hi, i'm jessica elephant buying

and it is a pleasure to be here today with the honors college students in the university of south. 421 course what the south made exhibiting south carolina's industrial i want to start with a quote this quote comes from a very prominent american historian a guy named ed ayres who while the coal mines and textile mills have become a visible and memorable part of southern history, the south's largest industry remained

virtually ignored. lumbering is often written off as of little consequence, and little dramatic interest, yet lumbering more often than any other industry, captures the full scope of economic change in the new south, its limitations as well as its impact and about, i don't know, a third of the way through the semester. and i think you guys are already kind of convinced of this, but i thought it might be interesting to share with you a little bit more about how we got to this place. so. about five or six years ago, the national park reached out to usc's department of history and asked us to help them by something called a historic resource survey for the park. so kingery national park is one of the youngest parks in the national park service. it had become a monument. 1976 during the bicentennial year, and it only became a park

early in the 21st century. it really is one of the very newest parks. so the goal of this historic resource survey is to tell the human history of the park and its environs. how have people interacted with the natural world? and we did that. did that, you know, about seven or eight chapters. we talked about the importance of transportation and we talked we talked about a lot of different topics. but the on extractive industries, particularly lumber, was one that raised many many, many, many questions about the role of lumber wood products and forest conservation in south carolina. so probably helpful to talk a little bit. the broad outline of south carolina. this story, post-civil war post-reconstruction and i think the way i would describe it is perfect storm. perfect storm. now you're, not looking at any

images of storms, you're looking at images of really beautiful yellow pine and really beautiful old growth cypress. but the perfect was this there, of course, was lots of old growth, hardwood and yellow pine in the south. but prior to the end of reconstruct action, both because of technological limitations and the way labor was deployed, this was not the highest priority of the folks who owned the land on which the timber grew. but at the same time that there was sort of a rediscovery of all of this timber in the upper midwest and new england managed to get themselves clear cut by lumber men who weren't particularly concerned with permanence. right. so then those folks were very interested in what the south had to offer. lumberman from those places, hungry for new timber and land in south carolina, like other places in the south, was also devalued.

its value was something like 1/25 of what it had been pre civil war. so what happens? well, big lumber comes i don't really like featuring i mean, these guys are our friends but it's the arrival of big lumber. guys know that lumber factors came from places like michigan and they did this very i mean, to us in 2023 sort of cool thing of buying up they amalgamated tracts of land into big tracts of and then using parlance from 2023 they flipped the land which in turn they sold to really big lumberman like these guys here so benjamin franklin ferguson in france francis vidler were they were really big lumberman from chicago and they came down kind of lured by stories of these big tracts full of cypress and yellow pine and other trees and they bought up gigantic tracts of land, not little tracts of land, but gigantic tracts of

land. they especially captivated by cypress oak. so they come these guys come, franklin and ferguson, i mean, ferguson and butler came together in the late 1880s with some other partners. it wasn't the two of them as a little gang. they came down by rail railroad. they explored areas around concrete, the santee and the watery rivers, and they were very taken by what they saw and they decided that they would start buying up land in time. these guys came to control something like 200,000 acres. this one company only in south carolina and came to control something. 200,000 acres, most of which they owned and some of which they owned the timber rights to. but in any case, they controlled the timber growing on something like 315 square miles that is a lot of land. a lot of land. and so they built on the banks

of, the santee river. they built a company town and corporate headquarters for their business their business was called the santee river cypress lumber company, and they built it for permanence they expected to stay for a very long time. this was not a cut and run operation they had. so much land that they really thought that they would stay a long time. and they started out only by cutting old growth. cypress they left else and they built this this pretty sophisticated expensive pretty highly capitalized company town it had a company store so that's a picture of some script, some script that was used in the store. it also had lumber and hotels and housing and hospitals and schools and artesian wells and all kinds of other for the health and safety of workers. but it was a segregated place. it was not a perfect place. and despite the fact that these

guys wanted to be there for the long, the company really only operated for about a quarter century. they they operated from about 1890 to about 1969. and at the peak in ferguson, the company and the town and everybody who was in that place was there only because of the company. it had not been a town previously. so at its peak, there were about 2500 people who lived and worked in ferguson and they manufactured. they didn't just cut timber, they also manufacture a whole bunch of wood products. there. before cardboard, they did boxes which were called shocks. they lots of roof shingles and balustrades and other architectural features and then world war one came and this company shuts down. so the question became, what happened to? their land and some of their land. and again, they controlled like 200,000 acres of land, some of

their land leased to hunt clubs that preserved timber, other land on other land, the timber rights sold for various wood products barrels became a big user of the trees. furniture became a big user of the trees, and it turns out that sumter, south carolina, a very special and peculiar role, all this, which we're not going to talk much about, but for for all of us something, had great ambition in post-reconstruction in the post-reconstruction south really thought it was going to be something very, very special. and it turns out to be because i'm the center of the wood products industry in south carolina was no small thing. it was a major, major industry. and the industry, the timber industry continues to be a major industry in our state. so i'm going to turn over the mic to graham duncan who

oversees manuscript collection at carolinian, a library, a world class special collections library that has been very helpful in getting processed. the papers of the williams furniture corporation, which is one of the sort of beneficiaries of the land that had been assembled, at least indirectly by people like francis bigler and franklin ferguson and all the workers who were there. and i would be remiss if i didn't start stop by saying that what williams furniture built was really quite unusual for the american south. we will talk more about it in a few minutes. but it was a major, major, major, major, major employer. and had an interracial workforce and unionized workforce. and this is in sumter, south carolina. that's really interesting. but there's a very good set of reasons why almost nobody knows the story and the story of the archives will help us to better understand. so graham.

all right, thanks, jessica. like, not very often, but sir, my name is graham duncan, the head of collections at the south carolinian, the library. so just briefly, the south carolinian library, as she mentioned, is one of the special units here at the university of south. we particularly collect archival research material about the state of south carolina, and it's inhabitants documenting its history, geography and culture. so those sorts of things consist of many materials, which might be personal papers or organizational records, right? like the like these types of materials business records, that sort of thing. we also have a published collection. so books, newspapers, magazines, things would expect maps and

then a large visual materials collection. so that includes both photographs and old photographs, photographic processes, postcards and, fine art, that sort of thing. so the south carolinian, a building you can see up here. through most of its history, has has kind of engaged its research audience in a very kind of traditional manner. right. we are a special collections library, so we're close to act non circulating, which means that you like just go into the stacks like you could in thomas cooper library look up and down the shelves, pick out the book. you want, check it out and go home. right? so, so you must tell us what you want to see. we pull it for you. you come sit the quite gorgeous reading room and and use it. that's a plug. we're reopening our on october six. so everybody come check out the building been none of you were here it closed for for renovations so that's exciting so yeah so engaged folks in a

very kind of traditional right you let us know what you want. you come here, you look at the materials, kind of the work do behind this with collections is you know in some ways it's a very kind of tedious of things. we take very large amounts of material. we organize it in a way that. makes sense for researchers who look at a finding aid and say, this is the folder of material i to see put in kind of a hierarchical arrangement on their what made this project really interesting. of course, this is not a collection that was that is held by the carolinian library, but of the great things about this project, as we were able to kind of lend some expertise and helping stevie, who you'll see in a minute, do some of the physical arrangement of the material, a finding and make a list, box list so people know what is when they want to use this. but the large kind of part of this this was digitization of of a lot of the materials. i don't it's going to encompass the entire collection but so

digitization of course you know makes things available online so we take these physical records that are only available in the library in between, you know, 830 and 5:00 under our supervision. and we make them freely available online. it's a lot of work, the scanning is one part of it, right? scanning all of the materials but stevie will talk i think a lot about metadata creation which a lot of work compared to just the scanning. it's not just as simple as taking these boxes and scanning them, running them through all of feet and putting them online. but the amount of labor of required in projects like this is worth it, right? because we can really engage with audiences outside of u.s. and it's not just through our own our own kind of content management system that usc hosted. right? we're also kind of harvested through south carolina digital library, which is in turn harvested through the national digital of america. so all of these things are searchable beyond end and in different portals than just

these here. i'm not going to talk for too much longer about kind of archive in general. i could go on for a while if anybody wants to talk archives, come find me later. we can do that. but but i do want to say that this project has been very satisfying for me and i think i can probably speak my usc colleagues too, because as a large state flagship university, it's very nice when we can partner with institutions like the sumter county museum, to really kind of leverage some of the resources and capacity we have to to make their collections more discoverable as well. this is a collection that's held by the sumter county museum and thanks to the the resource sources that came through the various grants that are offered by was able to get. but also, you know usc's faculty is in it and here kind of working. it's been a really great partnership i hope it's something we do more of. i'm going to let stevie talk for a while now or i don't know how

long he's going to talk. it may not be for a while. he'll he'll tell you kind of more of the nuts bolts of what he's been doing. this project. yes yes. hmm. okay. awesome. hello. as many of you know, stevie malenowski, i'm the guy who's actually gone through these many boxes. we here. so my plan right now, i'm going to talk a little bit about what we've done and how we do it. then we're going to talk broad strokes of what we have here. as many of you have seen, again, we a lot of stuff here. so talking know very specific wouldn't exactly work we'd here all day so start off we through a few stages in this program this process first we started by reading just about everything here to see what we have it got

dry at times you know you can only read the same 1920 tax returns for so many times before it starts. it starts to get old. but that helped us get a good idea of what needed to be digitized, what we could skip over. we're not going to digitize everything here such as? like the box of letterheads over there. you know, we don't need to digitize 40 copies of the exact same so that us a good sense on what we had. we did reorganization. there's actually two collections here in a weird way. we have the old williams collection. it's scattered to the winds now, but we have the old williams collection, which encompasses like stuff pre williams furniture company. then we have the williams furniture company collection is, you know, post roughly 1931, 1932, we did some cleaning and rehouse in that bottom picture up there is what desk has looked like for like the last week at the end of the day, a lot of

this has not been cared for in a few years. so we have to remove paper clips, remove staples it's going to rot the paper we have switch over some of the folders, a lot of stuff there's boxes here that were completely unprocessed. so we had to do some reorganization. we had to make sure they found their home in places that made sense. so a bit of cleaning up to do before we ever got into digitizing when we did get into digitizing these are machines we used the two on the left are what we primarily used the one on the right. i think only ended up using once, but it's so cool. so i figured i might as well throw it in here to show you guys kind the whole scheme, what's going on? the one on the left. good luck looking it up. it's called is rachel. it's this mass of overhead scanner. we use it for oversize materials, so something like a large map or one of these big thick books right here. they don't in a regular scanner. so we have to use something oversize to do it. that thing on the right there is just a normal flatbed scanner.

that's what we put most of this stuff through sits on desk. you just slide something into a the top scans done and then this thing here is again i only used it once but it's a cadenas it's very neat. it's like to cameras strapped at either side or it take pictures of books. i just think like the coolest thing ever so well i'll let guys see it but yeah so we have to choose which of these things is going to suit needs of the documents that we have. we have a lot of documents of varying sizes, colors, photo negatives, photo positives, total insane amount of things here. so we can't just use one object here, can't just use one technology this what we do next after we are done actually physically scanning it this is called metadata. some of you guys across different disciplines have probably interact with metadata before. i don't know my business students, but you probably a good idea of what this is. it basically is just large amounts of data. this is how make sure that you

are able to find what we scan so put it in the title. we add the date, we add anyone who contributed to the making the object layer. it's any sort of thing that's going help in your search for these objects goes here and it looks very overwhelming but this is gets turned into this which is what you see on the library's website. it obviously gets all neat and out and that next to it is what a traditional scan looks. so how many of you have looked at libraries website? you're going to be used this this is produced by those scanners monitor so then going into kind of what we have to start with we have things like the companies behind the scenes stuff this is the majority of what we have in the collection. i have some objects that i'm going to show along the way. we have company operations like this from really early on, these big, huge ledgers that contain a variety of materials in them. we also have stuff like this.

we talked about this in class yesterday. this is the sale for two georgia-pacific. so if anyone wants to go through that and find the handshake agreement of you'll operate the plant for 15 years be my guest so we have a lot these up here we have their marketing material that shows exactly how they want you to market the furniture there is like timber deeds and showing exactly it's the acreage and footage of the amount of timber that they have hand throughout their entire time. talk more about the timber and lumber. we talk about different things there. we have a lot of pictures of what the lumber operations looked like. we have land plats where the timber is physically located and then to go back to the company operations, we have stuff where their estimate being like, oh, we want to buy this bit of land. you know how much is on it? we have stuff like that. i right here, this is a

traditional. with about $1,000,000,000 of postage on it like to real estate we have a lot of deeds in here there's whole boxes with about 200 land deeds, all of which encompasses some different land sales that they're making. they bought a lot of land. i think, as we said in class, this was kind of his vice. so we have a ton of these. if you're interested talking more about the land there's a lot and how they use the that we have namely in that map there being the location the factories so you can get a good sense on what sumpter was set up like you've already been there so we have a good of it i trust that newspaper clipping there this is we have a lot of these talking about how they're using the forest or their impacts on it. who's being sold to talking more about the land we have stuff like this as well. let me pull it out a it's kind of weird at first why this matters. it's an insurance policy to their entire crop of timber.

it unfolds very large. i don't know if anyone knows lloyd's of london, but they insure large large and large, large objects. so you can kind of get a sense if they're insuring. i forget exactly famous thing they insured i believe the insured love for all my history people out there environmental environmental people. you can get a sense of the scale. williams operating on their timber. going off timber we have stuff the equipment that they were using, i believe we talked about this yesterday in that a lot of the sales volumes access equipment we have. so pictures, so many pictures, old, old equipment they were using guys using manuals on how to use them, people breaking down their jobs and saying, i use this piece every day. i don't use this as much. if you're interested in the technology we have so much on it. to the people who used the technology we have a good amount

on workers as i mentioned yesterday this is a management centered collection so we don't have as much on workers as we would probably like. there are still some really neat things in here, like in series 16 over here we have some really documents that they were workers were printing and they were showing exactly what they were in their free time, what company life was like, how workers interacted each other. so we do get some good glimpses as to what worker life was. we also have some pictures. these are two of them. there are a lot more on the actual faces that we know and like the workforce themselves as doctor of mine talked about, it is an integrated workspace, is overwhelmingly black and. this is reflected in all the pictures. whenever we have whenever have, you know, 35 year words, 30 year words, even 40 year awards, it's overall only black workers. so again pretty unique for itself going off of workers. we have a lot of the labor stuff that on the right is one of

about 10 to 15 photos that we have which are containing centered around strikes in 1974. we also have like that in the middle which is the contracts that workers were making with when strikes did happen. i think i mentioned this yesterday, important people from around would come and help with williams. i don't know if you guys recognize the name in the middle of coretta scott king, martin luther king's wife. so there are big national faces up in williams arm to going off of ideas of labor. this is the thing i've spent the most time with that i find very interesting is the marketing concepts. we mentioned this in class that williams kind of big for doing these like innovative marketing ideas and a few of you guys found the magazine over here that huge pull out color photo shows. it just was so advanced compared to everything else in the magazine. these are the brochures we have that show how they're marketing their objects. they got famous for doing a

house like settings where the rest of the industry was. not at that yet common today this was really for the time so that photograph shows a traditional williams salesroom they always are not always but majority of time had it set up to look like houses with different themes. very western themes were common that blueprint for your oak house brochure and on the right almost got my hands mixed up. that shows exactly to a salesman how they want how they want their showroom set up shows to magazine companies, what their ads are going to look like. it's a really good source for showing like how williams is physically marketed their materials going off of the up, going of that more are these brochures that we have again so much on the actual furniture a few guys saw these earlier but i'll bring them out for everyone or we have these large format.

oh, this is a we have a quad here. these large format kind of like test photos of, the actual furniture itself. so you can the furniture. this is made before they went to the brochures when, old furniture did make the brochures. we had color photographs. we had really interesting brochures. this one, which i believe flipped to the right page, you can kind of see this weird design how the pages get smaller and smaller, and they're all color photographs with these really interesting of the furniture full page ads. it's really awesome in terms of brochures that we have. looking at the brochures, they have really interesting themes. if anyone here is interested in studying like again studying the marketing of these things, they market them in really like masculine, pro-america ways, you know, up we have fireside or

calling, you know, old ideas mom pop on the fire, the apollo catalog for the apollo missions, for fathers, for the founding of america. that was for the bicentennial and then kind of old world european la lamantia, which is marketed for vikings, which was a really odd way to sell furniture in italian casual you know your renaissance living in in rural south carolina this is what the inside of them looked again if you guys saw this again full page ads absolutely gorgeous bright photos you can see why they were such a successful company when you look at their marketing it's just a cut above other companies that one on the right or left as this village square piece was probably their most notable line. it's designed charles in it's on price is right for a few seasons in a row. it's very popular, like setting the tone in terms of like colonial america styling in period we have a good amount on village square stuff.

they also have these tiny little pamphlets. and we showed a few of these in class action. i go over these quickly. this is again the same ideas as published in the actual sales catalogs, but kind of dial down to these tight, punchy locations. we have tons of these ones for every single line that they had practically, again, same idea, color photographs, very interesting marketing concepts, unique descriptions. i don't know if you can see the one up there in the adventure series. one of the taglines for it was sold with a real treasure chest. young boys could feel like pirates. they sell it by these pirates like venturing off the ship like sword in hand, ready to go again. same idea of, like, the vikings. it's like, dude selling bedroom furniture. let's tone it down. like, what is this last thing on? talk about that we have a lot of is the georgia-pacific relationship we have about a whole box on georgia-pacific time with the company what their ownership entailed. it's a really interesting

relationship. i really, really want someone to study this. they have a lot of stuff. this this is a letter sent to every single georgia-pacific subsidiary, williams one of them where it appears that they're, you know, really pushing, you know, we want this company to behave in this manner. oh, we want send you this brochure that talks about we need to open up the for pulp paper cutting it's very heavy handed in their management of williams there is some interaction between that we have a correspondence to and that we have where you can tell that georgia-pacific is mad at williams for going about things a different way than their suppliers where they go, hey, why you using our competitors varnish like do we have a problem here and it's really toeing the line in terms of business speak and into like are you do you want to fight right now really interesting material so think about what we've looked at here. think about the stories that exist there are a lot of them

and yeah i'm going to turn it over to lynn robertson and she's going to talk more about what we do with these big stories what stories we have. so yeah. thank you. betsy of course. well, as you can see, there's a lot of stuff and the of this class is since all of you signed for it, as you all know, is to come up with an exhibition. you know, i think we're all kind of surprised at what we found during the class so far. these are stories, you know, that i knew nothing about, certainly. so i like to think that a good exhibition does two things. the thing is that it gives information about something they probably know about. that's of where we all are right here at this point. and a good exhibition it also

gets people to think and feel differently about the subject that they've learned about and. that's always a much more subtle. so why don't we why don't we start with beginning in that all of this information you've had from dr. elephantine and the information that steve's given to us. and i think one of the things that we found in this course is because this is kind of a secret history. ed heir points out that we have to use in unconventional resources this is in a kind of do it quick read three big books and we can do this exhibition. we're going to have to learn to use the archival materials and we'll talk a little bit later the class about doing histories of people who are actually there to get the other side of the story. but what are some of the things what are some of if you wanted to put this all together say is of a book what would what do you

think are the important of the story that people wouldn't know about, that they would walk this exhibition, which is going to be because we have so few big objects. it's going to be primarily what we call in the business, a panel exhibit. and what what are the stories want to tell that people don't know about that they can go, oh, wow, that's really cool. and how do you how do you think that we can tell the story so? they think this was really important yeah, i really sorry. i didn't know about that. so now comes the interactive part that i'm up here, but you're giving me the answers. so some of you. come on, think something that's important to be able to convey through the panels is that there is that there was a furniture industry in south carolina. a lot of people, especially people who might not be columbia or sumter or, just inland, south

carolina in general, are not as aware how big the industry was. yeah, making sure that people aware of how many lives it touched, how it impacted the local economy, how much development it drove, things like that those are things that are very important to convey throughout the exhibition, right? so, so what you're saying is maybe this the state it existed but it was more than three chairs in a bed that the scope of it that it had economic impact. what are some of the other things you think we ought to about. yes, i have. i feel like a really good way to end the exhibition might be like bringing it into like modern day, like what you told us. i think on like the first day of class was like williamsburg. like the williams comes from williams furniture company and that's kind of what sparked my interest in this topic in, general, because i'm not really like i've like i've never been interested in the lumber industry all but, you know, being a student in the university of south carolina, obviously i love williams

stadium. so kind of bringing in that connection, like obviously this was in time, had a lasting impact. the lasting impact and we see it today on campus and it affects all of us. we just haven't been, you know, like told what was funny. i had lunch today with, an old friend who used to be in the legal office here and asked me what i was doing and i said she thought and she said, you connection to the beer to the football stadium. and i said, yeah. and it's also a school of is is, is a beneficiary the for the williams williams company so so what else so we want to tell people that there was a company in sumter, south carolina, that was very large and had a dramatic economic impact on the state and city. but what else what else? what about let's go all the way back to the beginning. what about the trees? what about byler and ferguson and things like that? wait.

i. i know what we primarily talked about in calgary was just the enormity of these old cypress forests and the state of south carolina and how these, you know, corporations, chicago came down, started this enormous industry that employed thousands of people, but also decimated a native environment. and this old back country of south carolina was just swept away, now reduced to 15 trees on a stretch of know 30 foot. so so just the environmental impact too if we're talking about the scope, also the environmental impact. yeah, well, just before we started, you looking at one of the journals that talked what? oh the shipment of wood from up north as well and imported wood. right. and it was the of wood and how much was coming in which gives that's another way of using archival resources to kind of an idea about what were they making

and what were they making it up and what's what's maybe another thing we want to talk about in addition to what were they making in harry thought it was interesting in the more recent readings how they're able to cut on like the types of materials they're using to make it kind of cheaper and cater to the everyday citizen talked at first it was very expensive and then they making it out of other materials and able to cut costs and like really drive up their margins. right. and what what what was the impact of when we talked about the depression and kind of plays into a little bit about what you're saying. right. okay. so we still got we've got well, we're making how big they were what they were making it out, of course it was making very good. we'll have the oral histories just kind of sharing. it's probably limited as to who we're able to talk to, but as the company evolved over the

course of its 50 some years, what they were making, how they were making it, the unionization aspect, the integrated workforce, things that really didn't exist in south in the 20th century, and the human aspect especially still doesn't really exist now. so telling the stories of the people as kind of way to tell the story of everything else, what one of the things that dr. alfred i mentioned that's kind of in the news today that was unusual for south carolina and when williams was operating you. strikes is the strikes the unions right and the history about organized labor that didn't happen so much in the south especially in south carolina for the come to be in such a rural location like sumter. yeah no exactly exactly. and that's one of the things

that, you know, stevie talked about that was in the documents. so here was in terms of management with very, very of what was going in terms of workers in strikes. and of course, they have a particular viewpoint, which is historians as we put the exhibition together, we have to think about who is you know, who is voice and and and sometimes more questions than answers come apart when you're, know, reading documents and doing like that. so, okay, so we've been talking about giving people new information that south carolina had an incredible number of trees after the civil war. they were important for the economy. they had been important for the economy for a long time. but we can't reconstruct action. the devaluation of the land. and people in chicago go and oh i think a picture is there there and we don't have any trees left

here anymore so you know the connection of that and the growth of of of what becomes this very large and mostly now forgotten company in some too. so okay we're going to talk about trees and cutting trees and making things out of trees and who makes the things. williams and were they were the only place people what where have we learned about other things that are going on? yes. oh, sorry. have i guess the nest the next step and who the things would be, you know, after and the depression, your next step would probably be globalization and the seventies and eighties, the towns were going down. and what happened to sumpter as well? because even just pictures of the current site today be a powerful contribution to the exhibition because we put up pictures of ferguson and the drowned you know brick walls

through the water but i think the crumbled and charter mains of williams are the stark contrast to what the aerial photos you know, and what where. but what about were there companies in sumpter were they the only one? and i think some of you come on. there was also a brooklyn cooperage which made barrels, huh. or lubitsch or the the cabinets and some other cabinet company, which when we go out, you know, when we're putting the exhibition together, it's going to be primarily panels, but we're also going to try to find those, you know, big, bulky objects that these people were making. and that's probably what we're going to be able to find the most of is the furniture because they stamped furniture and it says sumpter cabinet on it.

but but we'll look for some some things from williams as well. so, okay, we're kind of trying to tell this story. we're kind of putting it in in a way, a kind of a linear progression. the war after the war. yeah. something jumped in back before that because. the way that williams got started in sumpter was also a unique economic initiative by local boosters and people who looked around and said we need to have industry here. that's not just agriculture much to the scoffing of. like that report we read from u.s. office that said all sumpter can do is agriculture. these guys were like, no, we need to bring in manufacturing because that's the future. and so they know had a community invested effort with stockholders to recruit this company to start manufacturing in. sumpter as that's a unique part of the story as well is the, you know, the economic development efforts and recruitment. and we can still see, you know,

that kind of economic development happening today with the way that the state companies to move here. exactly. so okay so we talked bit a lot about how we tell this story. the part is getting people to know something. they know about. wow, that's cool. i don't know about that. i thought there were really textile mills, south carolina or but what about the other story? that story that's really the most important part of that. and that is when someone out of an exhibition your goal to get them to think about something differently or to feel differently about it. what are some of the things we've talked about that you think will make an emotional or an intellectual impact that people will say, oh, that's a carry over, oh, you had an idea? i mean, obviously it's from all the stuff we've pointed out that i feel like it's an obvious point, but just the fact that all of this was out of sumter, south carolina, a town of 30,000

now and not one of the towns like charleston or columbia who's kind of like a perspective thing coming out of the exhibition. like you'd think that all this growth in post-civil post-civil war would have come out of one of the bigger towns in south carolina. but. right. so what was was what was happening in the end, bryan, in the natural environment that plays into the story that we we talked about, i think we talked about how like the boll weevil through and i think in one of the reports it said like 50% of the cotton had been like wiped out of sumter. so they were kind of losing a lot of their economic like upward movement. and so had to find something else. so like, hey, know, we have a lot of his trees and so they were really trying to figure out how they could use all that and kind of moved them in a different pasture they were still heavily focused on agriculture, even still cotton but now they also like another outlet to make their money. okay, so what works if you get

we tell people that part of the that this is a natural occurrence this is a natural challenge a natural disaster. what are some ways that maybe we can get the get the audience to make a connection their lives today. what else what's going on in the world in terms of of people trying to adapt to natural disasters. nash. i know it was pretty inevitable, but i remember that we just kind of name dropped, covered there. yeah. and it came off our discussion at sumpter as well, i believe with the chamber of commerce or or the council about how covid and our industrial world is changing something about you know work from home and other movements in the south being affected and also think we

talked about some of the that came in to charleston and then you have bmw in greenville and quite a few other things that are kind of echoing the evolution of williams sumter. so now so good point. i think one other thing we touched on was moving some of the manufacturing back, given some of the supply chain issues have surfaced in recent years. and so i think that's a promising aspect that we can really sell on for sumpter, who is really trying stimulate the economy organically. so their natural disaster isn't climate change, natural disasters, a weird little bug with puppies and a big beak, but the way in which you commute and he says, oh, maybe isn't going to work anymore, let's have an innovative that's a really different decision let's let's let's look at retooling what do instead of doing the same old thing the same way. and then when we read at ayres

he was talking how you know, there was a of resistance in the south following the civil war in terms of we've had a very rich economy based on agriculture. why change? we're going to have the plantation system and about, you know, the evolution of that. and i think, you know, one of the stories i think we need to tell how imaginative and innovative these guys were that, you know, instead of just one person opening up williams furniture, that they go out, they sell shares. those are your finance majors? yeah. they looked at they looked at a new way of putting together the resources they needed they got for people, the community to buy shares and put up resources that they need and that's a lesson. maybe we want people walk out of the exhibition and say, wow, when the chips were down, they thought of a new way of doing

things. maybe, maybe that's know that's a challenge for us. maybe need to think about new ways of of doing things. what are of the other kind of take in terms of that would say that there is a relationship to what's going on. we mentioned it was already mentioned before in terms of the labor movement and the resurgence of the labor movement in the united states right now. natural disasters. what are the making out of trees today? not furniture, but we talked most of the trees in south are being turned into paper pulp. now and that that it is still i was a statistic on national public radio that south carolina cuts more timber on a you know per square foot basis than than is being cut in the brazilian that we we are still one of the

major producers in the united states of timber but most of it is is what kind timber pine and it's being used for paper products and what different from the way they're doing they're using timber today in terms of pine from what they were doing, in terms of earlier cutting all that cypress for agriculture, for architectural detailing. they well have oak o high. i didn't even see one thing they're doing is they're replanting ing the pine afterwards. and so it's more of a crop where you plant it and it's a 20 year cycle. you harvest it and then you can replant. and so you're able to have your tracts of and kind of rotate you which pioneer harvesting so it's a lot more sustainable the cyprus harvesting which is just taking these trees that are like hundreds of years old and

whacking them down and like they take so long to grow back that not really a crop that grows like pine where you can do that. so they're doing it more in a way where you're reforesting as you're cutting timber right? it's the whole idea that it's a crop like wheat or cotton or corn or, various healthy things. so it just takes a little it takes ten years to grow the pine tree and not other things. so okay, we we've got renewable resources that come out of the story we're trying to tell. we we're talking about maybe inventive ways of dealing with with climate change or other things that are going on. do you see things or first conversation that we had, it's how does any of this impact us? yes. you know, i think making connection for the people that have come to the exhibition, i'm sure, i mean, most of came in and didn't really see the connection between what was happening in the timber industry

here versus our own lives. so being able to use the people use what was happening as a way to, i don't know, just kind of tell that story in a way that they see the reflections in their own life opposed to just, oh, this is something interesting to learn about. this is something that now affects me every single day. like it's something that i use. it's something that is. that's a good point. yeah. yeah. and you know what? we went out to. well, we went out to kangaroo park and we looked at the cypress trees and we looked at one particular downed one. and i think, you know, what was how did you kind of, you know, what were response to that? what what you know, to me, you know, the just the size of of what you're dealing it's it was quite impressive, as you said. that's, you know, part of of what how is its relationship to me. so what what are what are your questions after? we've, you know, talked a lot

about in this course about the content. what are what are the questions have if you walked into to an exhibit, this exhibition, you what was what be your b your your question what. yeah. yeah i was just wondering, you know, it's is cyclical. yeah. yeah. so the south was wondering what do we do now? agriculture is not the option now post globalization. william's as close as other factories are closed. part of the exhibition could be what do we do now? again, where do we go from here? what businesses do we attract? how do we get them here? that's a very good point. how do we feed people, give them job? yeah, that you kind of flip it on. what is this? what the lesson we learned that we can away today which is i think, you know, as i said, i think it's an important part of an exhibition. we learn something new. we didn't know about. it's really cool. one of the things that interests me is steve showed you all of

these images of the furniture that was being made. why did it look the way it look? how is that? you know, showing what a miracle and styles and philosophies were? what was the social life of of that particular time? so. so say so steve we were talking about these things here. you've looked at the you've looked at the at all of this material. what what would be your in terms of as we develop the exhibition and this really big question because there's so much that we have so you've got to boil it all this is this is not the you know, the series of six episodes of 2 hours each. so what what you find, first of all, that you didn't know.

and second of all, what did you that was either emotionally or just made you think about things differently? i mean, like a the thing i found i didn't know was just how a company like this operates. like i feel i feel confident now i could run my own furniture company like i can start a fortune 500 company now. so, like, there's that. but i think in terms of a a like an exhibit, i think the most important thing for you guys since you all come from different backgrounds is that like what i went over up there, it's so varied there's so much if you're a business person, we have so much of the business. if in, you know, more artsy we've so much like how are drawing the furniture and how they are marketing it. you know, if you're in an environmental person, we have the environmental impacts of all this stuff. i think the most important thing guys need to do is follow what

you and what your personal background is. because no matter what, like what you're passionate about is, going to become the best product. don't chase something that you're not passionate about when it comes to this we have something for all of you up here. if we all contribute something that you're really into and that you absolutely love the exhibit be awesome so good good very good advice and also follow the follow the questions you have you know why did they do that? what happened you know why did they go into the business why did they sell it to a different company? you know, i wonder if guys could just sort of brainstorm you're not committed to any ideas might have at this moment. but at this very moment what most interests you kind of piggybacking on what steve suggested, what what has interested you so far? might you like to pursue. challenge everybody? who hasn't said anything so far in the class? you have to come up with an

answer. of the most recent readings we did. there was a section that was really, really interesting to me about like the addition of women into the workplace especially in these factories that were very male dominated. and there was just like a section of the reading where it was about like balancing concept of like being a housewife, also like wanting to pursue working a job which i found really interesting, especially during this entire time period, was just a struggle that women were having in general. but just like through the lens of, you know, sumpter, south carolina, very a place that's, you know, not most historically tied to minorities, but, you know, just like that kind of struggle and how it played out specifically this company. and i think kind of related to that can sense and looking at some of the advertising think that they take on this sense who they're really selling this to is women it's women make the choice of what you know esthetics and take out the sets because i think what was mentioned a lot was that it was

like very like american dream, like hunting and fishing and this stuff is geared towards like little boys and men. and i think there was like when i was looking through that little magazine catalog that was like there was a lot advertising that i was really like to like because i'm a visual communications major. so like that's what i do is like marketing. so i was like really interested in seeing all of the ways that they would like gear towards women and like having like chairs with women holding their children, stuff like that. that really resonates with women versus, you know, like the guns and like and the like, horns on the walls and stuff like that. took him a while to figure out women were buying the furniture that guys guys wrote to check that women and the parents weren't sure okay, who else has that passion? and it's something just really pique their interest and in what we've been doing. and. one of the things that piqued my interest was how city managers local business owners, local

courts kind approach the changing industry in the south following post because agriculture they saw that you know from the boll weevil from new industrial from mining from different industries. agriculture was slowly losing its hold on the south and and how the law began to treat these new industries iron like furniture lumber i thought was very interesting yeah that's very true. and the others i feel like. i feel like i'm enjoying just like learning the biographies of like the people who started it. like i found some stuff on earlier and once the boxes and then we about like buxton and then jb three who isn't in these boxes but in another reading we did and i feel like i'm enjoying the personal aspect of like looking at each of the people being like, why are they here like why did they choose to do this like i think it was buxton came down from north, so why did

he choose to go here and not up to. well, i'm like up to michigan or wisconsin or where that like furniture empire was happening? what is the role the charismatic like, what were they doing? and then also like how to sell data about their business like affects the people. i'm like is like did their personalities affect why they unionized or was it like the big personalities made them feel better about how they were working like that's that's just self trust me one of the to kind of with one of the things that i think is we talked a little bit about william is and at one time how vaughn buys williams when it's when it's been sold to several other people and it's kind of on the way down but if you get on the website von base which is still manufacturing in north carolina they don't manufacture here in sumter anymore and look at what they're

telling you about the furniture industry. it's a resource. they plant a tree, every tree they cut to use in their furniture. it's a stable workforce source that pays good wages and is diverse and that people for them for a long time they met it's american made solid wood furniture will last you know several lifetimes. so it's kind of like, you know, we've talked about company that you know, starts in the twenties and sells i think. 1967 but we recycle you had mentioned it's this cyclical thing in terms where going to selling american by america and stable workforce you know where we're we are carbon neutral all the way all the ways in which today is influencing very old and traditional way so we'll all

look forward to the next next few sessions where we start putting together actually what this exhibition that we're going to do looks like and so thank you