D.W. Brooks Interview

 GEORGE STONEY: Alright sir.

D.W. BROOKS: As you know, in the industrial world all the voting is done by the amount of stock you own. And so nobody had understood this business about one vote/one member whether you had stock or not. So I had lots of explaining, naturally, to do. And there were lots of very serious questions. For example, I went to Carrollton, Georgia to start Goldkist because it was the largest county in the state, it had more farmers in it and probably more poverty. And so, consequently, the business community, of course, was skeptical. At that time a university professor didn't have much status anyway! (laughs) They figured lots of these university professors were freaks in some ways, and so, consequently, they were telling farmers not to join. And I had to have a meeting of the 00:01:00business community in order to try to explain what I was trying to do. I explained to them, I said, "The average per capita income of farmers in this county is $72 for a year's work. There's no way you can make a dime off of a farmer who's making $72 for a year's work. Now, right or wrong, I think I can double that, maybe quadruple it, if you'll work with me instead of opposing me and if you'll stop telling these farmers not to join, because I think I can do it. Now maybe I can't, but you fellows ought to give me a chance to see if I can do it." And so finally they said -- I said, "You can't make a dime off a poverty-stricken farmer, but if I can get his income up you can make something out of it. And then you have a dime to go in the bank." And so they finally said, "Okay. We'll let you go for a while." (laughs) Well, fortunately, 00:02:00everything worked out and we doubled the income and quadrupled it. And so, consequently, I began to get invitations from other areas, even the business community, saying, "Come and put in a unit in our area."

STONEY: Use the word Co-op

BROOKS: Co-op. And so -- but it was a new kind of economic deal and people always are afraid and skeptical of things they don't know about. It's just a human nature thing. But the co-op meant that I began to pour money into Carroll County and wherever I was, because I not only sold the product out of that county, but I sold it all over the world. I gradually opened the markets all over the world. And so I explained to 'em that it was an entirely different thing, that if were just a company that was owned in Detroit, for example, that I would take the profits and move it to Detroit. But in this case I was going to 00:03:00Detroit and getting money and bringing it to Carrollton and distri-- disbursing it to farmers in Carroll County. So I was reversing the economic pattern that they generally had, that if you've industry -- men, mostly from the North, brought to the South, it was still owned in the North and naturally they expected their profits to go back to the North. But here was a case of where we were taking the profits and gathering profits from all over the world and concentrating them in Carrollton and disbursing them to farmers. So I said, "It's good economics if I can do it." And so I finally convinced the business community that it made economic sense and that they ought to help. And I finally got the help from them, and that was true all over, where I built Goldkist over a large area.

STONEY: Could you talk about the democratic thing of them voting?

BROOKS: Yeah. Now what I did -- this was unusual voting situation, but I made ever member a voting member whether he was a small farmer or a large farmer. And that was true of black farmers the same as white farmers. Up till that time no black had been permitted to vote in the South for anything. And so, consequently, it was rather unusual that they had a chance to vote. But when we would have our annual meetings at the courthouse at these different places, we let -- we passed the ballots out to everybody. I mean to everyone that was there, black or white. And so, really for the first time, I guess, in this part of the world, blacks had a chance to vote the same as white, because this was not a political deal; this was an economic deal. And I felt that blacks had just as much right to double their income as whites had to double their income, or 00:05:00quadruple it. And so, consequently, I made the blacks equal. They'd been, of course, a good deal criticism that blacks were not treated equally economically, but they were treated equally here because as far as we knew, we didn't know whether the member was black or white. All we knew was the economics. The whole job was to double their income.

STONEY: Why do you think that there were so few blacks in the textile factories?

BROOKS: I really wondered about that, but apparently somehow or another they didn't seem to fit into the textile industry at that time. And -- and -- and in noticing the mills, I noticed the -- the -- all the employees were white. There were very few black employees. And I'm not sure just why that was true. Ah, there might have been an economic reason for it, but, frankly, I do not know.

STONEY: Now you grew up in Georgia and right through from the First World War on there were lots of attempts to organize and to have strikes and get better wages and so forth in the textile industry. You were a farm boy. Did you observe that? Do you have any comment on it?

BROOKS: Well, as I said, I -- I heard about that in the -- in the '30s there they had it and I read it in the paper, but I was not directly involved in any way. So, consequently, I was not very much involved and so I didn't know too much about it. The only time you know a whole lots about something is when you're involved in it, and I was not involved in the strike. Now I was involved, as I said, in the Korean War. I was on the War Board with President Truman, and 00:07:00when they started the strike up in Virginia at the textile mills up there, it looked like it might spread all the way across the South to all the textile mills. Charlie Wilson, who was chairman of the board, was kind enough to say that he was going to put this and that I was from the South, and that I think I's the only one from the South on the War Mobilization Board with Truman. And he said he's going to put this in my hands. Now the way I felt like we had to do it was to get with the union people and sit down with 'em and say to 'em that first we had to go back to work because we had to have the textiles for the war effort, and then, second, we'd listen to their problems and -- and see what we could do to -- to help. Now we had the union people, of course, who were working in the War Board all the time. I mean there were -- we had Phil Murray, who was 00:08:00the head of the CIA. We had Walter Ruther, who was his secretary. We had the head of the AFL CIO and George Meaney, who was secretary of that. So we had all of them pleading their cases all the time. So we were very familiar with the problem, but we could not stand strikes. I mean you just can't stand strikes during war periods.

STONEY: Could you talk about Eugene Talmadge?

BROOKS: Well, ah, Eugene Talmadge was probably one of the smartest politicians that we ever had. He -- he played up the fact that he was a -- you would think he'as rather ignorant and he had red galluses. He put on a great show. But actually he was a very brilliant person. He was Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Georgia. Very few people know that. I -- I don't think there's one peop-- one 00:09:00person in Georgia in a thousand that knows that he was Phi Beta Kappa out of the State of Georgia. But he was real sharp and you'd see him and you'd think he was quite ignorant. But he wasn't. He was one of the sharp people. And he knew how to play politics and he was very smart. Now, of course, the newspapers gave him lots of trouble. They worked him over. But I was with him one time and somebody asked him didn't he object to what the newspapers were doing to him. And he said, no, he'd rather be called anything on the front page of the paper than an angel on the back! (laughs) So he -- he understood his politics. And probably at that time -- see, he was at a very unusual time in Georgia and, of course, he was appealing to prejudice. Most politicians were. And so, ah -- but he was a 00:10:00very shrewd politician. I'll say that for him. There was lots of things that he did that -- that people disagreed with and -- but he knew how to get the votes and -- but he, of course, was defeated later on in life. I mean he ran against Senator George and was defeated. He ran against Senator Russell and was defeated, but he was very successful in being -- in being elected governor.

STONEY: When we talked before, you said that he was a scoundrel.

BROOKS: Well, I -- I -- I didn't say that. I mean, you might have thought that. I -- I don't -- I had lots of admiration for the fellah in many ways. I didn't agree with lots of things he was doing. I disagreed with it, but, ah, ah, at the same time you have to give him credit for the fact that he was smart and that he 00:11:00was playing politics based on the situation at that time. If he had done otherwise, he would not have been elected. He'd been defeated. And he was smart enough to do that. Now that's been true of lots of politics and politicians. You run on prejudice. I mean you've got one picture of violence. Turned all -- Bush was elected. He just had to have one picture was all he needed to show what happened up in New Jersey and he -- he was elected President. He won everything from Virginia right on through Texas and Oklahoma. So prejudice, whether we like it or not, is very often used in politics. It's not good, but it's -- it's a 00:12:00terrible weapon that you -- now and I say this, that Governor Talmadge in knowing how to use the weapons. He -- he didn't need anybody to lead him around.

STONEY: Now you knew the farmers very well. Could you talk about their attitude toward the textile workers?

BROOKS: Well, I don't know that there was any particular feeling between farmers and textile workers, because actually lots of the textile workers were coming off the farm. That's where they came from. And there was lots of families that (telephone rings) part of 'em were farming and part of 'em were working in the textile mill. So you had a pretty close relations there between the -- the two setups.

STONEY: Did you know any of those farmers -- did you work with any of those 00:13:00farmers who moved back and forth from the textile mills to the --

BROOKS: Well, I -- I -- I worked with the families, yes, because I worked with the families that stayed on the farm. I mean the part that stayed on the farm, I worked with them constantly. And -- and although I was not directly involved in the textile industry, I knew, of course, part of the family that was working in the textile mills.

STONEY: Now you were a very bright young fellow --

BROOKS: Well, I don't know about that. (laughs)

STONEY: -- in that period, and a lot of bright young fellows were coming up in textiles, like the Calloways, like Donald (inaudible). Could you talk about that, that generation of young textile manufacturers?

BROOKS: Yeah. You had a young group that went to Tech, Georgia Tech, for example, and took textile engineering. And so they became the leaders of -- of the textile industry in the South. And so it was very helpful. I mean, they 00:14:00became very great industrialists and they were really very helpful to the South because they knew what they were doing. They were highly trained and graduates of textile institutions and -- and, as you know, Georgia Tech had a big textile industry and they were one of the top institutions of the country on textiles. So, consequently, the institutions did a great job. I never bragged on Tech too much, having been a University of Georgia professor, but, anyway, you have to give 'em credit for what they did.

STONEY: Now this is very important to us because seemed to get the idea that it was only the mills who were moving down from the North. Actually it was a lot of those young fellows in the South who were improving the industry.

BROOKS: Well, what they would do were building new mills. They weren't just getting mills from the North, but they were building new mills. And they were highly trained, highly skilled tex-- textile people. And they were the ones who really built the industry. Now some of these mills that moved down from the North, of course, started the industry. They got it going. But it was these young people that went to institutions like Georgia Tech that really made the textile industry. And they became the great leaders of the South.

STONEY: Did you know any of those people?

BROOKS: Oh, yes. Oh, yes, I knew lots of them very well. I knew the Calloways well. I knew the Combers over in Alabama, and I knew a great many of them quite well. In fact I knew 'em real well because I was selling cotton to 'em (laughs) and I had to go and visit with 'em. So, ah, like Bibb Manufacturing Company in Georgia. But all of those people, if you look at 'em, all of 'em were trained in 00:16:00the South. They didn't come down from the North. They were all trained in the South.

STONEY: That's very important for us to get from you. Now could you talk -- just think back a little bit and see if you can remember any of the things they said about the development of industry, those young fellows, when you got together with them.

BROOKS: Well, they, of course, had a great ambition to make the textile industry not only successful, but to be the best textile industry in the world. They -- they -- they wanted to make it number one. And lots of 'em were successful in doing that. If you look at these big textile setups, like West Point, Pepperill, for example, it was originally a Massachusetts institutions, as I recall, but the southern crowd who were trained down here took it over. And they took it over and started operating it. And they did great with it. They did a great job. 00:17:00And you have Calloway Mills and you have all the Tacoma Mills over in Alabama. They did a great job -- and all up in the Carolinas -- did a great job.

STONEY: Well now, they insisted, however, that there be a -- remember when the NRA came in and the code came in.

BROOKS: Yes.

STONEY: They insisted that there be a deferential between the Southern rate and the Northern rate. Why do you think that was true?

BROOKS: Well, you're talking about the payment, you mean?

STONEY: That's right.

BROOKS: Wages? Well, I think there'd always been that difference. That's what pulled the mills that came South -- that's what pulled them, was cheap labor. Well, they wanted to maintain that difference and not let the NRA change the whole economic setup. And that's inherent that you don't try to change a whole 00:18:00economic situation by government. You don't order economic. You follow the pattern that's already there. And so you already had that pattern here that there was a deferential in wages between the North and the South.

STONEY: And they wanted to continue that?

BROOKS: They wanted to continue that. They wanted to continue and have that situation.

STONEY: But you were making a big change for the farmers that -- that didn't depend on any kind of deferential.

BROOKS: Oh, no. The whole idea in the farmers was that I could bring 'em all up, and I wanted to get them to where were the -- the greatest producers and the highest income group. I wanted to take 'em from the bottom to the top, if I could. And I was working on that -- on that system.

STONEY: Well now, you were negotiating with these very smart young fellows for the price of cotton.

BROOKS: Yes.

STONEY: So the farmers had you to negotiate for them.

BROOKS: Yeah. I not only did that, but I changed some of the patterns of marketing cotton. You see, in the early days all the cotton was sold and about all that the average buyer knew was whether it had been rained on or not. Now I -- I had gone in lots of these mills and if you'd go and look at a mill, there were ends down all over where they were spinning to make thread. They would break and -- and I thought, well, that's foolish economically. And I developed the idea if I could train some classes of cotton, people who worked and could determine not only the color of the cotton, but also the length of the staple, and put ever bale of cotton exactly the same length, that I might could get the 00:20:00mills to set their spindles in such a way that they may not have so many down -- spindles down. And so I went and talked with the mills and said, "If I can train my people to put this cotton into absolutely even-running lots according to staple -- for example, ever bale will be an inch or inch-and-a-thirty-second -- now can you set your spindles to where it will prevent these breaks. And they says, yes, "Yeah, but can you do that?" And I said, "Yeah, I think I can train 'em to do it." They said, "Well, if you'll do that, we'll pay you a premium for your cotton." And so I did that. I trained my people to do it and they paid me a premium, the mills did. And I could pass that premium on through to the farmer.

STONEY: Could you talk about the efficiency that came in the mills in the late '20s and early '30s?

BROOKS: Well, I -- I'm really not familiar enough with that to know, but I'm sure they were -- see, if you get some highly technical people, they going to -- they going to make tremendous improvements, which they were doing in the mills all the time, I'm sure. And they were improving the mills. But at the same time I was trying to improve the quality of the product that -- that I was selling the mill, so that ever mill could buy from Goldkist the kind that he wanted to produce the kind of goods he wanted to produce and, ah, and pay me a premium for it. Well, it was successful because I was able to raise the price of cotton to the farmers about a cent a pound. Now through this system. And, consequently, I pulled cotton 100 times into Carrollton because every farmer -- that was 20%. Cotton was bringing 5 cents a pound and if you could get 'em 6 cents, that's 20% 00:22:00up. And so lots of the old type cotton people didn't know what I's doing, and they got all upset and one of our field me came in very much upset saying that Georgia legislature was going to investigate me. And I asked them what they were going to investigate me for and they said "raising the price of cotton a cent a pound," that nobody could do that and I'd doing something that was wrong or may dishonest, that nobody could raise the price of cotton a cent a pound and that they were going to investigate me. And so I told him, I said, "That's the finest thing in the world that could happen. I want to be investigated for raisin' the price of cotton a cent a pound. I was raisin' the income of farmers 20%, and I want to be accused of that!" (laughs) He was rather all excited and when I told him, I said, "You go back and tell 'em to investigate me. I want to be 00:23:00investigated." But, ah, it was a case of changing your pattern of how you did things economically.

STONEY: One last thing, and this -- you may not in your memory of this -- but we've been looking at a lot of newsreels of the time, and they show a lot of use of the National Guard, Talmadge calling out the National Guard and so forth. Do you recall that, and how did that strike you, as you recall it?

BROOKS: Well, actually I was not involved in that, and so I don't know whether it made too much impression, probably made some impression on me, but not serious; but I presume Talmadge was trying to, ah, ah, keep the textile mills coming South maybe or building new textile mills. And -- and he was working with the textile people, I would think. That'd be my guess about it. But I was not 00:24:00personally involved in any of that and I really didn't know. He -- as I said before, he was a whole lot smarter than more people thought he was. He wasn't -- he wasn't near that dumb of that stupid. He was a Phi Beta Kappa who'd graduated the University of Georgia. And although he played that part some, he was about as sharp as they come, and proved by the fact that he kept being elected governor of the State of Georgia. And you can't keep doing that all the time. You can't fool everybody forever. And so, ah, ah, he was playing the part that he thought, apparently, that was best, but at the same time it created great animosities and great upsets. I'm sure lots of people were violently upset about what was going on, because nobody likes the National Guard being called out for anything.

STONEY: Okay. Do you have anything more that you'd like to tell us?

BROOKS: No. You just said something about you wanted my age, and I didn't know whether you wanted to do that or not. You might want to ask me.

STONEY: Okay. Now we're talking about 1934. Could you tell us how old you were then and so forth?

BROOKS: Well, I was born on September 11, 1901. So actually I'll be 89 in -- in about two months from now I'll be 89 years old. Ah, that's a long time and I've lived through a long period of time. So I've been very fortunate really in my health. I've been in excellent health all my life. I try to exercise. I watch my diet some and I watch my weight. And I -- I do walking, fast walking, and I have 00:26:00some funny things happen, of course, in time, but at the same times it means that I think there's a close relationship between good physical condition and whether you can stay in there mentally or not. And, as you know, memory is the thing that's bothering lots of people. And lots of people accuse me of having too good a memory, that I remembered some of the things they want me to forget! But, ah, about the best story I heard on memory was one I heard the other day, that said a man and his wife decided that they were having too many memory problems. And what the trouble was, they was trying to remember too much. And the man said, "I'll you what. Let's just divide this memory problem up." Said, "You remember what our name is and I'll remember where we are." So -- so I think lots of people have this memory problem, but I, fortunately, have not had very serious memory problems up to the present time.

STONEY: Well now, how different does the South look today from the South that you knew when you were, say, 22?

BROOKS: Well, it's another world. It's --

STONEY: Just say the South is another world from the time I was 20, 22.

BROOKS: Yeah, it's another world. Back then we had poverty and hunger and bad economic conditions that, see, we really never recovered from the effects of the War Between the States. It persisted for a long period of time all the economics were set up to keep us impoverish. And so it took a long time to overcome that, but today the South is booming. It's doing well and it's up there even now and it's -- we're doing quite well. So -- and we have great institutions. As you know, I'm on the board of trustees of several institutions -- University of Georgia, Emory University, and Emory's becoming one of the great universities. 00:28:00And the University of Georgia's moved up tremendously. So we -- we have great institutions now in the South and they're training lots of wonderful people, and they're building the South. And that's the way you do it. And so I think the future of the South looks better to me every day.

STONEY: And would you say that the South needs low-pay industries or differentials?

BROOKS: No. I don't think we need it anymore. I think --

STONEY: Just, just, I'm sorry. I don't think we -- the South needs, you want to cut out my question you see.

BROOKS: Yeah. I don't think the South needs any differential anymore. I think we're equal now, and I think we are equal in every way. We have capital down here. We have trained personnel. We have highly skilled people who're graduates of great universities. So I think that day has past in the South. I think we're equal. We don't need any preferential treatment anymore.

STONEY: Excellent.