Friday's Internet Edition, July 25, 2008.
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The stock market crash of Oct. 29, 1929 took its toll on every American business. The following Tuesday, or Black Tuesday, sent investors in a scurried frenzy to withdraw their money from the market, in order to salvage its remains.
It was a panic that thundered its way across the country, and right through the heart of the North Carolina furniture industry.
Battling the Great Depression
For the Thomasville Chair Company, coming fresh off of producing its first bedroom suite line, the crash couldn’t have come at a worse time. Sales had dropped over an 18-month period by 26 percent.
The crash, coupled with the death of T.J. Finch the same year, left newly appointed company president T. Austin Finch looking for ways to motivate his employees.
“This is a plea for your best effort,” Finch wrote to his employees on April 10, 1931. “Don’t wait for the foreman or superintendent to point out to you the next thing to be done or something you can do to save time and materials. This is the time of opportunity to build the future on a solid and lasting foundation.”
It was a rally cry heard loud and clear by employees, motivated by Finch’s efforts not to cut wages in exchange for greater production and savings of materials. Workers checked the mail each day for new orders, driven by the faith that if the city of Thomasville was still running, so would TCC.
“It was a big risk on the part of management in that we continued to make furniture,” Charles Provost, a former general superintendent said in Thomasville Furniture Industries 75th anniversary booklet in 1979.
“We weren’t selling but a piece here and there. What they did was store it in every vacant building we could find in Thomasville and High Point. When business cleared up some, we were ready, and we sold from our inventory.”
Company management took 10 percent pay cuts and paid no stockholder dividends — setting aside aspirations for personal gain in favor of saving the very company they helped build.
However, the hard times didn’t deter the company from accomplishing one of its main priorities for the early 1930s — upgrading facilities.
This included a conversion from steam to electric powered machinery, as well as renovating buildings with brick instead of wood.
“The way they did it at Plant A was to build the brick structure around the existing plant,” George Finch, another TFI forefather recalled. “Then they tore down the wood inside and threw it out the window.
“This modernization was a big job, because at the time we had over a million square feet of floor space,” he added.
The company also saw expansion at the time, purchasing the old Lambeth Furniture building on a bankruptcy sale. The plant was designated Plant L, and created living room furniture. Part of the plant produced high quality bedroom and dining room pieces. They were the first to bear the name “Finch Fine Furniture,” because they were created with solid walnut, mahogany and maple.
The year 1933 netted TCC 1,375 new employees who had been effected by the National Recovery Administration, and implemented a 40-hour work week.
Hundreds of employees also attended the company’s first trade classes, designed to upgrade skills and teach new techniques in furniture production.
In a time when depressed conditions lead many competitors to cut wages, prices, and quality, many low end furniture products were on the market. While others opted to follow a design trend called “borax,” producing gaudy, overembellished furniture. TCC decided not to travel either path, instead attempting to establish itself as a reputable manufacturer.
In 1935, the company started its American/Modern/Decorative (AMODEC) line, sending a breath of fresh air into the furniture fashion industry.
In 1937, the company built Plant E, its central carving facility, which still sits today on Unity Street.
TCC also installed one of the first conveyor belt systems used in the furniture industry after company manufacturers Doak Finch and Charley White visited a Ford Motor Company Plant in Detroit. They decided to make the necessary modifications on Ford’s system and make it work in a furniture plant, thus reducing the amount of physical labor used in material handling.
Production rolls into the 1940s as war rages again
Just as TCC was patting itself on the back for being able to survive despite the Great Depression, it was met head on with another significant challenge — a huge loss of its workforce to fuel efforts of World War II.
Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, 597 of TCC’s 2,051 employees answered the nation’s call of service.
The loss of 25 percent of the company’s workforce, the company had to adjust, and did so by hiring women for production jobs to keep plants operational. The first group of women went to work in 1942.
Another adaptation was that TCC, like many other companies, shifted some of its production to aid with the war effort. This meant building wooden bunk beds, tent stakes, desks, rolling pins, and spatulas to be used by troops overseas. Other production included making wooden plugs for bombs, plywood for gliders, and other government furniture.
With over 25 percent of TCC’s pre-war workforce now actually fighting overseas, TCC made every effort to keep in contact with those men, keeping them informed of employee news, and what the company was doing to support them.
Many GIs responded, including one who got a pleasant surprise seeing his new TCC bunk bed waiting on him in his barracks.
“I’m sure it will be of interest to you to know that I am now enjoying the comfort of sleeping one of the beds that was manufactured by Thomasville Chair Company,” a letter from an employee, simply signed Charles W. read. “I think that I experienced the happiest moment of my Army life, when I came in from church services yesterday and discovered our new beds with the words ‘Thomasville Chair Company’ engraved on them.”
Meanwhile on the home front, the company managed to thrive despite the war, as expansion continued, including a new main office adjacent to Plant C, built in 1942.
But another dark cloud would cast itself over an otherwise successful company in 1943, with the death of company president T. Austin Finch.
He was the man that had driven the company to mass expansion and productivity during one of the roughest patches of American history. His character and his philosophy toward the company had directed could be seen in a letter written to employees in 1934.
“Yesterday is a thousand years ago. Tomorrow is the thing. Old ideas, old methods, old equipment cannot meet the tomorrow’s that are coming. Let’s forget them — look forward — we cannot stand still — we must keep moving — all of us,” T. Austin Finch said to employees during the era.
His legacy and his company would live on as the country headed into the baby boom years of the 1950s.
Staff Writer Ryan Seals can be reached at 472-9500, ext. 231, or at ryan.d.seals@gmail.com.