STONEWALL, Miss.- It's often a shock when a company in a small community threatens layoffs. Here, it's virtually a punch in the stomach.

If North Carolina-based Burlington Industries, which has run the textiles mill in Stonewall since 1962, can't find a buyer soon, it will close the factory in March.

That would put 816 area residents out of work in a town that has only 1,148 people.

"You take the heart, soul, lungs and liver out of a town whenever you lose that many jobs," said Jerry McBride, president of the Mississippi Manufacturers Association.

Burlington's decision to pull out of Mississippi is only the latest in a relentless string of announced plant closings that began a couple of years ago.

The U.S. textile industry is suffering from its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, according to the American Textile Manufacturers Institute.

Last year, 103 textile mills closed and almost 67,000 jobs were lost. Since Sept. 11, the crisis worsened when bankruptcies triggered the loss of nearly 24,000 textile jobs, the institute said.

Modernization accounts for some of the cuts, but most put the blame on a devaluation of Asian currencies that led to a flood of cheap imports and the shift to lower-wage production overseas following adoption of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Hardest hit are eight Southeastern states -- Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia -- which produce most of the nation's textiles.

For small towns, the blow feels worse. If Stonewall's mill isn't bought, the community may join other hard-hit towns devastated by recent job losses, such as Martinsville, Va., and Valdese.

Without the mill's tax revenue, the town may have to cut back on spending and improvements. Meanwhile, laid-off workers risk losing their health insurance and falling into debt.

"People have lived and worked here their entire lives," said A.D. Gilbert, Stonewall's mayor. "If you're 55, what are you going to do? There's not much else around here. Jobs are hard to find."

Burlington, which filed for bankruptcy protection in November, blamed a weak economy and foreign competition for the decision to close or sell the Stonewall denim plant and other fabric plants in North Carolina, Virginia and Mexico.

"Our people are concerned about the future, but they're handling it as well as can be expected," said plant manager Doug Carter. "But this decision has nothing to do with the employees. It's a function of the economy and Asian imports."

Economist Don Ratajczak said the reality is that the United States can no longer compete in low-cost labor production, which drives many rural economies.

"What's been a foundation of the rural South -- low-cost labor -- is going to disappear, just as it did a century ago in New England," said Ratajczak, who heads a firm that invests in technology-based enterprises.

"The South gained when New England found it couldn't compete," he said. "Now we can't compete, and there's no way to stop it."

Gilbert, Stonewall's mayor, worked for more than 50 years in the cotton mill that gave this small, east Mississippi town its name and its citizens a place to work.

His parents and his wife's mother and father also worked at the mill. Turning cotton into textile has been the lifeblood of Stonewall since 1868.

The mill's first owners, with the Civil War still a fresh memory, named their enterprise after Confederate hero Gen. "Stonewall" Jackson. When the village was incorporated in 1965, the name stuck.

But the spinning, weaving and dyeing likely will soon end, and Gilbert isn't sure what to do.

"It's tragic," Gilbert, 73, said at the old school building in the heart of Stonewall that serves as the mayor's office, the town library, water department and kindergarten.

State officials are counting on a Nissan plant under construction in Madison County to help revive the economy. The plant is scheduled to open in 2003, creating up to 4,000 jobs. Nissan-related suppliers are expected to create thousands more jobs.

But Ratajczak said places like Stonewall have few options unless they decide to target a certain industry and encourage locals to get the appropriate training.

"You have to have talented people," Ratajczak said. "Unfortunately, some of the former textile towns will go the way of mining towns. There's no question you just can't sit there. You either transform yourself or you're going to blow away."