Oh, it had all to do with it. And then you had the long tradition of, the
cotton mills have always had a low pay scale. And since the major
industry of North Carolina is textiles, I count the fact that North
Carolina, I think, is about the forty-seventh in per capita income,
dragging down the low pay and the textile industry probably has more to
do with it than anything else. Of course, the South now is opening up to
new industries, and that will eventually, I hope, lead to better pay and
better working conditions in the textile industry. But we were told
flatly to go back where we came from. We tried to tell them the
advantages of having a pension plan for the old folks when they retire.
I was at the Fish Camp one night, and an old fellow said, "Well, I made
my last one today. I got laid off." And I had no business getting into
the discussion. Said, "Of course, you don't mind that. You'll get a nice
pension, and insurance will take care of you if you get sick." "Well, I
don't get any of that stuff."
Page 20 I said, "Maybe you
people had better not thrown your little pamphlets we came over and gave
out." Their company had promised them better wages and all that kind of
stuff, better working conditions. "So far as I know, all you got out of
it, they sanded the floors in the mill." And my wife was saying, "Sit
down, sit down." And all the other folks around were mostly mill hands
that came up there, because it was run by two people that had worked in
the mill or still worked in the mill, the Fish Camp. She was telling me
to "Sit down, sit down," because there were more and more people
entering the argument.
[Laughter] And I
said, "No. I stood over at the gate and gave out pamphlets how they
could improve their conditions, and I was treated the way I was. Now
leave me alone and let me get through talking, and I'll sit back down."
They still get a chance, and they still haven't.