DHEC Says Mill Must Be Demolished

Unions and the Old Mill

The last days of Darlington’s former cotton mill were racked with turmoil. In 1956, pro-union employees of the Darlington Manufacturing Company drove through the streets of Darlington with bullhorns, bellowing reasons why employees needed to join a union. Pro-union meetings sometimes ended in scuffles when anti-union lackeys showed up to disrupt the proceedings.

After about six months of intense debate that sometimes led to physical confrontation, on Sept. 6, 1956, in a 256 to 248 vote, the employees of Darlington Manufacturing Company voted to join the Textile Workers Union of America, an AFL-CIO affiliate.

A “decorated motorcade” of cars celebrated the victory by driving through the streets of Darlington, according to published reports from the time, but behind closed doors the machinations of management were already moving toward sealing the fate of the cotton mill that opened in 1883 and by 1956 had grown to “523 workers in three shifts operating 873 high speed looms for a weekly output of 600,000 yards of oxford, broadcloth, poplin and print cloth”, according to “News and Press” reports, and also met an annual payroll of $1,664,000 and paid one-eighth of all property taxes in Darlington.

Behind the scenes, Roger Milliken, the principal stockholder for the mill and president of the controlling group Milliken and Co., had long signaled that he wouldn’t tolerate the unionization of the mill.

Indeed, almost immediately after the union vote a stockholders’ meeting was held during which it was voted to shut the mill down and to liquidate its assets.

Once it was clear Milliken wasn’t bluffing, some pro-union Darlington employees backtracked on the union vote, with 400 out of the 523 workers reportedly signing a petition asking that the mill be kept open because they had been misled by union officials before the vote. Milliken wasn’t impressed, and claimed that the move to close the plant wasn’t solely because of the union vote.

“This is a business decision in what the directors believe to be in the best interests of the stockholders,” Milliken said at the time.

In short, he claimed that the plant had been under-producing and needed to be closed anyway, and that the decision to close it wasn’t made lightly. Virtually no one in Darlington, on either side of the issue, believed that—and for good reason.

Clearly Milliken had asked his managers to dissuade employees from joining the union, as managers had posted notices around the plant suggesting the mill could close. Other postings suggested mill management wasn’t so bad, even pointing to allegations that Japanese managers forced their workers to wear skates so they could get around faster.

Pro-union employees characterized the mill as a cold fortress supporting slave labor, with management forcing employees to work long shifts even through Christmas holidays. Pro-management employees characterized managers as compassionate and working conditions as tolerable. So what was the truth?

As is typical in these situations, the answer is probably some of both. Most reports suggest that when Milliken entered the picture the relationship between management and employees soured, though an employee strike in the 1930s suggested problems weren’t new.

Following the closure of the mill, former mill workers, backed by the union, filed suit with the National Labor Relations Board, claiming that Milliken was guilty of unfair labor practices. On Oct. 18, 1962 the board ruled against Milliken, saying that workers were entitled to lost earnings. Milliken’s company appealed the decision but the Supreme Court backed the initial decision in 1969. It then took 11 years for the government to figure out which workers needed back pay and how much they should be paid. In 1980, almost 25 years after the mill closed, it was decided that the employees would receive $5 million in compensation.
After all those years, the government in some instances still withheld about 40 percent of that money for taxes, causing even more bitterness. Of course, some workers had already died by then as well.

West Enders
The group’s 21st reunion will be June 14 at Darlington High School in its cafeteria. Registration begins at 3 p.m., dinner at 5 p.m., and it costs $10 per person.

By Neil Hopwood
editor

The West End of Darlington will never be the same again.
City officials learned this past week that the former cotton mill, which at one point in the 20th century was the primary catalyst for the local economy, will be torn down after health officials determined the building site on Orange Street was hopelessly contaminated with dangerous chemicals.

The news dashed the city’s hopes of one day renovating the massive 250,000 square-foot building for residential and/or commercial use. A few years ago city officials toured the building with representatives of Landmark Assets, the same company involved in the downtown rehabilitation project currently under way. The company was optimistic about the potential use of the building, but that’s moot now.

“This pulls the rug out from underneath that,” City Manager Rodney Langley said.

“It’s going to leave a void in that area, because chances are it will be hard to find someone who will want to locate an industry in that exact spot, because of the standards it will be cleaned up to,” Langley said.

After the cotton mill was shut down in 1956 by owner Roger Milliken following a labor strike, a series of other industries used the building, which apparently subjected the premises to high volumes of dangerous PCB chemicals.

PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, were banned in the United States in the 1970s after the chemicals were determined to cause cancer and skin disorders in adults and children, and immune system and neurological problems, specifically in children. But the chemicals persist in the environment once introduced, forcing extensive clean-up efforts when certain levels are found at sites.

The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control informed the city this past week that the former mill must be demolished, in part because PCBs were found inside the structure but also because PCBs were present beneath the building. PCBs were also found outside the building, specifically in a drainage ditch. A pond that’s located behind the facility and at times becomes stagnant and rather foul will also be drained.

From 1963 to 1968, a General Instruments affiliated company operated in the building, and may have been one of the companies that contributed PCBs to the site.

Though GI (which produced semiconductors during that era as an electronics company) has not admitted any liability for the environmental contamination, the company has been in consultation with DHEC and has agreed to assist with the clean-up of the site. Attorneys representing GI were present at the meeting with city officials this past week, as were representatives of DHEC.

“There are potential pathways of migration for contaminates at the site,” GI attorney Todd Hooker of Morris, Downing & Sherred of New Jersey said (GI is now known as General Semiconductor, Inc.).

“DHEC had asked us to take care of them and we’re going to go ahead and do it.”

GI has been aware of the site testing as it has progressed.

Water contamination
“There is groundwater contamination at the site, there is also contamination in the sediment of the drainage ditch that’s next to the site,” DHEC hydrogeologist and project manager Judy Canova said. “There is also contamination in the Swift Creek that runs behind the site. It’s in the sediment, not in the water.”
There will be a public meeting in April to formally inform residents of what will happen at the site, and demolition work will probably start soon after, DHEC officials said. A fact sheet prepared by DHEC about the situation will be made public as well.
“It’s certainly not anything we wanted to hear, but we certainly understand what DHEC and you guys are up against,” City Manager Rodney Langley said during the meeting. “We appreciate you being up front with us and letting us know.”
Outside of the meeting, Langley confirmed that the initial cost for clean-up could top $3 million (the city is not responsible for any of the cost), though the final tally is not yet known.
Even after the property is razed, the profitability of the land could still be in question. The property apparently will be cleaned up to meet standards allowing for new industrial or commercial use, but not residential use.
“You’d have to take the clean-up further to allow it to be residential,” Langley said.
As much material as possible inside the building will be salvaged, which will help offset the clean-up costs.
The news also comes as a blow to a dedicated group of local citizens keeping the memory of the former cotton mill alive. Every year the group holds a West End Reunion, which is a gathering of people somehow connected to the mill, whether it’s through former employment at the mill, or through family members who once worked there or lived under its influence.
The mill was the center of life for many years for many of those people, and its destruction marks the biggest loss for them since the mill’s shocking closure (see sidebar this page). Mill Hill, as it once was called, will truly exist in memory only.
“It’s very disheartening because of the heritage there for our whole community,” said Peggy Sheffield, a former president of the ‘West Enders’ who was also present for the city meeting. “We had hoped that it would be salvaged and that something would come of it, because it has sentimental value. It would have been wonderful to always have the building so those with connections could go by the property and reminisce. But people will always have their memories—you can’t take that away.”

Sheffield talked with those in the meeting about perhaps saving a cornerstone of the building to serve as part of a monument recognizing the former prominence of the mill. At the very least the “West Enders” hope that some sort of monument will allow future generations a look into the not-too-distant past that shaped the present.

The group’s 21st reunion will be June 14 at Darlington High School in its cafeteria. Registration begins at 3 p.m., dinner at 5 p.m., and it costs $10 per person.

After the mill closed, a series of companies occupied the building.

The building was last occupied by Struthers-Dunn, a manufacturer of power relays and contactors, which eventually left for Florence. Before that, the Nytronics Corporation purchased Struthers-Dunn in 1986 and moved the company to Darlington. Magnecraft Electric purchased the Struthers-Dunn Commercial Product Lines from Nytronics in 1990. The company became MSD, Inc (Magnecraft & Struthers-Dunn), and many local people came to know the facility as the MSD building.

According to its deed, the building is still owned by Nytronics, an electronics company apparently based overseas that went defunct. But no one connected with the former company can be found or has anything to do with the building at this point.