ACTWU delegates from JP Stevens in Spartanburg, South Carolina Slides

John Stevens' grandfather, Nathaniel Stevens, started in the textile industry during the War of 1812. Nathaniel's son (John's uncle) Moses took over the textile company and made it one of the largest in the country. John Stevens started his career working for a Boston dry-goods commission house, Faulkner Page & Co., and by 1899 he had enough money to establish his own dry-goods commission house in New York City, named J.P. Stevens & Co. His commission house prospered by selling the products of his uncle's company. He also purchased interests in many textile firms in New England and was one of the first textile industrialists to invest heavily in mills in the South. He served as director of six textile mills. J.P. Stevens & Co., one of the giants of the textile industry with a history dating back to 1813. In the mid-1980s Stevens ran 59 textile plants employing 27,800, 10,000 of whom were in South Carolina, where it based its operations center, making it the state's third largest employer. Stevens had also become renowned for its opposition to unions, and its intractability in labor negotiations was met with a well-publicized consumer boycott. Struggles at one Stevens plant were dramatized in the 1979 Academy Award-winning movie Norma Rae.