Semaphore - September 1953

[aerial photo of Thrift Road in Charlotte] THRIFT ROAD industrial section in Charlotte continues to grow at a rapid pace. This recent aerial view shows the newly-graded 18 acres on the right and several new buildings completed this year. The central business district can be seen in background at upper left.

[photo of mechanics doing repairs]

[remainder of caption from previous page] OVERHAULS are being taken in stride by mechanics at the shops. Locomotive 101, with more than 100,000 miles to its getting a thorough overhaul. At right, Mechanic R. H. puts his skill to work grinding the big engine's 24 valves.

[photo of mechanic grinding valves]

IN TARHEELIA

The Welcome Mat Is Out

TAR Heels from Manteo to Murphy are out to corral new industries to stimulate their state's economy and to raise the level of per-capita income.

The pace of activity along these lines is being set by Governor Umstead and Director Ben Douglas of the N. C. Development. For the past month they have been stumping the state to gain support and cooperation from local organizations and persons interested in industrial development. Five sectional meetings have already been held and five more are on tap.

Governor Umstead, Mr. Douglas, and their associates want local organizations to take more interest in industrial development, to set up vigorous development agencies of their own which will supplement the state-wide effort. In short, they want strong backing at home in their efforts to sell North Carolina, with specific emphasis on the smaller towns.

At present time industrial development activities are generally handled

[photo of 2 men looking over documents] GASTONIA'S industrial fortunes are in the hands of a tax-supported commission. Shown above, comparing notes, are Industrial Diversification Commission Chairman H. S. Mackie and Executive Secretary Ralph T. Isley.

by the chambers of commerce in the larger cities and by informal committees or town officials in the smaller communities. In too many instances, there is virtually no work being done by these organizations. However, in some of the state's larger communities full-time industrial development agents are employed, usually as a Chamber of Commerce staff member. They are backed up by concerted effort on the part of the railroads.

Gastonia is unique

Gastonia has the first and only taxsupported industrial development agency in the state. All the rest are financed through voluntary membership. Eight years ago Gastonia citizens went to the polls and voted to tax temselves two cents on every $100 of property valuation to support Gastonia Industrial Diversification Commission. The purpose of the new agency was to "attract new and diversified industries to Gastonia township and Gastonia County, and

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for the encouragement of new business and industrial ventures by local as well as foreign capital."

One of the first acts of the seven-man commission created to handle the funds was to employ a full-time executive secretary. Gastonia thus became the first Tar Heel city in the population bracket to have an experienced professional industrial agent, who devoted all of his time toward bringing new business to the city. It has already paid off handsomely in increased payrolls, new industry, and the investment of local capital in new enterprises. Gastonia has been able to maintain its undisputed position as the State's leading industrial county.

Everybody can help

But, as Department of Conservation & Development officials have pointed out, the method of financing industrial development activities is unimportant just so long as they are adequately financed. If North Carolina is to keep pace with its sister states in the South it must have an active program for acquiring new industry on both the state and local levels.

The sectional meetings throughout Tar Heelia are expected to pump new life into local efforts to acquire new industry and place the state in a strong competitive position when industries come South looking for good spots to settle down.

The First Locomotives

At New York, one hundred and twenty-five years ago, a young American engineer named Horatio Allen to passage on a vessel bound for England with instructions from the Delaware and Hudson Railroad and Canal Company to place orders with manufacturers for four steam traction engines equal to the best then being built. Allen purchased four engines—or locomotives, as they were coming to be known—one from George Stephenson & Company of Newcastle, England, and three from Foster, Rastrick & Company of Stourbridge, England.

So far as is known, only one of the four locomotives ever operated; that was the "Stourbridge Lion" which became the first full-sized locomotive ever to run on a railroad in the United States. The "Stourbridge Lion," weighing six tons, was tried out at Honesdale, Pennsylvania, in 1829, but was found to be too heavy for the track, and it was removed from the rails.

In Baltimore a few months later, Peter Cooper, a New York ironmaster, created something of a sensation with his "Tom Thumb" locomotive, the first Americanbuilt engine to run on a common-carrier railroad in America. And in the same year the American-built "Best Friend," the first locomotive to be placed in regularly scheduled service in America, began running out of Charleston, South Carolina.

From these beginnings the steam locomotive grew in size and number and

READIN', 'RITIN', 'RITHMETIC...AND RAILROADS [drawing of 2 school children in front of locomotive and money bag containing taxes]

SEPTEMBER, 1953 13

usefulness until its influence spread throughout the New World. It brought countless towns and cities into existence and opened up vast areas which hitherto had been inaccessible and unproductive.

The steam railroad—spreading to other continents—revolutionized the lives of hundreds of millions of the world's population.

The impact was great

The Horatio Allens and the Peter Coopers of the 1830's probably had no idea of how profoundly the locomotive and the railroad in combination were to affect life on the American continent.

Today the railroad industry, born a little more than a century and a quarter ago, represents an investment in the United States of more than thirty billion dollars and does an annual business in excess of ten billion dollars. It gives employment directly to more than one and one quarter million people, not to mention hundreds of thousands of people employed in industries which produce fuel, materials and supplies for railroad use.

Without the passenger, freight, express and mail service performed by the railroads and without the huge expenditures of the railway industry for labor, material, supplies and fuel, the business life of this great nation would never have expanded to anything approaching its present proportions.

The railroads of America, with their vast fleet of locomotives, their forty-odd thousand passenger cars, and operating more than two million freight cars, are today, as they have been for decades, the "Life Lines of the Nation."

Chicago has an underground network of 47 miles of narrow-guage electricallyoperated railroads in the downtown Loop business district.

Boy Wonder of the Carpet Industry

Belrug

BELRUG Mills, Manufacturers of the famed Wunda Weve cotton carpeting and rugs, has moved into a new home on the Asheville Highway only a few steps from the City of Greenville, S. C.

The handsome $500,000 plant houses the production equipment needed to make six grades of rugs in the "Wunda" line and one other type of rug known as Tumbletwist. Cotton yarn goes into one side of the plant and finished carpets and rugs in 15 colors emerge from the other side.

Only 8 years old

Belrug is the boy wonder of the carpetmaking industry. It was founded in 1945 by William W. Pate of Greenville and in eight short years has mushroomed into an operation which turns out as much as 200,000 square feet of rugs per week, advertises extensively in national magazines, and is sold in nearly 3,000 retail outlets from Maine to California.

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[photo of Belrug Mills plant, spans columns 1 & 2] BELRUG MILLS, MAKER OF WUNDA WEVER, HAS MOVED INTO THIS NEW PLANT

Mills is covering America with Wunda Weve Carpets

Belrug carpets, cotton through and through, are literally covering America. They can be found in the most palatial flats in Manhattan. In their national advertising Belrug utilizes four-color photographs of its carpets in the homes of Hollywood stars and others of national prominence.

A price for every budget

President Pate believes in making a product that will suit every pocketbook. To accomplish this he produces six grades of his popular rugs and carpets—Wunda Crest, Wunda Velvet, Wunda Weve, Wunda Plush, Wunda Loom, and finally the plushiest of all, Wunda Luxe. The latter has as many as 20,000 tufts per square foot. They sell for as little as $6.95 a square yard and for as much as $19.95 a square yard.

Althogh Belrug moved its looms into the fine new Charlie Daniels-built plant last June, it didn't give up its old building. The preparation and shipping departments and the main offices are still located at the old homestead.

They ship everywhere

A large percentage of Belrug's production is shipped in less-than-carload lots to dealers all over the country. Sales offices are located in New York, Dallas, and San Francisco, and there is even a distributor in Canada.

Belrug has found the industrial elimate of Greenville to be ideal for a growing concern. The high productivity of its approximately 150 employees coupled with an aggresive sales promotion program have enabled the young company to grow rapidly in a highly competitive business. Its immediate goal is to cover the nation's floors with Wunda rugs. Then maybe it will start thinking about the replacement market.

SEPTEMBER, 1953 15