From Ancient Silk Road to Multinational Synthetic Fibers Industry in a Southern Appalachian Town
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ALL ROADS LEAD: FROM ANCIENT SILK ROAD TO MULTINATIONAL SYNTHETIC FIBERS INDUSTRY IN A SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN TOWN by Lydia B. Simpson A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Public History Department of History Middle Tennessee State University December 2017 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Carroll Van West, Chair Dr. Mary Hoffschwelle Dr. Brenden Martin Dr. Louis Haas This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of my granddaddy, Monte Wood, who never understood my love of history but who nevertheless inspired it. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project was made possible through the assistance of many people and it would be impossible to include them all. I would like to thank my family for their patience and understanding when my work kept me from visiting as much as I would like. I would like to thank my officemates at the MTSU Center for Historic Preservation for tolerating the mess that was my desk in the final throes of completing this dissertation. My dear friend and colleague Dr. Stacey Graham has provided moral support and read various parts of drafts over the past two years. Dr. Douglas Flamming, the late Dr. Clif Kuhn, Dr. Bronson Long, and Dr. Valerio Cerretano all provided advice, insights, and suggestions through correspondence and discussions. I am eternally grateful to the support I’ve received from the Celanese Village Kids and local community members, without whom this project would be meaningless. I only hope that I can do justice to the story of Rome’s “silk mill” workers, their children and the world they helped create. I would certainly be remiss not to acknowledge staff at the Rome Area History Museum, Chieftain’s Museum, the West Georgia Textile Heritage Trail, and archivists at the Smithsonian, Georgia State University, and Georgia Tech. I want to thank my dear friend Jessie who, on top of the love and moral support she gave me throughout the process, also spent many tedious hours with microfilm, helping me find last minute sources. And Michael, my most steadfast reader, who has been through all the ups and downs from beginning to end. iii ABSTRACT In the late nineteenth century, the silk industry came under threat, inspiring chemists to seek out alternative means of production. The pursuit of “artificial silk” ultimately gave rise to a whole new category of textiles – man-made synthetics. Synthetics entered the market just as the shape of global industry shifted east and south, and became a significant feature in the industrialization of twentieth century southern Appalachia. As a multinational, technologically advanced industry, synthetics initially struggled to find their place in the market among more trusted natural fibers, but with the rebranding of artificial silk to “rayon” in the 1920s, manufacturers soon prospered and began expanding into American markets just as the textile industry began concentrating in the South. The junction of the “fabric of the future” and the modern industrial design philosophies developing at the time left behind a unique landscape of which few examples survive. The Milan-based rayon mill constructed near Rome, Georgia in 1928 provides an ideal, intact landscape for understanding the industry, its impact, its place within the larger context of global industrial development, and the creation of public memory and collective identity in an era of environmental regulation and economic destabilization. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures…………………………………………………………………….............vi Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter I: A Centuries-Old Obsession: Silk and its Patterns of Exchange………………..7 Chapter II: The Rise of Artificial Silk and the Modern Rayon Industry………………....34 Chapter III: Worlds Collide: The “Rayon Gold Rush” Comes to the American South…..56 Chapter IV: Creating the Rome Industrial Zone………………………………………….76 Chapter V: Rayon Comes to Rome: 1928-1933………………………………………….94 Chapter VI: Southern Labor and Rayon: The Rome Experience, 1933-1946…………..123 Chapter VII: Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss? 1946-1977………………….137 Chapter VIII: Life after Rayon: Riverside Village and Public Memory…………………160 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………....217 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Groundbreaking at the Rayon Mill………………………………………………1 Figure 2: Rome, Georgia Hosiery Mill Housing………………………………………….69 Figure 3: Map of rayon mills in the United States by the mid-twentieth century………..75 Figure 4: "The Beginning of the Rome Plant"…………………………………………...102 Figure 5: Ridge Home, 1910s…………………………………………………………...104 Figure 6: Ridge Home, 1950s…………………………………………………………...104 Figure 7: Historic Riverside streetscape….……………………………………………..169 Figure 8: Riverside streetscape, 2012……...……………………………………………169 Figure 9: 3 room, minimally altered…………………………………………………….170 Figure 10: 3 room, moderately altered…………………………………………………..171 Figure 11: 3 room moderately altered…………………………………………………...172 Figure 12: 3 room, significantly altered…………………………………………………173 Figure 13: 3 room, significantly altered - vinyl additions……………………………….174 Figure 14: 4 room, minimally altered…………………………………………………...175 Figure 15: 4 room, moderately altered – rear addition………………………………….176 Figure 16: 4 room, moderately altered - porch enclosures………………………………177 Figure 17: 4 room, significantly altered – historic additions……………………………178 Figure 18: 4 room, significantly altered – newer additions...……………………………179 Figure 19: 5 room, minimally altered…………………………………………………...180 Figure 20: 5 room, moderately altered………………………………………………….181 Figure 21: 5 room, significantly altered…………………………………………………182 Figure 22: 6 room, minimally altered…………………………………………………...183 Figure 23: 6 room, moderately altered………………………………………………….184 Figure 24: 6 room, significantly altered…………………………………………………185 Figure 25: 3 room, minimally altered…………………………………………………...186 Figure 26: 3 room, moderately altered…………………………………………………..187 Figure 27: 3 room, significantly altered…………………………………………………188 Figure 28: 3 room, significantly altered, continued…….………………………………189 Figure 29: Preservation issues – windows…..…………………………………………..192 Figure 30: Overgrown vegetation…………….…………………………………………193 Figure 31: 23 Beech Street, rear…………………………………………………………194 Figure 32: Kitchen upgrades…………………………………………………………….196 Figure 33: Tubize Rayons baseball field, circa 1931……………………………………198 Figure 34: Village ballfield, circa 2012…………………………………………………199 Figure 35: Former tennis court………………………………………………………….199 Figure 36: Village school, circa 1930…………………………………………………...200 Figure 37: Village school, circa 2012…………………………………………………...200 Figure 38: Village school under demolition, 2015………………………………………201 Figure 39: Village school cupola………………………………………………………..201 Figure 40: Village Churches, 2013……………………………………………………...202 Figure 41: Modern map of Rome area…………………………………………………..206 vi Figure 42: North Gate and Swimming Pool……………………………………………..209 Figure 43: Aerial view of mill and village, 1930s..………………………………………214 Figure 44: Mill Landscape, from South, 2015......………………………………………214 Figure 45: Mill landscape, from North. 2015……………………………………………215 Figure 46: Former Rayon Pharmacy and soda fountain building……………………….215 vii 1 INTRODUCTION Figure 1: Groundbreaking at the Rayon Mill This image is labeled "Rome, Georgia." The man holding the shovel appears to be Dr. Ugo Mancini, vice-president of American Chatillon. Lockwood Greene Collection, Smithsonian Museum of American History On a late April evening in 1928, several hundred residents of the modest-sized southern Appalachian town of Rome, Georgia gathered at the Floyd County Courthouse for a special public meeting. A site just outside of town had made the short list for a new industrial facility, a rayon mill, and the chamber of commerce needed a swift showing of public support to win over the company’s interest. Within two days, the chamber had raised $115,000 in subscriptions from local individuals and companies and secured support from city and county government officials that they would meet the company’s infrastructure demands. A week later, Italian and American officials from American Chatillon Corporation arrived to lay the ceremonial cornerstone at the site two miles from downtown Rome. 2 This dissertation deals with artificial silk, or rayon, in both a global and local context. Early inventors of artificial silk production methods saw their creation as a modern replacement for the expensive and coveted silk whose history had in many ways tied East to West and served as a major progenitor, along with other prestige materials, of modern world systems. An early modern shift in European intellectuals’ attitudes toward nature, wherein man was its ultimate master, served to foster new industries intent on harnessing the power of the natural world to create a new, man-made one less vulnerable to forces such as disease and weather. From the Royal Society of London to the futurist movement in Fascist Italy, philosophers and chemists strove to free humanity from the shackles of nature and bring modernity, in the form of chemicals, synthetics, and plastics, to the world. Early manufacturers of artificial silk, however, soon learned that their products fell flat of expectations when compared to the real thing, forcing a redirection of market energies, and a rebranding of the industry as a whole in the 1920s. By this time, in an effort to gain better access to lucrative American markets, the European industrialists began moving production overseas, allowing them to bypass high tariffs imposed by the