Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

Stored off-site. Users must request boxes 48 hours in advance of desired use. Neither drop-in nor next-day requests can be fulfilled. For additional information, contact Special Collections.

Use Restrictions

See the University of Virginia Library’s use policy.

Preferred Citation

Edward L. Stone/Borderland Coal Company Papers, Accession #382, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

Before his death in 1938, the University of Virginia Library had been negotiating with Edward L. Stone for the purchase of his library. Mr. Stone had donated a number of fine books, and some manuscripts, to the University of Virginia Library, and its staff knew the value of his fine private library. The tentative purchase price settled upon was low principally because Mr. Stone wished his library to remain intact. Unfortunately, Mr. Stone died before negotiations were complete, but the Library concluded the sale with his heirs in August 1938. As a result of this purchase, the Stone Printing and Manufacturing Company of Roanoke presented to the Library the files of correspondence and other papers both of Mr. Stone's extensive business interests and of his personal affairs. The collection consisted of 207 letter boxes and twenty-five "large packing cases" when it arrived at the Library on August 11, 1939.

Biographical/Historical Information

Biography of Edward L. Stone
Edward Lee Stone was born on September 15, 1864, in Liberty (now Bedford) Virginia, the son of John Harmon Stone and Mary Witt Stone. He was reared in very modest circumstances, and received no more than an elementary school education, yet he became one of the wealthiest and most prominent citizens in the state of Virginia.

Edward Stone's career in the printing business is typical of the fabled American dream. At ten years of age, having recently lost his father, Stone was in the boys' playground of his school. J. R. Guy, the editor of the Bedford Sentinel newspaper, came to the playground looking for William Fellers, Stone's cousin. When Stone asked Mr. Guy what he wanted with William, Guy replied "I want him to carry the papers. Stone said, "I'll carry 'em' for you." After being a delivery boy for the Sentinel, Stone learned to set type and worked evenings after school for five cents an evening; twenty-five cents on Saturday. Less than a year later, economics necessitated that he quit school to pursue his job full time. Stone learned his lessons well, and showed enthusiasm in every phase of his work. Young Stone worked alongside a window, and enjoyed nothing better than to jump out into the street and scrap with some passing youngster, returning to his duties after the fun was over.

Stone was given more and more duties which he performed to this employer's total satisfaction. At the age of sixteen, for some now-inexplicable reason, Stone left the newspaper business to work for a mercantile establishment, He soon grew bored, however, and returned to printer's ink. This time he worked for the Democrat, a weekly newspaper in Buchanan, Virginia, then a thriving town at the intersection of the James River and the Kanawha Canal.

Once, at the age of sixteen, Stone was entrusted with getting out an entire edition of the paper by himself. The editor was in court and many workmen were out sick. Stone and an assistant set type at breakneck speed beginning at 7:15 A.M. and had the entire seven-column paper completed by noon --an amazing feat. Stone was out playing ball by 2 P.M. and earned a $5.00 bonus from his boss, editor William J. Boyd. In 1882, Boyd informed Stone that he was going to open a printing office in Roanoke, Virginia, then a small town. Boyd wanted Stone to be manager, and on July 20th, 1882, both men arrived in Roanoke. A place could not be found for the new enterprise however, and both returned to Buchanan. Stone became disillusioned with the small scope of opportunities Buchanan provided, and, with an ambition to "become somebody" in the printing business, set out for Lynchburg. Landing in Lynchburg in January 1883 he applied for work on the News and, after a few days, secured a position as compositor. Here he remained until March, achieving considerable reputation as a fast compositor, yet not satisfied. Stone really longed for a position in the printing business. John P. Bell offered Stone a minor position in a branch office he had planned to open in Roanoke. The position was, in most respects, inferior to the one he had already held, but Stone gladly took it. He worked hard, and showed superior business ability which impressed Mr. Bell so much that when the manager of the business died in 1885 his position was offered to Stone. The position was not offered without some misgivings because of Stone's youth (he was only twenty-one) and his lack of business experience. Stone, however, did such a good job as manager that Bell realized that he had made the right choice. Stone eventually gained control of the business and became president of the company.

His position was secure enough that in 1890, he married Miss Minnie Fishburn, daughter of J. A. Fishburn, a prominent business man of Roanoke. The couple had one child, Mary Katherine Stone.

Edward Stone's printing business grew in size and wealth. By 1920 it was acknowledged by many to be the best-equipped printing corporation in the south, and one of the largest as well. He had many other business interests. He was president of the Borderland Coal Corporation, president of the Virginia Bridge and Iron Company, vice president and later president of the Walker Foundry and Machine Company, chairman of the First National Exchange Bank, and president of his primary business and "first love," the Stone Printing and Manufacturing Company.

In March 1896 Stone was presented with a petition signed by fourteen Roanoke business men requesting that he run for mayor. Stone was very tempted, but a law stating that no one in Roanoke public office would be permitted to do business with the city stopped him. Stone felt that not being able to do business with the city would be unfair to his stockholders. Stone, a civic-minded individual, was chairman of the Roanoke Community Fund in 1924, and of the City Planning and Zoning Commission. He was also chairman of the war bond committee during the First World War, and belonged to many societies and organizations, including the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the Florida State Historical Society, the Shenandoah Club of Roanoke, the Country Club of Roanoke, the Roanoke Gun Club, the Roanoke German Club, the Virginia Historical Society (life member), the Better Printing Committee of the United Typothetae of America, the Roanoke Rotary Club, the International Benjamin Franklin Society of New York, and the board of trustees of the Committee to Assist the Blind.

Edward Stone was also an extremely charitable man. He gave large sums of money to the Roanoke Hospital and the Roanoke Relief Fund, helped endow Roanoke College, gave heavily to the Boy Scouts and the War Relief Clearing House, and donated money to the Coal Miner's Relief Fund--even though it was those very coal miners who were striking in Stone's coal mines. He believed, however, that the miners' children should not have to suffer for their parents' stand. The Stones also gave money to support French children who had been left fatherless as a result of the war. Stone, a Presbyterian, donated $100.00 to the Jewish Relief Fund in 1917 to aid the starving Jews in Russia displaced by the war, and also sent funds to the Tuskeegee Institute.

Edward Stone's principal hobby was book collecting, and his library was appraised at $50,000.00 in 1939. Among his treasured pieces was a page from the original Gutenberg Bible. Stone's library was considered to be the largest and best-equipped privately-owned library in the state of Virginia.

Stone's income fluctuated through the years. In 1917 and 1918, partly through stock sales, Stone declared an income of $129,383.39 and $91,483.00 respectively, but 1926 was considered an average year, and he declared an income of $57,500.00.

Although Stone was a humanitarian and philanthropist, he believed in keeping total control of his business and watched his employees closely. He did not strongly oppose unionization in his printing shop, but fully opposed unionization in his coal mines, even using scabs to break strikes.

Stone suffered financial reversals during the Great Depression but he reorganized his holdings to prevent a great loss, and he weathered the Depression better than most businessmen. His health had begun to fail by 1929, and by 1934 he was virtually bedridden. Finally, after a protracted illness, Edward L. Stone died on June 3, 1938, at the age of seventy-four.

A History of the Borderland Coal Company
The Borderland Coal Company derived its name from its dual location in Mingo County, West Virginia, and Pike County, Kentucky, an area bordered by the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River. The mines proper were located in Kentucky, and the coal washers and other processing equipment were located in West Virginia. The company operated from 1903 to 1934. While the Borderland Coal Company was incorporated in 1903, the first batch of coal was not shipped until September 1, 1904. In that year J. S. Tipton, formerly the majority stockholder, resigned his post as general manager of Borderland Coal and sold most of his stock to Edward L. Stone. At that time Stone was president of the Young Men's Investment Club which owned a large number of shares in the Borderland Coal Company, and thus, Stone controlled the club's activities.

The Borderland Coal Company initially owned approximately 1,000 acres of coal land. The company mined bituminous or soft coal, and sold slack coal, used by railroads and industrial concerns, egg coal, used in private furnaces, and nut coal, the highest quality of bituminous coal, used in the kitchens of private homes.

The Borderland Coal Company grew through the early 1900's. In 1905, a second plant was opened called simply "Operation #2." The company declared its first stock dividend in November 1907, and began the construction of an electric plant, cableway, conveyor, and tipple at a cost of $27,950.00. In 1908 a new coal washer was installed. By late 1914 the Borderland Company held 3,000 acres of coal lands containing an estimated 20,000,000 tons of coal. The profits of the Borderland Coal Company increased from $1,250.00 in 1904 to $11,243.77 in 1905, to $49,977.21 in 1908, and to $110,532.68 in 1910.

The amount of coal mined increased from 246 railroad carloads in 1904 to 3,781 railroad carloads in 1910, and expansion continued until the outbreak of World War I. The coal paid a regular annual dividend averaging 15-30%. Prior to 1911, the Leckie Coal Company of Cleveland, Ohio, was the exclusive agency for the sale of Borderland Coal. In that year, however, the Borderland Coal Sales Company was formed, with officers of the Borderland Coal Company doubling as officials of the new company.

The town of Borderland, West Virginia, was a company town, with company-owned homes, stores, school, and a church. The rents in the company homes appear to have been within the miners' incomes. The prices in the company stores, however, were exorbitant. In fact, profits for the company store were the second biggest money maker for the company in 1911, totaling $11,811.78. The largest profit maker was coal, which netted $91,741.07, while the sale of powder was ranked third, totaling $3,165.86.

World War I created a great demand and a high prices for coal, and the Borderland Coal Company prospered despite difficulty finding railroad cars to transport its produce. In 1917, the company paid a record 60% dividend. On January 1, 1918, the company re-chartered itself in Virginia, and patented the trademark and the name of the Borderland Coal Company. The new capital stock was valued at nearly $800,000.00. In November 1918 construction began on a new tipple at a cost of $116,000.00. After the First World War, the Borderland Coal Company experienced a decrease in both the demand and the price of coal. The problem of labor and unionization, however, ultimately caused the company's demise.

Borderland Coal Company officials had been concerned over the growth of coal mine unionization long before any major trouble began. As early as 1915, L. E. Armentrout, the corporation's Vice President and General Manager began using "secret service men" to infiltrate the ranks of the miners and report on any union activity. It is not known whether these agents were U.S. government agents or private investigators, but the latter is presumed. One of them reported on March 10, 1915:

I spent the entire day Monday with Emmett and Ed McKee, Gus Cantrell, and Henry McKnight, all white Americans. We played cards in an empty house on the Kentucky side. We had a nice fire and everything was very comfortable. We would play cards until we got tired, then we would stop everything and talk unionism. Gus Cantrell said that he had been talking to the boys for the last year, trying to get them to organize a local of the U.M.W. of A. He said that there was plenty of good, solid union men and that there were also a lot of rotten scabs here. That he got into a conversation with George McCormick, a white man, and McCormick told him that he didn't believe in the union and that he didn't want anything to do with the U.M.W. of A. . . . I told Cantrell that I would be willing to help organize the local. He said, "Well, the work is picking up now and we will wait until the boys get a good pay day, then we will put this thing through."

Borderland Coal Company successfully resisted unionization in the years before World War I. Wartime regulations prevented strikes and hindered unionization, but after the war many miners felt that it was time to air their grievances. Miners disagreed over specific demands, but most felt that grave inequalities existed in the rates for day workers established by the Bituminous Coal Commission. The miners requested that a conference be held but this request was turned down by the Commission. Dissatisfaction became more pronounced, and during the middle of July 1920 the miners in some of the subdistricts walked out in an unauthorized strike. Shutdowns spread to Indiana and Illinois. President Woodrow Wilson intervened and told the miners that if they returned to work a grievance committee would be formed. The miners returned to work August 10, 1920, and the committee was set up. Management and labor agreed on a wage increase and all was quiet for a while.

West Virginia was in a unique position in that most of the mines in that state were non-union. The Interstate Commerce Commission fixed freight rates with a "differential" low enough that West Virginia coal would not be eliminated by production from other fields closer to their market. When the market for coal was good, the differential also allowed the union coal fields of Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois to pay the union scale of wages and still sell their coal in competition with the product of non-union fields, such as those in West Virginia. When the demand for coal was low and prices receded, however, the differential no longer aided the union fields and they began to experience an adverse effect. These conditions appeared after the First World War, and as a result operators of unionized mines demanded the unionization of the Wast Virginia coal fields. Thus the U.M.W. put pressure on all non-union fields, including those of the Borderland Coal Company. Borderland Coal Company had been fairly quiet about unionization up to this time. On May 5, 1920, however, L. E. Armentrout had issued the following notice:

TO THE PRESENT OR FUTURE EMPLOYEES OF THE BORDERLAND COAL COMPANY
Considerable efforts are being made to organize this field and certain advantages are being held out to some men showing the advisability of belonging to the Union.
This is a free country and this company is not going to dictate to its employees whether they shall or shall not join the Union, but for your information and for the information of your friends, we wish to state positively that no Union man will be employed by this company, and if you find that it is to your interest to join the Union, we would suggest that you arrange to move out and call at the office and we will be glad to settle with you. This will save you as well as the company further trouble, but we sincerely hope that the pleasant relations between the Company and the men will continue, and that each and every one of you will continue in our employ.
Yours very truly,
L. E. Armentrout,
Manager

By late May, 1920 the situation had become acute. Armentrout wrote to James P. Woods, president of the Borderland Coal Company:

The organizers have just about put us out of business at both plants . . . We have a good many men who have not joined the Union, but these agitators are intimidating them and have them so scared they won't attempt to try to work. I will have a conference with the West Virginia attorneys today to see if I cannot get a temporary injunction, or probably prosecution for these intimidators.
We have three Deputy Sheriffs in Kentucky and expect two more in today. We have both plants pretty well policed at night, but still some of the intimidators slip through the mines and get to some of the men. . .
Now that the primary is over, we believe that Unionism will die out. . . . In fact, no Union cards have been issued and for the past two or three days they have not been able to locate the man who has been giving them orders on the stores. Some of them (the fired Union Men) have already remarked that they could not support their families on $7.00 to $8.00 a week, and they hated to go to bed at night when their children were crying for something to eat.

Unionism, however, did not die out. Union "agitators" saw to that no coal could be mined at the Borderland Company's coal fields. In a letter to Stone dated July 6, 1920, Armentrout stated that he was able to get "very little action from the Governor of West Virginia. . .I just finished talking to Governor Morrow's office in Frankfort, Kentucky, and the home guards will likely entrain today. They will likely have machine guns so if that they get in according to promise, we think that conditions will improve very rapidly."

The Borderland Coal Company kept its promise and dispossessed hundreds of its employees. Fired from their jobs and ousted from their homes, they were forced to live in tents. In a union pamphlet entitled "Borderland and Bullets" these men told of the horrible indignities forced on company employees who joined the union. The purpose of the pamphlet was to oppose the re-election of Colonel James P. Woods, president of the Borderland Coal Company, to the U. S. House of Representatives. Woods ran for re-election in the sixth Virginia district claiming that he had been always fair to the working man, and he won.

The situation at Borderland soon deteriorated into violence. A pamphlet dated "winter, 1920" and entitled "Hell with the Lid Off in Mingo County, West Virginia, "gives an account of drunken company guards wounding a number of workers by firing into their tents. On May 12, 1920, Edward Stone, chairman of the board of the Borderland Coal Company, had examined an advertisement for the Thompson sub-machine gun but had decided that "the gun is not sufficient for our needs at the mine." On May 16 Governor John J. Cornwell of West Virginia sent a telegram to the War Department in Washington requesting that Federal troops be sent to the Tug River District, where Borderland Coal Company was located. There had been fighting in the Tug River District for nearly four days. Secretary of War John Weeks, basing his decision on reports from one of his staff officers who had visited the area, decided that federal troops were not needed. Four days later Governor Cornwell declared martial law in West Virginia. Militiamen from both Kentucky and West Virginia were involved in the fighting.

In the summer of 1921 the U. M. W. began its famous "summer march" which precipitated guerilla warfare between the pro-union and anti-union forces. On June 29, Governor Cornwell ordered the citizens of West Virginia to take up arms and defend themselves against the pro-unionists. The papers of the Borderland Coal Company include lists of casualties written on scrap paper, such as "Stone Mountain, 5 Baldwin men and 4 citizens killed (one the mayor), 2 Feltz Bros. killed, 2 military companies there, 2 on the way." In April 1922 the coal miners' grievances came to a head and they struck. They demanded a continuation of the system of bargaining and contract, including the "checkoff," which is a list devised to check on payment of union dues. In addition to demanding stable wage rates, the miners demanded a six-hour day and a five-day week. These increased hours would mean steady employment, one of the miners' main goals.

The strike apparently took some pressure off the Borderland Coal Company because after 1922 there is little or nothing in the collection regarding unionization. Company officials had managed to avoid unionization of their mines but had caused the company much damage in the process. Bitter feelings prevailed after the strike. A letter from L. E. Armentrout to the Borderland Coal Company dated 1923 states:

Gentlemen,
My attention has just been called to the enclosed blotter bearing the union label. It has been the policy of this company for several years, in fact, ever since we have been in business, not to recognize any Union whatever. We spent, or lost, something like $300,000.00 fighting the United Mine Workers here in 1920 and 1921, and also have some injunctions against them.
For your information, please do not place any more printing with any Union shop, and if you have any more of these blotters, tear them up or dispose of them otherwise as it is inconsistent with our policy, and we positively will not stand for it.

While much of the collection regards labor struggles, there is little material regarding immigrant labor although 40% of the workers were immigrants. West Virginia was a sparsely populated state at this time, and immigrants were needed to supplement the labor in their mines. The first constitution of the state provided for the appointment of an immigration officer whose duties were to advertise the attractions of West Virginia throughout Europe and make arrangements with industries to supply transportation for foreign workmen. Of the 80,877 workers employed in the West Virginia coal mines in 1915, 49,753 were American-born (37,918 white and 11,835 black) and 31,124 were foreign-born. Italians made up the largest percentage of the immigrant labor force, about one third of all foreigners employed in the mines while Hungarians comprised the second-most prevalent nationality, approximately one-sixth of the foreign born total.

The Borderland Coal Company never fully recovered from the trouble that paralyzed its mines in 1920. The 1920's were a very depressed period for the mining industry in general and the depression of 1929 brought prices to an all time low. Coal production fell precipitously from 1927-1933 although there seemed to be a slight upturn that year. In 1927, L. E. Armentrout resigned from the company and a year later the Borderland Coal Sales Company was dissolved due to lack of business. The Norfolk and Chesapeake Coal Company became exclusive agents for the sale of Borderland coal. At a meeting of the Borderland Coal Company's board of directors in 1929, it was stated that since the market for coal was so poor, it hardly paid to keep the mines going. The Borderland Coal Company mines were only worked four days during the entire month of May 1932. In a letter from Edward L. Stone to a Borderland Coal Company creditor, Stone wrote that as the Borderland Coal Company did not have the money to pay its debts, all creditors would have to wait for their money, and that he hoped that he could avoid declaring the Borderland Coal Company bankrupt. In 1934 Stone received a letter from a stockholder consoling him for having to "lose Borderland Coal." Apparently the company was then out of business.

The demise of the Borderland Coal Company was the result of broad national trends; the product of their mines was of high quality, and in good supply. The problem of labor and unionization paralyzed the Borderland Coal Company. Lack of production in the mines meant that the Borderland Coal Company could not pay dividends which affected their stockholders. The bad mining conditions, a lack of demand for coal and low market prices made it impossible for the Borderland Coal Company to recover. The return of the coal-rich region of Alsace-Lorraine to France meant that our allies no longer needed American coal. Domestic demand increased, but it did not compensate for decreased industrial use. The switch to alternative forms of energy such as oil, also damaged the coal industry. Although prosperity returned to the rest of the country, the coal industry never totally recovered, and the Borderland Coal Company was one of the victims.

Officers of the Borderland Coal Company: Edward Lee Stone --President ca. 1907-1919, Chairman of the Board 1919-ca. 1934; James P. Woods (attorney at law --U. S. Representative, 6th Virginia District) --Vice President ca. 1905-1922, President 1922-1932; L. E. Armentrout --Manager ca. 1905-1915, Vice President and Manager ca. 1915-1927; Ernest B. Fishburn --Secretary-Treasurer ca. 1905-1930

Officers of the Borderland Coal Sales Company: L. E. Armentrout --President; Edward Lee Stone --Vice President; James P. Woods --second Vice President; R. N. Osborne, Jr.--Secretary (discharged in 1924); W. W. Austin--Secretary.

A History of the Stone Printing and Manufacturing Company
The Stone Printing and Manufacturing Company of Roanoke, Virginia, was established in 1883 as the Bell Printing and Manufacturing Company. John P. Bell of Lynchburg served as president, and Samuel J. Fields of Abington, Virginia, served as manager. Edward L. Stone, the eventual chairman of the board, was then employed as a journeyman printer and pressman. In 1885, Stone succeeded Fields as the company's manager, and his brother, Albert A. Stone, joined the business.

At this time the company occupied a small site on Commerce Street in Roanoke, an area about twenty by twenty-five feet. In 1889 the plant was seriously damaged by fire, and within a few months, the company moved to larger quarters on the second and third floors of the Gale Building on Jefferson Street. Shortly thereafter, the controlling interest was purchased by Edward L. Stone, with the remainder of the stock being purchased by J. B. Fishburn and Albert A. Stone.

In 1892, the name of the company was changed to the Stone Printing and Manufacturing Company, and the company occupied a new, three-story building at 116 North Jefferson Street. In 1896, a duplicate building was added on the north side; in a few years another addition was placed at the rear. The company built another addition in 1902 but five years later the old structure was torn down and a new two-stories building, 210 x 110 feet, was completed. The new structure gave the Stone Printing Company 50,000 square feet of space, which is about 100 times the floor space originally occupied on Commerce Street. The company today occupies the same site on Jefferson Street.

In 1883 the capital stock of the company was $5,000.00, and in 1900, it was increased to $50,000.00. In 1910 the capital stock had grown to $350,000.00. All of the stock increases were taken, with one exception, by the original stockholders. Sales grew from $84,371.00 in 1900 to $179,433.78 in 1905, and from $253,781.15 in 1909 to a high of $608,174.36 in 1920.

Stone had considered selling his printing company to a British syndicate in 1912. He felt, however, that business was good and getting better and eventually decided to retain control. By 1920 the Stone Printing Company had customers in half the states in the union and in some foreign countries. Between 1920 and 1929, however, sales showed a steady decline. In 1929 they fell to $399,701.43 and declined throughout the depression.

The Stone Printing Company's most important business came from railroads as the company printed tariff and rate schedules as well as tickets. Since the railroad rates changed rapidly during the early 1900's, railroad printing was very lucrative. The principal railroad customer and in fact, the largest customer, of the Stone Printing Company was the Norfolk and Western Railroad. In 1910 the Norfolk and Western Railroad accounted for $85,652.60 in sales. Combined with the sales to other railroads in 1910, the total of railroad sales was approximately $193,000.00 of a total of $339,678.92 --well over half of the total sales of the Stone Printing Company.

Commercial printing comprised the second largest source of the Stone Printing Company's business, accounting for $135,110.32 of a total $608,174.36 in 1920. The fourth largest amount of business, after the Norfolk and Western Railway, other railroads, and commercial printing, was school and college printing. The Stone Printing Company printed the yearbooks for the University of Virginia, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Mississippi, Randolph-Macon College, Hollins College, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and others.

The profit margin in printing often was small, and thus costs had to be carefully controlled. Edward L. Stone was a commissioner of the American Printers Cost Commission which kept a close watch on printing costs and tried to keep them down. Another serious problem that bothered Stone Printing Company was unionization. As most Roanoke printing shops, Stone Printing Company was an open shop where either union or non-union people could be employed. The company's officers did not penalize or prevent workers from joining the union. The International Typographical Union, however, put pressure on Edward Stone to turn his establishment into a closed shop, that is, a shop that would hire only union members, pay union wages, and abide by union rules. Paying union wages did not trouble Stone because he already paid more than the union scale in most cases. For example, in 1905 when the union scale was $13.50 per week, Stone pointed out that while two of his employees received less and one received the union wage, over forty workers received between $15.00 and $25.00 per week. Stone felt it folly to pay all workers the same because, he said, "some are so much better than others."

Edward Stone's paternalistic attitude toward his employees is reflected in a collection of letters exchanged with his workers. Forced to fire an employee who lied about being able to work on a printing press, Stone lent him the money to go to printing school, and re-hired him when he had learned the trade. Another worker left the company without notice, heading home to Lexington, Virginia. When the employee needed money to return to Roanoke, Stone lent it to him with the understanding that the employee would never again leave without asking Stone's permission. Another employee left Stone without notice to work for another printing firm, but when the employee wanted his old job back, Stone gave it to him. Stone frequently lent money to his employees, and did not press them for repayment.

Many of the union's rules, however bothered Stone. Among the ones he objected to were (1) in all cases when it became necessary to reduce the working force of an office, the last person hired should be the first dropped; (2) in machine composition, all work must be time work and no piece work should be allowed; (3) no member of the International Typographical Union should engage in a speed contest either by hand composition or on machines, and violation of this rule was to be punished by a fine of not less than $25.00, or by suspension; (4) an eight hour day (Stone Printing had a 9 to 9-1/2 hour day); and (5) no one holding active membership in a local union should sign any individual or private contract with any employer, agreeing to work for any stated time, length, or conditions as the union alone was to have the power to contract for conditions, wages, and hours. This fifth stipulation bothered Stone the most for he firmly believed that an employee should perform whatever duty Stone demanded of him.

On November 20, 1907, there was a union strike in Roanoke. The union men employed by the Stone Printing Company walked out, and the union formed a picket line in front of the Stone Printing Company. Stone wrote to Joel Cuthin, Mayor of Roanoke: "We have never been opposed to the union, but we have objected to having them run our business, unless they acquired it by ownership." The union put pressure on the Stone Printing Company. A memo to Edward Stone from Albert Stone dated 1915 told of some Stone Printing Company material being returned by certain Roanoke merchants because they did not bear the union label. The amount of material returned, however, was very small. The union pressure placed on Stone was generally peaceful and there was no violence or destruction. After the unsuccessful strike, Stone took back all of his union men.

After 1920 the company's sales and profits declined. In 1927, Albert Stone, who had assumed the presidency of the company, commissioned Ernst and Ernst, financial analysts, to examine the operation of Stone Printing and make recommendations for improving business. The analysts found Stone Printing to be an innovative company which sought and found new markets such as school and college printing and the printing of calendars, and which had sound leadership. Ernst and Ernst felt that it was a change in economic conditions, not the company itself, that caused the company's problems. Competition had changed and grown in intensity by 1920, making the ability to sell most important. The analysts recommended the creation of a sales department coupled with more aggressive selling techniques.

Later, Albert Stone, Jr., Edward Stone's nephew, claimed that it was the reluctance of the Stone Printing Company to cut prices during the depression of 1919-1922 that caused the company's problems. He claimed that by the time the company did cut its prices, Stone Printing had lost many of its most valued customers, and suggested a closer watch of costs coupled with an expansion of the calendar line. Although these suggestions were followed, business did not improve.

When the Great Depression hit in 1929, business worsened. Loyal customers and a solid financial base kept the Stone Printing Company from bankruptcy. Edward Stone's health was failing by 1929, and most of the company's affairs were passed on to his brother Albert. In a letter from Edward Stone to the board of directors in 1930, he wrote:

the years operations to date, with vastly improved selling efforts, has only brought us the same volume of business that we had last year but the increased organization expense, incident to this extra selling effort, and the extraordinary competition in the matter of price, has prevented us from obtaining prices that we should really obtain for our products.

Edward Stone recommended a reduction in salaries across the board from the president on down, and layoffs of certain personnel.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt first initiated his New Deal program in 1933, Edward Stone was apprehensive. In a letter dated July 26, 1933, he wrote:

We would like the best in the world to go along with the National Industrial Recovery Act, and be able to wire President Roosevelt an affirmative reply in connection with the agreement addressed "To Every Employer."
But to do so, with my modest knowledge of economics, would mean arbitrary action on our part, with a "blind faith" that we do not possess.
If we still further reduce the working hours to 35 per week (as the New Deal suggested) the increased cost of production reaches the geometric progression stage, with the result that our losses on current contracts, which we see no way of passing along to our customers until we would actually see no way of meeting our payroll or meeting our bills, would mean disaster.
Listening in over the radio last night I understand that 5,000 or more telegrams had been received by the President indicating unconditional acceptance of the Agreement. It is quite possible that we should do likewise, regardless, just as we offered ourselves, body and resources, in wartime.
I am giving expression to these thoughts even though I feel the "patriotic" thing for us to do may be to go ahead, "blindly," and in spite of our objections or reasons for not doing so, and sign the agreement.
Very Sincerely,
Edward L. Stone
Chairman of the Board

Clearly, Stone expected no miracles, but he went along with the N.I.R.A. and generally supported Roosevelt. There are references to increasing business by 1937. Correspondence ends the following year with Edward Stone's death. The Stone Printing Company, however, is in business to this very day.

Scope and Content Information

These papers fill 455 special four-inch Hollinger storage boxes (ca. 150 linear feet) and span the years 1895-1937. There are three major series: Edward L. Stone's papers re his personal life and diversified business, professional, and civic concerns; papers concerned with his principal business, the Stone Printing and Manufacturing Company of Roanoke, Virginia; and those papers concerned with the Borderland Coal Company of West Virginia and Kentucky of which Stone was the principal officer for many years. Because these series basically are composed of Stone's personal papers, and because there are interrelationships between material in one series and that in another, the series have been maintained in the boxes in the order in which they were found.

The papers are rich in material for many types of studies. Because Stone's major concern was his printing business, there is a great amount of material about that business, its labor problems, economic problems, its professional associations, relationships with its customers --especially the railroads --and so on. Because Mr. Stone collected medieval manuscripts and examples of fine printing that formed a great private library, there is, in his personal papers, a good deal of correspondence and material about this special interest. His personal papers also contain considerable material about his diversified business and civic interests. And the records of the Borderland Coal Company--which Mr. Stone operated either as president or as chairman of the board for twenty-seven years--are rich in information concerning this vital industry, its periods of economic success and decline, its relationships with the railroads that moved its products, and its labor problems.

Organization

After arrival at the University, the collection was placed in the stack areas of the then division of Rare Books and Manuscripts of the Library, and was shelved in close proximity to another large collection received only a year before, that of the Low Moor Iron Company. The two comprised the largest group of material in the division at the time, a group that, unfortunately, was rarely used by researchers as there were no finding aids to the mass, and interested researchers were intimidated by the problems of research in the papers.

The collections remained in the stacks until 1958 when expansion space in the division's storage area was reduced to a minimum by the successful collecting program of the intervening years. A review of the collections and their use showed that the Stone collection and the Low Moor Iron Company papers were rarely consulted, and it was decided to move them out of the division's quarters to provide storage space for collections that were being used by researchers.

Space was located in the attic of a student dormitory, and the division prepared the papers for long-term storage by removing them from the old letter boxes in which they had arrived. Each bundle of papers was placed between sheets of gray, newspaper-storage cardboard sheets; the spine titles of the old letter boxes were copied onto the cardboard sheets, and the bundle was wrapped in brown paper, tied up with string, and numbered in a coded sequence.

The collections remained in the attic of Lefevre House until the fall of 1976 when, after the receipt of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for the processing of the two collections, they were transported to the Alderman Library building once more In the Library's receiving room, the bundles were cleaned in the dust hood, untied and unwrapped, and the contents transferred into gray, Hollinger storage boxes before transfer into the storage areas of the Manuscripts Department for processing. The coded numbers on the bundles were recorded but proved to be of no use in restoring order to the papers, badly out of sequence from their many moves over the years. Nor did the spine titles and dates from the original letters boxes prove to be of any particular use in organizing the collection.

Once processing work was completed at the end of the summer of 1978, the Stone Papers were transferred back to the dormitory attic as space in the Alderman Library building remained short, and it was felt that adequate service on the Stone Papers could be maintained from the attic now that a guide to the papers had been prepared. (N.B. The Stone papers were removed from the dormitory attic and transferred to the University Library's high-density remote storage facility following its opening in the mid-1990s.)

The word "organization" is used here with considerable diffidence, for any researcher studying the lists of box contents that follow will realize quickly that there is no organization in the usual sense of the word.

As previously noted, the Stone papers were subjected to a number of moves before processing began, and, unfortunately, there seems to have been little organization of the papers in Mr. Stone's files in his Roanoke office. Presumably, he and his staff could locate material that was needed from the files, but at the time that processing began in the fall of 1976, no discernible scheme of organization could be determined.

The first step was to review the series of coded numbers placed on the bundles of papers before they were moved to the dormitory attic, but these did not provide any sort of useful organization. Next, the spine titles of the original letter boxes were reviewed (they had been copied onto the gray cardboard sheets before the move to the dormitory attic), but they, too, proved useless.

These steps having provided no scheme, and after a considerable hiatus due to a turnover in student processors on the collection, the new student processors were instructed to begin a box-by-box inventory of the contents of the collection. During this inventory, old folders were replaced with acid-free ones, and the original folder headings were copied onto the new ones. Some removal of papers clips was accomplished, and the materials were reviewed and notes were taken for the guide.

The processors found that Mr. Stone's papers were comprised of three series. One was devoted to his personal affairs, and contained material about his diverse business interests outside his two major ones, and about his civic and professional interests, as well as papers from his private life. The second series contained the papers from his major business and "first love" the Stone Printing and Manufacturing Company of Roanoke; and the third series included a wealth of material about the Borderland Coal Company, an enterprise that Mr. Stone served for twenty-seven years, first as president and later, as chairman of the board.

For a long time, we considered separating the three series of papers, and the processors evolved a good system of colored slips clipped to the boxes to identify material from each series contained in a box. However, as they neared the end of their inventory, the processors became convinced, and argued successfully that the series should not be separated. Basically, all these papers are Mr. Stone's private papers as he was the major stockholder in the Stone Printing Company and it was very much a personal operation. There are interrelationships between material that was found standing in different folders in the same box, and the processors correctly feared that drastic reorganization would destroy those relationships. Thus, we decided to accept their argument, and the box contents were allowed to remain as we found them.

A certain amount of movement of boxes within the collection probably would ease use of it. But what processing was accomplished on this project took far longer than had been anticipated, and there was no time in the late spring of 1978, when the processors had to complete their work with the project, to undertake a mass movement of material. Thus, they stand in the order in which we found them at the beginning of the project.

As has been stated above, the three series of papers in this collection (Stone Personal; Borderland Coal Co.; and Stone Printing and Mfg. Co.) have not been physically separated and are scattered throughout the collection. However, in the container listing which follows the three series have been separated. Therefore, the listing for the Edward L. Stone Personal Papers series begins with Box 11 of the collection because that is the first box in which Stone's personal papers can be found. (Boxes 1-10 appear in the listing for the Borderland Coal Co. series.) This also means that if a box contains material from more than one series it will have more than one entry in the listing, so that to find a complete listing of a particular box a researcher might need to look at the listing for each of the three series. In addition, some of the box entries in the listing are slightly out of order, so that if a box appears to have no entry or only a partial entry, in a particular series the entry is sometimes picked up on the next page of the listing.

Listings of oversize material are located at the end of the listing for each series.