Highlights Of
Mr. Straus’ Speech
At Picnic
"I have been compelled lately to be absent from
Pisgah Forest a good deal more than I anticipated,
but it was on business. I have been covering the
United States from one corner to another. Long
before this celebration is over, I will be back in
Washington, where I have important conferences.
You have not seen as much of me as I wanted
you to and I explained to you before the reason
for it. It disappoints me a good deal that during
my absence many rumors have been permitted to
be spread in Transylvania county and amongst
all of you good friends of Ecusta and Endless Belt
which are absolute lies, unfounded and unjusti
fied, and I am sure that none of you takes them
seriously. I will refer to them later.
I know how deeply concerned each and every
one of you is with the future of Ecusta. You have
built your lives around our company. Ecusta
has built its future around you. You are, there
fore, entitled to know the facts. Briefly, this is our
situation.
The paper we manufacture here goes into two
markets. The biggest of these is the American
market, which consumes a very large proportion
—in fact almost 75%—of our output. Nothing
has happened to this market. Practically all of
the large American cigarette manufacturers are
our customers, are well satisfied with our product,
and not only will continue to patronize us just
as long as we are able to produce high quality
paper at fair and reasonable prices, but are
actually buying more and more paper from us
year after year.
The second market for our paper has consisted
of a number of foreign countries. This foreign
market has purchased, in the past, approximately
25% of our output. In recent months, I regret to
say, we have experienced great difficulty with
this foreign market.
This is no fault of yours, nor of Ecusta. Our
paper has been of good quality. Our prices have
been right, and we have always made prompt de
liveries. The trouble has arisen because our
foreign customers are unable to pay us in dollars
for their purchases, and you, the same as I, want
to be paid in United States dollars and not in
Chinese yen or Turkish lire, or whatever other
currency is in vogue in countries to which
we have been accustomed to ship our paper.
One of the very unhappy consequences of this
situation is that we have not had enough work to
go around, and this condition has caused me per
sonally more regrets and worries than anything
I had to face since Ecusta began its operation. We
were faced with the necessity of laying off a num
ber of people. I am sure there isn’t anybody pre
sent here today who would expect Ecusta to give
them a pay envelope for work not performed.
The question arises immediately: How shall
people be laid off.^ What yardstick shall be used.^
I have studied this problem personally and with
great care; I have taken into my confidence our
superintendents because I wanted to make certain
that you would feel we were being as fair to
everyone as it is possible to be. I arrived at the
conclusion that lay-offs should be made on the
basis of length of service; and that as a matter
of principle, long service employees should be
retained, and that short service employees should
be laid off first. As many of you know, this prin-
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