Textron's Trick

"They're saying I'm a wild man. If I turn the trick, they'll say I'm a genius."

So said Royal Little, the mild, 50-year-old president of Textron Inc., whose unconventional production ideas have built a textile empire in less than three years. Last week Wildman Little did turn a trick. He paid $12 million to Benjamin Brown Gossett for his mills in Charlotte, N.C. and Anderson, S.C., thus adding twelve southern mills to Textron's 13 in New England, and more than doubling Textron's cotton and rayon capacity. But Little still has to perform his main trick—making Textron the most integrated and...