Roger Milliken's legacy

Roger Milliken, though born in New York City, became a transforming force for prosperity in South Carolina -- and beyond. His remarkable legacy as a textile tycoon, political game-changer and philanthropist will live on long past his death at age 95 Thursday in Spartanburg.

Mr. Milliken made the enterprise he inherited a soaring success after moving it -- and himself -- from Maine to the S.C. Upstate in 1954. He was long a mainstay on Forbes' annual list of the 400 richest Americans.

And he played a major role in boosting the Republican party from relative irrelevance to a dominant political position in this state.

Yet Democrat Ernest F. Hollings, S.C. governor from 1959-63 and a member of the U.S. Senate from 1966-2005, told us Friday of Mr. Milliken: "Of all the executives I met through the years, he was the best. He made the Republican party in South Carolina. But I knew him and admired him because he was fighting for jobs."

Part of that fight was as an advocate for trade policies that provided home-grown industries a fair chance to compete against their foreign counterparts. It was a mission that Mr. Milliken and Sen. Hollings shared.

And Mr. Milliken had a national political impact, for instance in helping talk Barry Goldwater into running for president in 1964. The Arizona senator lost in a landslide to incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson -- but South Carolina was one of the six states he carried.

Mr. Milliken helped transform the state's political landscape through his support for conservative politicians.James B. Edwards, who in 1974 became the first Republican to win South Carolina's governorship since Reconstruction, told The Greenville News Thursday: "We would not be as far along with the two-party system in the South if we had not had Roger Milliken to give it direction and help get it organized."

Mr. Milliken contributed significant sums to a wide range of educational institutions, too, including Wofford College, where he hastened integration in 1964 by pledging to make up any loss of alumni donations from a feared backlash over the admission of black students.

An ardent tree lover, he paid for many beautification projects at Wofford and elsewhere.

And while Mr. Milliken shut down a Darlington mill in 1956 rather than acquiesce to workers' demands for unionization, he earned a reputation for looking out for his employees.

After a Milliken plant in LaGrange, Ga., burned down in 1995, he kept all 680 "associates" -- his term for his workers -- on the payroll.

As Sen. Hollings put it: "He took care of his crowd, and he stayed ahead of unionization."

And today South Carolina is staying ahead in the competition for new businesses, in large part, because we've stayed ahead of unionization.

That was a crucial factor behind Boeing's 2009 decision to build the 787 Dreamliner plant in North Charleston.

The American textile industry has suffered a deep decline over the last few decades.

But South Carolina is a more vibrant place -- economically and politically -- thanks to Roger Milliken.