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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 C-0136, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Edward Gruber was born and raised in Spring City, Pennsylvania. During the early twentieth century, his father opened up Spring City Knitting Company, an underwear manufacturing company, later called Spring City Mills. Starting out as a small business, the company rapidly expanded. While going to school, Gruber worked as an apprentice at the mill. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1931, he returned to Spring City to work for his father full-time. Shortly after he came to work there, the company took off financially—despite the impact of the Great Depression—and his father decided to let him handle the business end of the company, which he did into the 1980s. In the 1930s, Gruber began to work closely with B. Everett Jordan of Sellers Manufacturing Company; Jordan later became a United States senator from North Carolina. Establishing the beginnings of a lifelong friendship and business partnership, Gruber and Jordan worked closely together over the years, to the mutual benefit of their businesses. Gruber describes Jordan's leadership and business acumen. In the early 1950s, Gruber bought out his father's share of the company and expanded its reach to the West, establishing plants in Arizona. Gruber explains how he experimented with different fabrics in order to produce a superior yet affordable product, how he established powerful business partnerships with department store distributors such as J. C. Penney and Sears, and the vast expansion of Spring City Mills under his leadership.
Edward Gruber ran Spring City Mills, his family's Pennsylvania-based underwear manufacturing company, for several decades beginning in the 1930s. He explains the expansion of the company; its relationship with department store chains; his efforts to maximize profits by producing a superior, yet affordable, product; and his personal and working relationship with North Carolina Senator and textiles businessman B. Everett Jordan.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
This is Ben Bulla, I am in my Holliday Inn room in Pottstown, Pa. I flew from the Greensboro, NC airport to Philadelphia yesterday afternoon; arrived in Philadelphia around 2:00 P.M., rented a car and drove out to Pottstown for the night. My appointment with Edward L. Gruber (known as Ed), one of our biggest customers in the yarn mkt. of Sellers Mfg. Co. and affiliates. Ed owned and operated the Spring City Mills at Spring City, Pa., he also had a number of knitting mills that supplied him knitted goods, and Sellers Mfg. Co., Jordan Spinning Co. and Royal Cotton Mill Co. provided yarn to these knitters for Ed's account. I am looking forward to my meeting with Ed because B. Everett Jordan, the man whose biography I'm attempting to compile and write, held Ed Gruber in the highest esteem, and our companies were closely involved with each other for many years.
One comment about my trip thus far: As I flew in to Philadelphia, this large city, and drove the distance from Philadelphia to Pottstown, my mind went back to the days when Everett Jordan must have traveled these many miles by plane and by car—many times by car—and I tried to imagine how he must have planned his sales pitch to convince Ed Gruber, and many more like him, to buy yarn from our plants. Everett Jordan was known as a good salesman, and I'm hoping Ed Gruber can give me some insight on how Everett Jordan worked with him.
Ed, before we get into your dealings with Everett Jordan, how about giving me some background on you and your career.
My father came down off the farm up here in Berks County. He was one of
14 children and his mother and father lived on a little farm.
Thirty-eight acres isn't quite big enough to raise 14 children you know.
What they did; as soon as the kids would get big enough they would farm
them out to the neighbors and they would work for the neighbors you
know. So my father was farmed out and the man that he worked for told
him that if he got the corn in by Thanksgiving, why he would give him a
ticket to come down to Spring City to visit his sister. His sister was
married and lived down in Spring City. So he came down, and didn't have
anything else to do so he went along to work with his brother-in-law on
Thanksgiving. He was a pattern maker in a foundry, and right next to it
was an underwear mill. So my dad was wandering around and he walked over
into the basement of the
The guy didn't pay him?
No. So he quit, and my father didn't know, but one of the mill agents
called a couple of the yarn mills and people like that and told them
that there was a little Dutch guy there in Spring City—sell him anything
that he wants, he's not going to ask for any more than he needs, and
he'll pay it, and if he don't, I'll pay it. Dad never knew that for
years—that somebody was guaranteeing his account you know. He just
thought that it was no trouble getting credit, so my
Did he call it Spring City Knitting?
Yeah. He bought two used sewing machines and a knitting machine. He only
made one size underwear, but he was smart enough to figure out that if
he made the smaller size, it didn't cost as much and he got just as much
for the small size as you did for the big size. He had one girl that ran
the sewing machine and he ran the knitting machine. I have all of the
original books right from the day one, and all his accounts. When I was
growing up I wanted to work in the mill and he sent me away to prep
school. I came home one summer and I told my dad that I wasn't going to
go back to Mercersberg. I had it all figured out that I would try to
butter him up real good. I told him that if I spent another year at prep
school then another four years in college thats five years. In five
years time, I said, "I could learn more from you in the underwear
business. Why do I have to learn Spanish and French, Geometry and
history to make underwear." He didn't say anything. So I packed all my
clothes and came home. Four O'clock in the morning came time to get up
go to work. Cutting grass and stuff over at the farm. I was up at four
o'clock every morning and worked until about five o'clock or six o'clock
in the afternoon. He farmed me out. I worked for about three months with
a farmer. I didn't even live at home, I lived with the farmer
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
. . . just one summer running knitting machines. I believe that was my freshman year in college. And the next year I wanted to work in the mill and he wouldn't let me work in the mill because the whole next year, all the bad cloth they had and everything that went wrong with the cloth, they all said, "that was the cloth that Edward made. He was running the knitting machines here last summer; that was made on his machines." My fathers only answer was, "Well I guess that if what you tell me is so, you guys must have sat on your ass all summer long and let Edward run all the knitting machines, because he sure made one helluva pile of cloth." As a result of that he wouldn't let me go back to work there.
I got married the day after I got out of college and we went up to our place in Canada and came back ten days later and went to work and have been working there ever since.
On the first day at work—I knew my father got there early so I thought
I'd get there early too—I walked into the office at 5:30 and my father
looked at his watch and he says, "This is a helluva time for anybody to
come to work the first day on the job! you must want a job awful damn
bad if you can't get to work on time." This was 5:30 in the morning. So
the next morning I got there at 5:00—he was still there. The first day I
was there I asked him what I was supposed
I did that for a couple of months. The first of October my dad had his
man friday that ran the office; he sent in the specifications to the
yarn shippers and he bought all the little supplies, the labels and
things like that, and
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
At the beginning of the snuggies business we made the samples—I told them to set up 4 machines—we had to have 4 sizes—but it had to be made out of mercerized yarn. Now—the last year I was in college, that was the summer of 1930—Everett came up to visit my father and my father took him over to this farm where I live now. He bought the farm in 1927 and in '28 and '29 he was rebuilding the house and doing a lot of landscaping. When Everett went back home he went out and dug up a bunch of holly trees and sent them up to my father to plant around the house, and there are still some of those trees out there. They've been there since 1930. They were native North Carolina hollys, but they never got any red berries on them. Don't your hollys get berries?
Some do; I have some that do.
I have a lot of English hollys that I got some time ago; when I bought them I got 4 females and 1 male. You have to have both male and female or they won't pollinate. I guess that may be the reason that we never got any berries on the holly trees that Everett sent up to my dad. I could see Everett Jordan riding around the farm up there around those holly trees.
We needed some pink 60/2 mercerized yarn. The only mercerized yarn that we used was maybe 2 cases a month; I believe it was 30/2; it was used as a curving thread for flat lock machines. That was the only mercerized yarn that we used and the only mercerizer that I knew was Everett Jordan. I'd never met Everett other than that summer up at the house. I called him on the phone and told him that I needed some 60/2 dyed pink and asked if he could get it for me. "Oh yes," he said; so he shipped me up a case of 60/2 mercerized yarn and I made up the samples and I figured it out-
Was it dyed pink?
Oh yes. I don't know whether he had a dyeing plant at that time or not,
but he sent out to somebody and had it dyed. I think I remember that,
because I remember when he put in the dye plant there. I figured out
that the 60/2 mercerized pink—I believe that was around 64¢ a pound at
that time. Oh I don't think it was as high as 70¢, I believe it was 62¢
or 64¢. I took these samples up to New York and the only ones that I
could find anyplace were at Burgoff-Goodman's where my mother-inlaw had
bought them for my wife at $4.50 a pair. So I asked them how much we
could sell these for; I said I could make
What year was this now?
This would be the spring of 1932, because I got out of college in
'31—this would be the next spring of '32. My father had never done a
half a million in sales a year; that year we did $850,000 worth of
business and had $490,000 profit. My father got out of the hospital and
went down to Florida—first time he was ever in Florida—and he bought a
house down in St. Petersburg—He'd come once a month to tell me what to
do and so—but we made so much money that first year—he couldn't believe
the figures. As a matter of fact he came home and shut the mill down for
three days to take inventory. I told him he had better not take
inventory for if you do you're going to increase the profits by another
$100,000. But we took the inventory and I showed him the results—and he
still said there was something wrong. I had pulled out everything I
could; there were sheets of goods that had been around there two or
three months or more I'd just write "no value"—a lot of yarn we were
having a lot of trouble with, I'd just write "no value" on it. He just
couldn't believe we had made that much profit. After that he wouldn't go
into the mill for three years. He said the mill's there, you run it, and
as long as you don't lose any money
Did he say do it your way or his way?
He said do it my way—the University of Pennsylvania way.
So Everett started making all this mercerized yarn for me, and got to
using so much of it that Everett couldn't make enough of it. So I got
Ewing-Thomas over here—owned by Cannon mills at that time I think. We
used nothing but mercerized yarn for about two and one-half years.
Everybody else got into the act—when you're making that kind of money
everybody wants to make it too. I started to make $2 or $3 a dozen—we
had been lucky to make 25¢ or 40¢ a dozen. Everett was charging me for
the 60/2 mercerized—Ewing Thomas wanted like 10¢ a pound more, so I
asked Everett—this is where Everett starts becoming Everett Jordan. He
is probably—well not probably—he was the most honest man that I ever met
in my life. We were sitting over at Spring City one day and he said,
"Well I'm gonna tell you all about the Durene Association." He says, "We
have a meeting about once a year up in New York, and someone would get
up and say, ‘Well it costs so much to make 60/2, etc, and anybody that
sells for less than that would be a damn fool wouldn't they? Is there
anybody in this room that is going to say that he is a damn fool, or
that he is gonna be a damn fool.’" Of course no one said they were, so
that set the price of yarn and nobody would undersell that price; it was
a fixed price. So Everett explained this whole thing to me. He said He
didn't want me to tell anybody nothing, but you just pay him whatever it
is and whatever help
That program lasted for a few years, but in the meantime I got women's underwear—I could see that we were not going to make cotton rib-knit underwear for women—everyone was making rayon underwear. Everysince then it's been man-made fibers. Maybe today they might be using some cotton, but not a helluva lot. I don't believe my wife has any cotton underwear. I got into men's underwear and we went to the carded yarn; the combed yarn. We were selling underwear for $1.57½ a dozen—that's when Penney's was selling underwear for 19¢ a pair. This is a long and drawn out story, but I have to tell you all of this as background. Since I knew you were coming up I started thinking about my relationship with Everett and I was going to make some notes and then I realized that I didn't have any idea what kind of information you were looking for, so I made no notes.
My father had sold underwear through the jobbers. He wouldn't let me sell
to the chain stores; Penney's or Sears, or Montgomery Ward or anybody
like that because over here in Spring City at one time there was seven
cast iron stove plants. They made kitchen stoves and things like that;
then they modernized them a little bit and put a gas burner one side;
then along came the electric stoves and the cast iron stoves went out,
but in the meantime those stoves plants in Spring City and Rorey's Ford
started going broke one by one. They sold to Sears, Roebuck and Sears
would take all they could make and they could tell
Was that carded yarn?
Yes. Then we went into combed yarn because we couldn't make any money for 19¢ underwear and I figured at $2 they could sell for a quarter or 25¢ instead of 19¢ so I made them combed yarn. They told me they were making more money on 25¢ underwear than on 19¢, so they moved up to that. We got so we were practically running the whole plant for Penney's.
Was 25¢ the price for one item?
Yes, for one garment. They paid $3 and a 3% markup that brought them down
to the $2 see, so they sold them for a quarter which would be $3 a
dozen. I had to have something better so I asked Everett. I told him we
had gone from carded yarn to combed yarn and I'd like
What year was this?
This would be about 1933 - 34. They had to be folded so the customer could see there was three garments in there. Here is the first pack we ever made; look how yellow the waist-bands have turned. This is how Everett and I became so close. We used 2 ply yarn for a few months and Penney's then wanted something for a big sale, and it had to be different than what they had. They wanted it for some anniversary or something. They were willing to sell it for almost nothing. Everett said to make it out of mercerized and put the Durene label on it. So we not only made it out of Durene but we put it in the package. So that mercerized became the biggest program in the whole country. We started to use more mercerized yarn—well we used mercerized yarn for years, all during the war. I wouldn't bid on any government underwear because I was so damn busy with all this stuff; we kept growing so damn fast. That fellow that had lectured me over there, he kept pushing me. I remember one year when he asked me what was the most business I had ever done. I told him around $700,000 to $750,000. He knew my father didn't like J. C. Penney and he wouldn't have anything to do with Penney or anybody that was connected. He came awful close to running me the hell out because I was doing business with Penney's.
So Ross Dillon and I became very—he said I want you to do a million in sales this year. So he called me around the middle of December and wanted to know what my sales were to date. I told him it was around $900,000 plus. He said I want you to ship a million dollars of underwear this year. I want you to call Pop Gruber and tell him that you shipped a million dollars worth of underwear. Here's enough orders that are supposed to be shipped in January or February, but I want you to ship them in December so you can get your million in sales. Well that continued, and the next year it had to be 2 million dollars. Take that and show it to Pop Gruber, he said.
So that three-in-a-pack thing was so successful that they made all stores
carry it. At first it was only their bigger stores. Penney only had
about eight or nine hundred stores at that time and maybe they had
mercerized underwear in three or four hundred stores, but then they
insisted that all the stores carry it. All the stores—the only thing
they would have on the counter would be mercerized yarns. Everett and I
were sitting over in Spring City one day and I told him that the Swiss
ribbed shirts made of mercerized yarn, when they are bleached they lose
their elasticity. He said, "Why don't you make them out of bleached
yarn?" So we made the Swiss-ribbed out of the bleached yarn. At some
place in along there he put in a bleaching kier. I think he started
bleaching yarn before he started the dyed. I'm pretty sure he bleached
the yarn himself—it was down in a basement somewhere where he had the
mercerizing. Everett not only sold me mercerized yarn that was cheaper
than these other people, but his mercerized yarn was better. He had some
trouble—Penney's had some of the packaged
Why did you buy from other people?
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
Did the Durene Association make any more complaints after that?
It came up every year for quite a few years, but it finally got to the point that other memebers of the Durene Association would meet Everett's price and Shorty McDonald's price. I used to buy my thread from Standard; but Standard and Dixie were the two that would never sell for a cent less than the Durene price; so I never bought any Durene from either of them.
One day Everett and I were talking and I said, "Everett, we have to have
something better than Durene. We've got to come up with something new.
We just can't keep sitting on the same thing because everybody else in
the underwear business has started to make Durene underwear, and as soon
as somebody else starts making it they cut the price. We got to have
something better. So Everett blended Silk with cotton, he blended linen
with cotton—that's all I can think of at the moment. But we made up
underwear out of all these blends—we made samples. We always had
something on the shelf. We didn't care what the price was, but we always
had something to keep on Penney's and Sear's buyers desk all the time
when they were looking for something new. Anytime we would hear of
something, Everett would make it. Everett sait it was going to be awful
high in price, but he thought he could blend cotton and polyester. So
Everett made 60/40; 60% polyester 40% cotton. Well it was too high in
price. We made the garments and they were perfect. Took them up to
Penney's and they ran them through all their labs and they performed
like a million dollars, but the price was real high. Everett came up one
day and he had a whole bunch of roving that was wrapped up in brown
paper and he asked me to take a look at it. I said, "What the hell is
that?" It was so soft and shiny. He said it was pima cotton. That ought
to ring a bell with you because you got to the point that you were
running practically nothing but pima cotton for Spring City. You had all
those mills down there running on pima cotton for quite a few years. So
we started this pima cotton program. Oh I'm getting ahead of
myself—Everett brought this pima cotton and I asked him how it would
spin. He said it would make the most beautiful
Who was going to sue DuPont?
Penney and Sears. Well DuPont backed off that deal fast, they agreed that 50/50 was o.k. So this evolution of the underwear business all stands with Everett Jordan. That's the reason I'm telling you all this in detail. Everett was not only innovative and creative, but he knew the spinning business. We'd go to other people to try to get them to make the same thing and they couldn't make it. When we got to the place that we used the yarn faster than Everett could make it then he would tell somebody else what to do. He would tell them how to make it.
One day I flew down and picked Everett up at the Raleigh-Durham airport
and we flew down to Kannapolis and we had a meeting with Charlie Cannon
and Don Holt. Charlie Cannon had sent some of this polyester over to
Wiscassett and the damn yarn would fall apart. I don't know what they
did but Everett told them what to do about it. Later I
Did Charlie Cannon tell Everett how to get his breaking strength higher?
Yeah. It had something to do with the roving. I knew at the time—I'm not sure.
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
You see beyond all this Everett was not only a man of integrity; a man
with a nice friendly smile; he was not only genial, but he was a very
generous man. Everett would go out of his way to be helpful. This
Everett did—I think he did this so often it became a part of his life;
to go out of his way to be helpful. I know, in walking around through
the plants, if he ran into somebody, whether they be black or white, and
especially black—Everett, If he knew somebody was having trouble at
home, or something like that he would go out of his way to see how he,
or his company, could do something to be helpful. You know his wife,
Katherine, was just like Everett in that respect. I
Does that answer your question?
Yes.
Regarding Everett: His magnetism would attract the best out of almost anybody and everybody. If I said something nicely about Ben, it was because of the magnetism of his father that I said it. I said that Ben was probably the only honest yarn salesman that I ever knew; I probably said it because first of all, his father's personalty commanded respect and commanded honesty, and I would give him an honest answer. That's probably the reason I said it.
Ed, I don't want to inject any sour notes, but so far we have
The only criticism that I can recall off the top of my head from any of his competition was that he was one hell of a tough competitor. The reason he was a tough competetor was because he knew the business. First of all he was dedicated to quality; he was dedicated to service. Beyond that he knew the business well enough that I would compare him to Charlie Cannon in knowing the cotton market. Now if you want to call that criticism on the part of his competitors then, yes, they criticized him for being a hell of a tough competitor. He was a tough competitor. Everett was not a "Patsy." He was not a patsy for anybody. You could push Everett just so far but no further.
Did very many people ever push him?
You see Everett was so smooth, and so clever that if people were trying to push him by the time they would get done trying to push him, it would appear that Everett was pushing them rather than them pushing him. I mean it.
I know I used to go to the meetings—now that reminds me of a situation:
There was a cotton bill that come up before the Senate; they called it
the 6¢ a pound cotton bill. Charlie Cannon and I sat side by side before
the Senate committee. We both testified—Charlie Cannon, as one of the
biggest producers of textiles, testified that the 6¢ a pound would be
passed on to the consumer. I testified, as a manufacturer of underwear,
that the 6¢ a pound would be funneled through us to the consumer. If we
got 6¢ off the price of yarn, the price of the underwear that we sold
our customers would be reduced by
The waste comes out.
Yes. Charlie Cannon was talking about the price of wages having gone up
in the meantime since he had testified before congress; overhead and
other things had increased; he was keeping faith that the three cents he
was passing on was the equivalent of the 6¢ he had indicated to congress
he was going to pass on. My quarrel with Charlie was that it didn't. Now
we at Spring City, we refused to accept shipments from anybody that
didn't pass on the 6¢ a pound. I figured that 20 or 25% waste on combed
yarn would more than cover the increases
Ed, the bill we are talking about—was that the so called two-priced cotton system?
Yep.
Remember we had a false price because of foreign competition—foreign markets. We were paying—the foreign markets had an advantage over domestic people here. Then the two-priced cotton system was supposed to correct this?
That's what this was supposed to do. And Everett, behind the scenes, had as much to do with getting that bill through the Senate as anybody that I know of. There was a lot of other people that stood up and beat their chest and took credit for it, but Everett would just sit back and smile. He didn't want credit. Everett was an egotist—his egotism he kept within himself. He never wore his egotism on his lapel. He never tried to overpower or storm anybody into . . .
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]
agreeing with him or going along with him just because of the sheer
weight of his influence. As a Senator—yes I can even say—people in North
Carolina—he never pushed the people around, people that he could have
pushed around if he had wished to in North Carolina because he was a
United States Senator. Everett was a great "live and let
[END OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE B]
. . . I get awful long winded, Ben, I'm sorry.
That's o. k. Ed, keep on; this is great.
But the polyester program had gone. I said we had to have something that would sell for a higher price. I had been reading something about DuPont's program on quiana which was to replace silk. In the meantime Everett had been experimenting with—well we started off with nylon, but that turned yellow; orlon, that was the wool counterpart—the nylon of course turned yellow. That wouldn't bleach, so Everett said he'd get some, so he got some staple and made the quiana for us. He made the quiana out of 80's so—I missed one in there—I used to get into trouble: Everett would make me, say the Pima Prince, I'd take it to Penney, then I didn't have anything to sell to Sears. I'd go back to Everett and tell him I had to have something to sell Sears. So he got into Egyptian cotton. He even labeled the stickers in the cones "Royal Egyptian." You see all things originated down at Sellers.
Who drew up the names?
I had an advertising agency over in Reading that we used. They came up
with Pima Prince then we wanted something else and we labeled that
"America's finest cotton made by America's finest craftsmen to produce
America's finest underwear." That whole program was built around those
three statements. Then with Sears we got the Eyyptian cotton. That
program was built around "The world's finest cotton, to make the world's
finest underwear" and that was Sears program.
I used to call Everett on the phone and say, "Hey, I'm in trouble." He had a saying, "It's all right to get into trouble as long as you don't draw any blood," or something like that. He had some sort of saying, "just so long as you don't draw blood" or"you're going to have to go get a surgeon's license" or something like that, or"you go to jail". He had so many homey statements like that you know.
Yes, I was hoping you would recall some of those—I need that. If you think of more be sure and give them to me.
When we start reminiscing a lot of these things will come back. So then Inca came out with that 1 1/2 denier staple—real fine staple that was real soft—it was similar to quiana.
What did you call the quiana when you sold it?
Quiana. [Here's a package of it.]
So that's Quiana. 75% nylon 25% 2 ply pima cotton. Did Sellers make all of your Quiana?
Yes. Then we needed one for Sears, so we took the Inca 1 1/2 denier and
they called it "Golden Comfort." Sears is still selling it—the Golden
Comfort line. Now that's then End of the Line in the
development of underwear and there hasn't been anything developed since
then.
This Nylile—cotton and nylon—how did it work out?
Oh, that nylile—he twisted nylon with cotton, but in order to make a new generation of mercerized yarn—Everett always kept saying, "We've got to keep those mercerizing machines running." What he did with that was he put in more twist and mercerized it. Everett coined that name "Nylile."
Did it have any stretch to it?
Not necessiarily; as a matter of fact I would guess it would have less stretch because it was a tighter twist. But it made a helluva nice garment. It gave the cloth a more sculptured look—it wasn't fuzzy. I know that originally he gassed it—I don't know whether he actually gassed it or we just talked about it, to get rid of the fuzzy look on it, but I'm not sure whether it was actually gassed. I know it was discussed.
We used to just sit around and talk like you and I are here. We would talk and talk. I didn't know what you could or could not do. I just kept asking questions.
Was the nylile program; was that a Sears program?
That was a Penney program. That's the reason I'm working with Penney's right now—there are still a couple of the original underwear buyers there now.
How about Ross Dillon?
Oh, no, no, no. Ross Dillon died long before any of these—he died even before the mercerizing program started.
Did you meet Ross Dillon at Pottstown?
No, at the Penney's office in New York. That was when Penney's was down
on 34th street. Then they built their own building—they're up there at
53rd street next to the Hilton Hotel. They have the Penney building up
there. No there were numerous buyers came along—boom-boom-boom. Penney
had a policy—anything you brought them in that was new that was yours.
That was the reason Spring City grew as fast as it did was because of
all these new programs that pushed us into Penney; and pushed us into
Sears with a new program for them. You see we went
Ed did you sell To Cluet-Peabody in '74?
I sold to them in '68—that's when I went down and paid Everett the money he loaned me at the time—well that's another story.
When you sold in '68 what was your total sales volume then?
About $75,000,000.
How many plants did you have?
Well, we operated 19 plants. Five of those we just leased. All the time we were getting this extra business these manufacturers in and out of the state started going broke because they lost their business, so as they would go out of business we would go in and make a deal with them to take a hundred percent of their production and lease the plant. If the management was o.k. we'd keep them there and sometimes we paid them to stay the hell away.
Were these knitters or cutters and sewers too?
Both.
Did you have a spinning plant out in Arizona?
No, that was cut and sew. We made all the cloth here in Pa., and shipped it to Arizona.
You didn't have any spinning mills at all did you?
No. No, you see here in Spring City we had three plants, there was two plants in Arizona, one in New Mexico, two in Georgia—let's see—two in Arizona, one in New Mexico and two in Georgia that would be six—then fifteen here in Pennsylvania.
Now we ought to back-tract a little bit because when we start
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[START OF TAPE 4, SIDE A]
In your fathers old house?
Yes. My father, he had a stroke about 1950 and all of sudden he became
interested in the underwear business. We used to have a board of
directors meeting— the board of directors was my father, our attorney,
myself and our accountant. I decided I was going to build a plant in
Arizona—
Getting back to Phoenix. I went out and I bought 25 acres of ground and
started to build a plant and my father, having had that stroke, said
that he had never agreed to build a factory in Arizona. He said that if
we built that factory out there then the one we had here in Spring City
would be standing idle. Fortunately we had made a deal when I agreed to
go to Arizona with Penney and Sears. I told them both that my father was
objecting like hell to my building this new plant out there and they
became as excited as all hell about having a plant where they could have
overnight delivery instead of 3 to 4 weeks, plus the fact that the
freight rate was $11.50 a dozen from Philadelphia to L. A. From Phoenix,
it was 90¢ a hundred. Round figures, 30 dozen underwear made a hundred
pounds, so instead of the 35 or 40¢ a dozen freight; 3¢ a dozen freight.
That was our profit—more than our profit. So we had another board of
directors meeting and my father accused our attorney and our
accountant—he fired them right off the board of directors just like
that—he said that they took out the record of the minutes and retyped
the record of the meeting where we had agreed to built the plant in
Arizona. He told me he would either buy me out or I would buy him out,
and that he would give me a year. I said, "How much do you want for it?"
He said, "I want what it's worth, you know what it's worth more than I
do. You tell me how much you're willing to pay me, I'll either take it
or we'll liquidate." My father owned 83% of the stock at that time and I
owned 17%, so there wasn't much question about whether it would be
liquidated or be sold. He was calling the pitches. I went down
I had to borrow $2,200,000, so I went down to the bank in Philadelphia
that we had done business with. We had never borrowed—oh maybe we would
borrow a half million or a million for a month or something like that.
They said they wouldn't loan me the money, said we were paying too damn
much money, said the business wasn't worth two and one-half million
dollars, said we were paying my father too much money. I said, "What do
you mean too much money, what establishes a price is a willing buyer and
a willing seller; that establishes the price of anything." I went back
to Everett again. I said, "Everett, they won't loan me any money." He
said we would go over to Winston-Salem and talk to Archie Davis. Archie
Davis and Everett and I sat there and went over all the figures, and
Archie Davis says, "Everett, if you think that's o.k. we'll go along
with it." So Archie Davis came up to Philadelphia with Everett and we
went down to the Philadelphia National Bank. Archie Davis was trying to
tell Philadelphia National Bank that they should loan us the money, that
Wachovia would participate with them; they would go 50/50 on the loan;
they would back up Philadelphia National Bank. Well these staid old
Philadelphia bankers—while they were sitting there talking, somehow we
got around to talking about fox hunting. Oh, I used to go fox hunting
over with the Radner Hunt over here, and this Bob Potts and Maurey
Dorrence of Philadelphia National Bank belonged to the Radner Hunt and I
used to fox hunt with them every Sunday morning. I'd take my horse down
and we'd hunt every
[END OF TAPE 4, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 4, SIDE B]
Didn't he say something about a turnip field?
He said, "You know when you're out hunting there's nothing like finding a
turnip patch, pulling out a turnip, rubbing the dirt off on your pants,
cut the top off and eat a turnip, it's better than a drink of water." So
Pots said, "You mean you'd shoot foxes?" and Everett said, "Yeah, that's
all a fox is good for is shooting." Well that's the worst thing you
could ever say to those old stodgy Philadelphia lawyers who had been fox
hunting all their lives with their fancy red coats and all that kind of
stuff, and when Everett told them about being out there eating a turnip
that brought down the house. I know walking down the street we kept
talking about how Everett had pared them down to size. So Everett was a
fox hunter.
It was a transaction that was done very confidentially. Everett Jordan told me to tell nobody in our company.
Nobody in the industry ever knew that Everett had any money in Spring City KNitting Co.
How much did Wachovia loan you?
It was a little bit less than two million—I believe that Everett loaned us two hundred thousand—I think. Maybe three hundred.
I believe it was three hundred. You had three hundred thousand cash of your own.
So I guess we borrowed a million, nine. Philadelphia National Bank said I couldn't pay it off in ten years—Archie Davis set it up on a six year term loan with a baloon and if I handled it all right they would refinance in six years. I kpet telling him that we'd pay it off is less than six years. To make a long story short we paid it off in four years and three days. I was going to pay it off in four years, but I missed it by three days because Penney screwed me up on our cash flow at Spring City, because Penney, at that time of the year, used to owe us—Penney's would pay on the 10th, the 20th and the first of the month. Every ten days we'd get a check. We were supposed to have a check for two or three million dollars come in on the 20th of December, but he had miscalculated, so instead of paying him off on December 31st—the end of four years
In our part, Ed, I remember I had some Spring City Stock I held in my safe. Was that security for your loan?
Yes. I don't remember how much stock he actually had.
We had it in our safe—not in our name it was in your name—it was never transferred on the books.
When I started talking to Cluett I went down to see Everett and I think I paid Everett 750 or 800 thousand for—it was three hundred thousand and the way it worked out we took interest on the money and-
It was on a granduated scale each year.
Yeah we added the interest to it and then built it up and that's the way it came out just like as if I never paid any interest on it. I used to remind Everett all the time because—you see I used to pay Everett 2, 3, 4, 5¢ a pound more—or as much more as I could afford to pay him than anybody else. in lieu of interest on the loan. Everett knew all of that because I used to show him what I was buying and who from and what I was paying and everything else.
I believe I went down to Washington and took a check along to Everett around 67 or '68—does that sound right to you? It would be toward the end of '67 I'm pretty sure.
I can verify it.
I know he called you and you mailed me back the stock, and I was in a position to deal with Cluett-Peabody. Those negotiations went on for a year or two I guess—
I know when I went in to see Everett I had a worksheet where I had it all
worked out how much it was this year and then the interest for this
year, and next year, and the next and next and it added up to this and I
rounded out the figure and I had a check for it and I said, "Everett,
now if this isn't agreeable to you let me know." He looked at it, he
took the check and he said, "That's fine." That's
Did you have a formal agreement of any kind?
No.
Verbal?
Yep. I think I had a note with Royal and one with Jordan and one with Sellers. I think I had signed three notes.
I believe that it stipulated that after a certain period of time that you would pay so much per year to get the stock back—the amount of the loan plus a rate of interest over a period of years.
I don't recall, anyhow what Everett was—I believe you're right because we did that and the numbers that I came up with were more than was on those statements. I know it was more. If Everett wasn't satisfied he never said so. He just said, "That's fine." He took the check and that was it.
That sounds exactly like him.
Oh yeah, that was Everett. Listen are you ready for a little lunch?
One thing that kept popping into my mind was the word "friend" I knew
that you and I were going to talk about the fact that Everett and I were
friends. Well that word friend is used very, very loosely. I have said
for many years that any person that has a friend the way that I would
interpret the work friend—if he in his lifetime has
[END OF TAPE 4, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 5, SIDE A]
The only person that I ever knew that was always right—no wait—
You're never wrong—
You're never wrong, but you're not always right. That was one
Just what kind of a man—what was his personality?
We discussed this at lunch time. I told you that he was a friend and I referred to the fact that a person was fortunate to have five friends. Everett Jordan was a friend that you could count.
Do you think he was always in command of the situation?
Oh yes. Everett had a personality all of his own. I mentioned about his
being in command—I think I said to you that he had a a personality that
was like a magnet. Everett had the kind of personality that attracted
substance. Everett was always in complete command of himself and of the
situation. To go one step further, he was usually in complete command of
the people with whom he associated and surrounded himself. He was in
command because of his personality, his integrity, his friendship for
people. His complete understanding. He had the unusual knack of
understanding the other man's problems. This is one of the greatest
attributes you can say about anyone, because anyone that understands the
other man's problems is first of all an unusual person. That person
attracts confidence, trust—he had the kind of personality that he was
dedicated to the real fine principles of life. I don't know Everett as
a—I had no way to know personally to have known Everett as a very
religious person, but if I were asked I would have to say that I believe
that Everett must have been a very religious person, because of his
dedication to the finest—to his family, to his employees, to his
company, to any project in which he was interested—adds up to that he
had to be a very religiously disciplined gentleman. I'm using the word
gentleman
After he became a Senator he was textile oriented directly in the southern states, he worked throughout his whole career in textiles—do you know of anything he did for the textile industry as a Senator?
Off the top of my head—at the spur of the moment it would be difficult
for me to say—to put my finger on any one thing that we could attribute
to Everett Jordan, but understand what I'm saying—you're going to have
to bare in mind all the things I've been saying to you about Everett.
You see Everett had the kind of personality—a magnetic personality that
attracted people to him. He had the ability to ride on the subway car
from the Senate Office Building over to the Capital for a vote or to
walk up the aisle and talk to someone about a vote on a bill. You know
people talk about Lyndon Johnson being a great leader of the
Senate—Lyndon Johnson being a
END OF INTERVIEW