Transcripts For CSPAN3 Lectures 20240704

And it is a pleasure to be here today with the Honors College students in the university of south. Here today with the Honors College students at the university of South Carolina for 21 course exiting South Carolinas industrial patch. I want to start with a quote. This quote comes from a very prominent american historian. A guy named ed harris, who wrote, while the coal mines and textile mills have become a visible and memorable part of southern history, the south as an industry has remained virtually. Lumbering is often written off as of little plants and little dramatic interest. Yet lumbering, more often than any other in the, captures the scope of economic change in the new south. Its limitations as well as his impact. We are about a third of the way through the semester and i think you guys are already convinced of this. But i thought it might be interesting to share with you a little bit more about how we got to this place. So about five or six years ago, the National Park Service Reached out to the u. S. Department of history and the us to help them by writing something called a Historic Resource survey for the park. Congaree National Park is one of the youngest in the park service. It became a monument in the bicentennial year. Only in the 21st century. It really is one of the newest parts. The goal is to tell Human History of the park and its environment. People interacted with the Natural World . We did that with about seven or eight chapters. We talked about the importance of transportation. We talked about a lot of different topics. The chapter on extracted industries. Raised many, many, many questions about the role of lumber with product as far as conservation in South Carolina. So, probably helpful to talk about the broad outline of South Carolinas story percival work, post reconstruction. The way i would just drive it is perfect storm. Perfect calm. Not looking at images of the storm. The yellow pine and oldgrowth cypress. The perfect story is this. Of course, lots of oldgrowth. Hardwood in yellow pine in the south. Prior to the construction, both because of technological limitations in the way labor was deployed, this was the highest priority of the folks who always land on which the timber grew. At the same time, that there was sort of a rediscovery of all of this timber. The upper midwest and new england managed to get themselves clearcut by lumber men who were not particularly concerned with permanence, right . So then those folks were very interested in what the south had to offer. Lumber men from those places were hungry for new timber and land in South Carolina, like other places in the south, was also devalued. The value is Something Like 1 25 of what it had been pre civil war. So what happens . Lumber comes. I mean, these guys are our friends, but its the arrival of big lumber. You know that lumber factors came from places like michigan and they did this to us in 2023, a sort of cool thing of buying up now committed a small tract of land to a big track of land and in 2023, they flipped the land which until they sold to lumber men like these guys. These two were really big lumberman from chicago. They came down and lowered by big tracks, yellow pine, other trees. Follow gigantic tracts of land. Not little tracts of land but gigantic. They are especially captivated by cyprus. So ferguson and he came together in the 1880s with some other partners. Its a little gang. They came down the railroad. The explored the areas around the concrete and they were very taken by what they saw. And they decided that they would start buying up the lands. In time, these guys came to control Something Like 200,000 acres. This one company only in South Carolina can to control Something Like 200,000 acres. Most of which they owned and some of which they only owned the timber rights to. In many cases, they controlled the timber drawing on Something Like 315 square miles. Thats a lot of land. Thats a lot of land. And so they built on the banks of the river Corporate Headquarters for the business. Cyprus, lumber company. The expected permanence and a very long time. So much land that they really thought there was a long time. They left everything out but the oldgrowth cypress. Pretty extensive highly capitalized down. Thats a picture of some script that was used in the store. It also had lumber mills, hotels, company housing, haas does, artesian wells, all kinds of other things in health and safety of workers. Its a segregated place, not a perfect place. The fact that these guys wanted to be here for the long haul. The company only operated for about a order century. They operated from 1890 to 1916. At the peak and ferguson, the company and the town only because of the company. At its peak, there is about 25 people 2500 people who lived and worked in ferguson. They did not just cut timber but manufactured what product there. Before cardboard they did the boxes which were called sharks. Shingles and lots of other architectural features. Then the company shuts down in world war i. The question is what happens to their land . Some of their land again, the controlled 200,000 acres of land. That preserves the timber. Other land, another land, the timber rights were sold. For various Wood Products. Girls became a big user of the trees. Furniture became a big user of the trees. It turns out that sumter, South Carolina had a special, peculiar role in all of this which will not talk about. But some had great ambition and post reconstruction in the south. Really thought it was going to be something very special and it turns out to become the center of the Wood Products industry in South Carolina, which was no small thing. It was a major, major industry. And the Timber Industry today continues to be a major industry in our state. So im going to turn over the microphone to graham duncan, who oversees manuscript correction at a worldclass special Collections Library that has been very, very helpful and getting the paper of the Williams Furniture corporation, which is one of the beneficiaries of the land that had been assembled by people like Francis Beidler and ferguson and all the workers who were there. And i would be remiss if i did not start or stop by saying that what furniture was built was very unusual for the american south. We will talk about that more but it was a major, major, major employer and it had an interracial workforce and a unionized workforce. This is in sumter, South Carolina. Thats really interesting. There is a very good set of reasons why almost nobody knows this dory. The story of the archives will help us better understand. Graham. All right. Thanks. My name is graham duncan. Im the head of collections at the South Carolina hannah library. One of the special collection units here at the university of South Carolina. We particularly collect Archival Research material about the state of South Carolina, inhabitants, history, geography, culture. Those sorts of things consist of manuscript materials, personal papers, organizational records like these types of materials. Business records, that sort of thing. We also have published materials collections, books, newspapers, magazines. A large visual materials collections including photographs, postcards, fine art, that sort of thing. So the building, you can see, appear, through most of its history, has kind of engaged this Research Audience in a very traditional manner. Close to on circulating. You cant just go in the stacks like you can the library, look up and down the shelves, pick up the book you want, check it out and go home. You must tell us what you want to see. Report for you. You come sit in the quite gorgeous reading room and use it. Thats a plug. We are reopening the building october 6th. Everybody come check out the building. Interviewer closed for version. We engaged folks and a traditional manner. Let us know what you want. You come here. You look at the materials. Kind of the work we do behind this with collections, you know, in some ways, we take large amounts of material and organize it in a way that makes sense for researchers looking to say this is the folder of material i want to see, putting the hierarchical arrangement on their. What made this project really interesting of course, this is not something that was helped by the library, but one of the great things we were able to do was learn from expertise in helping stevie, how you will see in a minute, do some of the physical arrangement of the material. But in the know what to request when they want to use this. The longest part of this project was digitization of materials encompassing the tax collection. Digitization, of course available online. These physical records that are only available laura very between 8 30 and 5 00 under our supervision and available online. Its a lot of work. The scanning is one part of it. Scanning all of the materials. Stevie will talk about metadata creation which is a lot of work. Its not just as simple as taking all the boxes and scanning and putting them online. The amount of labor required for projects like this is worth it. We can engage with audiences outside of u. S. The. Its not just for our own kind of constant Management System that usc posterior. They are harvested out through South Carolina Additional Library which is in turn harvested through the National Library of america. All of these things are searchable beyond and in different portals than these things here. Im not going to talk for too much longer about archives. I could go on for a while if anyone wants to talk archives. Come find me. We can do that. I do want to say that this project is going to be satisfying for me. And i think my colleague, too. As a large state flagship university, its very nice when we can partner with institutions like the Sumter County museum to kind of leverage the resources and capacity that we have to make their collections more discoverable, as well. In the county museum. And thanks to the resources that came through the various grants that i was able to get, but also faculties and experts youre kind of working. It has been a really great partnership. Its something that i hope we do more of. I will let stevie talk right now. I dont know how long he is going to talk but he will tell you the nuts and bolts of what he has been doing on this project. Okay, awesome. Hello. As many of you know, im stevie. Im the guy who has actually gone through these many boxes that we have here. My plan right now, im going to talk a little bit about what weve done here and how we do it right then we will talk Broad Strokes of what we have here. As many of you have seen again, we have a lot of stuff here. Wed be here all day. To start off, we went for a few stages in this process. First we started by reading just about everything here to see what we have. It got dry at times. You can only read the same 1920s tax returns so many times before it starts to get old. That helped us get a good idea of what needed to be digitized versus what we can skip over. We will not digitize everything here like the box of letterheads over there. We dont need digitize 40 copies of the exact same letterhead. This gave us a good sense of what we had. We did some reorganization. Theres actually two collections here in a weird way. Its scattered to the winds right now. We have the olowo williams collection which is pre Williams Furniture company and then the Williams Furniture Company Collection which is post 1931, 1932. We did some cleaning and rehousing of the bottom picture of there, what my desk looks like for the last week at the end of the day. A lot of this has not been cared for in a few years. So we have to remove paperclips, staples. You have to switch over some of the folders. There is boxes here that were completely unprocessed. Had to do some renovation and make sure they found their home. A little cleaning up to do before we got into digitizing. These are the machines reused. On the left are what was primarily used. The one on the right, i only ended up using one but its so cool i will show you guys the whole scheme of what is going on. The one on the left, good luck looking it up. It is this massive overhead scanner that we use for oversize materials. Like a large map, one of these big thick books right here. We have to use the over side to do it. The thing on the right wrist there is a normal flatbed scanner where we put most of the stuff through. Slide something into it. Scan, done. Then this in here, i only used it once, but its very neat. Its like two cameras strapped at either side aura takes pictures of books. I think it is the coolest thing ever. Just wanted to let you guys see it. But yeah. So we have to choose which of these things is going to suit the needs of the document that we have. A lot of documents of varying sizes, materials, colors. Photo negatives, photo positives. Total insane amounts. Cant just use one object or one technology. This is what we do next after we are done physically scanning it. This is called metadata. Some of you guys across different disciplines have probably interacted with metadata before. I dont know my business students but you probably have a good idea of what this is. Basically large amounts of data. How we make sure that you are able to find what rescan, so we put in the title, we have the date that anyone who contributed to the making of the object. Any sort of thing that will help in your search for these objects goes here. It looks very overwhelming, but this is what gets turned into this which is what you see on the library website. It obviously gets me in and out. Next to it is what the traditional scan looks like. How many of you have looked in the librarys website. This is produced by the scanners we went through. Going into what we have to start with, we have things like the companys operations of behind the scenes stuff. This is the vast majority of what we have. I have some things that i will show along the way. We have Company Operations like this. From really early on, these big, huge ledgers that contain a variety of materials in them. We also have stuff like this. We talked about this in class yesterday. This is the sale to georgia pacific. If anyone wants to do that and find the handshake agreement of the plant for 15 years, be my guest. So we have a lot of these appear. We have marketing material that showed exactly how they want you to market the furniture. Showing exactly the acreage and footage of the amount of timber that they have on hand throughout their entire time. Talking more about the timber in the lumber. Talking Different Things there. We have a lot of pictures of what the lumber operation looked like. We have land showing where it is physically located and then going back to operations, we have estimates of all, we want to buy this bit of land. How much is on it . We have stuff like that i believe read here. This is a traditional with about 1 billion of postage on it. Titled to real estate and we have a lot of deeds in here. Whole boxes filled with about 200 land deeds. All which encompass different lands that they are making. But a lot of land. We have a ton of these if youre interested. Talking more about the land, there is a lot in how they use the land that we have. Mainly in that map there being the location factory. Getting a good setup. Good sense that i trust. Theyre using the forest. Talking more about the land. We have this, as well. Let me pull it out. Kind of weird at first why this matters. It is an insurance policy. The entire crop of timber, very large. I dont know if anyone knows lloyds of londons, but very large object. You can kind of get a sense i forget what famous thing the insured. I believe love canal for all my history people out there, environmental people. You get a sense of the scale and where they were operating with their timber. Going off timber, we have stuff on the equipment they were using. I believe we talked about this yesterday. A lot of the sale wins involve act tester equipment. We have so many pictures. So many pictures of old equipment they were using. Materials, guys using them. Manuals on how to use them. People breaking down their jobs and saying i use this every day. Or is this one as much. If your interest in and to logic, we have so much on it. The people who use the Tech Knowledge he, we have a good amount on workers. As i mentioned yesterday, this is a Management Center collection. We dont have as much on workers as we would like. Some need rings in here like in series a 16 over here. Some will document that workers were printing and showing exactly what they were doing their free time. What company life was like and how workers interacted with each other. So we do get some good glimpses as to what worker life was. We also have some pictures. These are two of them. A lot more on the actual faces that we know. And the workforces himself was an integrated workspace. Overwhelmingly black. This is reflected in all the pictures. Whenever we have, you know, 35 year awards, fortyyear awards, as overwhelmingly black workers. Pretty unique for the south. Going off of workers, we had a lot of the labor stuff. That on the right is one about 10 to 15 photos that we have which are containing or centered around trikes in 1974. We also have stuff like that in the middle. Contracts that workers were making with really am instructed happen. I think i mentioned this yesterday. Important people from around paris have come to help protest with williams. I dont know if you recognize this name in the middle. Thats Martin Luther kings life. Big faces showing up in williams. Going off of the idea of labor, this is the thing i spent the most time with that i find very interesting, marketing concepts. We mentioned that williams was big for these Innovative Marketing ideas. Lets see if you guys found the magazine over here that have a huge pullout color photos. Maga. These are the brochures we have. That show how theyre marketing their objects. They got famous for doing a house like settings where the rest of the industry was. Not at that yet common today this was really for the time so that photograph shows a traditional williams salesroom they always are not always but majority of time had it set up to look like houses with different themes. Very western themes were common that blueprint for your oak house brochure and on the right almost got my hands mixed up. That shows exactly to a salesman how they want how they want their showroom set up shows to magazine companies, what their ads are going to look like. Its a really good source for showing like how williams is physically marketed their materials going off of the up, going of that more are these brochures that we have again so much on the actual furniture a few guys saw these earlier but ill bring them out for everyone or we have these large format. Oh, this is a we have a quad here. These large format kind of like test photos of, the actual furniture itself. So you can the furniture. This is made before they went to the brochures when, Old Furniture did make the brochures. We had color photographs. We had really interesting brochures. This one, which i believe flipped to the right page, you can kind of see this weird design how the pages get smaller and smaller, and theyre all color photographs with these really interesting of the furniture full page ads. Its really awesome in terms of brochures that we have. Looking at the brochures, they have really interesting themes. If anyone here is interested in studying like again studying the marketing of these things, they market them in really like masculine, proamerica ways, you know, up we have fireside or calling, you know, old ideas mom pop on the fire, the apollo catalog for the apollo missions, for fathers, for the founding of america. That was for the bicentennial and then kind of old world european la lamantia, which is marketed for vikings, which was a really odd way to sell furniture in italian casual you know your renaissance living in in rural South Carolina this is what the inside of them looked again if you guys saw this again full page ads absolutely gorgeous bright photos you can see why they were such a Successful Company when you look at their marketing its just a cut above other companies that one on the right or left as this Village Square piece was probably their most notable line. Its designed charles in its on price is right for a few seasons in a row. Its very popular, like setting the tone in terms of like colonial america styling in period we have a good amount on Village Square stuff. They also have these tiny little pamphlets. And we showed a few of these in class action. I go over these quickly. This is again the same ideas as published in the actual sales catalogs, but kind of dial down to these tight, punchy locations. We have tons of these ones for every single line that they had practically, again, same idea, color photographs, very interesting marketing concepts, unique descriptions. I dont know if you can see the one up there in the adventure series. One of the taglines for it was sold with a real treasure chest. Young boys could feel like pirates. They sell it by these pirates like venturing off the ship like sword in hand, ready to go again. Same idea of, like, the vikings. Its like, dude selling bedroom furniture. Lets tone it down. Like, what is this last thing on . Talk about that we have a lot of is the georgiapacific relationship we have about a whole box on georgiapacific time with the company what their ownership entailed. Its a really interesting relationship. I really, really want someone to study this. They have a lot of stuff. This this is a letter sent to every single georgiapacific subsidiary, williams one of them where it appears that theyre, you know, really pushing, you know, we want this company to behave in this manner. Oh, we want send you this brochure that talks about we need to open up the for pulp paper cutting its very heavy handed in their management of williams there is some interaction between that we have a correspondence to and that we have where you can tell that georgiapacific is mad at williams for going about things a different way than their suppliers where they go, hey, why you using our competitors varnish like do we have a problem here and its really toeing the line in terms of business speak and into like are you do you want to fight right now really interesting material so think about what weve looked at here. Think about the stories that exist there are a lot of them and yeah im going to turn it over to Lynn Robertson and shes going to talk more about what we do with these big stories what stories we have. So yeah. Thank you. Betsy of course. Well, as you can see, theres a lot of stuff and the of this class is since all of you signed for it, as you all know, is to come up with an exhibition. You know, i think were all kind of surprised at what we found during the class so far. These are stories, you know, that i knew nothing about, certainly. So i like to think that a good exhibition does two things. The thing is that it gives information about something they probably know about. Thats of where we all are right here at this point. And a good exhibition it also gets people to think and feel differently about the subject that theyve learned about and. Thats always a much more subtle. So why dont we why dont we start with beginning in that all of this information youve had from dr. Elephantine and the information that steves given to us. And i think one of the things that we found in this course is because this is kind of a secret history. Ed heir points out that we have to use in Unconventional Resources this is in a kind of do it quick read three big books and we can do this exhibition. Were going to have to learn to use the archival materials and well talk a little bit later the class about doing histories of people who are actually there to get the other side of the story. But what are some of the things what are some of if you wanted to put this all together say is of a book what would what do you think are the important of the story that people wouldnt know about, that they would walk this exhibition, which is going to be because we have so few big objects. Its going to be primarily what we call in the business, a panel exhibit. And what what are the stories want to tell that people dont know about that they can go, oh, wow, thats really cool. And how do you how do you think that we can tell the story so . They think this was really important yeah, i really sorry. I didnt know about that. So now comes the interactive part that im up here, but youre giving me the answers. So some of you. Come on, think something thats important to be able to convey through the panels is that there is that there was a Furniture Industry in South Carolina. A lot of people, especially people who might not be columbia or sumter or, just inland, South Carolina in general, are not as aware how big the industry was. Yeah, making sure that people aware of how many lives it touched, how it impacted the local economy, how Much Development it drove, things like that those are things that are very important to convey throughout the exhibition, right . So, so what youre saying is maybe this the state it existed but it was more than three chairs in a bed that the scope of it that it had Economic Impact. What are some of the other things you think we ought to about. Yes, i have. I feel like a really good way to end the exhibition might be like bringing it into like modern day, like what you told us. I think on like the first day of class was like williamsburg. Like the williams comes from Williams Furniture company and thats kind of what sparked my interest in this topic in, general, because im not really like ive like ive never been interested in the lumber industry all but, you know, being a student in the university of South Carolina, obviously i love williams stadium. So kind of bringing in that connection, like obviously this was in time, had a Lasting Impact. The Lasting Impact and we see it today on campus and it affects all of us. We just havent been, you know, like told what was funny. I had lunch today with, an old friend who used to be in the legal office here and asked me what i was doing and i said she thought and she said, you connection to the beer to the football stadium. And i said, yeah. And its also a school of is is, is a beneficiary the for the Williams Williams company so so what else so we want to tell people that there was a company in sumter, South Carolina, that was very large and had a dramatic Economic Impact on the state and city. But what else what else . What about lets go all the way back to the beginning. What about the trees . What about byler and ferguson and things like that . Wait. I. I know what we primarily talked about in calgary was just the enormity of these old cypress forests and the state of South Carolina and how these, you know, corporations, chicago came down, started this enormous industry that employed thousands of people, but also decimated a native environment. And this old back country of South Carolina was just swept away, now reduced to 15 trees on a stretch of know 30 foot. So so just the Environmental Impact too if were talking about the scope, also the Environmental Impact. Yeah, well, just before we started, you looking at one of the journals that talked what . Oh the shipment of wood from up north as well and imported wood. Right. And it was the of wood and how much was coming in which gives thats another way of using archival resources to kind of an idea about what were they making and what were they making it up and whats whats maybe another thing we want to talk about in addition to what were they making in harry thought it was interesting in the more recent readings how theyre able to cut on like the types of materials theyre using to make it kind of cheaper and cater to the everyday citizen talked at first it was very expensive and then they making it out of other materials and able to cut costs and like really drive up their margins. Right. And what what what was the impact of when we talked about the depression and kind of plays into a little bit about what youre saying. Right. Okay. So we still got weve got well, were making how big they were what they were making it out, of course it was making very good. Well have the oral histories just kind of sharing. Its probably limited as to who were able to talk to, but as the company evolved over the course of its 50 some years, what they were making, how they were making it, the unionization aspect, the integrated workforce, things that really didnt exist in south in the 20th century, and the human aspect especially still doesnt really exist now. So telling the stories of the people as kind of way to tell the story of everything else, what one of the things that dr. Alfred i mentioned thats kind of in the news today that was unusual for South Carolina and when williams was operating you. Strikes is the strikes the unions right and the history about organized labor that didnt happen so much in the south especially in South Carolina for the come to be in such a rural location like sumter. Yeah no exactly exactly. And thats one of the things that, you know, stevie talked about that was in the documents. So here was in terms of management with very, very of what was going in terms of workers in strikes. And of course, they have a particular viewpoint, which is historians as we put the exhibition together, we have to think about who is you know, who is voice and and and sometimes more questions than answers come apart when youre, know, reading documents and doing like that. So, okay, so weve been talking about giving people new information that South Carolina had an incredible number of trees after the civil war. They were important for the economy. They had been important for the economy for a long time. But we cant reconstruct action. The devaluation of the land. And people in chicago go and oh i think a picture is there there and we dont have any trees left here anymore so you know the connection of that and the growth of of of what becomes this very large and mostly now forgotten company in some too. So okay were going to talk about trees and cutting trees and making things out of trees and who makes the things. Williams and were they were the only place people what where have we learned about other things that are going on . Yes. Oh, sorry. Have i guess the nest the next step and who the things would be, you know, after and the depression, your next step would probably be globalization and the seventies and eighties, the towns were going down. And what happened to sumpter as well . Because even just pictures of the current site today be a powerful contribution to the exhibition because we put up pictures of ferguson and the drowned you know brick walls through the water but i think the crumbled and charter mains of williams are the stark contrast to what the aerial photos you know, and what where. But what about were there companies in sumpter were they the only one . And i think some of you come on. There was also a brooklyn cooperage which made barrels, huh. Or lubitsch or the the cabinets and some other cabinet company, which when we go out, you know, when were putting the exhibition together, its going to be primarily panels, but were also going to try to find those, you know, big, bulky objects that these people were making. And thats probably what were going to be able to find the most of is the furniture because they stamped furniture and it says sumpter cabinet on it. But but well look for some some things from williams as well. So, okay, were kind of trying to tell this story. Were kind of putting it in in a way, a kind of a linear progression. The war after the war. Yeah. Something jumped in back before that because. The way that williams got started in sumpter was also a unique Economic Initiative by local boosters and people who looked around and said we need to have industry here. Thats not just agriculture much to the scoffing of. Like that report we read from u. S. Office that said all sumpter can do is agriculture. These guys were like, no, we need to bring in manufacturing because thats the future. And so they know had a community invested effort with stockholders to recruit this company to start manufacturing in. Sumpter as thats a unique part of the story as well is the, you know, the Economic Development efforts and recruitment. And we can still see, you know, that kind of Economic Development happening today with the way that the state companies to move here. Exactly. So okay so we talked bit a lot about how we tell this story. The part is getting people to know something. They know about. Wow, thats cool. I dont know about that. I thought there were really textile mills, South Carolina or but what about the other story . That story thats really the most important part of that. And that is when someone out of an exhibition your goal to get them to think about something differently or to feel differently about it. What are some of the things weve talked about that you think will make an emotional or an intellectual impact that people will say, oh, thats a carry over, oh, you had an idea . I mean, obviously its from all the stuff weve pointed out that i feel like its an obvious point, but just the fact that all of this was out of sumter, South Carolina, a town of 30,000 now and not one of the towns like charleston or columbia whos kind of like a perspective thing coming out of the exhibition. Like youd think that all this growth in postcivil postcivil war would have come out of one of the bigger towns in South Carolina. But. Right. So what was was what was happening in the end, bryan, in the Natural Environment that plays into the story that we we talked about, i think we talked about how like the boll weevil through and i think in one of the reports it said like 50 of the cotton had been like wiped out of sumter. So they were kind of losing a lot of their economic like upward movement. And so had to find something else. So like, hey, know, we have a lot of his trees and so they were really trying to figure out how they could use all that and kind of moved them in a different pasture they were still heavily focused on agriculture, even still cotton but now they also like another outlet to make their money. Okay, so what works if you get we tell people that part of the that this is a natural occurrence this is a natural challenge a Natural Disaster. What are some ways that maybe we can get the get the audience to make a connection their lives today. What else whats going on in the world in terms of of people trying to adapt to Natural Disasters. Nash. I know it was pretty inevitable, but i remember that we just kind of name dropped, covered there. Yeah. And it came off our discussion at sumpter as well, i believe with the chamber of commerce or or the council about how covid and our industrial world is changing something about you know work from home and other movements in the south being affected and also think we talked about some of the that came in to charleston and then you have bmw in greenville and quite a few other things that are kind of echoing the evolution of williams sumter. So now so good point. I think one other thing we touched on was moving some of the manufacturing back, given some of the supply chain issues have surfaced in recent years. And so i think thats a promising aspect that we can really sell on for sumpter, who is really trying stimulate the economy organically. So their Natural Disaster isnt Climate Change, Natural Disasters, a weird little bug with puppies and a big beak, but the way in which you commute and he says, oh, maybe isnt going to work anymore, lets have an innovative thats a really different decision lets lets lets look at retooling what do instead of doing the same old thing the same way. And then when we read at ayres he was talking how you know, there was a of resistance in the south following the civil war in terms of weve had a very rich economy based on agriculture. Why change . Were going to have the plantation system and about, you know, the evolution of that. And i think, you know, one of the stories i think we need to tell how imaginative and innovative these guys were that, you know, instead of just one person opening up Williams Furniture, that they go out, they sell shares. Those are your finance majors . Yeah. They looked at they looked at a new way of putting together the resources they needed they got for people, the community to buy shares and put up resources that they need and thats a lesson. Maybe we want people walk out of the exhibition and say, wow, when the chips were down, they thought of a new way of doing things. Maybe, maybe thats know thats a challenge for us. Maybe need to think about new ways of of doing things. What are of the other kind of take in terms of that would say that there is a relationship to whats going on. We mentioned it was already mentioned before in terms of the Labor Movement and the resurgence of the Labor Movement in the United States right now. Natural disasters. What are the making out of trees today . Not furniture, but we talked most of the trees in south are being turned into paper pulp. Now and that that it is still i was a statistic on National Public radio that South Carolina cuts more timber on a you know per square foot basis than than is being cut in the brazilian that we we are still one of the major producers in the United States of timber but most of it is is what kind timber pine and its being used for Paper Products and what different from the way theyre doing theyre using timber today in terms of pine from what they were doing, in terms of earlier cutting all that cypress for agriculture, for architectural detailing. They well have oak o high. I didnt even see one thing theyre doing is theyre replanting ing the pine afterwards. And so its more of a crop where you plant it and its a 20 year cycle. You harvest it and then you can replant. And so youre able to have your tracts of and kind of rotate you which pioneer harvesting so its a lot more sustainable the cyprus harvesting which is just taking these trees that are like hundreds of years old and whacking them down and like they take so long to grow back that not really a crop that grows like pine where you can do that. So theyre doing it more in a way where youre reforesting as youre cutting timber right . Its the whole idea that its a crop like wheat or cotton or corn or, various healthy things. So it just takes a little it takes ten years to grow the pine tree and not other things. So okay, we weve got Renewable Resources that come out of the story were trying to tell. We were talking about maybe inventive ways of dealing with with Climate Change or other things that are going on. Do you see things or first conversation that we had, its how does any of this impact us . Yes. You know, i think making connection for the people that have come to the exhibition, im sure, i mean, most of came in and didnt really see the connection between what was happening in the Timber Industry here versus our own lives. So being able to use the people use what was happening as a way to, i dont know, just kind of tell that story in a way that they see the reflections in their own life opposed to just, oh, this is Something Interesting to learn about. This is something that now affects me every single day. Like its something that i use. Its something that is. Thats a good point. Yeah. Yeah. And you know what . We went out to. Well, we went out to Kangaroo Park and we looked at the cypress trees and we looked at one particular downed one. And i think, you know, what was how did you kind of, you know, what were response to that . What what you know, to me, you know, the just the size of of what youre dealing its it was quite impressive, as you said. Thats, you know, part of of what how is its relationship to me. So what what are what are your questions after . Weve, you know, talked a lot about in this course about the content. What are what are the questions have if you walked into to an exhibit, this exhibition, you what was what be your b your your question what. Yeah. Yeah i was just wondering, you know, its is cyclical. Yeah. Yeah. So the south was wondering what do we do now . Agriculture is not the option now post globalization. Williams as close as other factories are closed. Part of the exhibition could be what do we do now . Again, where do we go from here . What businesses do we attract . How do we get them here . Thats a very good point. How do we feed people, give them job . Yeah, that you kind of flip it on. What is this . What the lesson we learned that we can away today which is i think, you know, as i said, i think its an important part of an exhibition. We learn something new. We didnt know about. Its really cool. One of the things that interests me is steve showed you all of these images of the furniture that was being made. Why did it look the way it look . How is that . You know, showing what a miracle and styles and philosophies were . What was the social life of of that particular time . So. So say so steve we were talking about these things here. Youve looked at the youve looked at the at all of this material. What what would be your in terms of as we develop the exhibition and this really big question because theres so much that we have so youve got to boil it all this is this is not the you know, the series of six episodes of 2 hours each. So what what you find, first of all, that you didnt know. And second of all, what did you that was either emotionally or just made you think about things differently . I mean, like a the thing i found i didnt know was just how a company like this operates. Like i feel i feel confident now i could run my own Furniture Company like i can start a fortune 500 company now. So, like, theres that. But i think in terms of a a like an exhibit, i think the most important thing for you guys since you all come from different backgrounds is that like what i went over up there, its so varied theres so much if youre a business person, we have so much of the business. If in, you know, more artsy weve so much like how are drawing the furniture and how they are marketing it. You know, if youre in an environmental person, we have the Environmental Impacts of all this stuff. I think the most important thing guys need to do is follow what you and what your personal background is. Because no matter what, like what youre passionate about is, going to become the best product. Dont chase something that youre not passionate about when it comes to this we have something for all of you up here. If we all contribute something that youre really into and that you absolutely love the exhibit be awesome so good good very good advice and also follow the follow the questions you have you know why did they do that . What happened you know why did they go into the business why did they sell it to a Different Company . You know, i wonder if guys could just sort of brainstorm youre not committed to any ideas might have at this moment. But at this very moment what most interests you kind of piggybacking on what steve suggested, what what has interested you so far . Might you like to pursue. Challenge everybody . Who hasnt said anything so far in the class . You have to come up with an answer. Of the most recent readings we did. There was a section that was really, really interesting to me about like the addition of women into the workplace especially in these factories that were very male dominated. And there was just like a section of the reading where it was about like balancing concept of like being a housewife, also like wanting to pursue working a job which i found really interesting, especially during this entire time period, was just a struggle that women were having in general. But just like through the lens of, you know, sumpter, South Carolina, very a place thats, you know, not most historically tied to minorities, but, you know, just like that kind of struggle and how it played out specifically this company. And i think kind of related to that can sense and looking at some of the advertising think that they take on this sense who theyre really selling this to is women its women make the choice of what you know esthetics and take out the sets because i think what was mentioned a lot was that it was like very like american dream, like hunting and fishing and this stuff is geared towards like little boys and men. And i think there was like when i was looking through that little magazine catalog that was like there was a lot advertising that i was really like to like because im a visual communications major. So like thats what i do is like marketing. So i was like really interested in seeing all of the ways that they would like gear towards women and like having like chairs with Women Holding their children, stuff like that. That really resonates with women versus, you know, like the guns and like and the like, horns on the walls and stuff like that. Took him a while to figure out women were buying the furniture that guys guys wrote to check that women and the parents werent sure okay, who else has that passion . And its something just really pique their interest and in what weve been doing. And. One of the things that piqued my interest was how city managers local business owners, local courts kind approach the changing industry in the south following post because agriculture they saw that you know from the boll weevil from new industrial from mining from different industries. Agriculture was slowly losing its hold on the south and and how the law began to treat these new industries iron like furniture lumber i thought was very interesting yeah thats very true. And the others i feel like. I feel like im enjoying just like learning the biographies of like the people who started it. Like i found some stuff on earlier and once the boxes and then we about like buxton and then jb three who isnt in these boxes but in another reading we did and i feel like im enjoying the personal aspect of like looking at each of the people being like, why are they here like why did they choose to do this like i think it was buxton came down from north, so why did he choose to go here and not up to. Well, im like up to michigan or wisconsin or where that like furniture empire was happening . What is the role the charismatic like, what were they doing . And then also like how to sell data about their business like affects the people. Im like is like did their personalities affect why they unionized or was it like the big personalities made them feel better about how they were working like thats thats just self trust me one of the to kind of with one of the things that i think is we talked a little bit about william is and at one time how vaughn buys williams when its when its been sold to several other people and its kind of on the way down but if you get on the website von base which is still manufacturing in North Carolina they dont manufacture here in sumter anymore and look at what theyre telling you about the Furniture Industry. Its a resource. They plant a tree, every tree they cut to use in their furniture. Its a stable workforce source that pays good wages and is diverse and that people for them for a long time they met its American Made solid Wood Furniture will last you know several lifetimes. So its kind of like, you know, weve talked about company that you know, starts in the twenties and sells i think. 1967 but we recycle you had mentioned its this cyclical thing in terms where going to selling american by america and stable workforce you know where were we are Carbon Neutral all the way all the ways in which today is influencing very old and traditional way so well all look forward to the next next few sessions where we start putting together actually what this exhibition that were going to do looks like and so thank youi happy that you all here are here to join in this discussion. The examination