Next time you put on jeans made by Lee, Wrangler or Levi's, Dickies coveralls or a Cintas-made uniform, think of William Tecumseh Sherman.
According to local lore in Trion, Georgia, the Union general of "March to the Sea" infamy spared what is now Mount Vernon Mills, the Trion factory that produces the denim from which those manufacturers, and others, make what they make.
"The story goes that Sherman met with the plant manager," says Dale McCollum, a Mount Vernon vice president who's been with the company for 49 years. "It turned out they were both Masons, so Sherman agreed not to burn the mill if it shut down for the remainder of the war."
That was in 1864 -- nearly 20 years after the then-Trion Company had started making yarn. Next year, Mount Vernon Mills is set to mark a staggering 180 years in business.
"Today, here in Trion, we have 427 employees," McCollum says, adding that Mount Vernon draws workers from Alabama and Tennessee, as well as Georgia. He adds that Mount Vernon's parent company, the R.B. Pamplin Co., has another 200 employees at a plant in Rockingham, N.C., additional facilities in Burlington and Greer, N.C.; Columbus, Mississippi and the corporate headquarters in Mauldin, S.C.
But if Mauldin is the company's brain, Trion is its heart. Tony Strickland, Mount Vernon's vice president for marketing, estimates that the company's employee population is the biggest in Chattooga County and includes third-and-fourth generation family members.
Photo by Matt Hamilton / Yarn is dyed indigo to make denim.McCollum says his plan when he graduated from high school was to work at the plant for the summer, then go to college.
"Those 50 days I was going to work that summer turned into 50 years," he says. "Trion would still go on (without Mount Vernon), but it wouldn't be the same. We're a big part of the community."
Likewise, the company officials say, Mount Vernon is a big part of its industry. McCollum, Strickland and Mike Woods, the company's vice president for protective fabrics, each declined specifics with regard to sales numbers. But Woods, a 30-year Mount Vernon veteran, says his division "has grown by a factor of 10" in the past decade.
"We're the largest in our (respective) fields," Strickland says, referring to protective fabrics, denim fabrics, overseen by McCollum; and his own domain of dyed fabrics, that typically become khakis and uniforms. The company ships fabric as far away as Africa and Southeast Asia, he says, but "the vast majority stays in this hemisphere, because we want to support it."
"At the end of the day," Strickland says, "we're a cotton mill. Everything we make has cotton in it. We go from bales of field-grown cotton, literally, turn that into yarn, yarn into fabric and then into finished fabrics."
Photo by Bob Gary / A display of products made by Mount Vernon Mills customers.McCollum says Mount Vernon recently bought and installed new looms with an eye toward increasing productivity and staying competitive. The company is constantly adding speciality yarns, and is in the midst of making a significant change with regard to stretch fabrics.
Strickland says workers who wear uniforms as a matter of course are insisting on more comfort.
"Embracing that change is the first step (for us)," he says, adding that "spandex is affecting every aspect of the business." He says Mount Vernon is now turning out denim with as much as 30% stretch.
"Not like skinny jeans," he says, "but it gives more mobility and flexibility. More comfort."
"We used to run 5 to 6% (of our capacity) on stretch products. Now we're dedicating 40 to 50% of our capacity to making stretch," Strickland adds.