Sellers couldn't make enough. We were using it faster than he could make
it. We made sort of an agreement at that time; I would tell Everett how
much I needed, and He'd tell me how much I could buy from him and how
much to buy from somebody else, and who to buy it from. And as a result,
it raised hell with the Durene association. After one of the Durene
Association meetings Everett was in New York and he came over to Spring
City and he said, "Your name came up at our meeting. Somebody wanted to
have the Durene association boycott the Spring City Knitting Company and
expell from the association any of the durene mercerizers that were not
selling at the damn-fool price." They never fixed the price, but they
would say that only a damn fool would sell for less than that, so
Page 19 Everett called it "The damn fool price." You know
how down to earth Everett was; he was very earthy. So he told me who to
buy from and who not to buy from. It got to the point that we were using
yarn from Ewing Thomas, Sellers and—oh, Rankin, who was president of the
Durene Association berated Everett Jordan, and he said, "Everett if you
stop selling Spring City for less than the Durene price, I'll stop
selling Spring City for less than what you call "the damn fool price."
Everett told me all this. He said, "You better find somebody else."
There's a fellow by the name of Ed Golden who is Ewing Thomas salesman
who I did business with. So they fired Ed Golden for coming to me—they
blamed him for coming to me and telling me what was going on in the
Durene assiciation—but it was Everett that had told me; so I told Ed I
would give him a job. Well he was a fish out of water, he didn't know
anything about selling. So Everett says, "You better get somebody to
take the place of Ewing Thomas." I said, "Who." He said, "Well there's a
"SHORTY" W. H. McDonald over at Southern Mercerizing in Tryon, N. C. So
I called Shorty McDonald on the phone and I told him I wanted some 50/2
mercerized. Everett told me not to tell anybody that I told you to call
him. I told him I wouldn't. So McDonald asked me how we knew about
Southern Mercerizing, that they didn't do any business in Pennsylvania.
I said, well if you sell me you'll have your first customer in Pa.
anyhow. So I sent Ed Golden who had been the yarn salesman for Ewing
down to see Shorty McDonald and I wrote out an order for 500,000 pounds
of 50/2 at "your very best price." He called me on the phone while Ed
Golden was sitting there. He said, "I never had an order for 500,000
pounds of 50/2. Is this for real?" I said,
Page 20
"certainly." He asked what price to put on it. I told him to put the
best price on it he could, if he charged me too much we would pay it,
that it wouldn't break us, but on the other hand it would be the last
order he would get. If your price is right, you'll get another order. So
he put a price on it that was about 15¢ a pound less than the Durene
Association price. I'm not sure of those figures, but they are
approximately. It was maybe a nickel a pound less than Sellers price
was. So he sent Ed Golden back with a contract that was 15¢ a pound
less. I drew a line through it and raised the price 5¢ a pound and I
called him on the phone and I said, "You underbid my other suppliers,
but I'm going to pay you the same I pay them." I never made a move
without talking to Everett. Everett said, "As long as you do that,
you'll never get into any trouble, because if you paid them a nickel a
pound less, he might go to somebody else, maybe to one of my customers
down here"-at that time most of the mercerized yarn went into the
hosiery business—it was practically all hosiery. So that became the
standard. Everett actually set the price of mercerized yarn. The Durene
assoc. had a price and they had another price which was the Spring City
price, and that lasted for years.