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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 B-0019, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Alester G. Furman Jr. was born in South Carolina just before the turn of the twentieth century. By the time of his birth, his ancestors had lived in South Carolina for nearly 150 years. In the early 1800s, Furman's family helped to establish Furman University. Years later, Furman attended the University and later sat on its board of trustees. Furman speaks at length about his father's training as a lawyer and his early involvement in the establishment of the textile industry in Greenville, South Carolina. Furman's father went into business for himself, initially purchasing farmland for development of textile mills, and later buying and selling stock bonds in the industry. The younger Furman later assumed control of this family business. He first began to work for his father in 1914, following his graduation from Furman University. He describes the positive impact of the war on the family business, the growth of the business in the 1920s, the ramifications of "scientific management" in southern textile industries, and the effects of the Great Depression. He also discusses the relationship between labor and management in Greenville textile mills and discusses the lack of unionization there. Finally, he addresses changes in Greenville as a community and his activities outside of the family business, namely in relationship to Furman University, his family, and his civic activities.
Alester G. Furman Jr. describes his family's involvement in the founding of Furman University in the early 1800s, his father's role in the establishment of the textile industry in Greenville, South Carolina, and the evolution of the textile industry over the course of the early twentieth century.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
This is an interview with Alester Garden Furman Jr. at his home in Greenville, South Carolina. The date is January 6, 1976. The interviewer is Brent Glass. This is the first of three parts of an interview. The subjects range from Mr. Furman's family background, his childhood and his recollections of his parents, as well as many of his business activities over the years. Why don't we just start Mr. Furman, by having you give me a little about the background of your family.
Well, my family came to South Carolina in 1755 from Esopus, New York.
They were members of the Dutch Reformed Church there. My
great-great-great grandfather Wood Furman moved down here. He was a
teacher and a surveyor. He was an educated man and he brought with him
his one year old son, Richard Furman, who is the one that we all feel is
the real head of the family that started the educational process in
South Carolina. This young man had no formal education but his father
had a good library for those days. There were all kinds of books and of
all kinds of philosophies. He learned to read Greek and Latin and he
learned a great deal about medicine. Of course, there was no formal
medicine in those days practically at all, except that another
great-great-great grandfather of mine, named Alexander Garden, was a
doctor in Charleston and the families subsequently merged, so to speak,
after one generation. Dr. Alexander Garden was a botanist and a
naturalist in Charleston. His life was written recently by two botany
Dr. Alexander Garden of Charlestown, and it's a very
interesting book. It was published by the University of North Carolina
Press.
I've not seen it, but I would like to take a look at it.
Well, it's a very interesting book. He had a son . . . Dr. Alexander Garden was an old Tory; as a matter of fact, his properties were all confiscated after the Revolution and he went back to England and died in England. But his son, Major Alexander Garden, was an officer in Lee's Legion in the Continental Army and he is the one who made the connection with the Gibbes. And he married a Gibbes. Garden is my middle name.
But this man, Richard Furman, who was my great-great grandfather, at the
age of eighteen under the preaching of a Presbyterian minister, decided
that while the family had joined the Church of England when they came to
South Carolina . . . there being no Dutch Reformed Church down here, he
and his mother decided that they were going to join the Baptist
organization, which had hardly started in South Carolina. And because he
said that he could find no evidence of infant baptism in the New
Testament. He said that it all said, "Repent and be baptized," and no
infant could repent because they hadn't had that opportunity to sin.
That was his basis for it and he became a very, very prominent Baptist
minister in the United States and briefly, he had a little church in
Sumter County, in the high hills of the Santee, called the High Hills
Baptist Church. He left there in 1787 and went to Charleston and became
the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Charleston. He was so imbued
with the spirit of being independent, because frankly, that's what most
people don't realize, they listen to what a few nuts in the Baptist
Church say who get up in these
A diplomat . . .
Well, he signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and
his brother, Charles Pinkney, was also a very prominent man in Charles
town. But he was a great friend of his, but he was not a member of his
church. I have gathered many hundreds of letters from the family, some
written to Dr. Richard Furman and some written by him and some of his
manuscripts. He has a manuscript there of his sermon before Congress in
1814 and he has a manuscript of 1808 of his nominating Charles
Coatsworth Pinkney to be President of the United States. Of course, that
was very small groups in those days and if you've read about it, you'll
understand. One of the things that always interested me was a letter to
him from Charles Coatsworth Pinkney that said, "Dear Dr. Furman, I
enjoyed your sermon very much today. I find that the bile is very bad in
Charleston this summer and the best specific for it is Madeira wine and
I am sending you over two cases. One case of old wine and one case of
new wine. I hope that it does you as much good as it has done me. Your
obedient servant, Charles Coatsworth Pinkney." Well, I read that one day
in the First Baptist Church in Charleston and I said that I couldn't
find where he sent it back.
Right.
Total abstinence was not part of Christianity in any place, even from the first miracle. So, getting back, Dr. Richard Furman lived until 1825. He was really the leader in the field of education in this state. He sent his children to the College of Rhode Island, which is now Brown University. He sent some to England. His oldest son by his first wife, he was married twice, was Wood Furman and he was at one time the Chairman of the Faculty at the College of Charleston, which was one of the original city colleges. It was not denominational, it was a city college. Most of the great colleges in New England were all started by ministers of various denominations and the reason was because they were the educated people and they saw the need of education.
That's why you find so many colleges, Yale and Harvard, Trinity, Haverford and all those colleges were colleges who were started by ministers who saw the need of education. Well anyhow, he practiced some medicine in Charleston during the time of the Revolution and after. His brother was Josiah Furman and he joined him and was active in the Revolutionary War, but they got him out of that because he was a man who could speak and they sent him all over this up country to try to rally the patriots away from the Tories. The Revolution was really a civil war, if you come down to it. You had a few Hessians and a few high generals of British, but few really British troops here. Well, the Hessians were really the biggest part of the British troops. The rest of them were small, just small garrison troops.
I've never seen the figures on that, but that would be interesting.
Well, it's true. It's a civil war just like they are having
Right.
It's being published, I think, by the North Carolina Press.
I think that it's by Duke University.
Oh, it's Duke University.
I believe that's what Dr. Blackwell told me, but I'm not sure.
That will have something, a lot of it, in there. I have not seen it and neither have I seen the manuscript, so I don't know anything about it. Well, then my grandfather, I told you, came out of the Civil War and taught in Kentucky. He came back here and practiced law. He then became Professor of English at Clemson College and stayed there until he retired in 1912. He was then seventy-two years old. He was born in 1840.
What was his name?
Charles M. Furman. He was named for his uncle, who was president of the Bank of South Carolina in Charleston, which is the beginning of the South Carolina National Bank now. He owned quite a lot of land and did a terrific job. When the Civil War came along, Dr. James C. Furman signed the Articles of Secession. Charles M. Furman wouldn't do it, his own brother. He said that he didn't want to break up a nation that his father had helped begin. It shows you how different people in families are. They had just as many differences as could be, they didn't have to be antagonistic about it, but they felt that they should express themselves.
Now, Charles Furman, your grandfather, fought with General Johnston?
Joseph E. Johnston. He was at Greensboro when they surrendered in '65, after Appomattox.
And how did he feel about retiring to the North? Did he have any comments about that? Oh . . . he only spent the summer months up there.
He only spent the summer up there with his youngest daughter . . . well, she's living now. She is living in Massachussetts. Her son is with the American Shoe Machinery Company. His name is Charles, named for his grandfather, Charles Coles is his name and Kitty, as we call her . . . she was my father's younger half-sister but she's only two and a half years older than I am. No, four years older than I am, I believe.
And what's her name?
Coles. She's Mrs. Marion Coles. Well, going back now, my
Which president was this, now?
B.E. Geer. I'm sure that it is all written in that history, although I do not know it. Anyhow, my father stopped college when he was a junior and started reading law. He was admitted to the bar on December 21, 1888 and in that office . . . I was going to take you down there, I don't know whether you have time to do it or not, is his certificate for being admitted to the bar. It's hanging there on the wall now. The truth of the matter was, though, that he was an energetic person and while he was reading law, there was a man named Stone here who owned a great deal of land outside of Greenville and he got him to help him sell lots off of this thing and as a result of that, he got into the real estate business.
Who did he sell the lots to?
Anybody. Just any person that wanted to buy a lot to build a house.
This is around 1890, right?
1888 to 1890.
Were there people starting to move into Greenville?
Well, you've asked me something there that I couldn't tell you.
I'm just curious about why this was occurring at this particular time?
Well, we'll have to go back a little bit on that. There were people,
children of families that were able to build a newer house and they
bought the lots. The lots themselves were five or six or seven hundred
dollars. I mean, it wasn't any great big thing. Father told me very
often that Mr. Stone would say, "Alester, I need a little more money."
So, he would ask him to sell a lot and he would sell it for five or six
or seven hundred dollars and Father would make ten percent or something
like that on it. I know that he told me that in 1893 he had a partner
named Mr. John F. Mitchell and they divided twelve hundred dollars as
their income for that year, six hundred dollars apiece. That was when
the big depression came in 1893. Well, as I say, Father started in that
and then he started insuring houses by corporate insurance. Of course,
around in New England and other places, Philadelphia and all, they used
to have these mutual insurance aid things where they just paid so much
in and they all had a little plaque on the door saying that they were
insured by a mutual insurance company. Then, the corporate insurance
companies started up back in those days and he wrote insurance for these
people. He was doing that to make money while he was reading law. Well,
when he got through reading law and was admitted to the bar, he
For power.
For power. They would build them four stories high, just like they did in
New England. They didn't think about the one storey things
Was your father involved in planning these industrial communities?
Well no, there wasn't much planning done. I'll have to be fair. But what Father did was, he got very much interested in water power and he developed two water concerns on the Saluda River outside of Greenville and he developed a power plant down outside of Columbia. He sold this one to Duke and sold that one to South Carolina Gas and Electric Company in 1910 and 1912. But going back, he got interested in organizing a group here that would work to get these industries started and he was the first unpaid secretary of the Board of Trade in Greenville, which was what we call the Chamber of Commerce today.
Where do you think he got the idea for this?
I don't know where he got it.
This was happening in other parts of the South . . .
Oh, yes. It happened everywhere . . .
I'm interested in knowing how these people . . .
Well, of course, that's twenty-five to thirty years after the Civil War
and . . . well, for ten years, this country was occupied. It was just
occupied by troops. There were troops right here in Greenville. They
were trying to protect the slaves, as they called them, from being
Did your grandfather own slaves?
My grandfather did not and my great-great-grandfather, Dr. Richard Furman, freed his slaves. I don't remember my great-grandfather, he died four years before I was born, but his wife lived until 1911 and she had two blacks with her that had been slaves since way back there. And they were with her right up until the time she died. The old home is out here, when they moved to Greenville, they bought a home from a man named Green out here and Eugene Stone lives in it now where that Stone Manufacturing Company is located. He's got the biggest sewing operation in the United States, not all here, but in five or seven places.
Is that any relation to the Stone that your father did business with?
Yes. It was his grandfather.
What was the name of the man that your father worked with?
I think his name was Eugene Stone. Now, I could be wrong. He had a son named R.G. Stone who I knew myself, but that's another thing. Memory can do a trick on you.
So really, my father started
Now, when you say "started," how was he involved in it?
Well, I'll tell you. In the first place, he went to get the land for
them. I mean, they had to have land. It's rather interesting to me,
because he bought land for concerns to put a mill on. Some foreign, some
local. There were some merchants here who had done pretty well and they
. . . for instance, Old Man John Woodside was a merchant on Main Street
and Mr. F.W. Poe was a merchant and Mr. James H. Morgan was a merchant
and they built the Woodside Mill, the F.W. Poe Manufacturing Company and
. . . oh, the Morgan mill was named . . . well, they called it the
Sampson Mill, but that wasn't it's name. American Spinning Company was
its name. That was some, then the Brandon Mill, Father got the land for
that and by that time, people wanted a local interest in it. They wanted
people to buy a little stock in it and as a result of that, he would go
out and sell, get people to subscribe to the stock I'd better say,
rather than "selling" it. He went to get them to subscribe to the stock
in different companies. In small sums. A hundred dollars to a thousand
dollars was a big sum. Then after they operated for awhile, some of them
wanted to sell that stock and they would come back here and say, "You
got me to buy this, now would you sell it." So, it started him in the
stock business. Then, he used to do a great deal in municipal bonds. I
laugh about it often now, because a hundred thousand dollar issue of
municipal bonds was a big issue. Today, we don't think anything of ten
million.
About how much would one of these tracts of land cost?
Oh, not much. Land was very cheap in those days.
He would buy from a local farmer?
Oh, sure. The farmer was glad to get rid of some of it, mostly.
Was there any suspicion on the part of people about bringing industry in?
No.
No resistence?
No, no resistence whatsoever.
They were pleased?
Well, they would be getting the jobs, all those people coming down from
the hills. Incidentally . . . this is really an anecdote that goes back
a little in time. While his father was Assistant United States District
Attorney, here were these people that would come in who had been drawn
for the jury, or some drawn as a witness. Of course, we had legal
distilleries here in those days. They had warehousemen and . . . what
did they call them? Well, it was the man who tested the strength of the
whiskey, whether it was eighty proof, ninety proof and all that.
Classer. That's what it was. Warehousemen and classers. But anyway, they
would come down here and what transportation did they have? They had
nothing but oxen and a mule and they would have to come down here
twenty-five or thirty miles from the up part of the county to the court.
At that time, the United States Court only had two districts. They had
the eastern district in Charleston and the western district in
Greenville. Well, the western district was everything in the upper part
of the state and all these people had to come in here. Here were these
Did he own stock himself in these mills?
Oh, he got very little, he didn't have any money to buy it with. He subsequently owned stock in them but he wasn't in the original doings because he just didn't have any money to buy it with.
Was he involved in providing machinery for the mills? Did he get involved with that?
Well, you see, it was the machinery manufacturers who really started these mills, so in those days, there weren't any banks down in this part of the country that could finance anything. He had no basic connection with banks in New York or those kinds of things to do that. So, in his first twenty years or so, he was just working tooth and toenail to make a living, if you want to know the truth about it.
In whatever kind of business there was anything to make it in at that
time. I never will forget that in 1907, we had a money panic. I don't
know whether you are familiar with that panic or not. At that time, the
currency ran out. You see, before the Federal Reserve printed money like
they do now . . . God knows, I think that's what is going to fool a lot
of people some day, but the money gave out. They had a number of banks
in every community, created more banks than they had business to do and
so these banks in Greenville, I think there were seven of them, they
formed a little clearing house and they deposited with the clearing
house in trust their loans and assets. And they issued these little
certificates off that thing for currency. The Bankers Trust Company
here, the old People's Bank, used to have a picture frame full of those
things of different sizes. They were finally retired without any loss to
them, but it was just something for people to use for trading. Of
course, there was another thing that did in those times, was the fact
that
You were telling about the farmers owing . . .
Well, they only paid off their debts once a year. They would go to a bank
and borrow several hundred dollars to "make a crop" as they expressed
it. They had to buy the fertlizer and of course, they had what they
called "factors" in those days and they would factor a man on a farm.
They would furnish him not only fertlizer, but they would furnish him
with money to buy the food for his help on that farm, for his tenants.
All of that went into this whole situation and then they would pay off
usually when the crop was collected. So, always the fall was the time in
this part of the country when the farmers had money. Now, it is amazing
because most of them do more trucking business around here. There
Why is that?
Well, because in this up country it is very difficult to use machinery on cotton, there are two many hills. They go into flat countee where they can use cotton pickers mechanically and all those things. There is a definite reason for that. So farmers . . . well, jumping over to what I was really talking about, you take in 1914 when the First World War started, cotton plummeted from 11¢ down to 4½¢ a pound and many textile mills who had bought futures on cotton at 10½¢ or 11¢ couldn't cover the margin down to 4½¢ and they went out. Sixteen mills at that time, Father was on the board of some. The Brandon Mills where he was on the board had a lot of troubles. Of course, as we went along, as I said, he developed this power plant out here with the help of Lockwood, Greene and Company who were the engineers out of Boston. Mr. Edwin Farnnier Greene was the head of that at that time and the J.E. Sirrine Company came out of that Lockwood, Greene and Company. Mr. Sirrine was the southern representative of Lockwood, Greene and Company and Stephen Greene was the head of it. They have got a firm in Spartanburg now, Lockwood, Greene and Company and it's a branch of the one in Boston and New York.
That reminds of the fact that Stuart Cramer was the representative of Whitin Machine Works.
The old Mr. Stuart, Sr.
Right.
I knew him, but I knew his son, Stuart Cramer, Jr. very well.
And D.A. Tompkins was also a representative in the South. That seems to be a pattern . . .
Oh, yes. You take Kent Swift, who was head of Whitin Machine Works for many years up in Whitinsville, Mass. As a matter of fact, I was sent up there by a couple of banks in New York to buy that mill back in 1947 or '48.Kent Swift was a great friend of everybody in this part of the country. He spent a great deal of time down here, but that was an old antiquated situation right there, I came back and told the banks in New York, "Let me tell you something, that's Kent Swift and nobody else could run that plant but Ken Swift. You know, that has happened to many, many family owned situations. Here these big conglomerates go in and take them over and then the things don't make money. Take the Fuller Brush Company. They used to be one of the big things and what's happened to them: they are in Consolidated Foods and it is trying to liquidate them now. No . . . it is Consolidated Foods that has got Fuller Brush Company, I beg your pardon. Genesco liquidated S.H. Kress and Co. Now, it is just unbelieveable.
Right, I guess that is sort of a cycle, though. Because originally, they thought that it was wise to merge with these . . .
Of course they did. They all thought that it was. There is no question of
that, but there is a man here now who was a young fellow who went to
work for S.H. Kress and Co. here in Greenville named Christopher Trammel
and from working starting as a clerk putting up in the stockroom,
receiving the stock coming in and putting it up before it goes
You went to Furman?
Yes. And then he promised me that I would go to Harvard Law School if I would finish college. Well, when I got through in 1914, we were all broke again and I've told this often because it is true, I couldn't have got into Harvard Law School. I never applied, but I know that I couldn't have on my record, I couldn't have done it.
What were your college years like?
Oh, I loved athletics and loved to dance and just would do as little as I
possibly could. I laugh and say that if it hadn't been for father paying
the tuition over there, they would have gotten me out in a hurry.
There wasn't much dancing at Furman.
Well, there wasn't, but I was a member of all the dance clubs at Clemson. Grandfather was over there teaching, you see, and I would go over and stay at his house and go to all the dances there and there were all the dances in Greenville and all. Well, there was always a lot of the student body at Furman University that was dancing.
Yes, just not on the campus.
Just not on the campus, that's right. I was on the Board of Trustees when
we opened it up for dancing on the campus and at that, the students
didn't care, didn't want it. All they wanted to do was fuss when they
didn't have it.
That's human nature.
Well, the thing interested me all during that time because I was president of the Board of Trustees all during the time that we were making this move. Oh, I got letters, you would be surprised how many letters I got from people telling what a terrible thing I was doing. I wasn't doing it, but I was a symbol of the Board of Trustees that was doing it and I was getting all the flak. They would say, "Oh, that is terrible, these buildings over here are holy ground and it shouldn't move." I said, "Well, my great-grandfather moved it from Winsboro up here and I believe that he would be willing to go to a better place and better equipped." You've been out there and seen it so you know what we've got out there. Well, it's the best planned campus, frankly, that I ever saw.
It's beautiful.
And we worked on it six years planning it. Not building it, it took years
to build it, but we worked six years . . . John Plyler was
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
I was digressing a little bit from the real story, but this is an
anecdote that comes into it . . . I was down at that convention in
Charleston and I was walking across from the old Citadel Square Baptist
Church to the Francis Marion Hotel one day at lunch and I saw a young
crowd standing in front of the door of the hotel and one fellow was in
the middle of them and he was just hammering away and talking about the
evils of dancing. I stopped and I listened a minute and he caught his
breath and I said, "Pardon me just a minute, but tell me what is wrong
with dancing." "Why," he says, "they dance in houses of ill fame." I
said, "I'll take your word for that, I've never been in one."
That's a good point because why would someone have to say they are honest if they are?
Well, it's what you do that shows whether you're honest or not. So
anyhow, that was instilled in me way back there, if you've made a
mistake just say so and say it right there, the quicker you say it, the
I was going to ask, you said that the business was pretty bad in 1914, but it picked up after the war got going?
Yes, by '15 we had begun to do quite a little business for the time. I said to my girl at the time, "I believe that I'm making enough now that we can get married." I was making a little under $175 a month and so, we were married in 1916.
What was your wife's maiden name?
Janie Earle. Her family was the Earle family that came into South Carolina from Virginia and owned a lot of property up around Tryon and Landrum and all that area. I don't know if you've ever been in that part of the country, have you?
No.
Well, the old home place up there is known as the Four Columns. Oh, a man from Chicago owns it now, but it was her great-grandfather's home and is a beautiful place. Her father was a general practioner, a doctor for many years. His brother, his younger brother is over at Clemson College now . . . all of them are graduates from Furman University, but Sam Earle was a graduate and went to Cornell and he is a professor of engineering at Clemson and he's ninety-eight years old today and he's over there right now, not teaching of course, but he's got a building named for him and he's living in that hotel over there, that apartment house. Dr. Earl was a great man and one of the greatest engineering professors that I know of anywhere. Anyway, her mother's family were Gilreaths.
And what was your mother's maiden name?
My mother was a Hoyt. Her father was wounded in the Battle of Manassas
and walked on a crutch for the rest of his life and he was a newspaper
man. As a matter of fact, when he died in 1904, I was nine years
What was that called?
The Mountaineer. His two employees, the printers, one
of them was Mr. B.H. Peace and the other was Jones Peace, his brother.
B.H. Peace is the man, his family, finally got the Greenville News and Piedmont and his grandchildren now own a
great large part of that Multimedia Inc. company. B.H.Peace, their
grandfather, was a great friend of mine. I used to go in there as a
little boy and count newspapers for what they called an exchange. You
know, other newspapers would send them a newspaper and you would send
them yours and if there was something in yours that they wanted to clip
and use; they didn't hesitate to clip it and use it and vice-versa. I
used to count them out, lay the sheets out, roll them up and tie them
with a string around them and sell them to the Negroes for ten cents a
roll to paper the inside of their house with. Their houses were just
like tissue paper, the wind would just blow through them and that was
the best insulation you could put on.
Newsprint?
Yes, and they were much thicker than they are now. But anyhow, that was my grandfather, he lived next door to us and he was quite an old gentleman.
What was his first name?
James A. Hoyt, James Alfred Hoyt.
Are there any other childhood memories that come to mind, anybody who you were close friends with, that you have kept up the friendships over the years?
Oh yes, I've got one right next door to me here now, who was a boyhood friend of mine, W.H. Beattie, whose family were bankers here and with textile mills. His last job was president of Woodside Mill, it was sold to Dan River.
And you were boyhood friends?
Oh, yes. He's living right next door to me right now. Of course, most of my boyhood friends are dead.
Well, did you go to a public school?
Oh, yes. I went to . . . well, that's an interesting thing, if you ask
about friends and all. I went to public school through the fifth grade
and then I was taken out of public school and most of my friends, their
families had money, we didn't. And they went to prep schools in Virginia
largely, Staunton Military Academy, Woodbury Forest, Episcopal High
School and incidentally, all of those schools are still running right
now. Bill Beattie went to Woodbury and then he went to Furman for two or
three years and came back and then he went to Cornell until the First
World War broke out and then he left Cornell and went in the army.
Melville C. Westervell, his father was president of the Brandon Mills
here and he was best man at my wedding. His father came up from
Charleston and ran a little Pelham mill down here, a little yarn mill.
My father helped him develop the Brandon Mills and Father was on the
board there and had a little stock in it, it was big to him then but
it's little now. Then they built the Westervell Mill which is now the
Judson Mill, which is owned by Deering Millikin Company. The Brandon
Mill is owned by Abney Mills. Of
Now what mill was this that you worked in?
I worked in Brandon Mills and I worked in Monaghan Mill and I played baseball at all of them. We used to have good baseball in these mills here. I played college baseball. Of course, I couldn't play baseball for money so I had to get a job working for them to play baseball with them and I did that. I wasn't any great baseball player, don't misunderstand me, I was just an ordinary outfielder.
Well, that's about as far as I got in baseball.
Well, I had a lot of fun with it, of course.
These mill communities never became part of the city, did they?
Well, parts of them did.
Oh, eventually maybe.
I want to bring that up, as I got back . . . I went to the First World
War and when I got back, Father had accrued quite a little business. I
had gone into it at nineteen and I was now twenty-four. I said, "Father,
we've got to do more than a one-man job around here." We started
underwriting stocks in these mills. That is, when they wanted to build,
like the Southern Worsted Company, we underwrote a million dollars of
preferred stock and sold it, some common stock. The Judson Mills, the
Dunean Mills. We did a good deal of underwriting because we made a
connection where we could finance it with the Chemical Bank in New York
and my old firm has got an account there now, it has ever since 1919. I
had great friends up there and made quite a lot of friends in the First
Quite a nice gift.
Gave each one of them, I think, around $50,000 apiece. That's what I keep
telling him . . . I laugh and . . . talk about anecdotes, I never will
forget that I used to do a lot of business with him. I started him in
the mortgage loan business when we got the Prudential Insurance Company
account in 1919 and he was my subman down in Florence. We made mortgage
loans all over the state. That's what I started to tell you about, when
I got back, I said, "Father, we've got to do more than what we are
doing." So, I got the account of the Prudential for all but one city in
South Carolina and we loaned money all over. Father had been making
mortgage loans for years for his friends in Charleston, bankers and
lawyers down there. Lawyers were the executors of estates, very often
like the old Boston trustees and he used to make a lot of loans for
them. Well, I got this Prudential account and we did a lot of business
with them. Then we developed the security business, mainly because the
mills then were beginning to look for more capital to enlarge. We got
involved in that and of course, that took us on into other types of
investment. Now my son, when he took over and I retired fifteen years
ago, he had been there and had been made president of the company and I
decided to get out
Were you now a company?
No, we were a partnership, we brought them in as a partnership. In fact,
we didn't become a company until 1952 . . . I think it was '52 before we
incorporated. We dissolved the partnership then and it left so much
capital in there . . . when I got out, I got out entirely. I don't own a
nickel in it. I gave the people in there the biggest part of it because
the insurance business had a great value to it
What was the other fellow's name?
Gaddy. Harold is one of the finest people that I ever knew, but he never
gave a soul a damn cent.
How did your father react to your coming back and saying, "We've got to make some changes."
Well, Father said onetime, "We don't have enough business to divide up
with other people." I said, "I tell you, if they don't produce, they
don't stay." That's when I took over and of course, when '32 came along,
it was right down to the bottom again in this country and it was really
tough. I had against my father's judgement . . . he was probably right,
although I don't know, I think that maybe I got something out of it, but
they asked me to help try to save a bank, the People's State Bank, and I
worked like a dog in that thing for nearly two and a half years and at
one time, I thought that we had it on the road and then they found a
false statement of somebody that had given it to them, the man was in
the bank, and that wiped out a good deal of what we had been able to
build
I would like to backtrack for just a second back to the twenties.
There was a cotton depression in 1921, wasn't there?
Well, there was a . . .
Not a depression, perhaps.
Not a depression, no, but in May of 1920, we had begun to feel a real
depression coming in. I mean, business was getting poor. The textile
business was getting poor and all that kind of business. Then, it picked
up after '21, '22 and began to get back on its feet again. The textile
business has always been a sick business. It does this way always.
That's the reason that the textile business has no business having a lot
of debt. It's got no business having any debt at all. When you get them
expanding on equity, financing . . . well, it just shouldn't be that
Did the discussion ever come up in these early years of perhaps a city like Greenville, or the South in general, becoming too dependent on one industry?
Well of course, there was a lot of discussion and of course, it's only changed in the last few years as we have had a tremendous influx of other industries in here. As a matter of fact, I was on the board of a good many textile mills at one time. I'm on the board of one now, which is a little mill up in North Carolina that I pulled out of the Depression in 1939 and rehabilitated it and the man who I got to go there and run it for us, Mr. A.G. Heinsohn, Jr., is now my age and we'll be 81 our next birthdays and . . .
Where is that?
Spindale, North Carolina. Charlie Reynolds is the head of it now, an able
boy . . . man, I should say. I call him a boy because he worked there
when he was very young. They thanked me the other day in a board meeting
because they had plenty of money and wanted to buy another mill and I
said, "That's the worst thing that we could ever do. This is no time to
buy anything, keep that money in the bank." As a result of that, we have
been in fine financial shape and we can continue to pay our dividends to
the stockholders. Not only that, we kept people on payrolls and kept it
running when we couldn't have done it, and that's what textile mills
ought to all do. No question about that. But going back to the twenties,
you were talking about that, we had a pretty good boom . . . well, I
wouldn't call it a boom, but we had a good business atmosphere here from
'22 until about '28. Then, this thing started going, the stock market
had gone clear out of the world and then in April of
At this point, you were maybe on the board of directors of this?
No, I wasn't on the board of directors of Judson.
Well, what kind of influence could you have to . . .
Well, the influence was simply an economic influence. They needed new machinery and instead of selling more stock or borrowing more money, if they would sell those houses and finance it, they would have money to put in new machinery.
I see. So, you made the suggestion to them?
I sold it to Mr. Milliken, Roger Milliken's father. He's the man that I
first started working with and we sold the houses at Judson No. 2, sold
them cheap and immediately, those owners begun to fix those places up
instead of acting like a tenant and tearing them apart, they would go in
there and paint them and they put a lot of these
I'll never forget, one day I was going to New York on the Southern Railway out here, in the late forties, and my friend, Bob Stevens, who was the head of J.P. Stevens and Company for many year . . . and I had a room on that train and he didn't have any reservations. I said, "Bob, come on in here and stay with me." So, he did. We were in the First World War together at a training camp at Louisville, Kentucky, Zachary Taylor, they called it, Camp Taylor. We were passing by a little mill over there that was part of the J.P. Stevens group, they had begun to merge all these mills into J.P. Stevens corporation and my father was on the board, and I said, "Bob, when are you going to sell those houses?" He said, "Oh, we never will sell them. We never sell houses. I'm not going to run a mill without houses." I said, "Why?" "Well," he said, "we want to control the type of people that are in those houses." I said, "Bob, I want to tell you something, so you remember this. It's not a question of ‘if’ you are going to sell those houses. The question is, ‘when.’ Because you are going to sell them." But we went ahead and were selling other houses. I think that we sold . . . I can't remember it, but there were some 4700 houses sold for the Stevens Company before we quit.
You acted as agent?
Oh, we sold from Alabama to Virginia and sold those houses and the agent
of those mills. We would go in there, appraise them, set
Yet, there are some villages that are still owned.
Just a few. Cannon has a good many that he hasn't sold yet. We sold some houses for Cannon, my son has, I haven't. We sold some for them and as I say, we sold for mills all through, from Virginia all the way down to Alabama.
Was there ever a company named Draper?
The Draper Corporation?
Yes.
It was a weaving company.
No, I'm talking about another company that designed mills and . . .
Oh, you are talking about the architect. I don't think that he sold any houses.
No, but did he do any designing of mills and mill villages?
Not that I know of. There wasn't any real designing of mill villages. They would just have a standard house and would just build them.
Well, I came across a book that B.A. Tompkins had, a real old one, in which he has all these plans for houses and specifications and all this. A whole chapter of the books was . . .
Well, that was a good thing to do.
I don't know how much it was followed.
Well, I don't know either, to tell you the truth. The last houses built were . . . well, there weren't many houses built after the Second World War.
By the companies.
By the companies.
Was your father friends with any of these people like Tompkins or old Stuart Cramer?
Oh, yes. He knew them all. You say "friendly," and I'll tell you, frankly, I don't know. I know that there wasn't animosity, let's put it that way. Of course, the ones around here in South Carolina were . . . you're talking about North Carolina, right?
Right.
Now, Stuart Cramer, Jr., who I knew . . . he was a member of the Augusta National Golf Club with me for many years. His wife, his widow, married a fellow named Maury Smith and I think Stuart went to the Military Academy. I mean, to West Point . . . but her sons . . . she was a Scott, her father was the president of the First National Bank of Charlotte and she is one of the nicest people that you ever saw. They are living up at Linville in the summer and they lived down at Mountain Lake in Florida in the winter.
While we are on the textile industry, let me ask a few questions that have come to my mind as I have been studying this. One was this idea that these mills were very much in competition with each other. They were all very small, I know, in North Carolina and in South Carolina. Was there ever a realization that "maybe we are sort of beating each other over the head?"
Well, let me tell you, I was a member of the Merchants Club in New York
on Thomas Street, which was the luncheon club for textile people and I
kept a membership there for many years because I was in New York for
every two weeks or three weeks every month. I used to go around to all
these selling agents up there because frankly, I got a great deal of
information about what was going on and not only that, did a lot of
business with them in their stocks, their individual concerns and at the
same time, I was lending money for the Prudential Insurance Company.
Well, the heads of those selling houses up there were rather
interesting. There were many of them and I went in there once when one
of them was saying, "Well, if it wasn't for that So-and-So over there of
Spring Mills cutting the price, we would just be fixed." And I would go
over to Spring Mills and he would say the same thing about the fellow
that I just left.
There were some smaller ones, too, that were individual.
Oh, yes. A lot of them. Of course, when I got into this Spindale thing,
we put in our own selling house in New York. Instead of paying a 6%
selling commission for selling those fancy goods we made, it cost us
1½%. It made a lot of difference about a real profit, we've had a more
profitable experience with that on selling those goods. But all
Where is this located?
Biltmore Forest Country Club in Asheville and Mr. J.E. Sirine was one of
the organizers
This lunch with Mr. Milliken was in '39.
So, I went up there and we had lunch and I said, "Mr. Milliken, you are building a new building down on Leonard and Church . . . " they are uptown now, but this was where they were building a new building. Roger hadn't come into the picture yet, Roger is an able man and his father was an able man except for this: he had a bad fault of supporting anybody he hired whether they turned out good or not. So, to make a long story short, I had lunch with him and we had a long one and we sat and talked a lot and I said, "Mr. Milliken, are you going to take those termites with you from that store down there?"
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
Mr. Furman, I wondered if you could tell me anything about the origins of the Textile Exposition. That was in the twenties, wasn't it?
'16 was the first one and it was held in the Piedmont Northern Railroad warehouse, which had just been built there and it was an empty building and of course, it was a very minor thing but they had such success with it because the machinery manufacturers and the suppliers of materials and things for the textile industry took it up and of course, after that, it had to suspend during the war, during the First World War. And then they started again soon after the war. I think that it was '20, I could be wrong in that, it might be '19, but they can tell you out at the Textile Hall. From then on, it was every other year.
Who was involved in getting that started?
Well, there were a bunch of men here in Greenville and Greenville was the center then of machinery representatives representing machinery manufacturers and they were primarily the ones. Of course, a lot of the textile mills and all got interested in it and it went on. You can find more from them, they can give you that out there. Old Pete Hollis, he's 91 years old now and he's a great friend of mine.
Yes, I think that I should interview him also.
I think that you ought to sometime, because he did a lot. He did this,
and I'll leave it to him to tell you about it. He did the first social
work, if I may put it that way, in textile mills that I ever
And his first name was . . .
Thomas. Thomas F. Parker. And he took Pete Hollis and he started a YMCA out at the Monaghan Mill and from that, he developed their basketball interests out there and all kinds of physical things as well as a very fine character building organization. And then I never will forget, when they started the . . . each village had its own school and they just operated themselves and he conceived the idea of putting together all those outside of the city of Greenville school districts into what they called the Parker School District. And he became principal, I guess that was the old word they used, of the Parker High School. They didn't have a high school out there before.
When was this?
Well, it was in the twenties. Then he developed quite a manual-training program there. He had a loom in there running and spinning frames to teach them about the textile business. You would be amazed, but a great many of the textile men at that time were opposed to it because it was going to cost them more taxes.
This was being paid for out of tax money?
They organized the Parker School District and it had to be taxed.
But in other words, the mills themselves were running the school?
No, no. It was the Parker School District and they had their own trustees
and all that, but they had tax power over those mills and you know,
people don't like that, whether it's good or bad, it takes them a long
time to understand it. Now, a lot of them finally came around to the
position that it did more for the city of Greenville, or as much for the
city of Greenville, as practically anything that was done.
How was that?
Well, it was just the look in the face, and afterwards, we got so many fine, fine people out of those mills, fine men that went to college and came back and did work in the mills themselves and became overseers or superintendents. The old superintendents were just the boss of the land and it wasn't good for the whole thing. All that took time. That's what I said to you awhile ago, these changes just can't take place overnight.
I guess that brings up a question that I was thinking about, among many others. One was, did Greenville experience some of the labor troubles that Gastonia or Marion did during that time, and if not, why not?
Well, I can tell you exactly why not, because by that time, that Parker
School District had been running and those people were intelligent and
they knew this, nobody could ever debate or argue that a group of people
can't form an association . . . you can call it a union or you can call
it anything else, for their own benefit. But the trouble was, and it's
the trouble with the union situation today, the top men in the union are
the ones that get all the money and they have to pull a strike every now
and then to make it go. If everything went along smooth, you wouldn't
have any members, because "what's the use of me paying dues, I'm not
having any trouble." Now, that's the whole secret of that thing and very
frankly, . . . I try not to say that I did this in toto from one group of
stockholders to another. Brandon Mill was one that I did right after I
came out of the First World War. And I sold that to the Woodward Baldwin
Company, and we started doing a great deal of that type of work. Sold a
good many mills. I told you that I sold Harry Kendal of Kendal Mills.
Well, his company has gone out of business now, but he was the man who
started the gauze business in the First World War . . . Harry Kendall,
Kendall Mills and I sold him two mills in Newbury and I went fishing
with him up in Maine and I've got the pictures right there now when I
went there with him. That's where I got around a lot, you know. If you
get around and meet people, you get a lot of other things coming on with
it.
Did these mills have trouble with labor organizations?
No, we never had any trouble with labor.
The ones around here, in Greenville?
As a matter of fact, even today, we don't have a labor union in any one of these mills around here today.
And you feel that it's basically because of the feeling . . .
Basically, it was just this: be sure and tell those people exactly the
facts about what they are doing, not try to hide anything and not try to
cover up something, but the relationship between the stockholders, the
representatives being the officers and the mills was always a cordial
thing. I don't mean that they didn't have some problem, I don't mean
that there wasn't a dissident in there that wanted to change this or
that and of course, unions would come by and they would pay somebody and
they would send in an organizer or they would pay some people in the
mill
Did they come through Greenville.
Oh yes. They came through here and they had to call out the militia all
over the state. I know that I was at that time on the board of Woodside
Mill and I was on the board at the time that they went into Dan River as
a matter of fact, but anyway, the man who was the
Arthur?
Harry Arthur. That Arthur family is a great family for Union. He has a
bank in Union now. They drove a truck up over at Duneen Mill, I was not
there, this is what was told to me . . . they drove a big truck up there
and Harry had a little company of mill boys from all around Union and
they were around the Duneen Mill and the textile workers union came up
there in a flatboard truck and a fellow was standing up on it just
cursing and telling them what a terrible bunch of people they were, and
finally . . . Bob Henry was running it and they all loved him and old
Harry Arthur was a little bitty short fellow and he carried a forty-five
on him that was as big as he was nearly. He got a rope and put it around
there and he said . . . around the doors of that mill. They were going
in to pull those switches, that was what they were always trying to do.
They couldn't shut the mill down and they wanted to shut it down. They
never could get enough people out of the mill to shut it down. Of
course, you know that if you can get all your doffers out of there, you
can shut any mill down if your doffers are gone. That is a very key
place
Did many of the northern companies . . . I've heard a lot about the scientific management in the North. How influential was that in the South and did that cause any hard feelings?
Well, they always had a thing that they called a "stretchout" system. I
mean, that's what it was. Of course, the whole truth of the matter was
that nobody scientifically figured what was a fair load of work on a
particular person. Of course, they are all different. For instance, one
man might have a dexterity about him . . . of course, a spinner, you can
see them put up those threads when they break and it's just a matter of
flicking your finger, but you try to put it up and you would have a hard
time doing it. The whole thing was built to make a yarn that wouldn't
break and it took some real work to do it. Another thing was the quality
of the looms. When they first started running looms, they were not
automatic looms. They ran but they weren't automatic and eight to ten
looms was all a man could look after. Well, I've known the time . . .
when I sold those last seven mills that I sold to Burlington from
Martell Henrietta in '59, I think it was, '58 or '59 and over at a
little mill at Cherokee Falls, they were tending 225 looms with one man.
Of course, they had the fastest, best
Progress in the machinery?
Progress in the machinery and ability of the person. They had a lot of people who were educated and then, they were doing it on piecework and the more he turned out the better off that fellow was.
So, does this concern for better efficiency begin in the twenties or earlier?
It began in the twenties, that's when it really started, back there. Of course, I may be wrong, but I attribute a great deal of the change in the attitude of many of them and the change for help from owning their own homes. Now, you would be amazed but after we sold houses in the Monaghan Mill village out here for instance, that right outside there was a lot of vacant land out beyond that. We cut it up into lots and I had several men that bought their own houses . . .
These are . . .
Mill houses, that they were living in, renting, and they bought a lot out there and built a house and rented that house to somebody else. And got ten times what the mill was charging rent for it.
Well, I guess they were fast learners.
Well, sure. But that's America. That's what in the United States has been available to people if they became individuals and knew what they were doing and did it.
This man who is working for me, been here seven-thirty years, came here
as a young boy, he went to the
This is Preston . . . what's his last name?
Bates. He said, "I don't have anything left." I said, "Well, I'm living
in a hotel now, I don't need anybody, but I'll give you a job in my
office until I get a house. I'm going to get a house just as soon as I
can either build one or buy one." So, we bought a house pretty soon
after that and I built him a house and he brought his wife down here
with his one year old child. I made him pay for the house. I said . . .
I have no hours, for instance, yesterday we had breakfast at 8:30. He
got here five minutes before that. He and my cook can get breakfast
quicker than anybody because we don't eat much. We had lunch and he left
right after lunch. Of course, there's nothing you can do with this cold
weather. You can't work outdoors and there wasn't anything to do
indoors. So, we don't work on hours. We just work when we need him and
we let him off when we don't and it has been very satisfactory. Since
then, I've bought him another house. He owns the one that I built for
him, but I bought him another house over in another section of town, on
the west side of town that the Negroes moved into and I bought him a
brick seven room house over there on the corner. He has got just as nice
a house as anybody you ever saw. And he's paying for it,
That leads me to another line of questioning that I want to make sure I get in before we have to close, and that is about Greenville itself. You've seen Greenville grow and change and in particular, I was interested in the residential patterns that you have seen change. But before we get into that, I was talking to Dr. Blackwell about the Council for Community Development . . .
Yes, that took place in '36, I think.
Right. What kind of impact do you think that had on Greenville?
Not near as much as Dr. Blackwell thinks it did.
Well, he seemed to feel . . . well, he was aware of its limitations. Let's put it that way.
Yes, I think that's right.
Were you involved in getting that started?
No, I was not.
How about the changes that you've seen in Greenville over all? What would you say would be the most dramatic change in terms of leadership, economics, race relations . . .
Well . . . that's a hard question to answer off the top of yoru head
without thinking about it. But on the other hand, there are certain
basic things. I think that the hard core families of Greenville have
always had an entirely different attidue from other communities in the
South. There was never any of this high society side of Greenville.
Greenville has been a very democratic place, if I may put it that way.
In other words, they never . . . let me tell you, I'd better put it this
way. I learned this years ago. It's awfully fine and good to have
forebears that have done something in their time and their way and you
can honor them for that, but if you have to live off that, you'll starve
to death and too many people in some communities thought just because
their forebears had done something, they were entitled to something.
Well, their forebears worked for it. I've tried my best to tell my
children this, you can take off your hat to the past, but you'd better
take your coat off to the future and to me, I think that's the best part
about Greenville. When a man comes here . . . well, I'll give you an
illustration, if you don't mind me speaking in the vernacular kind of.
We seem to go back and forth from New York . . . well, we had a little
No.
There were upper and lower berths and a curtain came down and everybody climbed in behind that curtain and got an upper or lower berth. In the daytime, they opened up into the Pullman seat. Well, two people could sit the way the train was going and two people could ride here.
Right. I've been on a train like that in Europe.
Well, I was sitting there talking to a man and Shep Salzman was right
across the aisle from me. This fellow was quizzing him as to what his
business was and how long he'd been down here and he said what his
business was and then the man asked him how long he'd been down here. "I
been there two years and if you been there two years, you're native."
In Greenville.
Yes, that's where he meant. I think that is illustrative of what I just
said. In other words, I don't think that you find people here . . .
well, for instance, we've got a fellow named Heller who is mayor of our
town, one of the finest men I ever knew. Everyone here . . . well, he
just beat a fellow three to one when he ran the last time and Max is an
I'm a Jew.
All right, I'll tell you a very interesting story. You know, that fellow
asked me about Dave Levy, he was a Jew, one of the best men I ever knew
in my life, a high classed type. Max Heller is the same type. I said one
day to Dave Levy, he used to come over and have dinner with us at night
when he was in Greenville, and I said, "Dave, I want you to tell me
something. I go to New York a lot and in the textile business,
particularly in the selling and all around there, I run into many men
who are Jews. I have friends among them, some I know well, some I just
meet, but I would like to know why a Jew calls another Jew a kike. Among
the Gentiles, they all will say, ‘This man is a son-of-a-bitch."’
"Well," he said, "Al, let me tell you. Any Jew who is not present is a
kike to another one." Now, that was him telling me, not me. Well, you
take the language of the Senate of the United States, the language of
Mr. Truman in that oral biography . . . my friend Charlie Daniel in that
top picture up there, he was appointed Senator from here by Governor
Byrnes in the middle fifties and was up there about two months and the
only vote he cast was the vote to censure Senator McCarthy. Well, we had
so many friends that were members of the Jewish race and I never could
see any difference. When you take Saul Driben of Cone Exporting and
Commission Company, Clarence Guggenheim, there never were more generous
Well, did Greenville have any kind of rivalry with a town like Charleston or on the other hand, when this textile exposition was starting up, was there a town like Charlotte that was perhaps in competition . . .
I don't know whether they had any competition, of course, they are all
basically in competition. Spartanburg was a community that was always
throwing things up to Greenville. I've got a lot of friends over there
and they are fine people, there's no question about that, but they used
to nearly suffer about it. My father . . . I think I told you about that
man from Spartanburg that my father told me, "Any man who says that he
is honest, you'd better look out." One time, down in Carpenter Brothers
Drugstore, it was down on Main Street at that time, there was a big old
mastiff dog walked in the door. My father and this man were standing
there buying a cigar or whatever it was; and like all drugstores in
those days, they had cats running around there to take care of the mice
that were in there. And they had this soda fountain there and this
little cat stood over there by the soda fountain and scrunched her back
in the air, and this big old mastiff dog just walked by and looked at
her and walked on and Father said, "So-and-so, you know, that reminds me
of Spartanburg and Greenville. Spartanburg is always spitting up and
fussing about this and that and Greenville just walks on by and don't
say a word."
I want to make sure that I ask you a little bit about your present
activities. What do you find that you are doing and do you have
At eighty-one years old?
Well, they say that life begins at eighty sometimes.
Well, I told you what my grandfather told me, to live in the future more than in the past. I got off the board of Furman University because I don't think that men ought to stay on these boards after they reach a certain age. I'm not one that believes that sixty-five is the right time for everybody. I think that many people can work later than that and I think I could have. I got out of the business to get out of the way of my son. I want him to have every opportunity and not have somebody saying, "Well, his father did that and his father did this." He's done that, he's just done everything that I could have hoped for him to have done, as far as that's concerned.
You're not active on any other boards now?
I was on seventeen boards when I quit and I got off all but one. I told you about it . . .
Yes, Spindale.
The mill in North Carolina. I got off the advisory board of Furman
University, even. I didn't want to be on that, I didn't want to be on
anything that I couldn't say what I wanted to say and be free. Now, you
see, frankly I have a hard time finding time to do what I want to do.
Oh, I'm interested in all the different movements that go on in
Greenville, try to contribute to them, try to take part in them, try to
help my church to do a little better than they are doing all the time.
None of them are good enough, you know.
Of course, I am very much interested in Furman University. That's my
avocation.
Odds, from what? Financing or . . .
Financing and people were prejudiced about it. Of course, Furman University has always been an open college as far as race. Now, we didn't have any blacks out there before '54, but we were the first ones in this state that opened up a private college.
What kinds of comments were there about that?
Oh, plenty.
And you probably heard them.
Oh, I heard them well. I said, "Let me tell you something. The ones that have come out there, if they can pass their work, we'll do something for them. If they are not able to pass their work, they are going to leave. We don't have to send them off, they are just not going to take it." That was true and it has been true and today, I think that out of the two thousand odd or more that are in the college today, I think there are twenty-five or thirty out there and some of them have done excellent work. We have even had some pretty good athletes. We never had a star black football player, we've had some very good ones, there are two good ones out there now, but they are not nationally recognized. We had a boy last year who played basketball and he's now with the Milwaulkee Bucks, his name was Mays, Clyde Mays and in the paper, they had a piece about him Sunday quoting him, he said, "I'm learning a lot up here." He's playing ten to twenty minutes in a game now, going in and out, but he is a local boy.
Yes, he from South Carolina.
Yes, from Greenville. And I'll tell you this . . . this might be very interesting to you. When he was recruited to go out there, of course they gave him a scholarship. When he got out there and really got tested, he didn't have the qualifications to get this scholarship. Well, his father lives in New York, his mother lives here and his uncle, who is in one of the maintenance departments at Furman University working, they paid his way through that freshman year when he couldn't play. And he qualified and then they got him a scholarship and he graduated. Well now, to me, that's . . . and I was so interested in the football team this last year, if I may say that, because I used to run after athletics in the twenties when we didn't ask anybody any odds. We played them all. And very small squads we had in those days, but when the Southern Conference selected their academic teams, that is, the members of the teams who have a high rating in academics, of the eleven men, five of them were from Furman University. I don't know whether Dr. Blackwell told you that or not . . .
No, he didn't.
Well, to me, that's what we . . . we're trying to educate people. Athletics is good and fine, but if you loose the sight of education, you've got nothing to work on.
What are some of the other civic organizations that are very close to your heart or interest?
Well, I've retired from most of them, but of course, we've got the
symphony that we supported . . . one thing that I haven't supported
because I just . . . years and years ago, when we used to have so many
local
Right, I read about that.
. . . that it is really a professional type and of course, we've got a lot of people come in here that have professional training, who have married, particularly women, and they have added a great deal to that.
How long has Bob Jones University been here in Greenville?
Bob Jones came here in the late forties. And they've done a terrific job
out there. Of course, I don't agree with them in many of their ideas
about things, but the people are decent people. I don't care what they
are in or not in, they are decent people. The old gentleman, Bob
himself, he died here quite a few years ago, but they've added their
part to this thing. They have certainly contributed something to the
community and so I have nothing . . . One time, Lefty Johnson the
business manager, he's dead now, he was sitting next to me at a luncheon
one day; I don't remember what it was about but somebody raised a point
and he said, "Well, we dont' do anything unless we get God's guidance.
We ask him to lead us in everything we do." I said, "Mr Johnson, you
must not make a mistake then, because I don't think that God can make a
mistake." He never answered me. I don't believe that, you know, I don't
care what denomination . . . of course, in the Bible there are really no
denominations, if you think about. The Old Testament is the Jewish
history and the New Testament is the Christian history and that's all it
is. Denominations are
Yes. They fight with each other, too.
Yes, well . . . one day I was in Scotland and I was in Warwick Castle and the first thing they do, they always take you in the weapons room in all those castles and I said, "Well, the trouble with the Scots is that all their history, they have fought the Danes, the Norweigans and the Dutch and the English and if they couldn't fight anybody else, they'd fight among themselves, in the clans." That's the whole basis of it.
Well, the last question I want to ask you, besides your son Alester, who are your other children? Would you mind naming them?
No. My other son is four years younger than Alester and he is Dr. Joseph Earle Furman. He is named for my wife's father who was Dr. J.B. Earle Joseph Earle Furman. He's a pediatrician and has been here since he finished medical school. He was in New York at the Willard Parker Hospital in 1949 as a resident when they had that terrible polio epidemic up there. When were you born?
'47.
Well, you were two years old then.
Right.
They had a terrible polio epidemic and the Willard Parker Hospital down
on Twentieth Street and East Side Drive was where they
Right, that's out on the East Side.
It was a city hospital, I know that and he has been practicing pediatrics here since '52, I think. Seven years after he got through medical school and trained. He trained in New York and in Philadelphia and Baltimore and then he came here and started practicing. He has three associates with him. Incidentally, his newest associate is a young Jew. So, I just tell you, I think that time is too short and the world too long to have prejudice about anything. You can disagree with somebody, but you don't have to have a prejudice about it.
Do you have any daughters?
No.
END OF INTERVIEW