In the shorthand of his presidential campaign, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina is the candidate from Robbins, an up-from-almost-nothing personification of small-town values.
Lucky for him that Karl Robbins was an unusually generous and civic-minded businessman and that the people he showered his largess upon were inclined to make a public display of their gratitude.
Otherwise Edwards might be seeking election to the most powerful office on Earth as the man from Hemp.
That was the name of this Piedmont town of 1,000 before 1943, when residents voted to change it to honor Robbins, the owner of the local textile mill.
The 50-year-old Edwards is banking on his humble, Southern roots and a knack for connecting with working people, like the ones he grew up with in Robbins, to boost his prospects in Tuesday’s Democratic primaries in Tennessee and Virginia.
Edwards’ family arrived here in the mid-1960s, more than a decade after Robbins cashed out of the textile business.
But though they didn’t know each other, Robbins gave Edwards much more than a mellifluous name for his hometown.
Edwards draws heavily on his youth in Robbins for a model of how America is supposed to work.
The stable, supportive community filled with hard-working, upwardly mobile people he describes in stump speeches flourished on a foundation built by Robbins.
That version of the town, like its benefactor, is long gone, however.
Robbins’ mill and several other factories in the area closed over the past 15 years and “we’ve got 10 acres of [factory] floor space standing empty,” said John Frye, the owner of Robbins’ only clothing store and a former mayor.
As for prospects, Frye, 84, said, “Right now we don’t have any.”
A few Robbins residents travel 30 miles of mostly two-lane highway north to work at Unilever’s dry soup plant in Asheboro. Others commute to relatively low-paying jobs tending golf courses, spas and retirement homes in the Pinehurst resort district 20 miles to the south.
The decline makes Robbins a fitting illustration of the dark side of Edwards’ campaign message, which asserts that middle class families must work harder and have less chance of climbing the economic ladder, thanks to a Bush administration focus on currying favor with the rich.
And there’s no benevolent mogul on the horizon to reprise what Karl Robbins did.
A Russian immigrant who worked his way up from trading in remnants to become a pioneer in the production of synthetic fabrics, Robbins bought the former Pinehurst Silk Mill in 1930.
After retooling his newly acquired facility, Robbins ran it at full bore in the teeth of the Great Depression.
Employment reached 900 by the end of the decade and Hemp was transformed from a backwater bend in Highway 705 into a regional economic powerhouse. “Emphasis has been on . . . giving work to all who needed it. There was no period of distress and unemployment in the lowest phases of the Depression,” according to The State, a North Carolina history magazine. “Hemp was looked upon as . . . the most prosperous section in this part of the state.”
Employee benefits
In an era of sweatshop capitalism, Robbins’ workers received free health insurance, a midyear bonus, plus a Christmas bonus, the magazine reported.
Robbins paid off the town debt and in 1943 dumped so much additional cash on Hemp that the town commissioners cut taxes by one-third.
Little wonder that residents were willing to put their savior’s name on the map.
Especially since “Robbins” was easiest on the tongue of three renderings of that last name. Old-timers in town remember Robbins’ real name as Robinsky, but he was born Rabinowitz, according to a grandson.
No matter, Robbins is accepting on the subject of names: Robbins was the town’s fourth in less than 50 years.
It started the 20th Century as Mechanics Hill, a vestige of having been the site of a Revolutionary War gun factory. When the Durham-to-Charlotte railroad was built, the town rechristened itself Elise, in honor of the rail baron’s daughter.
Over the objections of townspeople, the post office nixed that name because it sounded too much like one or more other North Carolina hamlets. Postal officials assigned the name Hemp, apparently because of a now-forgotten local ropemaking industry.
With no emotional or historical tie to Hemp, Robbins was an easy choice.
“I didn’t object. [Karl] Robbins had done more for the town than anybody who ever lived around here,” said Thurman Maness, 94, of Robbins, a retired mill supervisor.
For all of his obvious care for the town, Robbins was only an occasional visitor, checking in every two or three months, Maness recalled.
Robbins sold Colonial Mills Inc., the textile business that included the Robbins mill, in 1954 and retired to a life of philanthropy.
The Robbins property chugged along through at least three changes of ownership, before finally closing in 1990.
Helped found medical school
Robbins died in New York at 67 in 1960. In the years before his death, he helped found Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in New York, and provided the first land for what is now Research Triangle Park, between Raleigh and Durham, N.C.
Two of his three children also are deceased. A son, Allan Robbins, of New York, did not return calls.
A foundation set up by Karl Robbins continues to send $15,000 or so every year or two to the Robbins public library, where his portrait hangs in the lobby.
It suggests a serious, almost severe man, resembling Harry Truman.
“There was a sense of perfectionism about him,” said his grandson, Jeremy Gordon, 51, of Burbank, Calif. “When he walked into a room, I can still remember the feeling, of `what have I done wrong?'”
But while Robbins may have been a taskmaster within his family, old-timers in the town recall a milder side.
“He seemed to be a fine gentleman,” said Maness, the retired mill overseer. “I never heard anybody say a word against him.”
