Jack May Interview Transcript
Date: Uncertain
Time: 33:33
Bill Carey (BC): Who, who are the earliest members of your family that you….
Jack May (JM): That’s my mother's line, not the May line, OK? Uh, Fishel, F I S H E L (Spelling) and Morris Fishel, I guess emigrated from Germany in the 1820s or 30s, settled in Cincinnati, where all these Germans…
BC: Yeah
JM: …settled, went out to California and the gold rush came back, brought, I've got a, I got a gold piece (laughter) of tangible evidence of the Cincinnati Mining company that he was there. Came back as a what's called a sutler. You know that noun sutler S U T L E R (spelling), is what these opportunists were called. You'll see them, in certainly in Walter Durham’s books, they all talk about the sutlers and they they were people who provided goods to the army and I don’t know, I guess from candy bars, to whores to what? Blankets, whatever. And they were just opportunists who were here and made a lot of money. And Ulysses S. Grant hated them, hated the sutlers because they were parasitic. My a, I always figured that Morris Fishel turned U.S. Grant into an antisemite all by himself, (laughter) but The Fishels stayed in the [indistinguishable]... century, In the last half of the century, they used these wholesale houses. Jobbers, brokers were what passed for banks. And the people put the money on deposit with wholesale; all Second Ave. places. (2:00)
BC: Where'd you get this? Where's this ad from?
JM: I don't know. It came out of, uh, one of these pot boiler books about Nashville. Somebody else had found it. I just cut it out of the magazine. I don't know what that ad is from, but it's pretty old.
BC: Yeah.
JM: So anyway, that's that was the Fishel side in the early days and from. They never did very well in business, never made any money. He went back to Cincinnati and got himself a bride, Margaret Callahan, came down here and went….Saint Mary's Catholic Church,
BC: Yeah.
JM: And uh. That's the Fishel side. My mother's my my mother is now 95 and the man I'm talking about it's her grandfather, so it's fine.
BC: What about the May’s side? (3:00)
JM: The May’s side is uh, is interesting. Jake May, Jacob May ran away from. Family of 12, in uh, in Germany in-uh in the 1870, I guess it's I wrote this. Did you ever find that book? That's something, the, uh, in the Nashville room. I've got that...
BC: Yeah, I'll find it.
JM: Uh. I only have my copy, hold on, (3:30)
BC: But I guess the thing is, its obvious reason, why did we get into apparel business to begin with. I suppose…
JM: Well, well my, the May family, I don't know I... So Jake May leaves this little town as a teenager, 15–16-year-old, runs away. And of course, the Germans there's a whole there's a little town, there’s a town of 800 people, rural town. But today it's got about 10,000 people about the size of Dixon, small. But there's a whole historic club there. And they know everybody who ever left the city for whatever reason. They have even come to Nashville to check out what happened. Interest in history is so much greater than.. So uh, so he leaves there, he comes to, Jake May comes to rise in New York as a teenager, has no relatives, no friends. No money, he had $5 and had to pay $2.00 to get in the country and uh...looked up a guy from his, from this hometown. Whatever he did, he went up to New England as a peddler. And he would go into Boston on the train, get his wares from the wholesale houses in Boston. Come back up to Laconia, Central New Hampshire, and, and sell, sell stuff. Uh, eventually he bought his, he always had a horse and wagon. Then he bought a retail store. And he got the idea, there was a lot of manufacturing in Laconia, the Knitting industry was there. Laconia, Scott Williams, all of these knitting machine companies and hosiery mills. And he got the idea he would take the socks and hosiery from the mills and take it into Boston and sell it to the drivers from whom he was buying the wares from his store. So, he would have a two-way trade there and so doing learn the Hosiery business. Saw an ad in a trade paper. The state of Tennessee advertising for somebody to come and set up an industry, hosiery industry inside the, and using prison labor.
BC: And was there some political reason why Tennessee was doing this, was the state bankrupt or something? (6:00)
JM: I don't know. I don't think so, but I guess it had a lot of, this was 1895. And he bid on that. Won the contract, came down, set up the hosiery mill inside the walls of the penitentiaries. God darndest thing in the world. Brought about 5 French Canadian mechanics with him. And used the, to fix the machines and bring the machines and they made hosiery socks for the prison system. I don't think they've made them for outside sales, but just for something to do. That lasted about two years. And the legislative stamped out these prison industries. And so, he, he moved over to, to Cedar St. (6:50)
BC: Can I ask you a question about this prison? And you may not know the answer to this. Do you know what May Hosiery's relation to the Gray and Dudley prison thing was? Gray and Dudley had a, had a foundry inside the prison walls as well. And theirs was, theirs lasted, until the 1930s.
JM: The, uh, the mayor generals moved out, but the knitting machines that he brought down stayed in and they were going up until the late 1980 last I heard. And they were making their own socks and we, we'd occasionally send the fixer out to repair the machines. And so they made their own prison socks. It was uh.
BC: So they ca- [indistinguishable] (7:30)
JM: So they ran around after about 19-1897, they set up that in the hosiery mills and their building on Cedar Street where Duckhead was. And I don't know who's there now. It's been completely done on Cedar St. And then about. Another interesting thing, it was for a while it was known, wasn’t known as May Hosiery Mills. It was known as Rock City Hosiery Mills, and the great-
BC: There was a nickname. Yeah.
JM: This nickname of the city was Rock City. Before it was Athens of the South and Rock City, now Music City. I like Rock City. (8:00)
BC: Who did he sell his socks to? Caster Knott or?
JM: Oh, I imagine these wholesale houses down on the square and the fact is I've got a list of them there...[trails off]...Oh Gee, that's reused Neely Harvell, names such as still around they were on all these, these were, this looks like Second Avenue may have been, but also went four sides of the public square, these wholesale houses. And I imagine it was to those wholesalers initially, considering they sold. In time, by the 1920s they set up an office in New York and was selling to the large chain retailers Sears, Ward, Penny, and [indistinguishable], Reski that type of trade. And you know, May Hosiery Mills
became very good, we, we were big. We're making a million socks a week, and have had as many as 1000 employees or 1200 employees during the end of the war. [indistinguishable] Bomb-Bomb fuses. Just the one in Nashville. Although there had been one down in, Lewisburg, I think they had a branch there for short time and eventually we bought a mill over in Athens, TN. Athens Hosiery Mill..but that poses...
BC: Who was the other big plants at that time? Apparel plants around town. I take at that time.
JM: Washington of course was, Washington Manufacturing…made work clothes. They were big. And uh, there were a couple of hosiery mills that aren't big. SeLing Hosiery mills (unsure); that building’s still there on Charlotte. That's just the sign of, where the blind place is, but it has many, of course, the hosiery business there are two, there are two kind of hosiery businesses. There one that’s lady stockings and the other’s socks.
BC: Which did they do? (10:15)
JM: May Hosiery Mills was socks. We made all the socks then NASA came to us and made all the socks that have been to the moon! Got that monopoly surviving.
BC: It's a big one! [indistinguishable] It’s good for PR though. (10:30)
JM: Well, it's, all of those details are interesting. I-I don't know it was.. May Hosiery Mills was very big and before the income tax, which in 1912 and we made big money during World War I, World War II, and Korea. rest of the time, umm, it just...
BC: Why was the War so good? Just because there were so many orders from the federal government? (11:00)
JM: It was just scarcities, and whenever there’s scarcity, people weren't available to work in plants. The country would mobilize people. And things were scarce; you had to allocate socks. And in an industry, that’s generally been overproduced and even with...there was a lot of profit made, but never, never any time except that. So old Jake May does this. He sets up, he has some partners in and out and he finally goes out to about 19-5, I think to South Nashville where there’s a big complex of buildings is. It doesn't look big from the street, but it's a quarter million square feet out there in South Nashville by Greer Stadium. [indistinguishable] Who's the richest person in town at any one time, But I imagine Jake May about 19-5 was richest man in Nashville. Uh, (12:10)
BC: Where’d he live? Where was the house?
JM: I don't know. He lived all time that I knew him, he lived, course there were, people lived in 19-5 downtown almost
BC: Edgefield and there's-
JM: No, well, not Edgefield, that's true. But there was always a side of the river on Demonbreun and there's a great houses. They lived on West End. Ohh, where Fuddruckers is today that block, across from Cathedral.
BC: Yeah, that that area was, I mean, Joel Cheek lived in that area for until 1935. He lived in what is in a building that’s still there, a funeral home. And ,and Ridley Will's father lived in what is now the steakhouse. Uh, the the real nice one. You know, I'm talking about,
JM: Yeah, I can't say that. But and then
BC: And they also lived in the Trilogy building what is now the Trilogy restaurant. They lived there. And then it will that. (13:00)
JM: Well, my father when he was going to Vanderbilt, graduating class of 1919. The walk to em, he was that the second house from the corner where Fuddruckers is. Of course, the governor's mansion was right there too.
BC: That had been a house owned by um, somebody who's in my book now, I can't remember.
JM: Well, I mean well of course Vanderbilt’s Alma Mater, you know, is on the city's western border. That's where the city stopped. And Vanderbilt is well,
BC: How many employees did the company have in these years?
JM: You're supposed to say how many people worked in the mills?
BC: How many people worked?
JM: About half. That's was always his answer.
BC: Ohh about half the people.
JM: Uh. It. I don't know from a low of 300 to a high of 1200.
BC: That many-
JM: Yes that much. So we actually did some ordinance other where the hell that bomb fuse is...
BC: Hey, at some point Jake May passes it onto his son and his-
JM: Yes he had. He had two, two sons, two extraordinary sons. Mortimer and Dan. Dan [indistinguishable], that Mortimer always had great advantage that he never had.
BC: What was that?
JM: A hard-working brother. But, but Mortimer was a great man. I mean, see, I don't know. But since Jake they were all Republicans. They, Jacob May was a- down in those days, it was an underground movement. When Jake May came to Nashville, he was a Lincoln, was a Lincoln Republican, which was not a popular thing. And, and in Nashville. And my father Dan May ran the factory from Dan went to Vanderbilt and then started at Vanderbilt Medical school, his father said. “Cut out that nonsense. Come out here and make socks.” And after a year of medicine, medicine. And so Dan ran the business for 30 years and some help at the end they have my man named Chip Schwartz and then I took over in (unsure) for 30 years and I finally sold it 19. Sold it for the second time. It, we sold it in 1965 to a Humboldt, TN company called Wayne Gosser, which is now called Signal Apparel, based in Chattanooga, but they left us completely autonomous. I ran it just as if it was a personal business from 65’ to 82’ at that time, and the business got bad. Montgomery Ward, who was our number one customer, started to fail and things got bad, so. Signal Apparel people said try and sell it. So, I did. I sold May Hosiery mills to a competitor (16:15)
BC: Who?
JM: Company called Renfro Hosiery Mills of Mount Airy, NC, run by Merrick (unsure) family. I said Bob, Bob Perry, “don't buy this thing. You can't run it from North Carolina.” He says, “Ohh, Jack, people run manufacturing plants all over the world.” So, so he tried it for two years and finally closed it down moved the equipment to North Carolina.
BC: What year was this?
JM: 82’-83’.
BC: Why did you not sell it the first time to Genesco? They were buying every apparel company..
JM: And they bought a lot of they bought a lot of hosiery mills,
BC: Yeah.
JM: In 65,’ I don't know, I imagine, I don't know why Dan, it was a good friend of Max’s and I guess he felt they couldn't get price or whatever, but it would have been a smart thing to do. (17:10)
BC: Did y'all have a union?
JM: No, no, having a union, is the same thing as going out of business. A hoa hosiery mill is. I mean, it's more like a farm than it is. You got to be on the dunghill every morning. You have no tolerance for any type of failure. And they went broke left and right. But as, so Merrick moved the equipment to North Carolina and I'll. I think. I don't know whether Maxie wouldn’t pay. I don't even know whether they ever negotiated, but we sold it to a company. Which was in the hosiery business, Wayne Knitting Mills, in Humboldt TN made ladies stockings. For them, it was a complimentary thing to, to move inside. During World War II, we didn’t make ordinance out there. Oh, oh, oh, almost always it was just a sock factory and a very big one.(18:10)
BC: When when did what started as May Hosiery cease to produce to produce apparel apparel here in Nashville? What year
JM: 1982-83. 83!
BC: Are there any other apparel companies in Nashville that-
JM: As of today?
BC: Yeah, not surely not. (18:30)
JM: Undoubtedly, there are some very small companies with few sewing machines. The man who would know best is uh John Reprovik. Whose family was the and they used the power machinery business.
BC: OK,
JM: And still here John's a very bright kid and I don't know what could I, not much there's some small cut and sew plants.
BC: What became of Washington Manufacturing company? (19:00)
JM: Well, it's not not too dissimilar. From a... Man to talk is Hix Clark. H. I. X. (spelling) Hix Clark. He’s a delightful fellow and interesting, interesting man. They, they, uh, like Genesco conglomerated. They had 100 enterprises. Literally. And then they got in this management squabble and the, things left, uh, things started going bad at the fringes and first thing you know. And it may still exist. There may be some power manufacturing may, the building that they were in where they manufactured, is at the corner of a court of
second avenue and the public square. It’s called Washington Square, old building down there, and Hix still works across the street, he was president of the company at the end. Family named Comb. So is there any other apparel in Nashville today? Of course there was Geneseco and Washington-
BC: Certainly nothing major then. Labor’s too expensive here, labors too expensive in the United States.
JM: It follows labor, like going downhill except in the hosiery business, a sock is not, almost all apparel is you get a….you make a cloth and you lay it up and then cut it and then you sew it into a garment. With hosiery, with a sock, there's no cutting and sewing. It comes out of a machine. It's somewhat capital intensive and there is almost no international trade in socks. 40% of the industry today I'm told is, comes out of town called Fort Payne, AL.
BC: Yeah, we were talking about that earlier. (21:00)
JM: Mentioned that but in Western North Carolina and some in Eastern Tennessee up the valley.
BC: You may you mentioned that May Hosiery's largest customer is Montgomery Ward is that that's worth noting. Are there any other particularly large clients?
JM: We've made all of the socks for the Boy Scouts and all of the socks for the Girl Scouts for years, but, but two. ‘Course we made a lot of them during the war and a lot of the socks for the Army. Any other Montgomery Ward uh... A number of, of lesser. Did, did business with all of them in one way or another Woolworth, Kmart, never sold Walmart and that was, uh, at the end there.
BC: That was kind of late, yeah-
JM: That was late but would have helped.
BC: Well Kmart prob-, my guess is Walmart probably buys their socks from, you mentioned. There is no overseas.
JM: No, no. it just, there wasn’t any, any overseas trade I always figured that people overseas had more sense than to get in the sock business. It is somewhat capital intensive. It does not, not quite run with everything, every other piece of, of, of. It's more like the textile trade where you've got these, still got big plants, and Burlington, and North Carolina making cloth.
BC: Let me ask you a question on a broader thing. Do you have to go pretty soon?
JM: Uh, well, I gotta be someplace at noon. (22:25)
BC: The Jewish community, which owned, which members of Jewish committee owned a few very successful businesses in town, particularly in the apparel business, I guess. There’s also the Worthens.. (spelling) Was there a, well, a line between the Jewish community and the Protestant community in the old days that I need to explain in this book?
JM: No, there was a line, but I don't think it was significant of fundamental business wise. The business relationships always crossed all the lines. And I never, or I don't think my, people are very aware. Yeah, I think if you stop somebody on the street today and say what's Jack May? And they want to say he's a male or whatever, they’ll say he's a Jew. But I think there is a consciousness of it. But I don't think it was ever. All of the organizations, none of.. Successful Jewish family were the Coons who were in the, retail business Coon’s 5 and 10 cent store, they sold to Walmart and uh, not too long ago, but they were there again. Erwin Coon is a, is a lawyer here. (23:45)
BC: How did your brother get up, end up with all the property on 2nd Ave. Is that?
JM: There was, Jacob May had two sons. [indistinguishable] Jacob May had two sons, Dan and Mortimer, each of whom had two sons, each one each of whom had one son each, Jack, and that's Dan May line. Leon is in the Mortimor May line, and so Leon is my first cousin.
BC: Which side are you on?
JM: I'm Dan May’s son.
BC: OK, What about? (24:15)
JM: Now, Leon has had two sons. One of whom he named Jacob. And is called Jack. And it's Jack who is the contemporary entrepreneur. So, these people are second. The guy is a second cousin. Not they're not connect, it's a generation off, it's a it's if the family is fairly well split. My son is a guy named Andy May.
BC: I know Andy.
JM: Ohh. So, So Andy is a second or third cousin to Jack.
BC: Yeah.
JM: Jacob, who owns the property on 2nd Ave. And who has made a lot, ton of money. Jack...
BC: Is that land he inherited or is that… (25:00)
JM: No, no, I think no that, no. That was just a hustler
BC: Once Upon a time. That was a Jewish neighborhood, but it doesn't go that far. it doesn't go back to the time
JM: Ohh I don't mean Second Ave.. yeah, I don't think so no, no, no,
BC: You know I mean there is Jack [indistinguishable]. He just bought it for nothing
JM: Ohh he bought it and borrowed the money, he just is a entrepreneur, a hustler and um...
BC: He started the prison moving?
JM: He well he didn't. It was that little company was in trouble and they asked him to come in and run and it was it was going broke and he came in and it was still going broke and somehow by dent of hard work and sharpness turned that thing around. It's called Transcore. And CCA bought it. And Jack today is enormously wealthy. I'm sure he's the most in that whole lash up there. Most wealthiest person in four generations.
BC: So what other cousins have had? (26:00)
JM: And that's it. That's the tiny family still, even after 100 years.
BC: Well, I guess turning a business related to prisons, I suppose it must have crossed his mind and his great, great, great grandfather started.
JM: He got this machine running? [outside]
BC: I read a book, where a guy in 1898, very interesting chapter of a book. A reporter wrote a bio, wrote an autobiography. In 1898, he visited Nashville and went to the Phoenix Milling Company, Phoenix Cotton Mills, or whatever, and they were doing the same, similar thing he describes what it looked like, he said “When I first walked in, it was just amazing. It was beautiful to me.” But he said he then he thought about it and most of the employees were living in pretty small buildings just outside. Where did the people who work for May Hosiery live. When it was over on Cedar, Charlotte?
JM: Don't know. They’d know it, certainly would. When we got to the 19-7 in South Nashville, we owned some, some buildings, little houses right next to the thing that some blacks lived in the most wretched conditions. (27:05)
BC: Did they work for the company?
JM: Some did, some didn't. I don't, it wasn't company housing. They just don't and that didn't but most of the people that worked, they came from two areas. One: Flat Rock which is the whole name for Woodbine, Antioch. That section out the Nolensville Rd. area today. And two: from the country, from Cannon County primarily, dozens of workers migrated in because this was the big factory. Like people going to Detroit, they came in from Woodbury, Cannon County, to work in the sock factory. So, we were just loaded with people.
BC: You're talking when the company was down at South Nashville,
JM: When South?... Ohh, yeah, most of this century,
BC: I guess when they when they're out in Charlotte,
JM: there's well, it wasn’t there, but couple few years
BC: Yeah West, West Nashville was where a lot of industrial-type people lived in those days when they liked the streets where they're, they're named after states.
JM: Yeah, yeah, that's what's known as West Nashville. (28:05)
BC: They, they, they were developed and, and it's hard to, actually it's I would have to guess at some point the company seriously consider putting it moving out to the train track. I guess in apparel business, it's not as important to be on the train tracks as it is others because it's not heavy stuff.
JM: That’s right. But it had to be conveyed to the rail heads. That's, that's was true. I don't know if they all ended and no, no hosiery mills by, no apparel by rail anymore it's all truck.
BC: Was there a train track next to Charlotte? On Charlotte?
JM: It was probably was a spray (unsure). You're not far from the, you're not far from the L&N.
BC: You know, it must have been because there was that car plant over there, Marathon, which lasted, one of the Nashville's biggest failures.
JM: Yeah, well, that's right. That was horrible business. That was something like 4000 automobile factories in America in 19 -5. (29:00)
BC: You know, it's easy to get sentimental about it, but a lot of people lost a lot of money building things like that, you know.
JM: Ohh sure.
BC: Did you, did your grandfather, do you know of any investments he ever got involved in these things or how was he about that kind of thing? What did they invest the company? You mentioned they own some property.
JM: Well, it's an investing thing in the corner of that story, which I got with my father, that he did lose some money, was swindled by somebody, that sort of thing. But no, he stayed right as we say, “stuck to his knitting.” uh, and uh, that is uh. That's a raw outline. I, I would love to know. I mean, I, I think what you're doing is amazing. It must be terribly frustrating because I don't, there's no real place to go to. Maybe the business directory is the...
BC: Two more questions. I'll let you go. One, one: how come y’all never started an outlet store? Get straight into the retail business. (29:55)
JM: We did have an outlet store, many people, was out there by the railroad tracks, and we were very advanced. In many ways we were very paternalistic, but we had, not only had a retail outlet, we had a commissary where people could buy on credit. We had, the health club and a beauty parlor. We had relationships with doctors and with lawyers in town where our people could go and get medical and legal services and ask person like George Payne, the judge that first job he ever had was handling May Hosiery Mills, but we were the clients. So we did all of those sort of enlightened quotation marks, people argue with you, but an enlightened employee practices very early on. Always a big employer of Negros, then called Negroes.. (30:55)
BC: That's a good question. How many like in the early early days, what percentage do you think? Let's take around at 1900-1910.
JM: Well, we hired blacks from the beginning, but they were segregated in the plant and did what were generally unpleasant jobs. Which were drying the socks, so it's extremely hot. We used black women. Was shocked to me to go to North Carolina to visit some competitors and find a way. We were using black women, they were using white men, but it was very segregated by departments for the.
BC: Why do you have to dry a sock. Why is it wet?
JM: How do you think it got brown? The cotton isn’t that color and.
BC: It would dye-
JM: In black. So every sock goes through a wet processing to get it dyed, it dyed in the whole and then they have to be, then you know a sock on a counter looks nice and pressed-
BC: Yeah. (31:55)
JM: And they put it on very high forms and, and they did that in the hosiery business until some genius over at Haynes boarded the process by wrinkling, wadding them up and sticking them in an egg and calling them a legs. And they shortcut the whole boarding process by making it, making them worse. But you know, it's just obvious.
BC: The other question and that's the last one I know you gotta go. I don't know if it would be your grandfather, your great grandfather. Did anyone know very well, not Maxie, but Max's father, the original founder, because he's he ends up being a very important person. (32:35)
JM: Well there nobody alive that would know. My, my mother is alive at 95-
BC: She wouldn't remember, I mean..
JM: And sharp as a tack-
BC: This man died in 1938.
JM: And, but she says all of this early history she can't remember. I mean, I can ask her about her grandfather. And she just, you know, this is I just didn’t ask him those questions. I mean, it's not a question, not a case, not a case of that you've gotten senile. It’s that you never knew in the first place. It’s a shame that this, what you're doing here is not done generally in families. And the other place to find May Hosiery Mill stuff is at the Tennessee Library and Archives. All of Dan May’s papers, all those early ledgers and that sort of thing, which I don't think are of any interest to you, but they are all indexed and cataloged down at the Tennessee Library and Archive
BC: You got any really old pictures?
CUT: 33:37