Love bought Gastonia Cotton Manufacturing for $170,000. That price purchased a small mill located in rural Gastonia County.
The original Gastonia plantGif

Those humble beginnings were only a sign of things to come. The Gastonia mill employed 200 men and women from the surrounding area in 1923. By the 1950's the number of Burlington plants grew to 75 with over 27,000 people employed worldwide.

Much of that growth came from an upsurge in the popularity of rayon. gifThe 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. gif 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.