(This is the seventh 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.
(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.)
Keep in mind as you read this that Royall Mill and the later Royal Mill were family businesses. Don P. Johnston Sr. and Harvey Seward were brothers-in-law having married two daughters of William C. Powell, Johnston marrying Petrona and Seward marrying Annie. There were two other daughters, Jessie Powell Powers and Rosa Powell Larsen.
The Johnston family lived with Jessie Powell Powers in the gray Colonial Revival house that William C. Powell had built in 1895 during all the time they were in Wake Forest, and Jessie Powers was to become the assistant to Johnston when he was president and head of the board of directors for Royal Mill as well as a director herself. Petrona Johnston was a director of Royal Mill in the later years. Seward was usually a director in the 1930s until a rift developed between him and Johnson.
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The new name for the Royall mill became official on Nov. 10, 1933 – the Royal Cotton Mill – when the new board of directors met. They were Harvey Seward, Annie Rene Powell (a granddaughter of William C. Powell and daughter of William R. Powell and also the secretary to Don P. Johnston) and Foster Bentley, one of the officials under the receivership. Johnston as receiver for Royall Mill did not want to be publicly associated with the new management, but he was elected general manager and his life was insured for $25,000 in favor of Virginia Trust Company. George Greason continued as superintendent.
By January 1934 503 shares of common stock at $50 each had been paid for; 180 to Seward, 200 to Don and Petrona Johnston, 110 to Willis Smith and 13 to several others not named. Don Johnston Jr. noted in his thesis that the stock ownership shifted in the next few years until the Johnston family owned 8/11 with the result of rifts and partings between Seward and Johnston and later Smith and Johnston.
In 1936 Smith wrote to Seward that he wanted to sell his stock, valuing it at $150 each, though he would sell at $125. That was rejected by Seward. But then early in 1937 Seward agreed to sell his 210 share because, Johnston Jr. wrote, he wanted to “put his affairs in order.”
Greason had retired in 1936 because of his health and Lewis D. Smart was appointed superintendent. Greason sold his 40 shares to Smith. With the Seward shares and other rearrangements, the Johnston family in 1937 owned 475 shares, the Smiths had 180. And a year later Bentley left the mill and sold his four shares to Johnston while Smith had the same 180 and Jessie Powers had one share. In 1934 Annie Rene Powell had left Wake Forest to take a position in the President Franklin D. Roosevelt administration and Jessie Powers became Johnston’s personal assistant as well as a director of the board.
During all this, Smith continued as a confidant and advisor to Johnston in mill matters but refused to become a member of the board of directors. Meanwhile Johnston had become the president of the three-member board with his wife, Petrona, and her sister, Jessie, as the other two. Smith told Johnston he did not want to serve as a director because “cotton mills were more likely to have labor trouble and that on account of political connections that all possible labor entanglements must be avoided.” This was 10 years before he ran for and won a seat in the U.S. Senate. How foresighted.
After Bentley left the mill – he had been treasurer/accountant – and H.H. Harris, who had been with Neuse Manufacturing Company until it also went into receivership, was brought on board and was even mentioned as a possible director.
His wife was Bertha Harris, who outlived him and left two gifts to the town. The first was $250,000 that made it possible for a group of seniors to buy the land and build the senior center, now the Northern Wake Senior Center, which is still owned by the town. The second was a gift of $100,000 to the town to beautify the Wake Forest Cemetery.
Without Seward to consult with, Johnston turned to Smith, and Smith said later in an affidavit that he “worked continuously and closely” with Johnston. “Our common difficulty, the problem of keeping the Royal Cotton Mill Company afloat, drew us very close together.”
Johnston mentioned strikes in to letters during this time in different years, but there is no further information. The bigger problem was the weeks, sometimes stretching to months, when there was no work because management did not have enough money to keep a supply of cotton and/or there was no demand for the finished product.
The mill did not operate at all in late 1933 when the new corporation took over, and in 1934 production was spotty. 1935 was somewhat better; 1936 began well but after June the mill did not operate at all for weeks on end. Finally, after June 1938 weekly production reached a satisfactory level and remained there for the rest of the year. Then 1939 returned to a low point with and never picked up until the end of 1940, which Johnston Jr. called the end of the lean years.
Meanwhile the mill had been reorganized and improved with new equipment and a shift away from the manufacture of cotton muslin to carded yarn. The company also undertook the job of reroofing or repairing the roofs on the mill buildings and more than half the workers’ homes.
There were changes for workers. The company store closed in 1934, meaning the families had to buy their groceries, clothes and essentials from local stores. Wages were paid by check rather than cash, although the wage level was reduced at different times.
In 1937 the mill had a minimum wage of 18 cents an hour, but that year the federal government mandated a minimum wage of 25 cents with a maximum work week of 44 hours. “I thought I’d gone to heaven,” Marlon Cole said of that change.
Those were the years of the WPA, Works Progress Administration, which in the late 1930s began building the first U.S. Post Office in Wake Forest. Previously the post office had been housed in the postmaster’s home or in rented spaces. Later the WPA would provide similar employment to laid-off mill workers for the construction of the Community House and pool, which featured a great amount of rock work. And the WPA or the college paid mill hands to repair “Doctor” Tom Jeffries rock wall around the campus. Jack Horton remembered ” . . . it took a lot of stone to get all the way around that college!”
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