SAFETV Makes SENSE
Firestone
t^gfiBWS
Gastonia, North Carolina • Bennettsville, South Carolina
Bowling Green, Kentucky March 1981
Cotton
to
‘miracle’
fiber
• • •
Tires soon
went pneumatic
and Firestone,
meeting
the changes,
began building
fabric
reinforcement
into its
product
A past exhibit at Merrimac
Valley Textile Museum en
trance. Wheels mounted on
plexiglass are wooden patterns
used in a foundry for making
sand molds for casting. Floor
case (right) has 19th-Century
models of textile machinery.
• • The American textile industry, established as a
hearthside craft of necessity in the Colonies, started moving
to the factory in the late 1700s. Textiles grew to industrial
prominence and dominated manufacturing in the Northeast
up to the 1930s. Then came the shift to other areas of the
country, notably the South and Southwest.
Firestone Textiles Company has its roots in the New
England beginnings. The Firestone Tire & Rubber Com
pany, founded in 1900 at Akron, Ohio, started out making
solid tires for horsedrawn carriages and after a while, the
early motor vehicles. Tires soon went pneumatic and Fire
stone, meeting the changes, began building fabric reinforce
ment into its product. The fabric first came from outside
sources.
AS EARLY as 1924, the company was producing its own
fabric for better quality control. That was at Fall River,
Mass., where the company had acquired an old-established
mill that had turned out sailcloth and other products.
The fabric was cotton—the only kind there was for tires
up to the mid-1930s when synthetics came on the scene. De
mand led to another plant at New Bedford and Newbury-
port. New Bedford produced more cotton fabric, but New-
buryport supplied rayon, through arrangement with the
producer. This and a similar operation that had started in
☆ ☆ ☆
☆ ☆ ☆
History—a Footnote • Some management and staff per
sonnel transferred from Firestone’s Massachusetts plants in
the 1930s and early 1940s. By the time New England tire-
fabric operations had been discontinued soon after World
War II, some pieces of old textile machinery such as cards,
spinning frames and looms were sent to Gastonia. A few
pieces were in use and some—or parts of them—were around
up to the early 1970s when cotton “went out.”
Two old looms, remembered, were descendants of the
Crompton variety, with drop-box shuttle arrangement, shut
tles loaded by hand. The old looms, long gone, were in the
tradition of a family of early power looms that hold an im
portant place in the history of the Industrial Revolution.
Textiles reference (placard at
left) is a quote from Victor
Clark's History of Manufactur
ers in the United States; "... No
other industrial arts were so
universally practiced by our
people and no other were so
suddenly taken from their
hands. The short period between
1810 and 1830 saw the center of
gravity of textiles manufacture
shift from the fireside to the
factory."
One of the Museum's power
looms of historical importance
(right). The collection includes
a rare early model of the
Crompton weaving machine.
•S^V -
Story of textiles 1750-1950
Merrimac Valley
Textile Museum • Located 800 Massachusetts Avenue,
North Andover, Mass. 01844. Telephone G17/686-0191.
Hours: 9 A. M.-4 P. M., Tuesdays through Fridays; 1- 5
P. M. Saturdays and Sundays. One of America's most ex
tensive collections/sources of materials having to do with
the textile industry in the United States.
Museum collects machines, tools, documents, pictures,
books and fabrics that tell the story of textiles in the
U. S. from 1750 to 1950. Visitors can see spinning wheels,
handlooms, cloth made in pre-industrial America, as well
as the carding engines, spinning jacks (or jennies) and
power looms from the early industrial era. Also there is
an extensive collection of fabrics, textile sample books
and swatch books, manuscripts, books, periodicals and
photographs for reference purposes.
Roanoke, Va., supplied rayon during and shortly after World
War II.
Meanwhile Firestone tire fabrics had moved further
South. In 1935 the company began operating the former
Loray/Manville-Jenckes mill at (Sastonia, N. C. Eight years
later the Bennettsville, S. C. plant was producing. By 1968
the new factory at Bowling Green, Ky., was producing. In
early 1980 fabric production was discontinued, leaving Bowl
ing Green as a treating facility altogether, its material be
ing produced at Gastonia and Bennettsville.
AFTER WORLD WAR II the company acquired its Hope-
well, Va., plant which produced synthetic fibers. That
facility was a part of and headquarters for the Textiles di
vision for a while in the 1960s. The operation today is Fire
stone Synthetic Fibers Company. It and the Textiles Di
vision are part of the Firestone North American Tire group.
For Firestone Textiles Company, it all began 57 years ago,
with tire fabric of “finest upland cotton” cord fabric from
Fall River. Today, Gastonia (headquarters of the Textiles
Division) and Bennettsville produce tire fabric in several
‘families’ of synthetic (chemically-engineered) fibers. Of
the domestic plants, Bennettsville and Gastonia supply the
product and Bowling Green and Gastonia plants treat the
fabric for building into tires. The other facilities of the Tex
tiles Division are at Woodstock, Ontario, Canada.