David Ford has worked at R.L. Stowe Mills for more than half his life, but when the 108-year-old company closes on March 2, he will be one of 550 workers left jobless.

“Something will come up,” the 50-year-old Chattanooga man said, trying to remain positive. “I’m disappointed, but I’ll get over it.”

R.L. Stowe is one of the latest textile companies to announce layoffs or that the mills are shutting down all together. About 350 of Stowe’s workers are employed in Chattanooga.

Jack Callaghan, president of R.L. Stowe’s Specialty Yarn Division in Chattanooga, said many of the company’s customers are going out of business.

“It’s really hard to go out and find new customers,” he said. “It’s not like it was years ago.”

J.Ed. Marston, the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce’s vice president of marketing, said the Chamber always is concerned when officials hear about a local business closing.

“These are challenging economic times, but we continue to be optimistic as companies continue to invest in our community,” he said.

But according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, that investment likely will not be by textile companies.

In 1998, there were more than 954,000 textile workers in the United States, but by the end of 2008 that number had dropped 46 percent to about 436,000 jobs, records show.

Jim Schollaert, executive director of Made in USA Strategies, a Washington, D.C.-based domestic industry protection group, said textile and other U.S. manufacturing jobs are moving out of the country because of what he called “bad trade policies” such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Dominican Republic and Central American Free Trade Agreement, known as CAFTA or DR CAFTA.

NAFTA, which took effect in 1994, eliminated tariffs on imported goods among the United States, Mexico and Canada, while CAFTA, implemented in 2006, eliminated tariffs on goods from the Central American countries of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua as well as the Dominican Republic.

Mr. Schollaert said the agreements allow companies to open operations in other countries where they can pay lower wages and avoid government scrutiny such as environmental regulation.

“Here in the U.S. they have to pay those costs, but they can get out of those costs by moving out of the country,” he said. “They are taking a new business model — pay Chinese wages, charge U.S. prices, make more money.”

ECONOMIC SQUEEZE

D. Harding Stowe, president of the Belmont, N.C.-based R.L. Stowe Mills, said the recent economic downturn, combined with a sharp drop in sales in the fourth quarter of 2008, led to his decision to shut the business down.

“Business conditions in the fourth quarter deteriorated suddenly and dramatically,” he said. “Looking forward, management does not see sales returning to levels sufficient to sustain business.”

Other textile companies also are struggling to keep their looms operating.

In Fort Payne, Ala., signs proclaiming the city to be the “Sock Capital of the World” still greet motorists as they enter along U.S. Highway 11, but many believe that is a slogan past its time.

Carol Beddingfield, executive director of the Fort Payne Chamber of Commerce, said the name was appropriate until China began flooding U.S. markets with inexpensive socks about five years ago.

“The hosiery industry has been the bread and butter of our little town, but that is changing,” she said.

Many of the once-thriving textile operations in Fort Payne, such as G&G Hosiery and Charleston Hosiery, now sit vacant with “For Lease” or “For Sale” signs staked outside.

Gildan, the Montreal-based apparel company that owns the largest textile operation remaining in Fort Payne, announced in December that it will close its sock finishing operation in the Northeast Alabama city, putting about 750 people out of work in June.

Textile industry experts said the company has opened several new operations in Honduras, but neither officials at the Fort Payne facilities nor Gildan’s Canadian headquarters returned calls seeking comment.

Bobbie Ledbetter, 45, has worked at Gildan’s Prewett and Son’s textile operation for almost nine years. She said she likely will go back to school when her job ends in about five months.

“There are no jobs out there,” she said. “We don’t have many options.”

Rachel Crane, 30, who has worked at the mill for 12 years, said she, too, will go back to school to learn about the funeral industry.

“That’s the only thing not going overseas,” she said.

THE CHINA PROBLEM

China, now a major player in the textile industry, has begun exporting large quantities of inexpensive textile products into the United States, driving down prices and putting the squeeze on an already battered industry here.

Chinese sock imports, for example, soared from fewer than 12 million pairs in 2001 to 264 million pairs in 2003, driving down the price of domestic-made socks. The federal government reacted by putting restrictions on the number of Chinese textile products that could be sent to the United States, but the restrictions expired on Jan. 1.

“They call it free trade, but it’s not really free. It’s certainly not fair trade,” said Mr. Callaghan at R.L. Stowe. “It’s a sad state of affairs for our industry.”

Some industry experts believe China again will flood the market with cheap textile products as it did three years ago when the restrictions temporarily were lifted in 2005.

But Donald R. Henderson, vice president and general manager of Mount Vernon Mills’ apparel fabrics division in Trion, Ga., said that won’t happen.

The restrictions are “not really enforced anyway,” he said. “For the last four or five years, there have been so many loopholes for the Chinese. They’ve been able to ship anywhere they want to anyway.”

Mount Vernon Mills is the largest industry in Trion, a town of about 2,000. It, too, has felt the industry’s crunch.

Mount Vernon officials said the company was forced to lay off about 300 employees in February 2008, but the company previously spent millions of dollars on new equipment and since has sought innovative ways to stay competitive.

“We have been extremely blessed to be able to continue spending capital dollars to make us more efficient and keep our quality levels where they need to be,” Mr. Henderson said. “When other folks were going out of business, we were installing new equipment.”

The mill began making fire-resistant materials required by welders and electricians and sought government contracts to produce camouflage material worn by the military. But its staple materials remain the denim used in Lee and Wrangler jeans and work clothes for Carhartt as well as uniforms for United Parcel Service and maintenance workers.

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