[TAPE 1, SIDE A]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]

JACQUELYN HALL:

Tell me something about your early life: who your parents were and where you grew up.

EULA McGILL:

I was born near Resaca, Georgia on May 15, 1911. My father worked in an ore mine in Sugar Valley, Georgia, which was a short distance from Resaca. And when that mine was worked out (or what they called "played out"), when they'd got all the ore that they could get out economically they shut the mine down. And we moved to Gadsden, Alabama.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Well, let's talk a little bit more about your life in Georgia. You were born outside Nance's Spring, right?

EULA McGILL:

Near Nance's Spring.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Which was what?

EULA McGILL:

It was a big spring where a lot of people in and around there came and got water. It was just kind of like a community spring, but it was on Mr. Bob Nance's land.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And you lived on his land?

EULA McGILL:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Rented a house?

EULA McGILL:

Yes, rented a house.

JACQUELYN HALL:

The area you lived in, was it part of the area that you called the "pocket"?

EULA McGILL:

No, no.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Nance's Spring wasn't in it?

EULA McGILL:

No, the "pocket's" beyond Sugar Valley, about three miles out from Sugar Valley.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Would you describe that area, though?

EULA McGILL:

Well, it's mountainous; now it's made into a national park, but

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at that time people lived in it. As I remember, most people lived in there because they had a big artesian spring in there and it made good whiskey. [laughter] Back in the early days there was a lot of moonshining, whiskey-makers in there.

JACQUELYN HALL:

They ran the whiskey across the state line?

EULA McGILL:

It wasn't much good for farming. Well actually, I imagine it looked pretty much then like it is today, because there's not much area in there (that I can see) that could be farmed because of the terrain.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were people that you knew involved in moonshining?

EULA McGILL:

No, I didn't know them. But my uncles were pretty good drinkers, and I heard of it because they drank.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So your father, then, would walk from Nance's Spring to Sugar Valley to work in the ore mine?

EULA McGILL:

I assume he walked; I don't know of any other way he could have gotten there. And it's not a bad walk; I could walk it, you know. There was a dirt road through there.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You moved to Resaca so he could be nearer to his work?

EULA McGILL:

We left Resaca and moved over in near Sugar Valley sometime after I was born.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But you moved first from Nance's Spring then to Resaca, and then from Resaca to the mine?

EULA McGILL:

No, I call it Resaca because that's the post office, see; I say Resaca because Nance's Spring's in that Resaca area. And Resaca is just a little bitty place—you know, a grocery store and a mill and a post office and a few houses. Just a small place.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Oh I see, OK. So you moved to Sugar Valley, yes.

EULA McGILL:

Yes, shortly after I was born we moved over to Sugar Valley to be a little nearer. Now from Sugar Valley up to the mine the men rode what they called the "dummy line:" it was a little old dinky engine with a car that they used to transport stuff from Sugar Valley up to the mine, and the men rode this car. I was on it one time as a kid, I remember. And it always was jumping the track, and the men'd have to get out and put it back on. But the mine used it primarily to transport things from down at the depot or Sugar Valley up to the mine area.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And then your mother got a job in the night boarding house, is that right?

EULA McGILL:

Momma? Yes, Momma run the night boarding house, and we lived in there for a while.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did she do?

EULA McGILL:

She cooked at night the midnight meal for the men who worked the night shift. They'd come out to eat.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did she also raise her own food?

EULA McGILL:

I don't remember at that particular time whether there was any room for a garden or not in that area.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you have cows, chickens, things like that?

EULA McGILL:

Not then, no: bought everything from the commissary that we needed.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Do you remember what your father did in the ore mine?

EULA McGILL:

No, I don't. He probably did maintenance work because of the nature of his work—he was a carpenter. And I think he was what we would call a jack-leg electrician. I think he worked as maintenance, because that's what

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he'd mostly done (I mean later); I assume that's what he was doing then.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Do you remember that mine? I mean, do you remember how it was?

EULA McGILL:

I can remember in my mind; I can see how it looked with the steamshovels digging out the side of the mountain. Big steamshovels dug up the ore and loaded it onto the cars and brought it into what they called the washer, where it was washed. It was all right out in the open, right near the area where, I guess, there was a dozen houses.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Who did the washing?

EULA McGILL:

I remember seeing young twelve and fourteen year old boys sitting by this belt; they'd look for rocks and things and throw them out before it went into the crusher.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did any women work there?

EULA McGILL:

No, no women worked around there.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When did you start to school?

EULA McGILL:

My first year at school was there. I don't remember whether they just allowed me to come or whether I was actually enrolled in school. But I did go to the little old school there that was for these children, the people who worked in the mine.

JACQUELYN HALL:

The school was just for the children that worked in the mine?

EULA McGILL:

Or ones who lived in that area.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You were just four years old, though.

EULA McGILL:

Yes, I was between four and five years old. My sister went, and I may have just gone along because she went. They used to be not too strict about the younger children coming. But I did go to school there, because I remember the first poem [laughter] I ever recited from memory was there: it was a Christmas. . . .

JACQUELYN HALL:

Do you remember anything about the school?

EULA McGILL:

Yes, an old one-room schoolhouse. In north Georgia we used to pick up (I was trying to think of what this was the other day), us kids near the school picked up . . . it looked like diamonds. What are they called? Quartz?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Yes.

EULA McGILL:

And there were a lot of them; it must have been pertaining to the ore and the type of ground. The kids would say: "Oh, if you get a shoe-box full of these you can send them off and get you a watch." You know, the fancies of kids! We used to gather them at recess and after school, and dig for these shiney little rocks.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Right. I remember we used to dig for sassafras roots.

EULA McGILL:

Well we did; my mother was a great sassafras drinker. And every spring we had to have sassafras along with our poke salad (that was a wild green). The mountain people particularly gathered a lot of wild greens to supplement their diet, because most people back in those days lived mostly on cornbread and peas. My mother used to enjoy going into the mountains and picking the wild greens. They have a thing called (and I like it today—they cultivate it, by the way, in Tennessee and Virginia) highland creeces. Oldtimers called them creecy-greens.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Never heard of them.

EULA McGILL:

I don't know if you've read these Foxfire books now; well, it speaks of all those greens that my mother. . . . I bought all of the books so my grandchildren would have them, because I learned about them by eating them when I was a kid. My mother knew all those wild greens: dandelion, unknown and lamb's quarter, poke salad, creecy-greens as well as watercress.

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We always ate watercress; it grew a lot up there. A lot of people had pellagra because of their diet. And in fact, you may be interested to know that it was only in the early fifties (I think; I believe it was in the early fifties) that Georgia quit issuing yeast. For years the government, whether it was federal government or state government, issued yeast to supplement people who did not get enough green vegetables—especially the people in the hills who couldn't preserve or didn't grow or didn't get enough green vegetables. We always had it: winter greens (we'd go to the wild greens). We used to dry green beans; in Tennessee they called them shuck beans, in north Georgia they called them leather britches. You take the green bean and you string it on a string and you hang it up to dry. Then in the winter you take it down and soak it overnight in water and cook it, and it's almost just like it was picked out of the garden like green beans. Because people didn't have canning facilities and cans to can in too much. . . . My mother always saw to it that we had a fairly balanced diet, and didn't just rely on the corn meal. In fact, my dad never did like corn bread; we always managed to have flour some way or other, but there was a lot of people that didn't.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Well, tell me about your grandparents, your father's family.

EULA McGILL:

Very little I know. Most of what I know is from what I heard from my sister talking [Clara Pringle], because, as I say, we left that area when I was five years old. And I don't suppose I went back for any length of time until years later.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But your grandfather was from Tennessee?

EULA McGILL:

Yes, my grandfather.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Your paternal grandfather?

EULA McGILL:

Yes, was from Tennessee. And my grandmother got acquainted

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with him when he served in the Union army.

JACQUELYN HALL:

She was from Dalton?

EULA McGILL:

Dalton, Georgia.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But you never knew that grandfather?

EULA McGILL:

No, no, because he passed away when my father and his brothers and his one sister were real young. And my grandmother came back there because she had no way to provide. And my father as a young man went to work on the farm with his cousin and lived with his uncle and farmed. His oldest brother worked on the railroad, and he must have went to work quite young. And he lost a leg on the railroad.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Your father did?

EULA McGILL:

No, my uncle; my father never worked on the railroad.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Right.

EULA McGILL:

Then later he cooked. You know these camp cars, they called them? After he lost his leg he cooked for the crew on these work cars; you know, they slept and ate on the cars, and went up and down repairing the track for a certain distance. Then he later opened a restaurant in Dalton, Georgia.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What was your grandfather's name?

EULA McGILL:

I don't know my grandfather McGill's name; if I ever knew I have forgotten it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What about your grandmother McGill?

EULA McGILL:

My grandmother, her name was Nancy Elizabeth Loner, L-o-n-e-r.

JACQUELYN HALL:

OK, so your grandfather died and your grandmother came back to be with her people in Georgia; and your father went to live with who?

EULA McGILL:

Luke Loner.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Luke Loner? Did he have to quit school young to do that work? Or do you know when he quit school?

EULA McGILL:

I don't know, no. Then he had a younger brother Robert who stayed in Tennessee (or if he came back to Georgia he went back to Tennessee) with some of the relatives there. I believe he stayed with a cousin called Tommy McGill around Gray, Tennessee.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Is that when your father learned carpentry? How did he learn carpentry? Do you know?

EULA McGILL:

Well, he learned carpentry by learning from some worker, or apprenticing to someone else. He built barns and houses. He always worked as a carpenter, to my knowledge. I remember, he told me one time about early life, getting him a job in the cotton mill in Dalton. I know he was laughing and talking about the language that people used [laughter] in the mills. He got him a job in there and he didn't like it; my dad just didn't like to be inside. And he didn't last in there very long; he didn't like it. And he was laughing and telling me about how the people talked. If they were going to be out the next day, [laughter] he said they'd say, "I'm going to st'out tomorrow." They didn't say "stay out;" he'd laugh about some of the language people used in the mills, you know.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did he see cotton mill work or people who worked in cotton mills as being not as well accepted?

EULA McGILL:

Well, no, I don't think that; my father just didn't like it—the lint and all got to him. Then I think he tried briefly coal mining in Tennessee a little bit. And he told me then that he couldn't stand being closed in. He told me he got him a job one time and tried to work in the mines with one of his cousins; and he said you had to lay in water. He said the

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mines were very bad. He didn't like that; he couldn't stand that, so he became a carpenter and went through life as a carpenter.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What about your mother's family?

EULA McGILL:

I don't know too much about them. My mother's father was John Wilson, and my grandmother died before I was born (my grandmother Wilson).

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did they do for a living?

EULA McGILL:

Farmed, yes; my grandfather was a farmer, a very good farmer. Had what we called a little bit of "bottom land"; people in the mountains thought that if they had a little bit of bottom land they were a little better off than the people who had to farm the hillside. He had a farm laying right in there between Resaca post office and Nance's Spring, on each side of the railroad. And my mother and her brothers (back then the trains burned wood, when she was growing up), unknown they used to cut wood and sell it to the railroad. They'd stop at Resaca and get wood for the engine. And they used to help supplement their income by what they called "cutting cord wood" for the railroad.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Her parents were part Cherokee, weren't they?

EULA McGILL:

Yes, both of them.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Both her parents?

EULA McGILL:

Descended from Cherokee indians.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Do you remember them talking about that?

EULA McGILL:

My mother did; she was very proud of it. She always liked to refer back; every chance she got she'd tell people that she was part Cherokee Indian [laughter]. She was proud of it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why was that?

EULA McGILL:

I don't know; she just felt like, I reckon, that she was different

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from other people, and she was proud of it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How many children did your maternal grandmother have? How many brothers and sisters did your mother have?

EULA McGILL:

Twelve—no, there weren't twelve. Jess, Charlie, Doc, Rena, and the one that died, Momma and Aunt Mae.

JACQUELYN HALL:

A lot of children, then.

EULA McGILL:

Seven. Her oldest brother Jess had twelve. Florence, eight! I'm forgetting them. Florence is the only one remaining alive now.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What about your mother's education?

EULA McGILL:

She had no education; none of them ever went to school.

JACQUELYN HALL:

None of her brothers or sisters?

EULA McGILL:

Never, except the younger ones. Aunt Florence had a fairly good. . . . I don't even know if she finished grammar school or not. She and Aunt Rena were the only ones that I remember could even read and write. Even Uncle Charlie, who was younger than Momma. . . . If there were any schools around there when Momma and them were growing, I never heard of it. A lot of times they'd have a school in a church, you know, in the winter months, because the school had to let out when the kids had to farm. It was not a nine months' schoolterm, even back then around in the rural area up there. And most of the people worked on the farm and they weren't encouraged to go to school, unfortunately.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did your mother work in the fields?

EULA McGILL:

Yes, she liked it. As long as she lived she always liked the outside.

JACQUELYN HALL:

She didn't work inside, do the housework?

EULA McGILL:

No.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did all the kids work?

EULA McGILL:

Yes, all the kids had to help out and work. Momma, though, was the only girl that worked in the field. She preferred it that way. Aunt Mae was the housekeeper, and Aunt Mae was older. And, of course, the other girls were younger. And when my grandmother passed away my mother had married, at the age of seventeen, and the unmarried children and my grandfather came and lived . . . or, rather, my father and mother moved in the house with my grandfather and looked after the younger children until they married and left the home.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And so they sent the younger children to school, the younger brothers and sisters?

EULA McGILL:

Yes. The two younger sisters, Aunt Florence and Aunt Rena, they did get to go to school pretty much.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did your mother feel about not being able to read and write? Was she self-conscious about that?

EULA McGILL:

No, she wasn't. I think she would love to have known how, but she was very clever. Anything she wanted to know she asked my Dad. My Dad read to her an awful lot.

JACQUELYN HALL:

He read out loud to her from books?

EULA McGILL:

Yes, the Bible—both of them were very religious and attended church. Anything she wanted to know she asked Poppa—very quietly [laughter]. She was very clever about it; you never would have known that Momma couldn't read and write if you had met up with her, the way she talked. Of course, radio later on helped her, and she loved television; it had just been invented or became available just before she died, but she really enjoyed it, because she loved to know. And she listened to everything on it; she always had the

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radio going.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did your father ever try to teach her to?

EULA McGILL:

No, and I've often wondered about that. And I'm ashamed of myself today. Maybe when I was going to school, a lot of times it was just me and her at home alone; I could have probably helped her. Maybe I was too embarrassed, or maybe I didn't want to embarrass her by asking her if I could teach her.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Right. Do you know when your mother and father were born?

EULA McGILL:

I'd have to look up; we've got an old family Bible that's got all that in it, but I swear I can't remember. Let's see: Momma died when she was sixty-eight.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When was that?

EULA McGILL:

I believe she died in '55. Poppa was sixty-three, and he died in 1946.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What were your father and mother's names?

EULA McGILL:

Momma's name was Mary Rachael Sue Ann, and Poppa was Joseph Hamilton.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Joseph Hamilton McGill. Now how many kids did they have?

EULA McGILL:

Two, my sister and I; my older sister, seven years older.

JACQUELYN HALL:

She was born in 1905?

EULA McGILL:

Yes, I guess so.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And you were born in 1911.

EULA McGILL:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Your mother only had the two children then? But she raised her. . . .

EULA McGILL:

Oh, we had from time to time cousins living with us, because my mother's oldest brother passed away and he had twelve children. And my

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aunt couldn't support them all, had no way—although my grandmother stayed with her most of the time (and my grandmother had a pension from the federal government by my grandfather being a Union soldier) and helped out. But they couldn't no way supply enough. So they moved to Dalton, where the oldest girls went to work in the mill, in the cotton mill. Different relatives took the younger cousins who were not able to work; except there's two that they put in a girls' school, like an orphanage. So we always had some of the relatives. And then later on my mother had a brother who mysteriously disappeared (he had worked on the railroad), and his wife and children came and stayed with us. And then she went to Chattanooga and got a job in a hosiery mill in Chattanooga, Tennessee. They lived with us at the time we were in Gadsden, Alabama. All of these cousins came and lived with us when we were in Gadsden, Alabama; see, we left Georgia when I was five, and my uncle didn't die until after then (my mother's oldest brother).

JACQUELYN HALL:

Oh I see, they came down to Gadsden.

EULA McGILL:

Yes, they lived in Gadsden and went to school—stayed with us and went to school.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did your father read to you when you were a kid?

EULA McGILL:

No, seems like I've been reading all my life.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Really? Do you remember when you started reading?

EULA McGILL:

No, but I just can't remember when I couldn't read.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But you don't remember his reading out loud?

EULA McGILL:

No. But he read to Momma; he'd read her the newspaper. We always took a newspaper; I don't even remember when we ever didn't have a newspaper come into the house. When he was short Poppa got ahold of books. I remember an old blue-backed speller (and we still have it; my sister still

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has it), what was known as the blue-backed speller. It was a standard for people who went to school and learned back in those days; it was a very standard book.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What do you remember about your childhood in Sugar Valley?

EULA McGILL:

Very little. Yes, I can remember I was about four years old, maybe three and a half. . . . I'm just guessing, because we moved to Alabama when I was five. And since then I remember fairly well, because I was very sick the first winter me moved to Gadsden (I had pneumonia and measles, and was very sick). And from then on I can remember vividly.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Now how did you father decide to move to Gadsden?

EULA McGILL:

Well there was no work.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But how did he find a job there? Did he have relatives already there?

EULA McGILL:

My uncle first went there, my mother's brother Charlie, and went to work for Gulf State Steel Company.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So he helped your father get a job there, or told him something?

EULA McGILL:

Well, he told him he might get. . . . So we went down and he went to work, just before World War I.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And what exactly did he do for Gulf State Steel Company?

EULA McGILL:

He was a carpenter, maintenance, you know. You know those blast furnaces then (I don't know if they have to now, they may have got some changes in the way they smelt the ore), when they'd burn out inside, to be relined the carpenters had to go in there and build forms. And then they had to repair tressles and keep the tracks around in the plant, in the steel mills. Most steel mills have train tracks through there to take the ore in. Well, just a lot of carpentry work has to go on around a steel mill.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was building the forms dangerous work?

EULA McGILL:

Well, it could be. I remember one night (Poppa was working nights) he went into the furnace to start, and evidently they hadn't cooled down enough. And someone turned some steam on, and he was pretty badly hurt. They brought him out, and he had a scar on his head; it looked like when the doctor sewed it up he left coal dust, and he had a black mark across there. Evidently he didn't clean it; that's what I thought, that maybe they didn't clean it good enough when they sewed it up.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you go to school then in Gadsden?

EULA McGILL:

Yes, and I was frightened—we all were. I can remember, every time there was an accident in the steel plant they'd blow the whistle. A lot of people back in those days did not have time clocks in their homes, and everything then blew a whistle for starting time: the textile mill did. They'd blow a whistle for a certain length of time and let you know you had so much time to get there; then the whistle blew for work time. Then it blew for lunch and for coming back after lunch, and at quitting time. But if the whistle blew other than that we knew there had been an accident, and it used to frighten me. I'd be in school and I'd hear that whistle, and it used to frighten me to death, because you heard it a lot. But that was the only time my father was ever injured.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You started to school, then, in Gadsden? I mean, you kept on to school in Gadsden?

EULA McGILL:

Yes, that's right.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What do you remember about going to school? What was the school like then?

EULA McGILL:

Oh, it was a very good school, and the land was donated by

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the Dwight Mills; it was called Dwight School. And it was in the textile village; it was the only school that they had there. Now this part of Gadsden's called Alabama City. Later on they built another school over near the steel plant called Forest—no, that wasn't called Forest School; I don't know what . . . . Later on they built one called Forest School; but I never went to the school (one of my cousins who lived with us did) because it only went to the fifth grade. It was mainly for the younger children who wouldn't have so far to walk to Dwight School, which went. . . . At the time I first began it went through the seventh grade; then we changed over and had a junior high. And when the school system changed, that's when we started junior high and then went over to senior high. When I first entered school you had grammar school and high school; you went through the seventh grade, then you entered high school. But during the time I was going to school we went into a junior high school, and they built a junior high school right near the Dwight Mill. I went to the junior high school when I completed it over in the Dwight Mill. And it was a huge building: it was three stories high. We had a very good school. The physical building had a big fence around it. Boys and girls were kept separated; the boys had to be on one side of the playyard, and the girls on the other. We had to clean those yards; we had to pick up the paper (we had big barrels). We were not to throw any paper down. And every so often we cleaned those schoolyards, kept those schoolyards clean. We had a janitor, but that was part of the routine, that we cleaned the schoolyeards. It was a beautiful place: it had trees all around.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you go to high school?

EULA McGILL:

I sure did, and I enjoyed it. We never resented having to clean up, because we were proud of it. [Interruption]

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you live in the mill village?

EULA McGILL:

No. First we lived in a rented house, then we lived in a steel plant house in the steel plant village—company-owned house. My Dad liked to be close to work; we moved within two blocks of the gate he had to go in to work.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But the kids from the steel village and from the mill village all went to school together at Dwight School?

EULA McGILL:

Yes, yes. That was the only school.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you feel a difference between the different kinds of kids? And were there different heirarchies or class at all?

EULA McGILL:

No, no. We all went to school together. Frankly, I can only remember two students in my class that came from the mills. And as I think back now I just wonder if they didn't go to school, or why I can only remember two children that went to school in my class. And of course I had a cousin, Kathleen Loner, whose father was a superintendent of the mill, and my grandmother's nephew. She was a grade ahead of me, and they lived in a big house where the supervision of the mill had a separate place in the village that they lived. And it was right up on the hill near the school.

JACQUELYN HALL:

They had a nicer house, then?

EULA McGILL:

Yes. [laughter] The superintendent had the best house, and then the next guy down; and when you went into the regular what we called "straw bosses," they lived in the village, but usually a better house. They had about five houses on this hill where the top management lived.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were there some kids in the school that were better off than others?

EULA McGILL:

Oh yes. In my class there was Sue Frances Shaddix, whose

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father was the company doctor for the steel plant. (And I just read in the paper just the other day where he'd passed away; he was close to ninety years old. He passed away just before Christmas.) And her mother had studied for the opera. And Sue Frances and I were very good friends; in fact, we used to play after school together, because their home wasn't very far from ours. We'd walk home from school. Then back then people who owned stores were considered to be a little better off financially. And Mabel Putman's father ran a store, and she was a good friend. Then I had another good friend (she's the one that talked me into going to work in the mill with her) Dorothy Stringer. She was an orphan; she and her brother were orphans. Her sister's husband worked in the steel plant, but her sister (to help supplement) worked in the store—dry goods store, they called it then (sold piece goods and things like that).

JACQUELYN HALL:

So you really played with children from all different. . . .

EULA McGILL:

That's right. We always managed to sit close together in class, Mabel and Sue Frances. Mabel and Sue Frances didn't get along too good, for some reason or another; I think their mothers clashed and were a little bit jealous of each other. I was closer to Sue Frances than I was Mabel, because she was kind of a timid, shy person and I always'd kind of be protective of Sue Frances. Then I had two very good friends, Italian girls who lived near us that went to school with us; their fathers worked in the mill.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were there blacks working in this steel mill?

EULA McGILL:

Yes, some blacks, not many.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Men or women?

EULA McGILL:

During World War I, yes, there were some black women working

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there for a while, but I didn't see them any more after the war.

JACQUELYN HALL:

They were actually doing. . . ?

EULA McGILL:

Yes, because they'd come out, they were. . . . In the summer time I used to take my father's lunch to the plant gate, and he'd come out and get it; sometimes he'd come out and sit down on the grass and eat. My mother'd always taken him to the plant gate a hot meal at noon, and in the summer I took it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What about the mill?

EULA McGILL:

Cotton mill?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Yes. Did people bring lunches up to people who worked in the mill?

EULA McGILL:

I don't know, because they worked a little different than the . . . . That's when they worked twelve hour day they had a lunch period, but they stopped off at noon.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I remember you talking about passing the mill walking to school, and seeing the. . . .

EULA McGILL:

. . . The older children bringing the little children out. Yes, the mothers would come out on the grass and nurse the babies.

JACQUELYN HALL:

At a certain time in the day?

EULA McGILL:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When?

EULA McGILL:

As I remember it they'd come out at ten and two. I'd see that mostly in the summer, because I had a friend who lived in the cotton mill village and in the summertime I used to visit her. The mill was run by steam and it had a big lake, and she and I used to sit on the side of that lake and read books. That's when I remember mainly seeing these women come out and sit out on the grass to nurse the babies.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Later on did that custom cease, when you were working in the mill?

EULA McGILL:

I don't know; oh no, it didn't happen, I didn't see it. I worked nights; I only worked a very short time on day time. The boss tricked me. He came around one day and asked me whether I'd work nights for thirty days and he'd put me back on the day shift. He told me a lie; I never did get back on days [laughter]. And I hated it; I hated that night work. But I worked the rest of my time at night.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did you like in school? What interested you?

EULA McGILL:

Everything.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did you want to be when you grew up?

EULA McGILL:

Never thought about it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You never did?

EULA McGILL:

No.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you have any sense of your parents' wanting you to be something?

EULA McGILL:

No, no.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But they were clear about wanting you to go to school?

EULA McGILL:

Oh yes, yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did they want you to finish high school?

EULA McGILL:

Yes. It was the worst thing that ever happened when Poppa wasn't able to let me go on to school.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What about your sister? Did she go to school?

EULA McGILL:

She never cared too much about it. She never read. She's just different from me. She just wanted to quit school and go to work, when she didn't really have to. She just didn't like school; she quit school and went to work in the hosiery mill when she was fourteen. But I would like

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to have gone on to school; I was unable to because of the financial situation.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So when did you first become aware of unions and union activity?

EULA McGILL:

Oh, when I was about seven years old, when the activity started around Gadsden during World War I. There was quite a bit of union activity. My mother went to all the union rallies when she heard of them; we'd get on the street car and go.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You mean not even whether your father was involved or not?

EULA McGILL:

My father had to work; he never was off during the times we'd have these little rallies, unless it was on Saturday or Sunday. He didn't dare go; if he was seen there, you know, he was likely to get fired, because most of the people who went were people who were already in the unions. There were no laws in those days, no protective laws whatsoever; you had no chance. And if you valued your job, why, you were very careful. It had to be done very quietly. But some of the men who had, you know, already obtained recognition, they attended.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What kind of organizing was going on around Gadsden during the war?

EULA McGILL:

The Textile Workers were organizing the Dwight Mills; the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers were trying to organize the Gulf State Steel; and the Iron Molders and the Founders; and I don't know what union it was (I assume it was the Car Repairmen) in what we called the car works. There was a plant in Gadsden that made railroad freight cars (boxcars, they were called), and it was called the car works. There were two stove foundaries, one in Attalla and one in Gadsden. Now unknown Alabama City and Gadsden is all Gadsden now, but at that time they were separate. Where we lived was considered Alabama City, and when we

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say Gadsden today we really speak of Gadsden. But at that time Gadsden and Alabama City and Attalla were different; had their own municipalities. But Alabama City and Gadsden have been consolidated now for years.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was your sister involved in the hosiery union?

EULA McGILL:

Yes, she joined at the hosiery mill. Then she later worked in an overall plant there for a while that was unionized. But she was a knitter; they made socks, not full-fashion hosiery. There's a lot of difference in full-fashion knitting and seamless knitting. Back then all the fashionable hose had seams.

[TAPE 1, SIDE B]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]

EULA McGILL:

She was active mainly because the man that she was going with was very active in organizing in the car works. Mainly, I think, it was because of his interest that she had interest, because later she seemed to lose all interest in unions—in fact, tried to discourage me when I first joined. It was actually a fear of me losing my job, I guess. She was the only one in the whole family that tried to discourage me from it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But her boyfriend was very. . . ?

EULA McGILL:

At that time, yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What about your father?

EULA McGILL:

Well, he was active to an extent, but they never got going as good in the steel mills at that time as they did some other places. For some reason or other they just couldn't get enough interest. My father joined, because I remember the first time that we had a discussion in the house. As I remember, we came in; my mother had been to a Labor Day rally (had a big barbacue and a parade and speaking, and we had been there). I guess it was the first time I'd really paid attention to the speaking.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What were the Labor Day parades like? Could you tell me a little bit more about the parades?

EULA McGILL:

Oh yes, they were very elaborate, as I remember it—might not be considered elaborate today. But they'd have flat-bed trucks, and like if a man was a blacksmith he'd be up there doing his job on this truck. And if somebody'd have a sewing machine or a knitting machine. . . . The bricklayers would be laying brick, and the carpenters hammering—on each float.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were there women on the floats?

EULA McGILL:

Oh, there were a few women, because the textile, as I said. . . . The mill came out on strike during that, because they lost the strike and lost out entirely in the Dwight Mill. We had a neighbor that was very active in that strike. There were some women in the overall factory, which had a union contract. And I can't remember, it didn't last very long; that overall plant closed down and went out of business right after the boom. And most of the unions that were organized in the foundaries and in the mills (well, they never got a contract in Dwight Mill, but in the hosiery mill and in the overall factory) right after the war was over and, I guess, the labor supply got a little more plentiful, the companies were able to defeat the unions, and they lost out. And they didn't revive up until in the thirties.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But you came back from a Labor Day parade?

EULA McGILL:

Yes, we came back in the afternoon and were eating supper, and I remember very distinctly saying, "Well Poppa, what is a union?" And he said, "Well, I'll tell you: a union is an organization of people getting together to try to better their working conditions. Now," he said, "I carry a union card, but don't tell anybody, because the union's not recognized where I work and I'd lose my job." And I never told anyone. He told me, I remember

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very distinctly, "All a person has to sell is their labor, and you ought to try to get the most for it." And he said, "As long as anybody in this world's got more than you've got, try to get some of it." At this particular time I remember it (and it impressed me, and I repeat it over and over), he said, "If a person lives in this world without trying to make it a better place to live in he's not living, he's just taking up space." [laughter] It stuck to me all through the years. And I agree with him.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So you were very much aware of unions, and saw unions as a good thing, and admired your father for being involved in the unions very young?

EULA McGILL:

Yes, and admired this man my sister went with. He was a good bit older than her, and he was a big influence on me too at that time because of his activity. He was very much in the front; in fact, they had a warrant out for his arrest and he had to leave the state. And he never came back [laughter] to Alabama to work anymore.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did they think he had done? What was he accused of doing?

EULA McGILL:

Well, there was some dynamite in the car works office, I suppose, that went off and destroyed part of the office. And he was among the ones that they had warrants out for, accusing them of being involved.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And he left the state?

EULA McGILL:

He left to avoid prosecution; and he never came back to work in Alabama again, because in the thirties when we started organizing around he was still active in the union, in the railroad brotherhoods. He went to work out of Jacksonville, Florida for Seaboard Railroad. And he came to Birmingham one time on a meeting, during the time we were having it, and he came out to see us. Of course at that time I was very involved in trying to organize textiles.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did he realize he had had such an influence on you?

EULA McGILL:

Oh yes. Then I saw him later on while I was in Jacksonville one time, and I called him and went out to his home and had supper with him.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What was his name?

EULA McGILL:

Lelus Waddell—L-e-l-u-s Waddell.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So how did you happen to start your first job?

EULA McGILL:

Well, this friend of mine Dorothy Stringer, they were having (her sister, who of course had children, and she had her mother-in-law there, and Dorothy and her brother lived there), they were having a pretty hard time making ends meet, and Dorothy felt the need to try to help supplement the income so she was going to get her a job in the mill during the summer. And she talked me into going up. Dorothy was about a year older than I was, maybe two, and I was only fourteen (big for my age). They didn't question you back then if you told them you were. . . . Well, if you were sixteen, to go to work you had to have a school permit to prove you were sixteen, so I told them I was seventeen, so I'd avoid having to prove it—because I couldn't prove it, I was only fourteen.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were there a lot of people working in the mills at fourteen?

EULA McGILL:

I guess so. I know I did; they never questioned it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But the mill required a school permit?

EULA McGILL:

If you were sixteen you had to prove you were sixteen. [laughter] They never asked you to prove it if you said you were seventeen. So we knew all the tricks.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did your parents feel about your going to work that summer?

EULA McGILL:

Well, Poppa never did want me particularly to work in a textile mill, I guess because of that first experience he had in one. And he swore

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up and down that I'd never work in it. Well, I got the job while he was out of town on a construction job, and I was able to outtalk my mother.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was she against you working there too?

EULA McGILL:

Well, not as much as my father was. He'd make statements that no child of his would ever work in a cotton mill.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why was that?

EULA McGILL:

I don't know, I guess that first experience. He just thought it was unhealthy. Well, a lot of cotton mill workers back in those days were looked down on; a lot of good people, but they were just looked down on for some reason or another in those areas where there weren't many textile. . . . I don't know why. Maybe it was because so many of the kids worked in there and never got an education; they seemed to be looked down on if they weren't people who wanted to do better. I don't know, people just thought if you worked in a textile mill that there wasn't much to you.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I wonder what he wanted you to do?

EULA McGILL:

I have no idea.

JACQUELYN HALL:

He thought you would get married and not work?

EULA McGILL:

No, they threw a fit when my sister got married. I don't know; I reckon they thought we'd stay home the rest of our lives. I mean, they didn't want my sister to marry, and she married when she was eighteen.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why didn't they want her to marry?

EULA McGILL:

I don't know; I was only eleven years old at the time, and I know that they didn't. I guess they thought she was maybe too young, I don't know—although my mother was married at seventeen. But people married earlier, I guess, back then.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Exactly how did you get the job then? The two of you just. . . ?

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You had an in, didn't you, because of your cousin?

EULA McGILL:

Yes, you almost had to, yes. No, not with my cousin who was a superintendent, because I never did let him know who I was.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How could he not know who you were?

EULA McGILL:

Well, you see, my grandmother passed away, and there for several years we didn't have no. . . . He used to come to our house and visit when my grandmother came to visit. Well, we were separate from them; they lived on one side of town and we lived the other. And since then I grew up. He used to come through the mill and stand and look at me, and I think he was wondering if he didn't know me. But I'd go on just like I didn't see him.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why didn't you want to let him see you?

EULA McGILL:

I don't know, I just don't have no idea; I guess I didn't want the people to know that . . . or I was afraid maybe he'd know how old I was, and that I shouldn't really be in there. Well I remember, he used to come through—well, he didn't come through much because he was superintendent (you know, the head man there)—and, my God, I guess there were two thousand people who worked there, you know, with two shifts. It was a huge place: from the gate of the mill to my station where I went to work, it was two blocks. It was a huge mill.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Well, how did you get the job then?

EULA McGILL:

Dorothy knew somebody, and she arranged for us to get the job.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And what did you do, exactly?

EULA McGILL:

Spin the yarn. You know, it goes through carding, and then it runs in what they called warping (and it's coming like a roll of cotton onto a spool). Then it comes through this bunch of rollers and it's twisted into yarn. I have to say I wasn't very good at it; I never did like it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did you learn your job? How were you trained?

EULA McGILL:

They would put you with someone for a day or two, and then they'd just put you out there on your own.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Just for a couple of days? That's all the time it took to learn?

EULA McGILL:

To show you how. They didn't pay you.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You weren't paid while you were learning?

EULA McGILL:

They paid you when they considered you sufficiently trained to go on the payroll. And in my case I worked six weeks before they started paying me, and Dorothy did too. And for the first fifty-six hours of work I got $3.16, but we had to pay for ice. They charged us ten cents a week for ice. I never had no ice water, but we had to pay ten cents a week (they took it out of our paycheck) to buy ice. Had a big thing up here with coils, and they put the ice in there, and it was supposed to run out and give us ice water. Well, you had to take glasses to drink in if you drank, or a lot of times you'd fold up paper and drink out of it. They didn't have fountains; it came out in a spigot. But I never had no ice water, because they never had any ice in there; I never saw any ice water, but we paid a dime a week for ice. And a penny out of every dollar we made went for the company doctor; whether we used him or not we had to pay for the company doctor. I never used him, but I paid a penny. So I had $3.03 left.

JACQUELYN HALL:

$3.03. A week?

EULA McGILL:

Yes, I made $3.16 for the first week they paid me; I paid a dime for ice and three cents.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How much did you make after that first week?

EULA McGILL:

Well, three or four dollars. They paid you so much an hour (you didn't get paid piecework), so I don't remember making any more than

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that until. . . . Along in the winter after I went to work in the summer, during that time the people who had donated the land to build this mill had it stipulated that that mill had to operate thirty years without being closed down for as much as thirty days.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Now how could they make a stipulation like that?

EULA McGILL:

Well, I assume to assure that there would be employment there. During that first time I worked there the thirty years was up and the mill closed down and retooled. It was down for a good long while.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Who donated the land?

EULA McGILL:

The Agricola family. It was closed down (I forget) over thirty days; it was closed down a pretty good while.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So you were just all laid off and not paid?

EULA McGILL:

Yes. No one worked, except maybe people in there setting up machinery and stuff. And it was retooled. Now when we left there to go out it was the boom years (about 1928), and I had gotten up to $18. a week, and that was an unheard of amount.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Eighteen dollars a week?

EULA McGILL:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Now this was about 1925?

EULA McGILL:

No, no; I went to work there in '25.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How long did you work in that first period?

EULA McGILL:

I guess a couple of years, yes, because it was during the time there that thirty years was up. And they shut the mill down, and it actually changed hands; they brought in new management. My Uncle Jim lost his job with the company. They brought in an entirely new set-up—I mean, top management. A lot of the supervisors in the plant stayed on, because the supervisor I

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worked for did, who was the uncle of one of my best friends—his name was Osko Cochrane. And I can't remember that old man's name that came down as superintendent. But when I went in to work the first day, I went in and I saw the change, and the work was different from what I had. . . .

JACQUELYN HALL:

Now how had it changed?

EULA McGILL:

Well, the type of yarn. You see, I had been working on what we called "big yarn" that went to the warpers, and that was easier for me to do. Well, when I went back in there it was small yarn, and we had four bobbins up here that fed in, where I used to have one up here and one down here. I now had two up here and two down here that fed in to make the finer yarn. And it was going to be harder for me to do, I saw that. So I asked what they were going to pay; and they had cut us down to $7.50 a week.

JACQUELYN HALL:

From $18. down to $7.50?

EULA McGILL:

For twelve hours of work, sixty hours a week. See, you didn't even stop to eat.

JACQUELYN HALL:

No lunch?

EULA McGILL:

At night no stopping off to eat; you worked six to six (six o'clock at night to six in the morning). You ate on the run.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Any breaks at all?

EULA McGILL:

No breaks. So when he told me that I just walked out.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did you say?

EULA McGILL:

I just didn't say nothing; I just walked out. That's when I said to the boss, "What're you going to pay me?" He was standing there talking to me, and I said, "How much is this going to pay?" And he told me, and I said, "Well, good-bye," and walked out the door. So at this time my mother and father were living down just a little ways from Gadsden in a place called Steel unknown on a

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friend of my father's farm. And he was building some buildings for him. So I had to go home.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Let me go back just a little bit. Summer came to an end; you planned just to work there for the summer and go back to school in the fall. But when fall came your father had lost his job at the mill, right?

EULA McGILL:

Right; well, he'd already been out of the steel mill, but this job he was on played out. He'd already lost his job in the steel mill just previously to that, and then he got this job with the Alabama Power.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Building dams?

EULA McGILL:

Working on the dams.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And so he had left Gadsden and was moving around, and you moved in with your aunt?

EULA McGILL:

Yes; no, Momma and me stayed there, and he came home once in a while then, when I was first working. When I got the job in the mill he was already working for the Alabama Power, but me and Momma were still living at the same place. We had to move out of the company house, but we were still living there. When you lose your job you had to move out of the house; you couldn't stay in the house no more once you didn't work for the company.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Well, when you saw that you weren't going to be able to go back to school in the fall, was that a big thing? I mean, were you unhappy about that?

EULA McGILL:

It was with me, yes; I was very unhappy.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How was that decision made? Your sister was working, right?

EULA McGILL:

Well, the man my sister married was in Birmingham; she moved to Birmingham when she married.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Would she contribute any money to the family?

EULA McGILL:

No, no, no.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Who decided that you should keep on working? Was it you or was it your father?

EULA McGILL:

Well, I guess it was me, and they didn't resist because a paycheck was needed, some money coming in. So I went home.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Yes, down to Steel?

EULA McGILL:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

After you lost your job?

EULA McGILL:

So my aunt wrote me a letter and told me that Osko Cochrane, the boss, had seen her in the grocery store and asked where I was; and she told him. And he said, "Well, get in touch with her and tell her to come back to work, but to talk to me before she comes—if she wants to work." He knew I needed to work, and he was a friend of the family (his sister and my mother were very close—lived next door to each other—and we knew him, you know.) So he worked nights, of course, like I did, so I went over to his house, and his niece went with me (we were good friends). We went over to his house and he was just getting up as he slept days. He told me, "You come on in. You're going to have to talk to [his nickname was "Wild Bill," but I can't remember [laughter] his name] him now. But," he said, "just listen; don't say nothing." He was considered to be pretty rough, this "Wild Bill," the superintendent then. So when I went in he says, "Oh, you want to come back to work?" And I said, "Yes." And he said, "Well didn't you walk out?" And I said, "Yes." He said, "Why?" I said, "Well, because I had my pay out in half, and I just got mad and walked out before I thought"—because I wanted to go back to work, you know. So he said, "Well, go ahead and begin to work." So Osko was waiting for me when I went up the stairs; he was waiting

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for me at the entrance to the spinning room, and he said, "Well, how did you get along?" I said, "Pretty good;" so I went to work.

JACQUELYN HALL:

At $7.50?

EULA McGILL:

Yes, yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did anybody else react the way you did when they went back and saw the changes?

EULA McGILL:

No, no, no.

JACQUELYN HALL:

There wasn't a lot of grumbling or people quitting? Or most people just said OK and did what they were told to do?

EULA McGILL:

I don't know; I just know what I did. I didn't talk to nobody.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Who were the new owners of the mill? Did it change ownership?

EULA McGILL:

It changed again later, so I don't remember who. It still went by the name of Dwight Mills, but I think some bigger textile company took it over. As I remember it, when I went there it was kind of locally . . . it was just Dwight Mills. And later at the beginning of that period when the mills began to combine and go into bigger companies. . . . And it changed later; when it was last operated it was Cone Mills.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Do you remember efficiency experts?

EULA McGILL:

That's when the Bidot system came in, the stretch-out came in there about that time. The Bidot system, they called it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Bidot?

EULA McGILL:

Yes, it was a Frenchman named Bidot.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You were a part of it?

EULA McGILL:

Yes, it was part of this business that cut my wages—give us more sides to run and stretched out the weavers. The weavers were always considered the aristocrats in textile, and I remember they used to talk about they needed roller skates to watch all their looms, you know. Yes,

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it was part of the struggles there in the turn there coming into the thirties, that Bidot system (or stretch-out, we called it).

JACQUELYN HALL:

What about spinning? I thought spinning was a fairly skilled task in a textile mill? Is it not one of the. . . ?

EULA McGILL:

Well, it's not as skilled as weaving. Weaving's the most, I think; it was higher paid than any other, as I remember it, among the jobs. Women mostly, but a lot of men were weavers; very few women, as I remember it, were in weaving. And I tried to get away from spinning so I could get into something else. I always considered my hands were too big and I was too tall for a spinner—I had to stoop too much, you see, to get down. I was not cut out to be a spinner. And I never could get transferred out into nothing else. I asked to be going into winding (felt I could do better) or the warping, where you had to reach high to take the big spools and put it on this frame, and it run down into a big bin that run the warping to go down into the weaving room. And I always figured I'd be better off there. It looked sensible to me to put me over in something like that (me and my height), but I never could talk them into it. I never was able to move; they just wouldn't transfer you, hardly.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Well, were there a lot of other women and children working in that mill?

EULA McGILL:

No children when I was in there.

JACQUELYN HALL:

A lot of women?

EULA McGILL:

Oh, all of us were women; all of the spinners were women. Spinners, spoolers, warpers—all women, and in the card room a lot of women.

JACQUELYN HALL:

After you quit school and were working there full-time, working the night shift, did your social life revolve around the mill and the people

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that you. . . ?

EULA McGILL:

No, never associated, I never associated with the people in the mill. I just lived in a different part of town, and Dorothy (the girl who worked with me) and I still had the same friends. I never associated.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And there wasn't any . . . ?

EULA McGILL:

Not because I felt any different, but because I just didn't live . . . my friends were different, and I just still associated with the same people that I'd gone to school with.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And while you were at work there wasn't really any time to get acquainted with people; there weren't any breaks.

EULA McGILL:

No, no, you didn't have no time to talk, no. You didn't get to talk; you yelled at each other through the room if you talked to somebody. You didn't get time to leave your job and go nowhere else, I guarantee you; there was no idle time.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What about the lint and noise?

EULA McGILL:

Oh, it was terrific; I couldn't stand it. I hated every day I ever spent in there.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Really?

EULA McGILL:

It was uncomfortable.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did you get through the day? I mean, twelve hours standing!

EULA McGILL:

Well, you had to; you had to eat, you had to live, you needed the money.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did you do? I mean, what did you think about while you were standing? How did your mind work in order to get yourself to stay in there?

EULA McGILL:

You didn't have no time to think; you were watching those ends, and if they'd break down you had to be there to put them back up.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You had to really concentrate on your job?

EULA McGILL:

You had to concentrate on that job.

JACQUELYN HALL:

It never got to be just automatic? You had to really concentrate?

EULA McGILL:

Oh no, no, you had to watch it. You had to set in your roving, you had to clean those machines; you had to clean all your cleaning, pick rollers. You had to pick out lint, take the clapboards, they called them, (boards that you put on the top of the rollers), take them off, you had to clean those things twice a day. You had to wipe and clean all under that roving and keep those machines clean—plus you had to run the machines. And I guarantee that it was tough.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What would happen if you got behind?

EULA McGILL:

We used to call it getting "stuck up." There were so many ends coming down; the machines would run on. An end would break—maybe a slub would come through and break the end. It would break off coming through the . . . sometimes the roving wouldn't be right. It would be too weak and it would break before it even got in to the roller. Well, when that broke down it didn't bother you, because it just meant you'd have a less spool to pick up. But cotton didn't just come out and ball up. But you had rollers under there that caught the cotton when an end would break, and the roving would keep coming through. Well, if you didn't get there pretty quick so much would get around there that it would fall out and tear all those others down, and then you'd call yourself getting "stuck up."

JACQUELYN HALL:

And what would happen? What would you do? Would that hold up other people?

EULA McGILL:

Well, you could not catch up unless you had help. Well, I had a couple of good people that were good spinners near me, and they helped me

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a lot. I couldn't have made it if they hadn't helped me, because I just absolutely was no good at the job. I didn't like it, plus I just was not cut out to be a spinner. I was awkward at it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But they would help you when you got "stuck up"?

EULA McGILL:

One lady in there, the day shift woman, used to have all my cleaning up done when I got in there.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why?

EULA McGILL:

She just liked me, and was sorry for me. She was an older woman. And she'd have my rollers picked and cleaned out one of the roving before I'd get in there in the afternoon. Of course, during the night I had to do it again [laughter] after midnight, but Lord have mercy, sometimes somebody'd help me. I could not pick those rollers good; I'd tear my ends down when I'd start, or let that old stuff fall in. I just wasn't good at it, that's all. I tried, I really tried, because I needed to work. And I remember one night (it was later) I was running some work, and oh God, it just wouldn't run good; it'd break constantly. It was when they started making Ausenberg (the material we now call Ausenberg), and this stuff is made from the sweepings off the floor—or it was at that time, and I think it still is now, because you can see splinters in the cloth. I can take you and show you now. The sweepings off the floor, they'd take it and rerun it. And those things unknown every fourteen minutes, and you could only run four sides. And I could get so stuck up, because it'd break constantly because of the slubs coming through there (the pieces of splinters off the floor and dirt, lints and slubs). So I got so darned fouled up I just shut it all off; and I said, "Well, I'll clean it up and start them up one at a time." The boss said, "Now what are you doing?" I said, "Well, I can't

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get caught up, so I'm going to stop them off and clean them all up at one time, and see if I can keep them cleaned up." So he let me go. Now then we were spinning by the hank; then they started paying us by the hank. They had clocks on the end of the machine and you got paid. . . . And if that machine wasn't running you weren't making nothing.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What about your boss, I guess it'd be your straw boss that was right over you? How did they treat you? What were they like?

EULA McGILL:

I never had any trouble with them because, like say Osko Cochrane, he knew me as a kid. And while they didn't make it no easier on me they didn't ever. . . . I've heard them curse women in there and talk to them like dogs, but they never did me that way. I heard language that I'd never heard in my life when I went in that mill; I'd never heard no such terms and profanity and vulgarity and just downright what people'd call gutter talk—things I'd never heard that I heard.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was this the bosses talking to the women?

EULA McGILL:

Bosses and the people too; they'd talk in front of you and everybody.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did the women talk back to the bosses?

EULA McGILL:

No, no, very few ever talked back. But they'd just curse you; and I mean, they'd just curse you, when they got mad at you about the job. But, as I say, I never had no trouble; Osko knew me as a child, and he didn't talk to me that way if he had to get on me. I know he has had to get on me a time or two about something, because I wasn't too good at my job. But still he didn't talk to me like that. In fact, I never heard Osko talk to nobody like that, but I did hear some section bosses, what's called section bosses.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How would the women respond to being talked to like that?

EULA McGILL:

Well, they just had to take it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did they complain to each other, or did you hear them talk?

EULA McGILL:

I guess they just took it as a matter of course, that that was life. Well, not at that time I didn't hear anything.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Well, along in there you had a brief excursion into marriage.

EULA McGILL:

Yes, but I'm going to leave all that out. I don't want to, because I've always left it out. Like I said, you know, I've had two marriages, but I'd just rather not go into them, because to me it played such a minor part—except I had a son out of the first marriage, which I've very proud of. I'm glad I did, and had the child. But it was such a brief thing, you know. I mean, the marriage was unfortunate; the only good thing is that I have a son out of i