities?
Well no, there wasn't much planning done. I'll have to be fair. But what Father did was, he got very much interested in water power and he developed two water concerns on the Saluda River outside of Greenville and he developed a power plant down outside of Columbia. He sold this one to Duke and sold that one to South Carolina Gas and Electric Company in 1910 and 1912. But going back, he got interested in organizing a group here that would work to get these industries started and he was the first unpaid secretary of the Board of Trade in Greenville, which was what we call the Chamber of Commerce today.
Where do you think he got the idea for this?
I don't know where he got it.
This was happening in other parts of the South . . .
Oh, yes. It happened everywhere . . .
I'm interested in knowing how these people . . .
Well, of course, that's twenty-five to thirty years after the Civil War
and . . . well, for ten years, this country was occupied. It was just
occupied by troops. There were troops right here in Greenville. They
were trying to protect the slaves, as they called them, from being
Did your grandfather own slaves?
My grandfather did not and my great-great-grandfather, Dr. Richard Furman, freed his slaves. I don't remember my great-grandfather, he died four years before I was born, but his wife lived until 1911 and she had two blacks with her that had been slaves since way back there. And they were with her right up until the time she died. The old home is out here, when they moved to Greenville, they bought a home from a man named Green out here and Eugene Stone lives in it now where that Stone Manufacturing Company is located. He's got the biggest sewing operation in the United States, not all here, but in five or seven places.
Is that any relation to the Stone that your father did business with?
Yes. It was his grandfather.
What was the name of the man that your father worked with?
I think his name was Eugene Stone. Now, I could be wrong. He had a son
named R.G. Stone who I knew myself, but that's another thing. Memory can
do a trick on you.
Now, when you say "started," how was he involved in it?
Well, I'll tell you. In the first place, he went to get the land for
them. I mean, they had to have land. It's rather interesting to me,
because he bought land for concerns to put a mill on. Some foreign, some
local. There were some merchants here who had done pretty well and they
. . . for instance, Old Man John Woodside was a merchant on Main Street
and Mr. F.W. Poe was a merchant and Mr. James H. Morgan was a merchant
and they built the Woodside Mill, the F.W. Poe Manufacturing Company and
. . . oh, the Morgan mill was named . . . well, they called it the
Sampson Mill, but that wasn't it's name. American Spinning Company was
its name. That was some, then the Brandon Mill, Father got the land for
that and by that time, people wanted a local interest in it. They wanted
people to buy a little stock in it and as a result of that, he would go
out and sell, get people to subscribe to the stock I'd better say,
rather than "selling" it. He went to get them to
subscribe to the stock in different companies. In small sums. A hundred
dollars to a thousand dollars was a big sum. Then after they operated
for awhile, some of them wanted to sell that stock and they would come
back here and say, "You got me to buy this, now would you sell
it." So, it started him in the stock business. Then, he used to
do a great deal in municipal bonds. I laugh about it often now, because
a hundred thousand dollar issue of municipal bonds was a big issue.
Today, we don't think anything of ten million.
About how much would one of these tracts of land cost?
Oh, not much. Land was very cheap in those days.
He would buy from a local farmer?
Oh, sure. The farmer was glad to get rid of some of it, mostly.
Was there any suspicion on the part of people about bringing industry in?
No.
No resistence?
No, no resistence whatsoever.
They were pleased?
Well, they would be getting the jobs, all those people coming down from
the hills. Incidentally . . . this is really an anecdote that goes back
a little in time. While his father was Assistant United States District
Attorney, here were these people that would come in who had been drawn
for the jury, or some drawn as a witness. Of course, we had legal
distilleries here in those days. They had warehousemen and . . . what
did they call them? Well, it was the man who tested the strength of the
whiskey, whether it was eighty proof, ninety proof and all that.
Classer. That's what it was. Warehousemen and classers. But anyway, they
would come down here and what transportation did they have? They had
nothing but oxen and a mule and they would have to come down here
twenty-five or thirty miles from the up part of the county to the court.
At that time, the United States Court only had two districts. They had
the eastern district in Charleston and the western district in
Greenville. Well, the western district was everything in the upper part
of the state and all these people had to come in here. Here were these
Did he own stock himself in these mills?
Oh, he got very little, he didn't have any money to buy it with. He subsequently owned stock in them but he wasn't in the original doings because he just didn't have any money to buy it with.
Was he involved in providing machinery for the mills? Did he get involved with that?
Well, you see, it was the machinery manufacturers who really started
these mills, so in those days, there weren't any banks down in this part
of the country that could finance anything. He had no basic connection
with banks in New York or those kinds of things to do that. So, in his
first twenty years or so, he was just working tooth and toenail to make
a living, if you want to know the truth about it.
You were telling about the farmers owing . . .
Well, they only paid off their debts once a year. They would go to a bank
and borrow several hundred dollars to "make a crop" as
they expressed it. They had to buy the fertlizer and of course, they had
what they called "factors" in those days and they
would factor a man on a farm. They would furnish him not only fertlizer,
but they would furnish him with money to buy the food for his help on
that farm, for his tenants. All of that went into this whole situation
and then they would pay off usually when the crop was collected. So,
always the fall was the time in this part of the country when the
farmers had money. Now, it is amazing because most of them do more
trucking business around here. There
Why is that?
Well, because in this up country it is very difficult to use machinery on cotton, there are two many hills. They go into flat countee where they can use cotton pickers mechanically and all those things. There is a definite reason for that. So farmers . . . well, jumping over to what I was really talking about, you take in 1914 when the First World War started, cotton plummeted from 11¢ down to 4½¢ a pound and many textile mills who had bought futures on cotton at 10½¢ or 11¢ couldn't cover the margin down to 4½¢ and they went out. Sixteen mills at that time, Father was on the board of some. The Brandon Mills where he was on the board had a lot of troubles. Of course, as we went along, as I said, he developed this power plant out here with the help of Lockwood, Greene and Company who were the engineers out of Boston. Mr. Edwin Farnnier Greene was the head of that at that time and the J.E. Sirrine Company came out of that Lockwood, Greene and Company. Mr. Sirrine was the southern representative of Lockwood, Greene and Company and Stephen Greene was the head of it. They have got a firm in Spartanburg now, Lockwood, Greene and Company and it's a branch of the one in Boston and New York.
That reminds of the fact that Stuart Cramer was the representative of Whitin Machine Works.
The old Mr. Stuart, Sr.
Right.
I knew him, but I knew his son, Stuart Cramer, Jr. very well.
And D.A. Tompkins was also a representative in the South. That seems to be a pattern . . .
Oh, yes. You take Kent Swift, who was head of Whitin Machine Works for many years up in Whitinsville, Mass. As a matter of fact, I was sent up there by a couple of banks in New York to buy that mill back in 1947 or '48.Kent Swift was a great friend of everybody in this part of the country. He spent a great deal of time down here, but that was an old antiquated situation right there, I came back and told the banks in New York, "Let me tell you something, that's Kent Swift and nobody else could run that plant but Ken Swift. You know, that has happened to many, many family owned situations. Here these big conglomerates go in and take them over and then the things don't make money. Take the Fuller Brush Company. They used to be one of the big things and what's happened to them: they are in Consolidated Foods and it is trying to liquidate them now. No . . . it is Consolidated Foods that has got Fuller Brush Company, I beg your pardon. Genesco liquidated S.H. Kress and Co. Now, it is just unbelieveable.
Right, I guess that is sort of a cycle, though. Because originally, they thought that it was wise to merge with these . . .
Of course they did. They all thought that it was. There is no question of
that, but there is a man here now who was a young fellow who went to
work for S.H. Kress and Co. here in Greenville named Christopher Trammel
and from working starting as a clerk putting up in the stockroom,
receiving the stock coming in and putting it up before it goes
You went to Furman?
Yes. And then he promised me that I would go to Harvard Law School if I would finish college. Well, when I got through in 1914, we were all broke again and I've told this often because it is true, I couldn't have got into Harvard Law School. I never applied, but I know that I couldn't have on my record, I couldn't have done it.
What were your college years like?
Oh, I loved athletics and loved to dance and just would do as little as I
possibly could. I laugh and say that if it hadn't been for father paying
the tuition over there, they would have gotten me out in a hurry.
There wasn't much dancing at Furman.
Well, there wasn't, but I was a member of all the dance clubs at Clemson. Grandfather was over there teaching, you see, and I would go over and stay at his house and go to all the dances there and there were all the dances in Greenville and all. Well, there was always a lot of the student body at Furman University that was dancing.
Yes, just not on the campus.
Just not on the campus, that's right. I was on the Board of Trustees when
we opened it up for dancing on the campus and at that, the students
didn't care, didn't want it. All they wanted to do was fuss when they
didn't have it.
That's human nature.
Well, the thing interested me all during that time because I was president of the Board of Trustees all during the time that we were making this move. Oh, I got letters, you would be surprised how many letters I got from people telling what a terrible thing I was doing. I wasn't doing it, but I was a symbol of the Board of Trustees that was doing it and I was getting all the flak. They would say, "Oh, that is terrible, these buildings over here are holy ground and it shouldn't move." I said, "Well, my great-grandfather moved it from Winsboro up here and I believe that he would be willing to go to a better place and better equipped." You've been out there and seen it so you know what we've got out there. Well, it's the best planned campus, frankly, that I ever saw.
It's beautiful.
And we worked on it six years planning it. Not building it, it took years
to build it, but we worked six years . . . John Plyler was
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
I was digressing a little bit from the real story, but this is an
anecdote that comes into it . . . I was down at that convention in
Charleston and I was walking across from the old Citadel Square Baptist
Church to the Francis Marion Hotel one day at lunch and I saw a young
crowd standing in front of the door of the hotel and one fellow was in
the middle of them and he was just hammering away and talking about the
evils of dancing. I stopped and I listened a minute and he caught his
breath and I said, "Pardon me just a minute, but tell me what
is wrong with dancing." "Why," he says,
"they dance in houses of ill fame." I said,
"I'll take your word for that, I've never been in
one."
That's a good point because why would someone have to say they are honest if they are?
Well, it's what you do that shows whether you're honest or not. So
anyhow, that was instilled in me way back there, if you've made a
mistake just say so and say it right there, the quicker you say it, the
I was going to ask, you said that the business was pretty bad in 1914, but it picked up after the war got going?
Yes, by '15 we had begun to do quite a little business for the time. I said to my girl at the time, "I believe that I'm making enough now that we can get married." I was making a little under $175 a month and so, we were married in 1916.
What was your wife's maiden name?
Janie Earle. Her family was the Earle family that came into South Carolina from Virginia and owned a lot of property up around Tryon and Landrum and all that area. I don't know if you've ever been in that part of the country, have you?
No.
Well, the old home place up there is known as the Four Columns. Oh, a man from Chicago owns it now, but it was her great-grandfather's home and is a beautiful place. Her father was a general practioner, a doctor for many years. His brother, his younger brother is over at Clemson College now . . . all of them are graduates from Furman University, but Sam Earle was a graduate and went to Cornell and he is a professor of engineering at Clemson and he's ninety-eight years old today and he's over there right now, not teaching of course, but he's got a building named for him and he's living in that hotel over there, that apartment house. Dr. Earl was a great man and one of the greatest engineering professors that I know of anywhere. Anyway, her mother's family were Gilreaths.
And what was your mother's maiden name?
My mother was a Hoyt. Her father was wounded in the Battle of Manassas
and walked on a crutch for the rest of his life and he was a newspaper
man. As a matter of fact, when he died in 1904, I was nine years
What was that called?
The Mountaineer. His two employees, the printers, one
of them was Mr. B.H. Peace and the other was Jones Peace, his brother.
B.H. Peace is the man, his family, finally got the Greenville News and Piedmont and his grandchildren now own a
great large part of that Multimedia Inc. company. B.H.Peace, their
grandfather, was a great friend of mine. I used to go in there as a
little boy and count newspapers for what they called an exchange. You
know, other newspapers would send them a newspaper and you would send
them yours and if there was something in yours that they wanted to clip
and use; they didn't hesitate to clip it and use it and vice-versa. I
used to count them out, lay the sheets out, roll them up and tie them
with a string around them and sell them to the Negroes for ten cents a
roll to paper the inside of their house with. Their houses were just
like tissue paper, the wind would just blow through them and that was
the best insulation you could put on.
Newsprint?
Yes, and they were much thicker than they are now. But anyhow, that was my grandfather, he lived next door to us and he was quite an old gentleman.
What was his first name?
James A. Hoyt, James Alfred Hoyt.
Are there any other childhood memories that come to mind, anybody who you were close friends with, that you have kept up the friendships over the years?
Oh yes, I've got one right next door to me here now, who was a boyhood friend of mine, W.H. Beattie, whose family were bankers here and with textile mills. His last job was president of Woodside Mill, it was sold to Dan River.
And you were boyhood friends?
Oh, yes. He's living right next door to me right now. Of course, most of my boyhood friends are dead.
Well, did you go to a public school?
Oh, yes. I went to . . . well, that's an interesting thing, if you ask
about friends and all. I went to public school through the fifth grade
and then I was taken out of public school and most of my friends, their
families had money, we didn't. And they went to prep schools in Virginia
largely, Staunton Military Academy, Woodbury Forest, Episcopal High
School and incidentally, all of those schools are still running right
now. Bill Beattie went to Woodbury and then he went to Furman for two or
three years and came back and then he went to Cornell until the First
World War broke out and then he left Cornell and went in the army.
Melville C. Westervell, his father was president of the Brandon Mills
here and he was best man at my wedding. His father came up from
Charleston and ran a little Pelham mill down here, a little yarn mill.
My father helped him develop the Brandon Mills and Father was on the
board there and had a little stock in it, it was big to him then but
it's little now. Then they built the Westervell Mill which is now the
Judson Mill, which is owned by Deering Millikin Company. The Brandon
Mill is owned by Abney Mills. Of
Now what mill was this that you worked in?
I worked in Brandon Mills and I worked in Monaghan Mill and I played baseball at all of them. We used to have good baseball in these mills here. I played college baseball. Of course, I couldn't play baseball for money so I had to get a job working for them to play baseball with them and I did that. I wasn't any great baseball player, don't misunderstand me, I was just an ordinary outfielder.
Well, that's about as far as I got in baseball.
Well, I had a lot of fun with it, of course.
These mill communities never became part of the city, did they?
Well, parts of them did.
Oh, eventually maybe.
I want to bring that up, as I got back . . . I went to the First World
War and when I got back, Father had accrued quite a little business. I
had gone into it at nineteen and I was now twenty-four. I said,
"Father, we've got to do more than a one-man job around
here." We started underwriting stocks in these mills. That is,
when they wanted to build, like the Southern Worsted Company, we
underwrote a million dollars of preferred stock and sold it, some common
stock. The Judson Mills, the Dunean Mills. We did a good deal of
underwriting because we made a connection where we could finance it with
the Chemical Bank in New York and my old firm has got an account there
now, it has ever since 1919. I had great friends up there and made quite
a lot of friends in the First
Quite a nice gift.
Gave each one of them, I think, around $50,000 apiece. That's
what I keep telling him . . . I laugh and . . . talk about anecdotes, I
never will forget that I used to do a lot of business with him. I
started him in the mortgage loan business when we got the Prudential
Insurance Company account in 1919 and he was my subman down in Florence.
We made mortgage loans all over the state. That's what I started to tell
you about, when I got back, I said, "Father, we've got to do
more than what we are doing." So, I got the account of the
Prudential for all but one city in South Carolina and we loaned money
all over. Father had been making mortgage loans for years for his
friends in Charleston, bankers and lawyers down there. Lawyers were the
executors of estates, very often like the old Boston trustees and he
used to make a lot of loans for them. Well, I got this Prudential
account and we did a lot of business with them. Then we developed the
security business, mainly because the mills then were beginning to look
for more capital to enlarge. We got involved in that and of course, that
took us on into other types of investment. Now my son, when he took over
and I retired fifteen years ago, he had been there and had been made
president of the company and I decided to get out
Were you now a company?
No, we were a partnership, we brought them in as a partnership. In fact,
we didn't become a company until 1952 . . . I think it was '52 before we
incorporated. We dissolved the partnership then and it left so much
capital in there . . . when I got out, I got out entirely. I don't own a
nickel in it. I gave the people in there the biggest part of it because
the insurance business had a great value to it
What was the other fellow's name?
Gaddy. Harold is one of the finest people that I ever knew, but he never
gave a soul a damn cent.
How did your father react to your coming back and saying, "We've got to make some changes."
Well, Father said onetime, "We don't have enough business to
divide up with other people." I said, "I tell you, if
they don't produce, they don't stay." That's when I took over
and of course, when '32 came along, it was right down to the bottom
again in this country and it was really tough. I had against my father's
judgement . . . he was probably right, although I don't know, I think
that maybe I got something out of it, but they asked me to help try to
save a bank, the People's State Bank, and I worked like a dog in that
thing for nearly two and a half years and at one time, I thought that we
had it on the road and then they found a false statement of somebody
that had given it to them, the man was in the bank, and that wiped out a
good deal of what we had been able to build
I would like to backtrack for just a second back to the twenties.
Well, there was a . . .
Not a depression, perhaps.
Not a depression, no, but in May of 1920, we had begun to feel a real
depression coming in. I mean, business was getting poor. The textile
business was getting poor and all that kind of business. Then, it picked
up after '21, '22 and began to get back on its feet again. The textile
business has always been a sick business. It does this way always.
That's the reason that the textile business has no business having a lot
of debt. It's got no business having any debt at all. When you get them
expanding on equity, financing . . . well, it just shouldn't be that
Did the discussion ever come up in these early years of perhaps a city like Greenville, or the South in general, becoming too dependent on one industry?
Well of course, there was a lot of discussion and of course, it's only changed in the last few years as we have had a tremendous influx of other industries in here. As a matter of fact, I was on the board of a good many textile mills at one time. I'm on the board of one now, which is a little mill up in North Carolina that I pulled out of the Depression in 1939 and rehabilitated it and the man who I got to go there and run it for us, Mr. A.G. Heinsohn, Jr., is now my age and we'll be 81 our next birthdays and . . .
Where is that?
Spindale, North Carolina. Charlie Reynolds is the head of it now, an able
boy . . . man, I should say. I call him a boy because he worked there
when he was very young. They thanked me the other day in a board meeting
because they had plenty of money and wanted to buy another mill and I
said, "That's the worst thing that we could ever do. This is no
time to buy anything, keep that money in the bank." As a result
of that, we have been in fine financial shape and we can continue to pay
our dividends to the stockholders. Not only that, we kept people on
payrolls and kept it running when we couldn't have done it, and that's
what textile mills ought to all do. No question about that. But going
back to the twenties, you were talking about that, we had a pretty good
boom . . . well, I wouldn't call it a boom, but we had a good business
atmosphere here from '22 until about '28. Then, this thing started
going, the stock market had gone clear out of the world and then in
April of
At this point, you were maybe on the board of directors of this?
No, I wasn't on the board of directors of Judson.
Well, what kind of influence could you have to . . .
Well, the influence was simply an economic influence. They needed new machinery and instead of selling more stock or borrowing more money, if they would sell those houses and finance it, they would have money to put in new machinery.
I see. So, you made the suggestion to them?
I sold it to Mr. Milliken, Roger Milliken's father. He's the man that I
first started working with and we sold the houses at Judson No. 2, sold
them cheap and immediately, those owners begun to fix those places up
instead of acting like a tenant and tearing them apart, they would go in
there and paint them and they put a lot of these
You acted as agent?
Oh, we sold from Alabama to Virginia and sold those houses and the agent
of those mills. We would go in there, appraise them, set
Yet, there are some villages that are still owned.
Just a few. Cannon has a good many that he hasn't sold yet. We sold some houses for Cannon, my son has, I haven't. We sold some for them and as I say, we sold for mills all through, from Virginia all the way down to Alabama.
Was there ever a company named Draper?
The Draper Corporation?
Yes.
It was a weaving company.
No, I'm talking about another company that designed mills and . . .
Oh, you are talking about the architect. I don't think that he sold any houses.
No, but did he do any designing of mills and mill villages?
Not that I know of. There wasn't any real designing of mill villages. They would just have a standard house and would just build them.
Well, I came across a book that B.A. Tompkins had, a real old one, in which he has all these plans for houses and specifications and all this. A whole chapter of the books was . . .
Well, that was a good thing to do.
I don't know how much it was followed.
Well, I don't know either, to tell you the truth. The last houses built were . . . well, there weren't many houses built after the Second World War.
By the companies.
By the companies.
Was your father friends with any of these people like Tompkins or old Stuart Cramer?
Oh, yes. He knew them all. You say "friendly," and I'll tell you, frankly, I don't know. I know that there wasn't animosity, let's put it that way. Of course, the ones around here in South Carolina were . . . you're talking about North Carolina, right?
Right.
Now, Stuart Cramer, Jr., who I knew . . . he was a member of the Augusta National Golf Club with me for many years. His wife, his widow, married a fellow named Maury Smith and I think Stuart went to the Military Academy. I mean, to West Point . . . but her sons . . . she was a Scott, her father was the president of the First National Bank of Charlotte and she is one of the nicest people that you ever saw. They are living up at Linville in the summer and they lived down at Mountain Lake in Florida in the winter.
While we are on the textile industry, let me ask a few questions that have come to my mind as I have been studying this. One was this idea that these mills were very much in competition with each other. They were all very small, I know, in North Carolina and in South Carolina. Was there ever a realization that "maybe we are sort of beating each other over the head?"
Well, let me tell you, I was a member of the Merchants Club in New York
on Thomas Street, which was the luncheon club for textile people and I
kept a membership there for many years because I was in New York for
every two weeks or three weeks every month. I used to go around to all
these selling agents up there because frankly, I got a great deal of
information about what was going on and not only that, did a lot of
business with them in their stocks, their individual concerns and at the
same time, I was lending money for the Prudential Insurance Company.
Well, the heads of those selling houses up there were rather
interesting. There were many of them and I went in there once when one
of them was saying, "Well, if it wasn't for that So-and-So over
there of Spring Mills cutting the price, we would just be
fixed." And I would go over to Spring Mills and he would say
the same thing about the fellow that I just left.
There were some smaller ones, too, that were individual.
Oh, yes. A lot of them. Of course, when I got into this Spindale thing,
we put in our own selling house in New York. Instead of paying a 6%
selling commission for selling those fancy goods we made, it cost us
1½%. It made a lot of difference about a real profit, we've
had a more profitable experience with that on selling those goods. But
all
Where is this located?
Biltmore Forest Country Club in Asheville and Mr. J.E. Sirine was one of
the organizers