This is the fourth installment of a history of the Royall Cotton Mill, later the Royal Mill, based on a thesis written by Don P. Johnston Jr. in 1945 for a degree from Princeton University. His father, Don P. Johnston, was the president of Royall Mill before and during the Depression.
(This week we also quote from “A Common Thread: Life at Royall Mill and its Village, 1899 to 1996” by R. James Cox Jr., then a planner with the Town of Wake Forest. It was printed in 1996 and reprinted in 2007 for the Town of Royall Mills Centennial Celebration.)
Despite its effect on other industries, the Great War, World War I, was not financially good to Royall Cotton Mill when it began. In his treasurer’s report to stockholders on Sept. 8, 1914, Robert E. Royall wrote: “We have made only $3,524.51 during the year which closed Aug. 31, 1914 . . . The War in Europe cut down our profits by $10,000 or $12,000.” He blamed it on the 500 bales of cotton the mill had purchased and had to use and sell at a loss because “The first declaration of War caused all buyers of yarn and cloth to withdraw from the market.”
The market was fickle aside from the war. Stock market downturns and other causes resulted in constant fluctuations in the price of raw cotton and also the market for yarn and cotton cloth. Royall, like other small mills, did not have the resources to weather such storms and was constantly piling up debt.
Wages had to be substantially raised in 1918 though no dollar figures were provided. Several mill workers were either drafted or volunteered for the U.S. Army or Navy and probably never returned. “But the new Federal Child Labor Law, just put into operation on Sept. 1, 1917, has caused us to drop entirely a considerable number of persons not quite fourteen years old and is preventing a number of others from working over eight hours in any one day. We are still in the process of adjusting ourselves to these changed conditions; but we know that it will be very difficult to maintain production on the same basis as heretofore.” Read it as: The mill depends on children 12 to 14 working more than eight hours a day to be profitable. Wonder how the families of those children had to cut down on their mill store purchases because of that loss of weekly income. And how many of those children returned to school when they could not go to the mill.
In the next paragraph of Johnston Jr.’s thesis, he outlined the pay for directors. “In 1917 the first of a series of major salary increases occurred, when W.C. Powell was voted $1,800 (from a previous high of $600); R.E. Royall got $5,600; his son, W.L. Royall $1,800; and George H. Greason, the superintendent, $3,600.” In that same year a Mr. Ballard, one of the original board members, died and W.L. Royall took his place, meaning there were no more outsiders. The company directors consisted of three Powells, two Royalls and two Powell-Royall in-laws.
But it didn’t stop there. In June of 1918 the salaries of W.C. Powell and R.E. Royall went to $6,000 each; Greason’s to $4,800 and W.L. Royall’s to $2,000. Also the directors began to pay themselves for attending meetings, first $5 and later $100.
Then in 1919 salaries went up again. R.E. Royall’s salary went to $7,500, his son’s, W.L. Royall to $3,600, W.C. Powell’s to $6,000 and two of his sons, R.B. and W.R.) were at $3,000 each. Greason began receiving $6,000.
By the end of the first world war, the mill was receiving government contracts and was operating more of the time as well as feeling prosperous. However, when it bought $40,000 in Liberty Bonds it had to borrow $10,000 from the Virginia Trust Company at 4.5 percent interest to help pay for them.
The next few years, from 1919 through 1927, were described by Johnston Jr. as “living off the fat,” with steep declines each year in the cash on hand to pay for raw cotton, labor and other invoices. Dividends were paid to stockholders every year.
The cash position 1923 – when W.C. Powell died – to 1929 was:
1923 $110,519.39
1924 $ 85,996.84
1925 $ 39,257.51
1926 $ 11,608.26
1927 $ 7,558.89
1928 $ 96.84
1929 $ 219.24 Over Draft
Less than three months after the last dividend, this time of 6 percent, was paid in 1927, Johnstone Jr. wrote that the management “had to call for all possible assistance from the directors in order to keep the business afloat.” It worked that time, and the mill limped along for two more years.
“Then in September, just a few weeks before the famous stock market crash of October 1929, the direction of the company was gently slipped from the hands of the Royall household – where it had remained for 30 years – and was turned over to two sons-in-law of W.C. Powell – the husbands of Annie and Petronia – Harvey Seward and Don P. Johnston.”
There were still water pumps and mailboxes at the major intersections in the mill village, according to Marlon Cole. With the front porches where families would sit in the evenings after supper, they made the village seem almost like one family. James Cox wrote: “Marlon and his sister Minnie Lee remember the whistle blowing at noon, and watching as everyone walked home for lunch, sat on the porch and chatted until the whistle called them back to work at 1:00.”
Men like Marlon Cole, who went to work at the mill when he was 12, and Jack Horton remembered people moved around from job to job until, like those two, they had worked at almost or all the jobs at the mill.
There were hints in private letters that not everyone was happy with the mill management, the wages, the working conditions or all three, but no real labor unrest at Royall was known.
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