Lancaster, SC, Sept. 12--Shortly after 9 a.m., the parking lot at the unemployment office in Lancaster is full and seats inside the building are scarce. It's a scene that's become common in the South as textile plants shut down and leave hundreds or thousands of workers without jobs.
In Lancaster, Springs Industries has shut one of its mills, and laid-off workers struggle to imagine what the future will be like in a community that was shaped by textiles.
"This is going to be a ghost town," said a worried Esterlean McGriff, 74, who was part of the first groups of black women to work at the plant. With the mill gone, McGriff, whose three sons followed her into mill work, spends her days volunteering at the senior center.
The Lancaster mill ceased operation Sept. 7, taking at least 330 jobs with it. Company officials cited a weakened economy and poor retail sales, factors that, combined with foreign trade, are costing textile workers thousands of jobs across the region and in the Northeast.
The trend hits particularly hard in a town where ties to the mill span generations.
Darri Bradley, 37, said her grandmother, father, mother and siblings had worked there. "My daddy supported seven kids on a job at the cotton mill," she said.
She worked two years of graveyard shifts while attending high school and now works at The Old Mill Grocery, just across the road from the mill where cotton-laden trucks rolled in and yarn rolled out.
One of the store's customers, 47-year-old Dennis Sanders, said he had worked the overnight shift and his father retired from the mill. Yet he was philosophical about the plant's closing.
"It really ain't that bad. I've been through it before," he said. "Things happen, that's the way I look at it."
Sanders said he's trying to find work at Springs' nearby bleaching, finishing and fabrication facility. But the news there is bleak as well because the company is cutting 130 of 2,000 jobs at that operation.
The mill was built on an old cotton field and opened in July 1896 with 10,000 spindles, 260 looms and 325 workers. It managed $8,842 in profits its first year. By 1903, the first major expansion was completed. Four years later, a state survey showed the mill payroll had grown to the state's seventh largest at 1,050.
A century later, the U.S. textile business is on the skids as a steady decline since World War II has accelerated. The American Textile Manufacturers Institute said the industry has shuttered 250 U.S. plants, costing 200,000 people their jobs since 1997.
Springs spokesman Ted Matthews said the company would try to rehire as many workers as possible at its other plants. So far 100 of 630 workers who lost jobs have been transferred elsewhere and about 130 have decided to take early retirement.
After closing two mills and cutting jobs at a third, Springs still has 4,000 workers in that part of the state, Matthews said. With a 10% turnover rate in the payroll, it is possible some recently laid-off workers could end up on Springs' payroll later, he said.
