Gus Grose, an Ecusta retiree, and his wife, Bonnie, stand in the back yard of their home near Brevard on Friday. Photo by PATRICK SULLIVAN/TIMES-NEWS
Posted on 08/18/2002 2:38:17 PM PDT by Gritty
Gus Grose, an Ecusta retiree, and his wife, Bonnie, stand in the back yard of their home near Brevard on Friday. Photo by PATRICK SULLIVAN/TIMES-NEWS |
When Gus Grose was a young man, a job at the Ecusta paper mill in Pisgah Forest meant more than a steady paycheck. In 1941, it provided other employees and him with cafeteria meals, health care, holiday social gatherings — even a musical education.“We would put on minstrel shows and square dances back in the old days — it was more like home,” said Grose, 79, who lives on his family’s 130-acre cattle farm in nearby Little River. “They even sent me to music camp one summer to learn how to pay sax and clarinet. ... They bought me a $300 clarinet, and we would have practice three or four nights a week.”
Grose and other Ecusta veterans fondly remember how Harry Straus, who founded America’s first cigarette paper plant here in 1939, contributed to the community. From the time the plant’s initial four paper machines started rolling, Ecusta provided a stream of good wages that helped mountain families pull themselves out of the poverty of the Depression.
Plant veterans also recall the sense of community that swirled around the mill in its early days. When workers went off to serve in World War II, Straus donated uniforms and band instruments to Brevard High School. When Grose returned to the Brevard area after two years of military service, his job at the plant was waiting for him, along with an opportunity to teach BHS students music.
“That’s the kind of background it was at one time,” he said. “We would play on the (Brevard) square to support the war efforts. ... We would play at Brevard College football games, in parades. That was mighty nice.”
The image of festive parades is a striking contrast to what one would have seen Friday outside the plant gates.
The sprawling mill with its brick buildings, metal warehouses and smokestacks sat empty and quiet, shuttered after 63 years as a stalwart of Transylvania County’s economy. Almost 600 employees, many the sons and daughters of Ecusta workers, are left wondering how they will support their families after owner Purico closed the mill following a bitter 10-month labor dispute.
But longtime residents in Transylvania and neighboring Henderson County, which once provided hundreds of workers for the mill, remember Ecusta for more than the labor strife and global economic stress that caused its demise. They recall a company that helped mountain families send their kids to college, hold on to their farms and buy homes and raise children, often on a single paycheck.
“When I look back at family members, I see the difference in the lives of those who were able to get those early manufacturing jobs,” said Marilyn Gordon, a Mills River native and vice chairwoman of the Henderson County Board of Commissioners. “Their children were able to go on to college and to other opportunities.”
A ‘godsend’
Straus, a German-born Jew, developed a process that used flax to manufacture cigarette paper. The Ecusta mill was the first in the United States devoted solely to making cigarette paper. The mill came on line just in time to meet wartime demand for cigarettes — and to help relieve the poverty of the Depression.
“Harry Straus’ company was a godsend for the people of Transylvania County and the surrounding area, signaling an end to the Depression and adding some diversity to an economy that had been heavily dependent on agriculture and the lumber industry,” says a line from Transylvania: The Architectural History of a Mountain Town, published in 1998 by Laura A.W. Phillips and Deborah Thompson.
That was the case for Gordon’s father, James Allison, a Mills River native who worked with Fiske Carter Construction Co. to help build the plant in 1939. Allison worked in the maintenance department in 1942 and 1943 and after the war from 1950 until about 1970, working his way up to shop foreman.
“When I went to work up there originally I was making 40 cents an hour, $16 a week I think it was,” said Allison, now 76. “But it was pretty good — you could live on it back then. We had just gone through the Depression, and wages then were 10 cents an hour.”
Gordon said her dad’s job at Ecusta helped other farmers and him hang on to their land. Later, about 1967, the plant provided a job for her husband, Norm Gordon, shortly after they got married.
“Quite frankly, I don’t know how we would have been able to make it without wages and benefits,” she said. “It made it possible for us to save up enough money to buy a country store.” The family later went on to develop a string of convenience stores, Norm’s Minit Marts.
Allison said the job at the mill also allowed him to send two of his children, Mark Allison and Martha Shoemaker, to college. Today, Mark works at a building supply company and Martha holds a master’s degree and works as media coordinator at Apple Valley Middle School.
“Some of the first people in either family were able to go on to higher education, and it was because of that job,” Gordon said.
‘Everybody made good money’
Cedar Mountain native Eldred Burns, now 81, went to work at the plant in 1939 at age 18 after graduating from Brevard High School. She worked there 53 years, longer, she says, than anyone else. She worked her way up to serve as an administrative assistant in the finishing department, which employed 450 people in its heyday.
“I grew up in the Depression, finished high school in 1938, no money to go to college,” she said. “I went to work at Ecusta and went to Brevard College for nine months at night. If it hadn’t been for Ecusta, I would have had to go to work in the textile mills in Greenville (S.C.), which paid nothing, and I would have had to leave home, which I didn’t want to do.”
Burns, who retired in 1993, said the job also helped her care for her parents when her mother became ill.
“I think probably it (the plant) affected every family in Transylvania and Henderson counties,” she said. “Everybody got along. Everybody made good money.”
Retired Judge Stephen Franks, 72, a Hendersonville native, said he saw firsthand how the plant helped families.
“I saw a number of families where both the husband and wife worked and once the husband got a job at Ecusta, the wives didn’t have to work anymore and they could stay at home with the children,” Franks said.
Olin Industries bought the plant from Straus in 1949 and two years later opened a plant to produce cellophane film, which at that time was used to package all kinds of foods. Ecusta’s work force swelled to more than 2,000 — some say as high as 3,000 — during the 1960s and 1970s. The plant was sold to P.H. Glatfelter in 1987 and Purico in 2001.
Grose worked at Ecusta from 1941 until 1989, retiring as a supervisor in quality control over several laboratories. Before getting a job at the plant, he worked in a sawmill, as a lifeguard and carhop. He made the jump to management after the company gave him a four-year leave of absence to attend Wake Forest University. His wife, Bonnie, and daughter, Mary Carolyn, also worked at the plant.
Like Allison, Grose recalls what a boost it was to get a job that paid 40 cents an hour at a time when most jobs paid a dime.
“I thought I was a rich man,” he said.
Ya know, if you really stop to think about it, there's something extraordinarily bass-ackwards about this statement.
If the plant's financial performance had been better in previous years, there likely wouldn't have been any need to invest in equipment upgrades.
Most capital investment justifications that I'm familiar with look at potential for improved future financial performance. Not simply allocated willy-nilly based on past performance.
Cannon Mills ran the town. They provided the housing and still own most of the downtown property and residential property through Atlantic American Properties.
Cannon has gone through Fieldcrest-Cannon, Fieldcrest, and now Pillowtex. It is currently in bankruptcy.
North Carolina has long beeen a right to work state. Unions have made little inroads. After years of lost elections, UNITE was finally able to organize Charlie Cannon's old mill. The mill was quickly driven into bankruptcy.
Iron Jack, I'm a little senior myself. 53 this week and a veteran of the MFJ.
Cordially bluedevil
Thank-you for providing the reference. That is all I had asked for.
Precisely why there will NEVER be a union where I work! It'll be a cold day in Hell when those scumbags organize here.
The unions certainly developed a bad rep, a lot of it well deserved. But there have been an awfully lot of crummy, greedy, poorly run companies, too! They deserved to go under.
- now many of those people are realizing it is the demise of American manufacturing
So true.
We cannot be a nation of consumers - we must have something to sell.
We have already become a nation of consumers. Have you checked the appalling trade imbalances lately? Most of what we export is money!
... now we are left with aging or closed manufacturing plants
The industry I worked within went from the largest, finest in the world to the most archaic and primitive in the industrial world in the space of a few decades. Some of that had to do with unions, but more of it had to do with lack of capitalization because horrendous environmental regulations required immediate capital monies to be spent for mandated pollution controls which couldn't work because the technology wasn't ample. This required even greater amounts of money thrown down a rathole!
The manufacturing equipment and technology were what suffered most quickly as costs skyrocketed and competitive advantages rapidly decayed to burgeoning foreign technology and their lower wages. Soon the American productivity and competitive edge was lost to foreigners, forever. Now what remains are falling down buildings and huge empty lots. Oh, did I mention many of the workers are in marginal jobs or on welfare? Unemployment Insurance has long since run out.
I suppose the "upside" is, those "dirty" industries are now polluting other shores - and employing their workers at living wages. And after all, our local water is supposedly cleaner! The unemployed can now eat the fish they catch.
... and a whole boatload of illegals that will work for less because they do not have to take care of the basics for themselves.
Yet another problem, but unrelated to this story.
... other parts of the world are moving forward and America is either staying stagnant or moving backwards... improving their infrastructure, transportation, manufacturing.
Let's hear another "Amen", shall we Sister? However, we are "protecting" our Precious Environment against these awful, predatory human encroachments!
Now how can an American worker compete with someone in India. It is just not possible.
I think it is. But, Americans are increasingly burdened with unproductive anvils around their necks such as massive government regulations, trial lawyers and ridiculous liability problems, and environmental fascism. That always hurts productivity!
Now I know some will defend this as 'free trade'
'Free trade' is not "free" if we are the only ones abiding by the rules...
... but can anyone deny that America is aging and sagging because we are not making the strides we should.
Certainly not me!
The cities are rotting, the taxes are outrageous, and we taxpayers are burdened with the upkeep of millions of illegal immigrants. That is a recipe for disaster.
Dittos!
Oh Well -- I'm just sticking around now to watch the end of the party, should be interesting.
Our system is broken beyond repair, and more and more people are figuring it out for themselves. Has anyone else noticed the dearth of "breakthrough" ideas coming out lately? Could it be that the engineers and inventors out there finally figured out that the name of the game is "you can't win"?
A special pox and curse on those who have twisted our legal system into the mess that it is today. I hope the Christian Hell becomes a reality for them, eternal punishment in Hellfire would be a modest repayment for all the damage they have done.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.