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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview
G-0027, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill”
Harriet Herring, a research associate at the Institute for Research in Social Science and professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, recalls her early life and experiences studying labor in North Carolina mill towns in the first half of the twentieth century. The bulk of the interview focuses on Herring's efforts to study the high turnover at cotton mills and the industry's resistance to her investigations. Some recollections about Herring's family and eminent sociologist Howard T. Odum did not merit excerption but might still be useful for researchers.
Harriet Herring, University of North Carolina sociologist, recalls her efforts to study labor at North Carolina mill towns in the first half of the twentieth century.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
As I said a while ago, I don't know whether we're Scotch-Irish or Irish. I'll ask this niece of mine; I don't know why I didn't think to ask her the other day when she was here. And I'm sure she has gone all the way who the first ones were. I used to hear all the time when I was growing up that we had a land grant from the king of England, and I had heard dates from the late sixteen hundreds to 1772. Well, I didn't think that even George III would be giving a land grant to anybody in North Carolina in 1772—things were warming up a little too much! But I found that a descendant in another branch of the family had a copy of the grant—not the land that I grew up on, but where a cousin of mine and his father and grandfather grew up. And it was up near Lagrange. And it told even about a creek and everything, you know—just exactly. So some of us got here by that time anyhow. And I think it must have been that some of them lived in this county, as a matter of fact, because my grandfather, I reckon it must have been in, say, 1828 or something of the kind, he bought a farm down where I grew up. Well, there must have been about fifteen hundred acres. No, it was more than that, because he had four children and they each had about five or six hundred acres. And it was on the Neuse River, and it had a creek flowing through it. Then two of his four children, my father and an aunt, lived on theirs, and the other one sold hers to the two of them, and married a man from Greene County and came back. So I can't tell you exactly when I started, but I know it was a right good while: about four or five generations back.
How far was your family place from Kinston?
Well, three miles now
Did you have all brothers, then, or did you have any sisters from the first marriage?
Well yes, but the last one I just barely remember when she got married. I
remember we had a fence/down the width of the house and everything down
to the road, which wasn't as far then as it is now (they've straightened
the road—it had a loop in it). Anyhow, I knew there was stuff
going on around, you know, and somebody looked out the window and said,
"Oh, there comes the bride and groom." We had a gate
there because they turned the horses in there sometimes. I looked out
there and I said, "Oh, it's / Don Uzzle (that was her beau, you
know; he'd been coming there). It's nobody but Don Uzzle."
That's the way I greeted him. Fortunately /
I wanted to ask you about your father's background. He grew up there on that land that he later farmed?
Yes. You see, he had part of my grandfather's place, that he bought when
he moved from Greene County. And there was a house on it. Here's
Beautiful.
Was that a house for a plantation at one time?
Well, there were two houses on that, and Grandfather lived in the one that was sort of up the hill from there. While he built the house, it's still standing. It's changed hands two or three times, but ours hasn't changed hands. Anyway, the big trees and those barns and everything were as good as I could make them; I couldn't make them around in a circle and keep them their right size.
Did your father attend college?
Oh no, there weren't any colleges. You're asking both mother and father,
I suppose? Well, my father went, a little while anyhow, to academies.
Especially a man teacher would have an academy, and have two or three
teachers to help. And that went on to all of my half sisters and
brothers too. But by the time I came along there were—though I
went to a four-month school until I went to Kinston to what was called
the high school (seventh, eighth and ninth grades were high school). And
until I went there when I
Well then, he ran what seems like a very large farm.
Well, it was only about six hundred acres, something like that.
What did he plant primarily?
Mainly cotton. He wasn't very keen about tobacco because it ate up timber too fast. But my brothers before he died did begin raising a little tobacco. A lot of people had been raising tobacco for quite a while, and he just saw that price floating away, you know. Of course they had a very valuable thing there in it; it was saved until fairly recently.
Was he fairly successful as a cotton farmer?
Well, cotton prices were awful low: seven and eight and ten cents a pound, I remember. What is it now, a dollar?
About, I think, yes.
Generally, a little above or a little below and so on. I remember as a
small child my father came home from town (that's the only way he knew
what the price of cotton was for the day, you know). And he said to my
mother (he was talking about the price of cotton), "I believe
it'll go to five cents." And I said, "Oh, Daddy, a
bale?" And so they at least got a laugh out of that, you know,
because they had fifty bales of cotton. He had a gin, and he would gin
his own cotton. And then you know what he did with his seed? He cracked
them so they wouldn't come up and used them for fertilizer; that was
before they were using oil, cotton seed oil.
Was your father interested in politics?
Well, not a great deal. He didn't talk politics very much. But you must remember my father was—well, let's see—I guess he was fifty-eight when I was born. By the time I was acquainted with him he was elderly, and his health got not so good. And so I don't know that he'd ever been very greatly interested in politics. But he always voted; I'd hear him talk about voting ("Time to go vote," and so on). And he talked politics with one of our neighbors, the one who bought most of the rest of the farm and lived there. As a matter of fact his descendants still live there, the third generation of them.
What were his views on political issues?
Well, I was too young when my father died to pay much attention to what they were saying about it. I just knew they were talking politics.
How old were you when he died?
Well, let me see: I was born in '92, and he died in 1906.
Fourteen, right. Were you in some kind of community where your farm was? I mean, did you have a church that you went to? Was there a group of people that you pretty much knew?
Well, there was a little Methodist church about two miles from us, and
these people who came and bought the farm of my uncle were Methodists.
But my mother and father happened to be Baptists, and so we had
Well, about the same. Her father didn't have as much land as my
grandfather did. And he was younger; had young children. And he was
killed in the Civil War. A sister of his insisted on taking my mother
over to live with her (there were five other children). After she went
over there
Why did she only go for one day?
I don't know why they even sent one day. I said, "Why?" Well, school started and so she started too, you see. I'm sure this aunt simply. . . . She had one daughter, and I'm sure, I know from things my mother said that she was simply a servant in the house, you see. And her father was dead and her mother's health was bad; she didn't have anybody to. . . . Some of your questions here, you can see, didn't fit my situation at all.
Right. Did your parents ever say anything about the Civil War, about their attitudes toward what it was like then? Did they feel any animosity to the North? What did they feel about that kind of situation?
Well, there were bywords to talk about "damn Yankees", you know, and that sort of thing. But as far as I could see any real bitterness was over by then. See, it had been a full generation; I was just late coming along!
How did your mother, though, feel about her father's loss in the war?
Well, I mean, everybody had somebody lost in the war. There wasn't any family around that didn't have somebody lost in the war.
How did she meet your father?
Well, this aunt lived not very far from my father. And then
To raise all the rest of the kids.
How old was she when they married?
Well I never did know just exactly. You'll think I'm awfully uncurious
that I didn't ask, but she was grown and getting ready to get married
when I first became really conscious of her. I don't know, but she must
have been quite small
So some of your father's older children must have been about the same age as your mother.
Yes. Well this first girl, the oldest one, the girl that got married not too long after he did, must have been not more than a couple (two or three) years younger than my mother, than her mother-in-law. Then she was glad to get away from the mother-in-law.
No, not at all. See, there has always been a great deal of men marrying
if they lose their wives; they'll get married again and have two
families. So it was so common that I suppose it just wasn't. . . . And
some of them were really quite devoted to her, and some of the others
(particularly two husbands). . . . Well, my father, when the girl
married, he gave her a farm somewhere wherever they wanted it (of course
they usually
Were your parents really interested in education?
Oh yes. My mother in particular, because she had none. I've thought about
it a lot of times since: it was amazing how interested she was in the
newspapers and in magazines and books and all. Of course we didn't have
an awful lot of books, because we lived too far from town to go get one
from the very small town library, and
Did she want you to have a good education?
Oh yes.
I asked if she ever did any work for women's suffrage?
Oh, it wasn't even talked about; didn't hear the term 'til I was grown and in college.
Well, who would you have in it? Three families there that you visited
with; the rest of them were
We had, let's see, seven tenant houses; had that many black families. And you asking here about servants. Somebody in one or another of those families, when they were bargained with it was understood that somebody was going to do the laundry, and they did the laundry. And they helped with housecleaning and so on. But we didn't have a servant that came in every day. I didn't know but two families in my whole neighborhood who had; and one of them didn't have one all the time, but the other one, he had. Incidentally, this Mr. Kennedy had some of the land that belonged to Henry Herring of several generations back; it had been changing hands and he got it. And both of them had money besides a good-sized plantation, and had no children. My father with eleven to give some education to, you see, made a difference.
Exactly. Well then, were all of the tenants black?
Oh yes.
You didn't have any white tenants at all?
No. They would refer once in a while to when (I've forgotten
Did the tenants stay for a long period of time on the land, or did they tend to come and go?
Well, some of them were second generation. Joe Brown, for example: his mother had lived on the farm. He was raised on a farm, and they didn't forget it. And, of course, when I was young you were still in the period when somebody would tell you that "My husband belonged to your grandfather." And then they expected a little more consideration, you know. You'd run into that quite often.
So your grandfather did have slaves also?
Oh yes. Because, you see, he didn't die until really after the Civil War.
He had to be pardoned because he was a slave owner before he could ever
vote again, you see. I had some occasion to look up cotton mills and the
textile industry, and went through a lot of things. What do they call
that set of books on the Civil War? Rebellion Records:
you can tell who put that out, can't you? Congress authorized a printing
of all the correspondence that they got between generals, between
governors and everything. I was looking up things. An index helped to
get it, but I browsed and ran into a letter from a governor (his name
will come to me in a minute; he was a sassy sort of fellow). He was a
governor before the war and then was a governor again afterwards. I ran
across some of his correspondence between him and the confederate
government. And he was telling them how he
Oh, Zebulon.
Yes, Zeb Vance. But it sounded so disrespectful until this great respect,
you know
But your father's father didn't fight in the war? He stayed on his plantation during the war?
My grandfather? Oh yes, he was too old for it. See, my father was born in 1834, born before Victoria came to the throne. You're talking about things a long time ago when you go to my father. My age plus his makes a long time, you know.
Well, a few, not too many. As I say this Brown, the one I remember, he
lived there for years and years. Now, for instance, there's a black man
up not far from Kinston who cures very good meat, hams. Mary gets her
ham from him every once in a while, and she stopped by there. The first
time I went there with her she told him that I was her father's sister.
And he said, "Yes. When I was first married I went there to
live with Mr. Henry and Mr. Beck." I said, "Well,
that's the reason you know how to cure good hams." He said,
"Yes, Mr. Henry taught me how to cure good hams." But
he hadn't ever belonged, but he had that very early connection with the
family.
What was your relationship with the children of the tenants?
Oh, I was crazy about them. See, I had nobody of my own to play with, and
especially after this white tenant family moved. I'd run away; I've been
switched for running away. One family didn't live very far, and there
weren't any real small children there. And I could get by with running
away and going over there. Sometimes my youngest brother'd be sent over
to fetch me home, and I was sitting there eating collards and cornbread
with them.
So you did have some kind of childhood contact with black people.
Oh mercy! They came up every day twice a day to get the mule (three times, four times a day) and bring the mule back at lunchtime to feed, and then bring him back at night, you know. I'd see the black people and I would dash out to talk to the children.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
Well, there were two or three families that would come back and forth, you know. He and his family stayed on for years and years. But I lost contact with them because I was away too much.
Did your mother ever have any help, did any of the women ever help your mother with the children? Did you have a nurse or anything?
No, I don't remember having one. When she had two or three that were
stepping-stones she may have, and probably had some of the older girls,
you know. But by the time I came along, you see, there was five
I see. You said that someone came in to help her with the cleaning and that someone else did the laundry. Did she have a cook? Did someone do the cooking?
Not very much. If my mother was feeling bad she'd have her come in and
help when she needed her. But, as I say, these people who had cash as
well as land, they had not only a cook and maids (a maid or two), but
also a phaeton with a driver and two horses.
Well, she tended a garden because she wanted to. I mean, the men plowed (my brothers or my father); I barely remember my father ever plowing, because the boys were big enough to, plowing the rows and planting. But she often planted. And of course she and I gathered the vegetables a great deal. Sometimes some of the colored ones would be there to help with that, especially if you were going to do some preserving or something, not as a regular thing.
How old were you, then, when you left the farm to go to college? Did you go to Meredith College from the farm? How old were you at that time when you left to go to Meredith?
Well, I left in 1909. I went to college in 1909, and I was born in '92.
So you were fifteen years old then when you went to Meredith?
Yes, I was fifteen years old when I went to Meredith.
What led you to go to Meredith College? Was somebody here that influenced you in school, that had you go there? Or what was the attraction of Meredith at the time?
Well, I suppose it was just because, although we didn't go too regularly
(not every Sunday) to church, our connection was with Meredith, and you
heard them talk about it a lot, you know, and all. And at that time
Women's College was about the only. . . . Well, there was little old
College up in the northeast corner; it's still there. (I taught there
for two years, incidentally.) It called itself a college, but it was
really just an academy, you know; I don't know that it even called
itself a college at the time. But girls came as far as from Texas to go
there, because there were no schools for girls (I imagine they were
people who have moved to Texas, you see). But there just weren't any
schools. My older brothers and sisters went to an academy in Kinston
that a man ran, and he had one or two teachers help him. I don't
remember how many of them went off to school. I know one went to a
technical school in Baltimore, and I think Sally went somewhere to
boarding school. But you didn't say you were going to college until
about the time I got to the stage of going to college. And of course
Meredith had to have elementary courses; it had eighth and nin
Before we talk about the years that you were at Meredith, I wanted to ask just a couple of other questions about before you left home. Was the church an important part of your family's life when you were growing up?
Well, important enough to make an effort to go when the weather was good. With the sand and the heat and so on you didn't go too regularly, but it was fairly important.
What about at home? Did you have family prayers or anything?
No, we didn't have family prayers—just a blessing at the table.
What did religion mean to you as a child? Was it important to you?
Well, only moderately so, I should think. I think it probably seemed more important to me when I went to Kinston to high school, because I spent the week with a family that lived just diagonally across the street from the church. And you went every time the bell rang, you know; they made us go. I got pretty bored with that. Then, of course, at Meredith you had to go to church a certain percentage of the time. You had a certain percentage of Sundays off, that you didn't have to go. So we went to church regularly then, and Sunday School. Some of it was almost taken for granted that you went, both when I was going to high school and staying with the Pridgens or at college.
Would you describe your family as being in any way non-traditional?
No, I think we were very like everybody else around—
They were the unusual ones, not you.
We weren't unusual; they were the ones that were unusual
Do you have any idea, thinking about your family background, of what led you into the kind of work that you eventually went into?
No. I tried to think about why I happened to get into this and that since
I got this list. I don't know, it was quite accidental. The reason
Were there any particular teachers who influenced you at Meredith?
Well, the history teacher did. And she was a New Englander and had been to Radcliffe—but that was incidental, my going on account of her. But she did have a great deal of influence on me; she was an excellent teacher. I also had at Meredith the poorest I ever had, and Miss Smith was one of the best I ever had. Just to show how accidental, almost. . . . I was taking this course in American history, and about that time was when Frederick Jackson Turner's emphasis on the West and the development of the country was a new thing. And I remember reading that essay, and I wanted to take some more American history. So he had moved from Wisconsin to Harvard during the interval after he wrote that; and so I went to Radcliffe mainly to study with Frederick Jackson Turner.
Hmm, that's interesting.
Oh, I didn't realize that.
Did you get to study with him?
Oh yes, I had his regular course on the building of the West. I got very
interested in a project that I wanted to sort of pursue. (I came back
and worked for two years and then went back, you remember—you
seem to have gotten some way or other everything I've done!) He didn't
give but that one course on the West, the development of the West, and I
don't know if he gave any other course over at Harvard or not. I was an
individual student of his the next year I was there. I had an interview
with him about every two
What did you think about him as a teacher?
Oh, excellent. Of course he's been gone so long, as young as you are you wouldn't hear anybody speak of him.
No.
Oh, he was an excellent teacher.
I guess the only thing now recently has been this new biography by Ray Allen Billington, who was a student of his also, I guess.
I haven't read that.
It's just been recently. And apparently it talks about him as a teacher too, and how fine he was.
Well, what did he do? What was the kind of thing that you liked especially about his teaching? Just his personal abilities, or
Well, he was a very charming person, and he just had so much more
information on it than he could give to you. You just felt there was
banks and banks back of it. And he had just thousands (well, I reckon
not thousands, but it must have been) of maps and charts and things
showing movement of people, and what proportion were foreigners and what
proportion were old Americans moving West and all of that. And it was
just fascinating to me, because, I mean, it was like having a history
book that had all those maps and
It sounds like he was a very approachable person.
Oh very, yes; he was charming.
Did you do any writing when you were. . . ? Did you start putting together any of your own research?
Oh no. I wrote term papers
Well, I don't know. We had organizations; we had two societies, and sometimes we debated with each other.
What kinds of things did they debate?
Oh gosh, I can't even remember now: some political thing that was up at the time, I'm sure. And there were other kinds of programs. Some people would make readings or whatever.
How many students were at Meredith when you were there?
I should say around between four hundred and five hundred, but quite a
number of them were preps, you see. See, the high schools, you couldn't
go from Kinston and get into Meredith. I barely did; one reason was
because I had one very good teacher in the last year, a very good
English teacher. She was really the only one. The other one made you
write a one-page theme
Are you still in contact with any of the friends you had at Meredith?
Very few of them. When I first left Meredith, whenever I was handy I would go over to commencement. But after I went to Chapel Hill the commencements nearly always came at the same time. And I knew a lot of people coming back for there, you know, and so I kind of got out of the habit of going over. So I really haven't. . . . A few of the people that I knew, but as contacts with Meredith I haven't had a very great deal.
What is the name of the woman history teacher who influenced you so much?
Mary Shannon Smith. She was a Bostonian, and she gave the impression (she didn't say she belonged to the . . . what is it?). . . .
Brahmans, Boston Brahmans?
Proper Bostonian. I'll show you a cover on a paperback book that looks not unlike Miss Smith. And after I learned a little more about the composition of Boston's population I wondered where she got that middle name.
I don't believe that they had forgiven each other enough, gotten friendly enough to name the children for them unless they were kin to them, do you?
No, I don't think so.
No.
Very suspicious.
Was there a YWCA group at Meredith?
Oh mercy yes. My roommate and I, I was president of the student government and she was president of the YWCA. And I was editor of the Annual—see, they had small classes, and a lot of people had to do several jobs. They got to calling our room "the capitol," because I was president of one thing and she of the other main thing.
Who was your roommate?
Gertrude Horne. She married—can't remember her husband's name
now—and lived in Roxboro. I haven't heard from her in two or
three years. Her health wasn't so good the last few times I heard from
her. Her father was a candy manufacturer, and he would send us a barrel
of apples every year when he'd go up in the mountains. And he sent us a
box of candy every now and then, consisting of a box this long, this
wide and this thick
Mainly just the religious. They had prayer meeting every morning, and then they had a meeting every Sunday night.
Did you participate in all of that?
No, not nearly; I went once in a while.
Did they do any interracial work?
No.
Were they interested at all in the industrial problems?
Oh no. They were interested in college.
Not particularly; I don't know of any. You saw what there was to take: "What can I take now?"
Did they have sororities when you were there?
Dear me, no. I told you, we had five Sundays a year off from going to church (Sunday school and church).
Is this when you started hearing about women's suffrage?
No. You had one in connection with my mother. Even those great beginners way back hadn't begun to pipe out then. We never heard hardly anything about it; I can't remember anything particularly.
Anything about women's rights?
I don't remember its being discussed in college.
Was Meredith a very sort of protective environment? Did you have to be chaperoned all the time?
Of course Wake Forest was nearby. But they couldn't have dances on their campus at that time, so they would come to a hotel in Raleigh and have a dance. And the Meredith girls, if they had permission from their mothers, could go to the dance, but they had to have a chaperone, you see. And if they went to any affair (unless it was a relative) they had chaperones.
What about if girls went out together? Did they have to have a
Oh you could go downtown by yourself, yes.
Did you date a lot in college?
Oh dear me, no. I was born an old maid!
Oh yes.
Did you continue to be close to her when you were in college?
Well, she died my senior year in college. But she liked to hear about everything that was going on there, you know.
Was she very happy for you getting a chance to go away to school?
Well, it had just always been so assumed, I don't know whether she had any specific happiness or not. It had just been assumed that I'd go to college.
Did you ever have any contact with or hear about the Settlement House movement or the Women's Trade Union League?
Oh yes, I had heard about it. One friend of mine who lives now in Franklin, Virginia (she was a good friend of mine), we wanted a course in sociology. And the only person there that could teach it was the dullest, I think really the poorest teacher I ever had, not even barring all the ones I had in the little four-months brown, unpainted school—I'll tell you, most of them didn't have what we'd call a high school education, you know. And he was worse than that, although he was one of the very few on the faculty that had a PhD degree: the dullest man in the world. But he was the only one that could teach a course in sociology.
And what was his name?
And it really wasn't a course in sociology; it was a course in social problems. But we didn't know the difference then, so we took it. And you know what he did (don't let the thing record this into it; you won't put it in or anything)? When he came to . . . what's the word, people who have houses and they go to them?
Prostitution?
Prostitution, all that whole spate of problems, that was treated in a
long chapter in the textbook that he had us get. When we approached that
he had to be absent the next time the class met (it met three times a
week, you see). He had to be absent, so we were to study that ourselves.
Now that's the kind of person he was.
Yes, but I don't know whether he has died or not, so I won't give it.
Well, I knew by then that I was going to Radcliffe. I wanted to go study with Mr. Turner, and I wanted to take some more history.
But you didn't go straight there; you went to teach for two years.
Yes.
In Scotland Neck then?
Well, three years, really. No, wait a minute. I taught one
year—and here's an instance of what I said about accidental.
When I came back from Radcliffe, you see, in 1914, school wasn't over
there until the middle of June. When I got back here there wasn't
anything to do but teach, you see. I was sort of looking around, and
this good friend of mine in
What was the teacherage?
The teachers in the public school had a house all of them lived in.
Not like a boarding house?
It was sort of a boarding house, yes—dormitory kind of a thing, you see. And I didn't have to live in that. And then in the meantime I had known Mr. Lyonberry, who had been principal of a preparatory school at Winover. Two of my brothers went there, and then I had known other people who went there, and I had been there to commencements. He was acquainted with me, so he asked me to come up there. Well, I couldn't teach history, which I considered my major. I took some English—well, I had to take a lot of English and history both at Meredith, you see, because there wasn't a great deal else. The science wasn't very strong. And I had taken some English at Radcliffe, because I knew I couldn't get a masters in one year nohow, you know. I had to teach English, I guess it was, because somebody already had the history to teach. So I taught the English—and quoted Kittridge to beat the band! You don't know Kittridge. Do you know the name Kittridge? Do you?
Yes, just the name.
Just vaguely.
He's known even in England. You know the story they tell about his going
over there and going to one of those old libraries at one of the
universities—I don't know which now. He said he wanted some
information
Yes.
And then you came back?
Went in the fall if 1913.
So you graduated from Meredith in the spring of 1913.
Yes.
And that fall you went to Radcliffe. And then you came back in June of 1914.
And taught at Scotland Neck.
For. . . .
Just one year. But I didn't like that. Well, of course, a girl who
graduated from Meredith the next year I was at Radcliffe, she and I both
were new, and the students just really rode you, you know, if you were a
first year teacher. I didn't like that.
Well, what it like to be in a. . . ? That was sort of a small community, wasn't it?
Yes. A lovely community, a lot of perfectly charming people in it. I knew a number of them, because a number of them had gone to Meredith.
But you generally didn't like the experience of the. . . .
Oh, I had some charming little students. I remember two or three little
girls and several boys that were just as bright and sweet and
Was this like a public academy, or was it a private school?
Oh no, no, it was just the town high school.
It was the town high school, OK. Then what did you do the next year?
Well, two years, you see, I stayed at Murfreesboro at—what's the name of the school there?
Chowan?
Chowan.
Chowan. And that was after the Scotland Neck?
Yes.
How did you get the job at Chowan?
Well, as I say I knew Mr. Lyonburg from a contact with him, and somebody told him they thought maybe I would go there.
Then in 1918 you went back to Radcliffe?
Well, I guess it was 1918 wasn't it? Yes, because that was the year of the flu epidemic. No!
Oh, was that 1919?
1919 was one. Well, I've got the dates mixed a little, because I went to. . . . You sure that was the first one? You know there were two years: the first one was terrible, the next one wasn't quite so bad.
I'm trying to think. Edward Kidder Graham of UNC died in one of them; I forget which one it was.
Then the man who took his place died the next year in the next one.
That's right; OK, you're right then. 1918 and 1919 then; I think you're right.
Well, anyway, I went. And I went to Bryn Mawr. I had finished my masters at Radcliffe, you see, that spring.
Wait. I'm sorry, I just want to get it straight. You had finished the masters the first year you were at Radcliffe?
No, because I went that one year and came back and taught, you see, at
Scotland Neck and at Chowan, Murfreesboro. Then when I went back the
next year and I got out. . . . Incidentally, we talk about a lot of it
was accident; it was an accident that I got invited to go to the Bryn
Mawr thing. I wanted to do some statistical comparisons such as Mr.
Turner had been doing, and that was the year that I saw him every week,
you see, or every two weeks—had a conference with him. And he
said, well he didn't know much about sort of doing that statistical
stuff. "But I'll tell you who. You go to see Miss Ann
Besantson." She was working on her PhD and almost had it, and
had done a lot of statistics. And he said, "Go and talk to her
and ask her about how to do this." So I went to see her. And
then that spring (that summer, really) I didn't even graduate at
Radcliffe, because I had to leave to go to Bryn Mawr before
commencement. She had invited me to come. She had been employed to come
down to Bryn Mawr—they had gotten a grant. The name of the
department was the Corolla
So it was almost completely by accident that you went into personnel work?
Yes. And the accident of having Mr. Turner refer me to Miss Besantson. She saw I was interested, so then when she was invited to go down there to take up this. . . .
She asked you to come with her.
You see, at that time not many plants had personnel departments at all. The foreman did the hiring, or the superintendent. And a grand flurry of it had come along, and they were just pleading for people who knew anything about it. And so this course. . . .
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
I wanted to ask you about when you left North Carolina for the first time and went to Radcliffe, what it was like. Was it a big change to go from rural North Carolina to live in Cambridge?
Well, the biggest change was having everybody . . . you would realize they were making you talk to hear you talk.
As a southerner.
I just talked so southern, you see. Radcliffe had very few southern girls in those days. The next time I went (what was I out, three years or two—-I've forgotten). . . .
Three years, I think.
. . . I was in a graduate house then, and there were several southerners. As a matter of fact, when I got back some of them said I talked like a Yankee. And I said, "Well heck, I reckon it's just involuntary self-protection." Because I'd catch them making me talk, you know.
Did you like it in Boston?
Yes, very much. And I went to plays and I went to symphony and everything happening in Boston.
Did you ever think of staying there permanently?
No, not really. I did realize there wasn't anything I could do but teach. I filed with a teachers' thing there, but I never did press it. I just had one notice from them, and by that time I came on back home.
You say people asked you to talk because you were a southerner. How did they react to you as a southerner in Boston?
Well, I was in Cambridge, you see, and it was in a dormitory. And it happened that I was in an unusual situation, because they had just opened a new dormitory. Practically all of us were either graduate students or freshman. And the dean said later that she had wondered what would happen in that combination. But we got along fine. And there were two almost middle-aged (it seemed to me then) women, sisters, that were studying there, and they in particular loved to hear me talk southern.
There was no sense of you being singled out as being different or not as smart? Did they expect you to be somehow very different because you were from the South? Did they take you out as a student?
Oh yes, they took me as a student, but I was a new kind of specimen they
hadn't ever seen before, hadn't been in daily contact with—I
imagine they'd seen a tourist or something, you know. But those two
elderly women (they were elderly to me then—the younger one
was a little older than you, and, you see, I wasn't too far out of
college), by george, they just thought everything I could tell, when I
said something differently from the way they pronounced it or the
emphasis or something. . . . No, they were very friendly and very kind;
they were awfully nice. I didn't have a bit of trouble
What was involved in the course that you took at Bryn Mawr?
Well, it turned out to be a course in personnel management. This woman, Miss Besantson, had charge of it really; one or two others were sort of economic courses, you know. But she farmed us out; I worked in the Winchester Repeating Arms Company for six weeks. Miss Bysanson went up and made the contacts to place all of us, some in Philadelphia. I was in New Haven, and fortunately they put another one with me. And we ran into a woman when we were looking for a room that teachers used (they wanted to sublet it). And the owner of the house and the one who lived downstairs was the dietician at Radcliffe when I was there, and she lived in our hall. So I went right to a friend, you see, there; had a grand time.
What did you do at the Winchester Repeating Arms Company?
I worked on a different machine twice a week. I worked in the drawing
room, and the drawing room has had a different connotation to me ever
since. The drawing room was where they make cases for the cartridge. It
starts off a round of brass, and they cut it, but it's real thick. And
so then they had a machine that drew it (that was the drawing room)
longer and longer every time it went through a different one of these
machines to make the cartridge. And then finally somebody had a machine
that put a shoulder on it, you know. Then finally somebody put the
powder in and sealed it. But there were all different operations. This
drawing, there were about six or seven drawings, and it had to be
annealed (brass if it's been bent, it has to be heated again or it will
break—it will make it brittle—to keep it flexible).
You had a dial and these little rounds (I was running ones about just
right to go on my little finger). And you wiggled your finger
Yes. You see, I didn't tell you about her; you aren't interested in her especially, are you? She was a Nova Scotian who had taught in Nova Scotia. And it was about the time that so many Nova Scotians were coming down to Boston. And she was the eleventh person hired by the Gilette Razor Company.
This was Ann Besantson?
Yes. Pretty soon she was hiring all the new help; it was expanding very
rapidly. I don't know how many others, but the extremes were
What was she getting a PhD in?
Well, in economics, supervising labor.
What were her basic ideas about labor and about personnel, and about scientific management?
Well, of course, scientific management was in its very height right then. That couple (what's their name?) Lillian and somebody Gilbreth, and two or three other people.
Yes, Frank.
She was interested in that, but she'd already seen it from the beginning, you see. As I say, she was the nineteenth person hired by the Gilette Razor Company.
How long did you stay at Bryn Mawr and do all of this work?
Well, by the time we finished the course the war had ended, and so it
wasn't so handy to get jobs. If we had started six months earlier we
would have gotten out and everybody would have been grabbed up as they
came out of the door, you know. As it was we had to wait around. And
finally a Bryn Mawr alumna got acquainted with some of us. She knew this
company that made men's underwear: well, as a matter of fact, they spun
their yarn and also all the way down to putting the buttons on the
shirts and trousers and so on. She knew both of them; it was a Jewish
firm and she was Jewish. They employed about a thousand people, and it
was getting fashionable to set up a personnel department, you know. And
labor turnover was so high it was taking so much of
This is at the Roxford Knitting Mill in Philadelphia?
Roxford Knitting Mill in Philadelphia, yes. And so I went and lived in a boarding house, roomed in one place and ate in another, and took a streetcar down one street and the streetcar back up. That's my closest to being a real town worker, you know. Although I had to go out; I had a driver to take me around looking for workers. By that time people were scarce, you know: everybody was employed in the war, and they hadn't lessened their numbers so much. So they'd go through there. They did have a register of an address and card for them: that's all they had for personnel. And the foreman would look over the names of people who had worked for them; then I'd go at night and visit them to try to get them to come to work. I rode all over Philadelphia.
My word!
You never saw such places as I went into, trying to get them to come. But not very many came. Then I went there in March, I guess it was.
Of 1919?
It must have been '20. Then it began to get so that you just had them
floating in all the time, because there was a little depression there
for a short time. Then Mr. (I started to say his name, but I won't
This was the foreman or the head of the mill?
No, this was the head of it. He gave me as an assistant one of the most competent secretaries in the institution. She was the secretary to the sales manager, and he had so much typing and dictation to take that she had trouble with her arm, and so she wanted