GASTONIA HISTORY IV
Article Twenty: Labor Unrest In Gastonia:Strikes, Stretch-Out, Flying Squadrons and Violence
Part Two: General Textile Strike of 1934
The General Textile Strike, spearheaded by the United Textile Workers’ Union (UTWU) and American Federation of Labor (AFL), occurred in September 1934. More than half of the 600,000 men and women in the American textile industry responded to the call for a nationwide strike, from Main to Alabama, to take place on Labor Day. Its immediate objective was to shut down the nation’s textile industry, cut hours of work to 30 a week without wage reduction and eliminate the hated “stretch-out.” It was hailed in United Press news releases as “a day of unparalleled significance in organized labor annals…and the grimmest in the country’s history.”
Up and down the Atlantic Seaboard, workers were called to hundreds of mass meetings to whip their enthusiasm to a fever pitch, and get union and non-union workers to follow them and join the organization. In Gastonia, local union officials of the already established Central Labor Union (CLU) staged a giant parade on Labor Day, Monday, September 3, 1934. With emotions running high, 2,000 strikers marched through the city carrying banners and shouting slogans. At City Park (later Lineberger Park) they were encouraged by union organizers to take decisive steps to close those plants that were running. Communists were reported en route to Gastonia from Charlotte and elsewhere to participate and assist in union recruitment. It was a somber time in history, marked by emerging social changes, and Gastonia was on center stage.
Because it was during the bleak days of the Great Depression, only a portion of Gaston County’s 104 textile mills were in a position to run at all – those few with sufficient order backlogs. The management of those 60 Gaston County mills that were capable of running told their workers that if they wanted to work on Labor Day the mills would run; otherwise, they would close. It was their decision. The employees of a majority of those mills, it was reported, voted to stay on the job. With perhaps a few exceptions, mill executives made it known that rather than have any violence, they would close their plants for a few days should there appear any likelihood of disturbance. Most of the mills were making no money anyway and could afford to stand idle for some time. The real test would come the morning following Labor Day, Tuesday, September 4, when most of the mills would attempt to resume operations.
The principal strategy of the WTWU and CLU was to raise a roar of protest and keep all the mills closed until their demands were met. The strikers’ job was to concentrate on closing those mills that attempted to open. Conversely, workers that had jobs were pleased to have them and generally did not desire to stir up unrest. They were, depending on their specific work assignment, earning $10.80, $13.80 and $14.60 per week for a 12-hour shift. Unfortunately, however, one or two mills in Bessemer City were paying as low as $4.50 a week, hardly enough to keep bread on the table, and their workers were highly susceptible to discontent.
The unemployed workers had no such constraints and readily joined what were known as “flying squadrons”, groups of 150 to 250 people moving in caravans around the state from strike to strike, venting their frustration, spreading the union message and using terrorist tactics to agitate employed workers to a fever pitch of discontent. Locally these squadrons were from Gaston, Cleveland, York and other surrounding counties. Their objective was to intimidate workers into leaving their stations and joining the WTWU or CLU. In several incidences, mill property was destroyed and workers were forcibly “pulled” from their jobs.
Strikes were occurring in textile towns all across both Carolinas, as well as throughout the South and New England. Because of Gastonia’s importance as the combed yarn center of America, much media attention focused here. Greater Gastonia saw 37 or its 45 mills closed by the strike on the first day -- Labor Day, Monday, September 3 – with only eight mills continuing in operation. Residents of the troubled textile city were uneasy with the memory of the 1929 Loray Mills strike still fresh on their minds. Dire speculation dominated newspaper and wire service reporting.
It all started when hundreds of howling picketers surrounded the big 5-story Loray Mills plant Monday night, preventing the workers from going inside for the 11 p.m. shift. By daybreak Tuesday morning, 2,000 picketers from Gastonia, Bessemer City and Shelby joined in to besiege the factory, and even the office staff could not get in. The next Gastonia targets on Tuesday morning were two Hanover plants – Pinkney and Rankin – in South Gastonia, followed by the Parkdale, Threads, Arlington and Myrtle mills. Then came Ragan Spinning Company’s plant in West Gastonia. Flying squadrons of strikers, ranting with an apocalyptic fervor, “crashed into the mills, pulled the main [power] switches, dislodged card room belts, disrupted yarn in process and shoved willing workers from their posts,” reported the Gastonia Gazette. Soon, the Cramerton and Mayflower mills were closed, as were all 18 mills in Belmont, 6 in Mount Holly and 7 in Cherryville. By noon, all the mills were paralyzed. Not a spindle was turning in a single one of the Gaston County’s 104 textile plants. Management asked their loyal workers to go home until things settled down.
Reaction by stunned mill owners and managers was swift and predictable. They had been given no opportunity to negotiate by union officials or flying squadrons. Surprised and infuriated by the sudden onslaught, Caldwell Ragan of Ragan Spinning Company, one of the first targeted mills, was quoted in an interview for the Daily News Record, a New York textile trade publication, as saying, “It’s high-handed insolence and a damnable outrage that things like this can happen in a civilized society.” Industry leaders Archie Lineberger in Belmont, Arthur Dixon from his Mount Holly offices and Carl Rudisill in Cherryville expressed similar sentiments of anger. There was general outrage over union tactics. For the most part, the Southern press condemned the actions of the flying squadrons and was sympathetic to management and the maintenance of civil order. The national press was less restrained and created stories that cast a dark shadow on Gastonia, the South in general and the textile industry in particular.
By Wednesday, September 5, things began to get really nasty. One could feel the potential for violence rivaling the tragic strike at the Loray Mills plant five years earlier. Hanover Mills requested the Gaston County sheriff to furnish guards to protect their 295 workers. North Carolina Governor J. C. B. Ehringhaus made a last appeal for cessation of “unlawful activity of flying squadron pickets” in hope that he may “avoid drastic measures.” The governor conceded the right to strike and picket peacefully, but asserted “the right not to strike and keep on working is just as sacred and entitled to the same protection.”
In light of potential violence, most managers closed their mills until further notice and took precautions to protect their property by having loyal employees and friendly local farmers sworn in and armed as sheriff’s deputies. These privately paid deputies guarded the mills day and night, some stationed in railroad boxcars on sidetracks adjacent to the mills, inside the mills or even on top of a few mills. Leaders of the Gastonia-based Southern Combed Yarn Spinners Association, the trade arm that represented most of the country’s combed yarn mills, met almost daily in the boardroom of the First National Bank to discuss rapidly changing events and provide constructive advice. Communications were kept open between the textilists, the governor’s office and the White House.
Associated Press and United Press news releases on Thursday, September 6 reported that the death toll nationwide reached ten as bloody battles developed. Wild riots were reported in Rhode Island, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Six strikers were slain in a brief clash at Honea Path, South Carolina when mill guards opened fire upon a crowd advancing toward the factory gate. Fifteen others were wounded. That same day Governor Ehringhaus and the governors of most Southern states ordered state troops in large numbers to selected locations to protect both sides. A striker was killed in Trion, Georgia; a mill in Burlington, North Carolina was dynamited; and 4,000 state troopers were reportedly sent to a town in Georgia where a man was murdered and a mill superintendent attacked. The crisis area in Gaston County was at Belmont, where near riots erupted in an attempt to restart Knit Products Company and Hatch Full Fashioned Hosiery. Later, one striker was slain in Belmont, which re-ignited the explosive situation there.
On Saturday, September 8 the Gastonia Gazette headline screamed “Union Leaders Dare Mill Owners to Start Monday,” furthering tension. President Roosevelt tried to stay out of the confrontation. The only word from the government came from the summer White House at Hyde Park when Relief Administer and Presidential Assistant Harry Hopkins, visiting the president, said the government had no intention of underwriting the strike and there would be no government food for the strikers. It had been generally thought “that taxpayers would finance the strikers,” and that federal aid would “enable strikers to stay out indefinitely.”
Finally, mills began to reopen with the assistance of armed militia. Unions began to realize their cause was hopeless, as strikers became hungry and discouraged. Seeing no purpose in further prolonging the conflict, it was announced on September 22 that the General Strike, the largest in American history, had been called off, ordering 500,000 idle workers back to their looms and spindles. Little, if anything, had been accomplished, other than creating a public awareness of labor dissatisfaction in the country. In some regions like North Carolina, it could be argued that the strike actually created a backlash against unions. It was a hard, depression era when most working Americans were happy to have a job of any kind, even if it wasn’t a perfect one.
Picketing and other disturbances soon ceased and National Guardsmen were slowly withdrawn. By September 25, it was reported some 60 of the 104 Gaston County mills were running, the same number as before the strike was called on September 1. Soon the Indian Summer days of autumn brought healing. Newspaper headlines began changing from strikes, unions, flying squadrons and local violence to assassinations and war in Spain, the Lindberg baby kidnapping trial, the Gloria Vanderbilt custody trial, Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party’s take-over in Germany and the reign of terror in Stalin’s Russia.
So significant was the General Textile Strike of 1934 and the events that centered on Gastonia in the labor movement of the United States, that it was documented in a 1994 two-hour Public Television documentary called The Uprising of ’34. The broadcast was national in scope and aired intermittently for a decade or more afterward. Students and scholars of labor history have studied the strike over the past 83 years, trying to understand the South’s strong aversion to labor unions. [INDEX]
Article Twenty-one:
The Great Depression of the 1930s
Economic Collapse
The Great Depression of the 1930s became the greatest economic catastrophe of the twentieth century, quickly spreading from the United States around the industrialized world. Coming so soon after the tragic strike at the Loray Mills only a few months earlier, its impact on Gaston County and its extensive textile industry was devastating, causing untold economic and human hardships for almost every family, regardless of race, class or color.
Excesses of the free-spending, over-consuming decade of the 1920s finally brought the national economy into a deep depression. Structural weaknesses were exposed. The stock market crashed on October 24, 1929, “Black Thursday” it was called, when massive selling struck the New York Stock Exchange and triggered a huge sell-off. Money started drying up and many were caught in the middle. Banks, already on shaky ground, began calling loans in an attempt to maintain their own survival and meet depositor demands.
Business and consequently profits and cash flow, declined precipitously, and soon the economy was in a downward spiral. Tens of thousands of businesses, large and small, went under, and investors were wiped out. Fear permeated the nation. As a result, faith in the system was lost. From Wall Street it quickly spread to Main Street. Unemployment soared to levels never before known. President Herbert Hoover tried his best to stop the downfall, but old policies and remedies simply did not work anymore. It was no ordinary downturn – this one seemed to have no bottom and no end. Frantic attempts to shore up the economies of individual nations through protectionist policies, such as the 1930 U. S. Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and retaliatory tariffs in other countries, exacerbated the collapse in global trade.
In Gastonia and all of the surrounding towns, most of the mills, with only a few notable exceptions, were facing bankruptcy by 1933. Workers had been laid off, pay had been halved, and it permeated through the economy to all the other businesses. It was a disastrous debacle and conditions kept getting worse. As one aging Gastonia textilist who had seen and weathered many downturns before put it, “The [golden] heavens had turned to brass.” Fortunes were literally lost overnight; they simply evaporated.
The entire American textile industry had been in a serious recession of its own for nearly two years prior to the onset of the national depression. Inventory buildup was followed by cutthroat price-cutting. Consequently, most mills were barely eking out an existence. Then, as the Depression deepened, cotton prices dropped from 25 cents to five cents a pound, causing some mills further withering losses on high-cost inventories. When the magnitude of the economic situation finally became evident, consumers stopped buying, and orders for Gaston County yarn fell precipitously. The mills of the county were geared to support a capacity of 1,500,000 spindles and tens of thousands of workers. Conditions deteriorated quickly, and weaker mills soon found it necessary to cease operations entirely; others were operating on substantially reduced work schedules.
The carnage became dreadful. The Armstrong group of mills was the first to fall, and so, too, did its stockholders. They were followed in 1930 by Manville-Jenckes Co., which owned the Loray Mills. By 1931, the economic domino effect eventually overwhelmed the Gray-Separk mills as well, and then spread to the others and to the banks, and the merchants, and the service sector. As a result, tax revenues, the ones that could be collected, fell and with them many of the services expected of the city and county. The six Rankin-operated mills were barely holding on through a plan of restructuring and the five mills run by W. T. Love were to fail or be taken over by others before it was all over.
Unemployed workers with families to feed and support had no means to do so. That was the saddest condition of all to endure. There was no safety net of unemployment insurance in those days to see them through rough times. These people had to depend on menial, part-time work, the pity of friends or the charity of the community. The hush of the great mills, the deafening silence of whirring spindles was eerily frightening. It meant no jobs and no money. The extreme distress in seeing so many unemployed people, pain chiseled into their faces, was crushing to the soul and affected people in different ways, emotionally and psychologically. Still everyone held to their faith, hoped against hope and found numinous beauty in the everyday.
Of the Gastonia mills only seven family-controlled independents – Dixon Mills, Groves Thread Co., Parkdale Mills, Ragan Spinning Co., Ruby Cotton Mills, A. M. Smyre Manufacturing Co. and Trenton Cotton Mills, representing ten plants – were able to weather the storm successfully under their ownership and management initiative, without being wrung through reorganization or bankruptcy. Their finances were comparatively strong and they had little or no long-term debt with which to contend. Somehow, they found sufficient orders to keep their mills running reasonably well and profitable straight through the Depression, until better times returned.
Bank Runs and Failures
The mills’ troubles were not the only problems facing Gastonia. The banks, too, were suffering and teetering on collapse. Commercial Bank & Trust Co. failed and was liquidated in April 1929, followed by Peoples Bank of Gastonia in 1931. Gastonia’s First National was in trouble early on because of the direct problems of the Gray-Separk mills and other businesses, and the indirect problem of the bank’s close association with its former president and largest shareholder, L. L. Jenkins. Irregularities radiating from the American National Bank in Asheville, which Jenkins headed, and federal banking indictments against him and other prominent bankers brought the Gastonia bank under suspicion. Asheville’s once shining land boom had gone bust by 1930 and every bank in that city had been closed. In addition, Jenkins was treasurer of Buncombe County, which had defaulted on millions of dollars of bonded debt floated in better days to support the mountain resort’s unsustainable expansion.
Faith had been lost and when faith disappears, banks fail. Concerned customers, fearing the loss of their deposits, streamed into First National each day for weeks to withdraw their hard-earned money. In effect, it became a classic “run” as the undercurrent of rumor spread until depositors became panicky. Conditions worsened and Gastonia’s largest and oldest bank was forced to close on December 15, 1930. It was the greatest financial crisis in the city’s history. J. Lee Robinson, its president, and his associates made a valiant effort to rescue the institution and keep it open by raising $500,000 in new capital and reorganizing under a new federal charter. Under the pressure, he became so distraught that he suffered a nervous breakdown and committed suicide at his home on January 4, 1931, a tragic example of the Depression’s destructive power.
First National Bank reopened March 12, 1931 with former Vice President Samuel N. Boyce as its new president. To try to restore confidence it announced that it was bringing in one million dollars in cash, which soon arrived under guard by train. State policemen, sheriff’s deputies and city policemen formed an almost 200 or 300-foot armed line between the Southern Railway’s depot and the bank, where the money was visually and ceremoniously deposited in its secure vaults. The public display was an exciting display to ordinary people on the streets, who were said to be “goggle-eyed with wonder.” It helped restore confidence, as was its intention, and temporarily stopped the run on the bank. On December 11, 1932, as the Depression continued unrelentingly, total deposits of Gastonia’s two principal banks stood at $2,026,000, down from $7,688,000 twelve years earlier, on February 10, 1920, the peak of the textile boom.
There were three distinct banking panics during the Great Depression, each resulting in a rash of bank failures. The first, in 1930, was a tough, garden-variety crisis, which started in the Midwest after big crop failures in the Corn Belt. The second, tougher crisis hit in 1931 after the Federal Reserve Bank pushed up interest rates to stop a gold exodus. The final crisis, which began in 1932 and rolled along to 1933, was the most devastating. At first, state orders closed many shaky banks, and then President Franklin Roosevelt closed all U. S. banks on March 6, 1933 for a period of time for examination. This was called the Bank Holiday. Both banks in Gastonia were closed. A week after the Holiday began, 127 banks across North Carolina – over half the total numbers – had not reopened. After two weeks seventy of the state’s one hundred counties lacked adequate banking facilities.
President Roosevelt attempted to give the country a sense of hope and security during this difficult time and garner support for his New Deal policies with a series of radio addresses between 1933 and 1944. They became known as his “fireside chats.” The first one aired on March 12, 1933 in which he assured the American people that “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself…” As the Depression wound down, he continued his fireside chats with explanations of major wartime policies and events. Nearly every home had a radio and the broadcasts became a political marketing bonanza for the Democrats, helping to keep Roosevelt popular, despite the continuing depression.
Citizens National Bank survived the first wave of deposit runs in 1930-31 and remained, for a time, the only bank in Gastonia able to carry on the community’s financial requirements. Its executive management moved quickly and decisively to restore confidence. President Albert G. Myers arranged with the Federal Reserve to have large amounts of cash shipped through the postal service to meet anticipated withdrawals. Appeals were made at public meetings for cooperation in avoiding panic. The bank was saved, at least for the time being.
Notwithstanding, two years later, during Roosevelt’s Bank Holiday, although Citizens National of Gastonia was considered solvent, it was deemed expedient to reorganize with a capital of $200,000 and greatly reduced deposits of $812,000. It was also necessary to borrow substantial amounts from the Federal Reserve to sustain its liquidity. On September 23, 1933, under the continued leadership of Myers as president and Allen H. Sims as vice president, a new organization, The Citizens National Bank in Gastonia, was ready to open, taking over 100% of the old bank’s deposits and paying its former stockholders 69% of par value. For almost a year, while First National Bank completed its liquidation, Citizens National was again the only financial institution in Gastonia capable of conducting normal business.
National Bank of Commerce of Gastonia was chartered October 20, 1934 under the executive leadership of Kay Dixon as president and Joseph G. Reading as vice president. It had a capital stock of $200,000 and abysmally reduced deposits of $811,000. Seventy percent of the deposit liability of the defunct First National Bank was assumed, but former stockholders were not so lucky. It is noteworthy that seven years later, on December 31, 1941, following two years of war-induced recovery, total deposits of Gastonia’s two banks reached $8,263,000, for the first time exceeding deposits of $7,688,000 on February 10, 1920, the peak of the World War I textile boom.
Textiles-Incorporated Created During Depression
It was in this bleak depression environment that a group under the leadership of Gastonia banker Albert G. Myers devised a plan to rescue those mills that were on the verge of bankruptcy. Closing them would have caused appalling hardships for the thousands of workers depending upon them for their livelihood, not to mention the huge losses facing the banks and mill stockholders. Keeping them open, despite the reality that wages must be reduced and that most of the mills were only going to be able to run part-time at best, meant bread on the table and keeping the family together until times got better.
The idea for some type of consolidation was in fact not a new one. It had been discussed and considered individually by the Armstrong, Gray-Separk and Rankin groups for several years, but for a lack of strong commitment and direction by either group, and for a complexity of intransigent personal reasons, it never materialized. Myers now emerged as the one who had that commitment and direction. It was his dedication and firm leadership that made it possible to put together this divergent, sometimes warring faction of independent yarn mills.
Textiles-Incorporated was chartered under North Carolina law on June 1, 1931 by A. G. Myers, J. H. Separk, J. L. Gray, C. C. Armstrong, A. K. Winget, R. G. Rankin and S. N. Boyce. Myers, president of Citizens National Bank, a major creditor of many of the mills, and executive head of four of the merged mills, emerged as the company’s first president and chief executive officer. Each of the top executives of the merging groups was given a title and important position. The charter set the authorized capitalization of the company at $17,500,000.
There was a sense of great hope for success in the new arrangement, born for the purpose of consolidating 15 individual combed yarn mills in Gastonia and the Gaston County area and acquiring operating control of eight others. The combined capacity of the 23 mills was 303,740 ring spindles, or approximately 22% of the total sales yarn spindles in the South. Textiles-Incorporated thus became the greatest combination of combed yarn spinning mills in America.
With only one reorganization in 1933 and a name change in 1978 to Ti-Caro, Inc., Textiles-Incorporated survived the Depression and the ever-changing American and world textile markets to continue for 56 years as Gastonia’s and Gaston County’s largest and most recognized employer. Until its sale in 1987 to outside interests, its significance in the life of Gastonia and Gaston County was substantial and should not be underestimated. Every division of community improvement was recipient of its financial contributions and human resource involvement. [INDEX]
Article Twenty-two:
For five unforgettable years, the color and pageantry of Gaston County and its textile industry was vividly represented and publicly proclaimed in the glorious reign of the Grand Cotton Festival, which took place in Gastonia each June from 1938 to 1941 and again in 1946 following the interruption by World War II. The idea for this elaborate event, an innovative marketing concept of the day, was to honor the staple that formed the basis of the South’s major industry. Its purpose, according to the June 15, 1939 edition of the Gastonia Gazette, was the “promotion of cotton as an everyday fabric and as one which may be adapted to the costumes of Kings, queens, princesses and the millions of average citizens who comprise America’s own royalty.” Sponsored by the Gastonia Junior Chamber of Commerce, the festival attracted much interest and established the desirability of cotton in the minds of consumers of textile products. More specifically, it was intended to assist the entire American cotton industry in recovering from a decade of depression and stagnation.
As the decade of the 1930s drew to a close, the grip of economic distress lessened considerably and the surge of prosperity resumed across the country on all fronts. Nationally and locally textiles had become an enormous industry of manpower and materiel that was politically influential as well. As Hitler’s Nazi blitzkrieg spread across Europe, and Japan’s warlords conquered much of Southeast Asia, textiles became an industry vital to the American and Allied military as we entered World War II after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
Textile World of March 1941 revealed some impressive statistics regarding the importance to the national economy of this massive American industry. “Cotton is produced in the United States,” it informed its readers, “by approximately 2,500,000 farm families dependent in the main upon revenues derived from cotton and cottonseed for a livelihood. The commodity is produced in greater or lesser quantities in 18 of the 48 states of the Union. Production, harvesting, marketing, transporting and initial processing of cotton gives employment to more that 10,000,000 human beings. The processing of raw cotton, essential to its conversion into yarn, requires the services of another 500,000 workers. The raw cotton industry is composed of six independent interests, namely, producers, ginners, warehousemen, cotton merchants or shippers, cotton-seed crushers and cotton spinners.” Indeed, it was an industry worth honoring in a special way.
What was termed the Royal Kingdom of Cotton – with Gastonia, the “City of Spindles”, as its capital – saw the crowning of five “royal families” during this period in the presence of governors of the state, senators, congressmen, industry leaders, numerous local dignitaries and elected officials, and over 60,000 happy subjects of this realm of cotton. The normally hardworking city was transformed as if by magic into the gaiety of festival life each June, and its laboring people forget the drudgery of factory work, if only for a short while.
The week-long event included a spectacular three-mile parade along Gastonia’s main city streets composed of dozens of area high school bands, decorated automobiles, several uniformed military companies, and 60 to 75 magnificently designed floats depicting the glory of cotton and its many products. Crowds lined the sidewalks or watched from windows of business houses and bank buildings along the streets as the colorful parade marched by. There were also golf and tennis tournaments, Gastonia Cardinals double-header baseball games, a soapbox derby coaster car classic, a cotton fashion show, an antiques show and numerous other events designed to involve the entire community. A play, entitled “A Cotton Yarn”, produced by Seydel-Stiles Entertainment in New York City, was presented on multiple nights in the Gastonia High School auditorium on South York Street to a packed house.
The main events were the coronation ceremony and the elaborate Grand Cotton Ball. As the strains of Dixie wafted out across Gastonia High School coronation stadium, filled to a capacity with thousands of excited spectators, the governor, mayor or one of the national textile industry leaders crowned the year’s King and Queen of Cotton. Their coming was heralded by a trumpet fanfare, followed by a court of beautiful princesses, handsome pages, flower girls and scepter and crown bearers. All of their costumes were made from cotton, “Southern ermine” to the people of this realm. Gastonia Country Club witnessed the Grand Cotton Ball turn the evening into one of dancing, gaiety and color, as Gaston’s elite and honored guests turned out in their finest to hail the new king and queen.
National media coverage was given to Gastonia’s royal carnival week. Newsreel cameramen for “Fox Movietone News” recorded the highlights of the promotional event for national distribution, recognizing the royal fabric and its many qualities. It was described in newspaper commentary of the time as: “One of the most brilliant and colorful things of its kind ever staged in the Piedmont section.” “Magnificent pageantry drawing a mammoth crowd.” “Outranking anything the city has ever seen.”
It was an occasion that masterfully turned attention from the drabness and routine of factory work and the universal pain of the country’s economic stagnation. It became a glamorous, fun filled time of jubilation, make-believe and hope. Above all, it lifted people’s spirits at a time when everyone needed hope for the future, and it was a boost to industry sales of cotton goods.
Gaston County textile interests continued to stage, even if only for a short while, this resplendent event they proudly called the Grand Cotton Festival. Our people played a part upon a painted stage to proclaim to the world that cotton was King and that they were proud workers of the gloried realm of Gaston. The rejoicing cry heard by all was, “Long Live King Cotton.”
Governor Clyde R. Hoey, while officiating at the 1939 celebration, said, “Cotton will assume its rightful place, its ancient heritage, its importance in the markets of the world to the glory and profit of the South. I believe, the governor continued, “we are making progress and will continue to make progress in North Carolina and the cotton-growing South, not only in material aspects, but in advancement of the ideals of a free and democratic people.”
Kings and Queens of Cotton
Five prominent textile executives and their beautiful queens reigned as Gaston County’s cotton sovereigns of that generation, selected by a consensus of their peers and vassals from the entire community to represent the “Combed Yarn Center of America” to a discerning public for the promotion of cotton products throughout America. It served its stated purpose well, and once the economy revived as a result of the tremendous stimulus of World War II, Gaston County’s economy and its principal manufactured product, combed cotton yarn, reached its zenith and would remain dominant in this area of the South for another fifty years.
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