Much of that growth came from an upsurge in the popularity of rayon.
The
Gastonia mill originally wove bedspreads and other textiles from cotton.
Love liquidated the company's store of cotton and began buying rayon, a
relatively new fiber at the time. A picture
of a rayon fiber is located to the right. Love thought consumers would
appreciate rayon's sheen and silk-like softness. Rayon also cost less
than cotton, lowering Burlington Industries' overhead.
Burlington Industries began replacing cotton with rayon in all
its major products, including bedspreads, the companies main
production item. Consumers liked the fiber and sales continued
to grow. The synthetic revolution overtook textiles like a tidal
wave, with Burlington Industries riding the wave's cusp. By 1960,
Burlington Industries dominated world textile production with over $1
billion in sales.
Love's experiment with rayon bedspreads worked so well, he decided to
expand its uses.
In 1927, Burlington Industries started weaving rayon
dress goods. Such expansion required the use of new machinery, such as
machines to process wood pulp into viscose rayon fiber. On the
left, a machine operator
pours wood pulp into a dissolving solution. That wood pulp would be
converted into a soft, fibrous material called "viscose rayon." The
fiber could be loaded onto spinning machines for conversion into rayon
yarn. Love
invested in the right machinery, and he hired the right people to make
things work.
Love's story was not built alone on luck and wise investing. Thousands
of workers also contributed to that success. In the 1970s, researchers
sought out many of the aging weavers, dyers and pourers. The researchers
documented those men and women's stories in thousands of interviews. The
following
page is just a small portion of those interviews.
Back to Burlington Workers introduction.