The twilight of the gods: global forces bring another textile giant to its knees, drawing the curtains on a modern mill lord's career.

• Author: Speizer, Irwin
• Position: Cover Story

Chuck Hayes gingerly lowers himself down the stairs to his den, wincing with each step. A barrel-chested man with beefy hands, white hair and eyes fogged by painkillers, he's in no shape to leave the house today. A few years ago, he tripped over his dog and fell backwards onto a log, wrenching his lower back so severely that he continues to struggle with the pain. On bad days, he can barely walk. This is one of those days. It's all the effort he can muster to field calls and take visitors at his house of glass and wood set into a hill above Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro.

He shuffles to a wingback chair and lowers himself into it, a maneuver so arduous that the urge to grab him under the arm and help is almost irresistible. That wouldn't be politic with Hayes, a proud man who built a company almost large enough to match his ego. But at 67 he isn't what he was just a few years ago. Nor is his company.

Greensboro-based Guilford Mills filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection March 13. This should be the time of life when Hayes, the chairman, savors the rewards of creating what once was one of the nation's most-profitable textile makers. Instead, he is watching his company be dismantled -- plants shuttered, thousands of workers laid off, its stock nearly worthless. Hayes figures that he personally has lost about $50 million -- money he had hoped to pass to his children.

The business, he complains, was battered by Asian imports and abandoned by American politicians and bankers. As he talks, the once foul-mouthed, hard-drinking brawler begins to cry. "I was hoping for a miracle. I felt that if I could just bring the apparel business around to where China wasn't beating us as badly and the U.S. government would take a look at import quotas, we might stand a chance. I was wrong." He dabs a tear. "From my heart ..." he begins, then trails off.

In every one of his tears is the tiny reflection of an industry that is slouching toward oblivion. Guilford is the fourth Tar Heel textile giant to file for bankruptcy protection in the last year and a half, following Kannapolis-based Pillowtex, Greensboro-based Burlington Industries and Greensboro-based Galey & Lord. Shutdowns and layoffs have become an almost weekly event. Between 1997 and 2000, the state lost 10% of its 184,600 textile jobs and nearly a third of its 56,200 apparel jobs. And the end isn't in sight. "Much of the industry, particularly the most labor-intensive part, is in a long-term decline," says Mark Vitner, an economist with Wachovia Securities in Charlotte.

The bankruptcies mark the end of an era, a time when iron-willed, larger-than-life figures made millions from their mastery of men and machines. And none of them was bigger or tougher than Charles A. Hayes. A high-school dropout who rose from the mill floor to the executive suite, he could walk into one of his plants and tell immediately if a loom wasn't running right -- then fix it himself. "I ain't got no education," he says. "I'm blue-collar."

Thomas Lewis, an analyst with C.L. King & Associates in Albany, N.Y., recalls visiting Guilford's headquarters and hearing shouts. It was Hayes on his phone, cussing out a supplier. "If you had a list of 10 characters who defined an era in North Carolina's textile industry, Chuck would have to be one of them. But a leader can be right for the part for years, even decades, and then not be right for the part anymore."

The signs of change in his industry were there for years as smaller, less-stable companies perished. Anticipating the rise of foreign competition, Hayes tried to position Guilford accordingly. He embraced free trade and fought for the North American Free Trade Agreement, figuring Mexico, with its cheap labor, could be a bulwark against the dirt-cheap Asian imports. Sure, some jobs would go south, but he could control Mexican production by investing there. Companies that modernized might produce fabric so efficiently in this country that it could be sent there for cuffing and sewing. But the Asian tide was stronger than Hayes -- or most people -- ever dreamed it would be.

"Asia's cost advantages are just too great for even Mexico to compete," Vitner says. "The textile industry migrated from England to New England. When it became more cost-effective to produce in the South, the industry moved there. Now that it's more cost productive in Asia, the industry is moving there. In a free society, in a country that is supposedly free-trade, there really isn't...