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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 H-0045, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Ethel Bowman Shockley was born near the turn of the twentieth century into a working-class family in Carroll County, Virginia. In 1921, she moved to Glen Raven, North Carolina, with her new husband to find work in the mills. Her husband found work dying yarn in the Plaid Mill; she went to work there in 1927 as a skein winder after her first three children were born. Shockley describes life in the mill town of Glen Raven and discusses the effect of labor activism there during the Depression. Although there were other mills in the area, Shockley stayed at Plaid Mill for the duration of her career. Before she retired in 1964, she had had numerous positions at the mill. Shockley explains how work was never steady during the Depression, but that most people in her community were able to get by either through farming or from receiving aid from the company bosses. Some of the mills in the community were unionized; some participated in the national textile strike. However, the workers at Plaid Mill, Shockley included, did not participate in the strike or labor activism. According to Shockley, working conditions began to improve with the passage of the National Recovery Act and after the United States entered World War II. She describes changes to the materials produced and the techniques used in the textile industry over the course of these years. Her daughter, Hazel Shockley Cannon, joins the interview. Cannon also worked in the textile industry, and together the mother and daughter describe issues such as child labor, health care, workers' compensation, and race in the workplace. They describe Glen Raven as a close-knit community in which most families continued the tradition of working in the mills.
Ethel Bowman Shockley and her daughter Hazel Shockley Cannon describe life and work in the mill town of Glen Raven, North Carolina. Shockley worked at the Plaid Mill from 1927 to 1964; she describes how working conditions changed through the Depression, World War II, and the postwar years.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
We're interviewing Ethel Shockley, and I first want to know did you know your grandparents?
Yes.
What were their names and where did they come from?
My father's parents was Sam and Adeline Bowman. They lived across Blueridge Mountain in Carroll County. And my mother's parents was Andy and Phoebe Ayers. They was from Virginia, Carroll County, but they came down here to Glen Raven, and they worked in the Glen Raven mill for years. And then I think they moved to Haw River. My daddy's parents always was farmers.
Do you remember when your mother's parents came down to Glen Raven or Haw River?
No, I don't, but I've heard my uncle say that he was real small, and him and myself's about the same age, so it must have been about 1900.
Do you know anything about why they came down here to work in the mills?
The way I understand, I think there was fourteen in the family. And then, the larger the family was, the more the mill owners wanted to get them in so they could have help. It was hard to get help back then, and if they got a large family they had plenty of help in the mill. That's what I've heard them say.
So your mother was born in this area and your father was born in Virginia?
No, my mother was born in Virginia, but they came down
How did your parents meet if your mother was a young girl and your father was still up in Virginia?
That I don't know.
What was your father's name?
My father's name was Dennis Bowman.
And your mother's name?
Susie Ayers.
So you were born in Virginia?
Yes. I was born in Carroll County, Virginia.
And when did your family come here?
I came here in '21, but I had some people on my mother's side that was living here, was the reason I came here.
What relation were they to you?
My aunts, my mother's sisters.
So they stayed here, and your mother went back to Virginia and got married.
Yes.
And then the whole family moved down here in '21, or was it just you and your husband by that time?
My husband and myself moved in '21, but I came down here during World War I and stayed with my mother's sister.
Why did you come down here at that time?
I just come down here to visit and went to work in Glen Raven mill. [Laughter]
So you got married after he got out of the service?
Yes. And then we stayed up there till '21, and we came down here.
Why did you decide to come back down here rather than stay in Virginia?
Because we rented on farms, and not too much money to make, so he decided he wanted to come down here and get a job at the mill. So he came down here and got a job at the Plaid Mill.
How much were renters making back in those days on the farms?
About seventy-five cents a day.
How much did mill work pay in 1921?
I don't remember just how much he made. I guess if I could hunt long enough, I could find some things. It seems to me like when we came to the Plaid Mill, he made two dollars a day.
So it was a big improvement.
And we paid a dollar a month house rent to live in a company house.
What kind of job did each of you have when you first came down here, in the Plaid Mill?
He had a job in the dye house, dyeing yarn. And I didn't go to work until '27, and I went to work skein-winding; you run the skein of yarn onto a bobbin. That's what I did at the beginning. And after then it went out and I done odd jobs, first one thing and another, whatever I could do.
Had you done any work before you worked in the Glen Raven mills during the First World War?
No, I wasn't but about sixteen then. No, just housework and on the farm.
Had your husband, before he worked in the Plaid Mill?
No, he was a farmer on up till he come to the Plaid Mill.
How did the two of you meet?
I was living in Virginia then, so that's where we met. And then he went into the Army, and I came down here.
Did you have any brothers or sisters?
No, my father died when I was six weeks old, and I'm the oldest one. Then my mother remarried; I had some half-brothers and -sisters.
Back in Carroll County?
Yes, they lived in Virginia till they got old enough to come to North Carolina. I have one half-sister lives at Gibsonville, and I have a half-brother that lives in Virginia. And the rest of them's passed away.
When they came down here, did they stay with you?
Yes.
How would that work?
One would come and stay a while and get married, and another one would
come. [Laughter] [Laughter]
Did they come down for work, or did they come down to get married?
They came down and held a job here. They was on a farm, so they followed
us down, we told them. And they worked at the
In the mill, were there any jobs that were considered better jobs than other jobs?
Oh, yes.
Which were the best jobs?
The best moneymaking jobs there were in the mill was weaving. And then it went down, and then they went on production.
What was the difference?
When you worked production, you had to work harder to make a little money, did more work.
Your husband started working in 1921. When were the kids born?
The oldest one was born in Virginia. That's the reason I know so well when we came down; I know how old she is. And the rest of them was born here in North Carolina. One was born in Virginia; one was born at Glen Raven; one was born on Cady Street; and the other on Plaid.
Where exactly is Cady Street?
Cady Street is in West Burlington, up there one block from the Plaid Mill. One block from Plaid Street down towards town.
Why did you move from Cady Street to Plaid Street? Was there any difference in the housing?
Yes. The one on Plaid Street had a little more room than the one on Cady Street.
Was the rent the same?
Yes, they was company houses.
So it was the same even for the one on Plaid Street as on Cady Street?
Yes.
What years were the children born?
The oldest one was born in 1920. Stella was born in '23. The next was born in '25, and Ruth was born in '37.
So in 1923 Burlington Mills comes in. What was the effect in the community when Spencer Love first came in with Burlington Mills? Was the industry in good shape at that time?
That was during the Depression when Spencer Love came in. He opened up a silk mill down where the Pioneer Plant is. Then he built the Pioneer Plant, and then Burlington Mills took over the Plaid Mills and Burlington. And then he started up Belmont; that was a division of Burlington Mills. So with Spencer Love coming in, that was what saved us.
Did he offer the same wages as the other mills, or were there higher wages in different kinds of mills?
You'll have to say Burlington Mills has always paid the highest pay. If this mill over here raises wages, you've got a key you're going to get one, too. And it'll be a little bit more than that one. That's the way it was then.
During those years that you were at the Plaid Mill, did you ever have any desire to go to any other mills?
No, I enjoyed working at the Plaid Mill.
Where did you work, a lot of different places?
I worked at Glen Raven before I got married. And then
Did you do the same kind of job all the time in the Plaid Mill?
No. I started off winding rayon; then come in with silk. Then I redrawed.
I worked on the warp mills, wound cake yarn, cleaned frames, swept the
floors [Laughter]
They would put you on the different work, or you would want to work a different kind of work?
If they didn't have somebody for a certain job and my job was not running, then I did something else.
Did certain kinds of work have more prestige than other kinds of work?
Yes, some of it was. Like cake winding; that was pretty hard work. I even cleaned tangled bobbins. Anything that come along, we did it.
Then the Depression came, and how were conditions in the County during the Depression? And also in Burlington?
The County, I guess, did pretty good, because they raised their stuff. In town it was kind of hard, because people with a large family on a day or two days a week, they'd just go to the A & P or anywhere they could find something a little cheap to buy.
How did it start? Did you all of a sudden go down to a day or two a week, or did you start on four and then go down to three? What happened when the Depression hit?
Some weeks we didn't work at all, and then in some weeks
How did people survive on just a day or two a week?
Back then you could buy meat for about five or seven cents a pound. Of course, my husband was a farmer, like; he always had his hogs and chickens, and we had our cows. My children say, "Mother, we don't know about the Depression," because we had our own food in that way.
Did you have a garden?
Yes, we had our garden stuff. But the ones who couldn't do that and didn't know how to do that, they were the ones that had it worse.
Did most people know how to have a garden?
Most everybody on the Company Hill had garden places.
Where had they learned how to keep gardens?
I guess from their forefathers and things that way. But didn't everybody have the hogs and cows and the chickens and things. That's the reason we're down here, because my husband got disabled to work, and he wanted to get out of town. That was when they decided you wasn't supposed to keep things that way in town. So we got down here and had all that place down there where the snack bar and stuff were.
That was all yours?
We could have our chickens and cows and things like that. We was down here just six months, and they put us back in the city. But we was still out far enough that we could go ahead and keep our cows.
Did a lot of people come into Burlington during the Depression?
No, a lot of people left, hunting work, during the Depression.
Where did they go?
A lot of them went up north and things that way. But the biggest majority of the people that lived in the company houses stayed on and toughed it out. Mr. Williams was real good, and he would order a carload of potatoes from out different counties. And he'd bring them in and we'd have a barrel, and we'd put in maybe a dollar or two dollars for a big old barrel of Irish potatoes.
What other kinds of things did the company do during the Depression?
During the Depression, he didn't charge us rent for our houses, and he let us have our coal real cheap. He helped us; if he hadn't, we'd never have made it.
Why did people want to start the union in '33?
I don't understand just now. Higher wages, I would say, though.
Did you know people who were involved, who were not in the union that you were in but who were in the United Textile Workers?
No, but the mills that went union was Haw River and Gibsonville.
When the national textile strike was declared, what happened to the Plaid Mill? Did the mills stay open during the strike?
They stayed open during the strike, because that's where we had to fight.
If we had not went in, they would have declared
Could they get jobs anywhere else in the county?
Yes, I guess so.
How many people stayed out?
There wasn't too many of ours stayed out.
Just a few from the Plaid Mill?
Just a few that wanted to run the place.
Did the strikers have any parades or marches?
Just around the mills.
The pickets.
Yes.
Do you remember what they called Flying Squadrons?
No.
What are your memories of the dynamiting case? What kind of things do you remember about when it happened and what happened to the people and how people viewed the dynamiting case when that happened?
We was all kind of sad about it, because we didn't know what would happen next.
What did happen next?
There didn't anything happen after that, because they had more patrols. The patrols were at the mill all the time.
And they were workers at the mill who were given a badge?
Some was workers at the mill, and some was extra patrols
Where did they come from, the county?
The town.
Had they been employed?
They was policemen here.
What year did the Depression end and things started to get better in the mills?
It didn't get too much better till that little NRA came in, and that was in forty. . . .
Maybe '40; maybe a little bit before then.
It was when Roosevelt was in; he was the one declared it.
That was in '33, when he declared the first NRA.
That was when it began to get better.
How so?
People began to let their money loose and began to give orders for material and stuff. The salesmen, like somebody in New York, maybe they would call in an order for certain patterns of material. Then the Plaid Mill would go ahead and start up on it. Well, they'd keep bringing them in, and the first thing we knew, we was going full blast.
So you feel that it was the NRA that helped.
I think so.
What kind of effect did the Second World War have on the mill?
It was not as bad. The Second World War was when everything was rationed
out, and that was the worst part then. We
Did the Plaid Mill make things for the War?
Yes, they made that parachute stuff. And it seems to me like they made some khaki for it. But they made all that stuff we'd make the parachutes out of, that pure silk.
Did you work much overtime during the War years?
No, I didn't work hardly any overtime. One or two times we worked on Sundays during the War, because I remember the first Sunday I ever worked we was on pure silk. And it had to be processed through oil or something before we run it. And the government was going to take it. And Mr. Copeland was our superintendent then, and he thought if we'd go ahead and put it in the oil and stuff. . . . Well, the government wouldn't take it. So we worked two Sundays straight. The government took every bit of it.
How did work in the Plaid Mill or work in textiles in general change after World War II, in terms of different kinds of things that you made or other sorts of changes that went on in the industry the last twenty years that you were working in the Plaid Mill?
I don't think there was too much of a change, only we went out of silk. And we went into rayon, and rayon-cotton, and then we went from that to nylon.
For each of those things, did people have to learn new, different kinds of skills?
Yes, with the nylon they had to make different machinery
Was that hard, to learn the new machinery?
No, it was really easier work on the nylon than it was on the rayon, because the rayon was a soft yarn and fussed up. It would break; you'd have to tie knots every time you look around. But the nylon was stronger and would go right on through your work.
How did people like working with the synthetic fabrics, compared to the cotton or the wool, the natural fabrics?
Much better. It was better because it was easy, but still you had more production to get off on it because it run better. The better your yarn was, the higher your production.
How did the production compare to what you had to do before?
You'd get paid by the board. I think there was twenty-four bobbins to the board. If we had a good grade of yarn and it run good, they'd set the production on that up about ten or twelve boards higher. And then if you got off too many of that, they'd set it up a little bit more. So the harder you worked, they added more production.
When did they go to the piecework?
Before World War II.
Do you know why they went to piecework at that time?
Because they would give you more machinery to run, and you could get off more work with less employees. By your taking on more work, you could get more production, and they could make their material cheaper or get more out of the material.
Did some people not like having to work more, having to
Yes, we fussed, but what good did it do? [Laughter]
[Laughter]
We'd tell them they was not doing us right. [Laughter]
[Laughter]
Any of them. They'd say, "Well, if we don't do so-and-so, we just don't get the orders," and that shut us up.
I guess so.
"We've got to beat So-and-so for a run," they'd say, so there we'd go.
What are the bigger changes that you've seen take place in the community or in the textile industry over the time that you've worked here?
When I first went to work up there, it was cotton and rayon. Well, that was slow. And the material was narrower. And then we went from that to the wide looms. And oh, there's a lot.
How about in the community of Burlington? How has the City of Burlington changed?
Oh, it's changed. Back then we hardly had streets, and now nearly every little place is a paved street.
You have a big one out here. [Laughter]
When we went to town, we walked.
You walked all the way from here or from . . .
From where I lived on Plaid Street.
Was there ever a streetcar you could ride?
Did the streetcars go out to Plaid Street?
Yes, we had streetcars. That was way back in World War I, and they went from Haw River to Gibsonville.
That's right.
And you'd ride them for a dime.
But then during the thirties and forties, you didn't have the streetcars or busses or anything?
We had busses, but I can't remember: the streetcar has been gone a long time.
When did the mill hands start to get automobiles?
The big part, I guess, was during World War II, because that's whenever we had work, and on that thing everybody tried to get a car.
Did that change where people lived? Did people live in the same area of the mill after that?
Yes. Along just after World War II is when the Plaid Mill sold their company houses. And a lot of the help that lived in the houses bought the houses and stayed on. A lot of them are living in the same houses today.
Most of the people that you knew lived in the same neighborhood as you did?
Yes.
Did you know people from other areas of town?
Not too many.
Was there a lot of turnover in the housing around the Plaid Mill? Did
people come and go pretty often, or did people tend to stay
They stayed, most all of them. They didn't like come in today and leave tomorrow. Most of them, if they moved in, stayed.
Stayed for five or ten years?
Oh, yes, and some of them are still up there that was there when they was children.
And stayed on the job, too.
And stayed on the job. And some of them, I think, went from one company to the other, didn't they, at the Plaid Mill. Some of the help.
Are you talking about going from one mill out there to another mill out there?
No, like the Plaid Mill changed to Burlington Mills and then to Klopman's. Like Mary Taylor and them?
Oh, yes, they have stayed on as the mill changed.
And they lived in a house . . .
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
. . .without a reason.
Yes, if they come, they stayed, unless it was somebody that was boarding. We'd call them drifters. They'd come in and get them a boarding place and work a while and then. . . . But that was mostly young people. But most of the families, when they moved in a house, they stayed several years. But if work would give out, then they'd have to lay them off, and then they would move to another place.
Was that the same for people of your generation stayed in the same area of town? Or did people in your children's generation move around?
We just stayed in the same area of town up there in that section.
Do you still live over there?
No they moved out here from West Burlington. [Interruption in tape]
Were there stores at that time up there, or did you have to go downtown to do shopping?
There were stores up there. They had a meat market up there, and they had three or four grocery stores. I thought they had about two meat markets, too. Mr. had one, and then they had one over where Paul Greene lives; that place used to be a meat market and store.
So you would do your shopping in the neighborhood?
Yes, we could do our shopping right around there.
What kinds of things did you leave the neighborhood for? Did you ever leave that community in West Burlington?
The only thing we'd leave to come to town for would be to go to the show or something like that.
What did people in West Burlington do for recreation or entertainment?
We had a ball park up there, and people watched that. And then they'd come to the town to go to the show. You could go to the show for about a dime.
They had a fair? once a year in the ballpark.
Once a year they had a fire in the ballpark.
That's the show that.
What were the medicine shows like?
Just like you see on TV. Big. They was always selling soap and liniment.
They'd have somebody with them to make music.
What about churches? Were there several churches up there in West Burlington?
That Hocutt Memorial is an old church.
And West Burlington. We had the tent meetings.
Yes, we had tent meetings back then.
On the ballfield, or where were they held?
That ballpark was the only. They had big tent meetings up there.
But there were a number of churches in the one neighborhood.
Well, that and the Methodist Church. Then they had one or two tabernacles.
Yes. One was down here on Atwater Street, and one was up on what they called the Greensboro Highway then; it's Webb Avenue now.
Was the school in the neighborhood?
No, you walked to Plaid Street Hillcrest. You had the Hillcrest, the a, and the Fisher Street. If one school was crowded in one grade, then they transferred you to one of the other ones.
So you went to Hillcrest rather than to a?
We went to Hillcrest; that was our district. But
Were the schools all kids of people who worked in the mill, or were there other kids around?
It was other kids, because when you got out of the mill village, you had the and Gants who went to school with you.
You did go to school with the Gants.
Down to Fountain Place.
Fountain Place and all around there, that was Hillcrest District.
But they just had one high school, on Broad Street.
The Broad Street High School.
You went either to Hillcrest or or Fisher till you got as far a eighth grade. Then you went to Broad to get your last four years. It was three years back then.
How much schooling did most people have?
Most of us got on through. The parents pushing.
[Laughter]
They would let them go to work then, I think, at sixteen. Or fourteen.
When was that sixteen law passed?
I think that's also during the New Deal, but I'm not sure about that.
I think before then, though, they worked them. Mr. Brooks said he went to work at eight, Wes Brooks' brother. Then there was some more men, a Mr. Preston; he passed away. He said he went to work at eight.
When you came down here to Glen Raven or to the Plaid Mill, were there children in the mill either working or with their mothers or daddies in the mill?
They could work then, but I think they had to be fourteen to work in the mills then. And then they passed a law that they had to be sixteen, and then they had to work first shift, I believe, so many hours or something. Had to obey it.
How about the health conditions or the working conditions within the mills? How have those changed over time?
Oh, my, it's changed. Used to they had no spit things; people spit on the
floor. [Laughter]
If a parent looked out the window and saw one of their kids doing something
they shouldn't be doing, they'd stop [Laughter]
Where did most of the younger kids stay?
We played. We always had somebody that stayed there and looked after us.
Who was that?
Usually bring in a colored woman Sarah Nelson.
They had a colored woman when I first went to work. She stayed with me ten years.
But if a child got sick back then, the parent come home, too. Used to they'd come home and feed the baby, if they had a baby, and then go on back to work.
Come home for lunch. One time I came home for lunch and the children was
all right when I left. And I went back to work, and in a little bit one
of them came up there and wanted me to come home; one of them was sick.
And I went home, and she'd got a big old dip of snuff [Laughter]
That changed after Mr. Copeland came over there.
Why do you think that changed, that people couldn't leave to go home?
He was real strict. He thought if you went home or anything, you was losing a few minutes' work.
Was that the reputation that he had up at Burlington Industries, too, before he came to the Plaid Mill?
Yes. They called him "Slave Driver." [Laughter]
I enjoyed my work, but I don't want to do it any more. [Laughter]
Do you still see any of the people whom you worked with?
Oh, yes.
Who are some of the people?
Emma Whitesell and Sally Wheeler. Her husband was overseer up there. His picture might be in some of them papers. I can't think of the [other] names that I know.
What kind of work did you like the most, and what kind of work did. . .
Skein winding. It's my type I like to do, so I liked that better than
anything. And what I hated the most was quilling. Your frame sits just
about like this, and you have rolls of bobbins, so many ends to make a
warp. And every time it would come my day to quill, they'd say, "Get in
the corner," because I was tall and skinny. And I hated that mess; I
didn't like quilling. But that's the only
What kind of work did your husband do?
He worked in the dye house. He was a dyer. He worked in the dye house all the time, the second man down there.
Were there more men than women, or more women than men?
In some parts, they was most all men, like the dye house. And then when they put in silk and rayon, they'd be tinted. They brought some women in then. But mostly all the dye house was men. And the biggest part of the weaving room was men. They had some women to thread the shuttles. In our part it was mostly all women, in the preparation. Most of the men was service, put up our yarn and take it down, things like that.
Did you say that your husband was disabled?
Yes, in '45 he got disabled, but he worked from '21 on up till then.
Was that as a result of something that happened at the mill?
Yes.
What was that?
Shockley!
Did they give him any kind of compensation when he was disabled?
No, back then they didn't have anything like that.
Do they have a pension now?
Yes, they have one now.
When did they start to bring in a pension?
I hadn't been in it too long when I quit work. It must have been in about '60.
I don't know. all they do is give you a lump sum what you got in the pension plan.
What I had, I brought it out, because it was just a lump sum.
All they gave Daddy was insurance or something.
Yes, they gave him insurance. But back then they didn't have no compensation.
So they just gave him one lump sum, not money.
No, it was just insurance. They carried his insurance on.
Oh, I see.
So they just brought it in in '60?
It could have been in the fifties. But I retired in '64, and I had $500 in pension plan. So it had to be around about '50-some.
Why did it come in right then, in the fifties?
I don't remember just why, but it was supposed to, I guess, help in retirement. Then was when they were beginning to talk retire at a certain age. And when I retired it was women sixty-two and men sixty-five.
So you retired at the age of sixty-two.
Yes. And then they found out they couldn't make it like that, and then
they let the women come on to sixty-five. But I was glad to get out at
sixty-two. They came down several times for me to go back to work. I
told them I was too old, that I
Did they try to keep good workers?
Yes, they'd try to keep good workers.
Has the work force changed a lot in the mills? Do a lot of the sons and daughters of mill workers work in mills, or have a lot of new people come in from outside the county?
I don't know. I've been out since '64. What do you think, Hazel? She's still working.
It's a family thing, one generation after the other one. Some of them might leave town, but it would be a small percentage.
Have many new families come in to work in the mills? Are there any first generation people?
It would be a small percentage there, too, because most of them, even the colored, at some time their daddy had worked there.
Really? So even there, their father had worked as janitor or in some kind of capacity?
Are there many black workers in the mills,?
You see right many now. work. They're nice Once started, eventually. As far as the colored, they've been just as nice as they can be about it. And it's never been a problem to me.
Was that a problem right in the beginning?
No, I think they came in in such few numbers when they started, and we knew we had to accept them.
When was that?
That was back when Mama was still there, when we first started hiring them. We've always had the colored to clean up, janitor work, tending machines. But I don't remember when the women started coming in.
They started hiring them at the Plaid Mill when they desegregated. You had to qualify for a job. You went to the office, and you was interviewed, and you had to be up to the standard of what they would want to get a job. They just didn't say, "Well, come on and go to work." They picked the ones, and that way we had nice colored people work with us.
How did they do that interview?
I don't know. I was back before that started, and I never was interviewed.
How did you get your job, then?
I told my husband one morning, "The children's getting up to some age, and we need some more money, and I want to go to work." That's when they'd just said they was going to bring winding in. So he went up there and told Mr. Williams, and he said for me to come up there and go to work.
Did your husband mind your working at all?
No, he didn't mind it. So then we got a colored woman to come and keep house for us.
Was that usual, for people to have a woman come and keep house?
Oh, yes, if you worked.
In how many families did both the mother and the father work in the mills?
The biggest part of them worked in the mill, because they had to.
The only one I can think of that she didn't work was Mrs. Williams. Everybody else worked.
Did women usually just stay out for a few years while their children were real small?
Back then, they said some of them had their babies one week and went back to work the next, but I didn't see it like that. But they didn't stay out too long. Now they've got a period, I think, you've got to be out before you go back to work. But back then, you went back when you felt like it, I guess.
So when you had your last baby in '37, you stayed out for how long?
I think it was three months before she was born and three months afterwards; I believe was the way that the insurance people had it then.
Could you automatically get your job back?
Oh, yes. You got a relief for so many months, and then you went back on your old job.
And that was the only time, because she was next to her, and she was about two years old when I decided I wanted to go to work. She was born in '25, and I went to work in '27, that's how old she was.
Thank you very much. Got a lot of information.
[Interruption in tape]
. . . at the Plaid Mill. Then I have been in hosiery mills. Then I worked with Jim Copeland over at Copeland's. I've stayed pretty much in the mills, though. I've been back at Burlington Mills about five years.
Which division are you in now?
Division.
Why did you choose to move around from one place to another?
The first was my second baby was born I left there. And then I married a man that wasn't from Burlington. He was from the eastern part of the state, down at Elen. And so we moved back and forth down there. And that's one reason I moved so much. And then when I'd come back to Burlington, I'd go back to the mill.
So it's not a question of your generation wanting to move around more than your mother's generation, or do you think there is . . .
About World War II when I got married, a lot of the girls then married men from out of town. I guess if it hadn't been for the War, we never would have met men from out of town. We'd still be marrying town. That's the reason look like.
So a lot of guys came into town during the War years?
Oh, yes. Back in the middle of the War, if this buddy's bringing two or three War buddies in, he'd come in on a weekend.
So they came in from . . .
Fort Bragg.
How about in the industry, when the young men from Burlington
Women did the jobs.
The women filled the jobs. That was the first time a woman had worked in the spinning room, in World War II. That was when they had to put the women in the spinning room.
Did they stay in the spinning room after?
Yes. stayed till they closed it down. But when we first started in the spinning room—that's where I started, during World War II—we had our own trucks to. Anyway, it was quite a bit of weight. But we had to load and unload our trucks. But then a couple years after the War, the women continued to do it. The men, I think, were waiting they come into the insurance or something. But a woman wasn't allowed to lift over so many pounds.
Did you want to continue lifting or?
That was after I had left the spinning room. And then that's when they brought men in to load the trucks again. Back at the end of the War, we was loading our own trucks.
What differences do you see between working in your generation and work for your mother's generation?
It's different; I don't work so hard. Back then, spinning was not on production when I first went in the spinning room. But still, we had a certain number of ends that we had to keep up.
When did they change that to production?
That was a long time after I left. I think when the men started loading the trucks, then spinning was on production, wasn't it, Mama?
I don't know. I never did work in spinning too much.
I think it was when they brought the service men in to load and unload the trucks that they went on production.
Do you think it's harder work now than it was when you first started?
You've got easier work.
I've got the easiest job now I've ever had.
What do you do now?
I'm in the department now. We make up that go to the sales.
Was that a promotion?
No, it wasn't exactly a promotion. I was in one of the knitting that warp mill. And so there came an opening in the department, and they wanted to know if I'd take it, and I told them yes, I'd be glad to. So that's one way, you know, you'll get switched all around from department to department.
When they have vacancies.
If the work gets short in this department, they'll ask you if you want to go to another one.
And that's why you get to stay so long. If you do just one thing, when it's done, you're done; that's the end. Do other things, you stand a chance.
That's the way with these department to department, mill to mill, wherever they were needed.
That's how they made it a little bit more interesting or. . . .
You don't get bored, because you change.
Then they know that if something happens that they can ask you to take another job,.
It seems that a lot of the people we've been talking to have gone from mill to mill.
Mama was here at the Plaid, and if they needed any help at Belmont, she'd go to Belmont. They'd give her transportation over there and back.
Belmont was the Holts'?
It was a division of Burlington Mills at one time.
So they'd shift you to another division if they needed you.
Like if my job now, they'd give me offers of jobs in other B.I. plants, so's you can have the right then to say, "I'll go" or "I won't go." But if you say, "I won't go," job is vacant. . . . They try to place all their help, just like. Now if you're close to retirement age, I don't think they'll try to place you. But now if you try to place you in another B.I. Or you're willing to learn a new job.
Not only your job, but you say on the whole the work is easier now than it was?
In my job, it is. But the last five years, I have not been on production work, and so that's one thing that's made it easier.
The majority are still on production, though.
No, I don't think they are. In the department, the winding and redrawing and things like that, they're still on production. But as far as warp mills and knitting and frames and things like that, they're not on production. I think the department is still on production.
When you went to the Broad Street High School, did people from different parts of town look down or have hostilities towards people from other parts of town? Was there rivalry between different parts of the town?
No, because we grew up together. My district was Hillcrest. If your grade was overcrowded at Hillcrest, then they'd transfer you to Fisher or Belmar. By the time you got to Broad Street in high school, and you had been transferred from school to school, you knew pretty much everybody from around there. That's all the school we had.
Including people from East Burlington you had known.
Oh, yes. Broad Street was the only high school in Burlington, so everybody eventually ended up at Broad Street.
But there wasn't any antagonism or anything between people from East Burlington and West Burlington.
No, back then you walked all over town if you wanted to. You wasn't
afraid of anything, but there wasn't anything out there
But now you're afraid to get out the front door.
You're afraid to go sit on your front porch. But back when I was growing up, you weren't afraid of. . . . Now we was afraid of hoboes. People were always talking. If a train come through and hoboes got off. . . . I think the parents told the kids this to keep them out of the woods. down there in the woods.
A group of gypsies. Is that right?
But we never saw any of them. I think the parents just told us that to keep us out of the woods.
Now what does the parent say? [Laughter]
We played in the woods woods; they were woods . . .
END OF INTERVIEW