Burlington Industries

Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

For an understanding of how the to invest or not to invest dilemma plays out in a commodity business, it is instructive to look at Burlington Industries' by far the largest United States textile company, both 21 years ago and now.

In 1964, Burlington had sales of $1.2 billion against our $50 million.

It had strengths in both distribution and production that we could never hope to match, and also, of course, had an earnings record far superior to ours.

Every year we're doubling it and tripling it, and it's going to be the next generational employment center for our area.

And I think what it becomes is not even something that people can imagine today because, I mean, if we go back to the way we've grown, When Burlington Mills shut down, we thought it was the end of the world.

But I think at the time, that was when U.S. Air relocated.

And so we had this influx of people that came in that were pilots and flight attendants and whatnot.