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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-0046, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Sisters Mattie Shoemaker and Mildred Shoemaker Edmonds discuss their experiences at a textile mill in Burlington, North Carolina. This interview includes discussion of their work routines, striking, the impact of the Great Depression, and the integration of the mill. The sisters' recollections are particularly interesting when they discuss the place of African Americans in their community—they were unbothered by integration and fail to understand the persistence of racism there—or when they share a few words on party politics. This interview will be useful for researchers interested in mill life in the early twentieth century, but is more a portrait of two personalities than a history of an era.
Sisters Mattie Shoemaker and Mildred Shoemaker Edmonds discuss their experiences at a textile mill in Burlington, North Carolina.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Was that when you first came to Burlington?
When we first came to Burlington.
Ken was the superintendent. I'd know his name if I could think. He lived in Graham. He's dead now.
I don't expect he's here cuz he's older than I am.
Did Miss Johnson tell you who she worked for?
No, she didn't.
She didn't work in the same part we did when we first come there.
No, she worked in the weave room, we worked in the winding room. Now what in the dickens was that boy's name. I'd like to get the boss man, their names.
Sykes is his last name.
He was over us.
His last name was Sykes. Ain't it awful you can't remember. He had a daughter named Myrtle and …
Well, we don't care about them.
I know. If I could think of his daughter's name I could think of his name. Now Versa Haithcock lives over on Belmont Street. He's worked in Burlington Mills. He's worked there longer than we have.
Miss Smith would remember that Sykes man's name. Go in there and call her and ask what Sykes' name is. She was raised up with him. She ought to know.
Were you born in Burlington?
No, we're from the mountains. We're from Ashe County at Jefferson.
How did you come to Burlington?
We just got started down here I guess.
Did your whole family come down?
Yeah. My mother and father and family. They was four girls and one boy of us. And they all came down.
Now when was this?
Sis, what year did we come? We come to Burlington in '28.
When we first come to Burlington. She didn't answer. But wasn't it Jack Sykes?
Uh-uh.
I sure hate I can't remember his first name. We worked over here in July for him and then he called us back over here and we went to work for him. It wasn't Jim and it wasn't Tom.
Maybe if we talk about the mill it will come back to you. Did you come directly to Burlington from the mountains?
No, we came to Guilford county.
What did you do there.
That was in …
We came in '22. We worked at the Hopedale Mill over there for Copland. We worked at Gibsonville and then we worked at Burlington Mills.
But she's wanting to know just the Burlington Mill.
We're doing the whole area. We're in this neighborhood because the Burlington Mill is here, but most of the people we talked to worked in a lot of the different mills.
We come to Burlington in '28.
We come here in '28. November. I know you don't remember this now.
Heavens to Betsy, she wasn't born, not thought about.
No.
Which ones …
Well, all of us that was old enough went to work in the mill. Now our sister didn't come here with us, did she?
Uh-uh.
She was married and lived in Gibsonville.
Did your mother and father work in the mills?
No, my mother never worked a day in her life at nothing. I mean only housework.
Was that because she didn't want to work in the mill?
My daddy never would let her work. He said, "A man is a sorry man couldn't keep his wife up."
How did he feel about you girls working in the mill?
Well, he didn't mind for us. We was the children.
How old were you when you started working?
Me, when we come here? I was twenty-eight. I lacked a month of being twenty-eight.
I was about twenty-four then.
Did you work in the mill in Gibsonville or Hopedale before?
Yeah. We worked there. Our daddy run a business there in Gibsonville.
What did he do?
He had a store, service station.
Were those the kind, they had a gas station and then a little store?
Yeah, that's what he had.
Did you ever work in the store?
Yeah. We worked some, maybe a Saturday evening, a Saturday night. Worked down there.
Was that fun? Did you like that?
No, I didn't like it.
How come?
I'd rather went to the show.
Before you came down from the mountains, were your family farmers up in the mountains?
No, my daddy run a business there.
Why did he decide to leave?
I don't know. We just took a notion to leave, I reckon. Don't know no particular things.
Do you remember what moving was like?
It wasn't fun.
How did you do it? Did you have a car then?
Yeah.
When you came to Burlington, was it hard to find work?
No. It wasn't hard then to find work.
How did you go about getting a job?
You'd hear where they wanted help. You'd just go and apply for a job. They'd call you and maybe the next day. It wasn't no trouble.
How did you hear? Were there like notices, or just from people telling
Did we know people?
How did you know about which places needed hands at that time?
Well, you'd hear about people would talking to you.
When you came to the Burlington Mills, was that when you moved into this house?
No.
Where did you move first?
Up there on Graham Street. These were all mill houses. The company owned all the houses. Then they sold the houses out and we bought this one.
When was that? When did they sell the mill houses?
Do you remember what year that was?
'35.
Yeah, that's the year that Arnold graduated we moved in here.
What did they call the mill then?
Called it Burlington Mill.
I have heard them say when they first built the mill they called it the "New Mill." But it was Burlington Mills when we come here. But I heard tell when they first built it it was called "New Mill." It was just one small mill. It came from Gastonia. Wasn't that the place?
Uh-uh.
Love brought it here. This started just the one room.
They had one winder, I think it was, out there was all in one room.
They told us about that.
They didn't have but a few looms, they told us, out there. Then
How big was it when you two started there?
That had that silk mill and the weave room. They had three up there then.
So the silk mill, each one was a separate mill?
Uh-huh.
Oh, I see. People kept telling me about the Carolina Silk Mill and I just thought that was the whole thing up there.
There was the Carolina Silk Mill and Alamance Novelty and they called up there …
The Burlington Mill.
Yeah, the Burlington Mill.
And that's the one you worked in?
Yeah, we worked in the Burlington Mill. Oh maybe for a week, maybe a couple of days they'd be short of a hand or something in the Carolina Mill. We'd go down there and work, just walk up and go in that department. Or go down to the Novelty Mill. They did all of them.
What did they make in the Novelty Mill?
Well, they had looms down there, didn't they?
Uh-huh. And they had winding down there. They made bedspreads down there.
What were your jobs?
Winding.
Did you both wind?
Yeah.
Would you work together?
We did part of the time because she worked maybe on the first shift, sometimes I'd work on the second and on the third. The last work I did was on the third shift.
When we first come here, though, we worked from four to four and six to six. All night or all day long. When was it they put on eight hours?
When Roosevelt.
'32 I believe it was it went on eight hours. I think that was when we went on eight hours.
That's the year we had the strike.
It didn't amount to much.
What was that like, the strike?
Wasn't nothing.
Well there was a bunch from over at Danville come over here and tried to pull the people out up here to come out on strike with them. But nobody didn't go out with them.
Well, they did pull some, don't you know that bunch from up at the Plaid Mill come down?
Yeah they pulled a few of them, but they was glad to get back in there.
You know that bunch from Plaid Mill came down here. And don't you Robert Coles was in it and he belonged to the National Guard. He was in the strike and was up there. The next day or two they called out the National Guards and he had to go in as a National Guard where he had been a trying to pull them out. Then he was up there protecting the rest of us going in.
Did you ever talk to him about that?
Yeah I told him about it.
Do you know, how did he feel about that?
Oh, he just laughed about it. We had one woman up there, I don't
The Pickard girl. I don't remember her first name, but she was a Pickard.
I believe she's dead now. We started in one morning, into work. She met us out there at the gate. We was told not to say nothing to them, you know if they said anything to us. We had guards up there. They said if they put their hands on us they could take them up. But they couldn't no other way. So we went on in and she told me, she said, "Well, you'll be …"
"In the morning I'll be …"
"On the inside looking out and you'll be on the outside looking in." She went on to another mill. That evening after we came out of work, Sheriff Davis—he is the deputy sheriff here, we didn't have no policemen, not in here because it wasn't a corporation. The sheriff had to look after us. Davis was a good friend of our daddy's. He came out to the house. He said he couldn't hardly wait for me to get out from work. He heard what she said that morning. He couldn't hardly wait for me to get home from work, he wanted to come and tell me.
He said, "You know that thing,"—that's what he called her, "That thing," he didn't call her a lady. I don't know whether she was a lady. She could have been. But he called her "that thing." Said, "You know that thing that talked to you this morning? Well, she sure is on the inside looking out. She's down at the county jail."
Really! Wow. Was she from Burlington?
She was from around Graham or Burlington or somewhere.
Why did they arrest her?
She went on up to the Plaid Mill and I think she take a hold of
Did they arrest a lot of people?
No. They wasn't many arrests.
So they didn't have policemen then?
No, we wasn't in the city limits. Still in the county.
So who were the guards up at the mill?
The National Guards and the night watchmens was out up there. They wasn't worth a hill of beans. They'd run.
What did those people say when they would come up and try to get you to go out of work?
Well, they'd catch us as we'd come out the gates or go in. Now the first morning they pulled it, our supervisor, he come out to the house and he told us not to come in that morning. They said, "We going to work on it and get somebody around the gates. You all can come in in the morning."
So we went in, we didn't go in that morning. The next morning we went in. There were several of them around here and some of them I guess you'll interview, they wouldn't go.
Do you know any of those people that wouldn't go in?
Icy Norman wouldn't go. Miss Birch over on Fair street didn't, yes she, no, she didn't go in.
Now this next door neighbor up here, she worked up here a long time in the Burlington Mills.
She went in.
She went in.
Now who was that?
Mrs. Birch, next door up here.
Versa Haithcock wouldn't work.
They wasn't too many that lived here close by that would go into work.
Dewey McBride, he lives in Fair Street, now he works up here, but he wouldn't go in.
No. The next scare we had—I'm not going to call no names on that—said that our house could be burnt down. That didn't scare us because we are from the mountains. You know if you've ever been to the mountains, you've got the show them—they like the people from Missouri—they just not scared. So we went on in. They said, "Well, your house could get burnt down tonight."
We didn't pay no attention to it. We went right on back. We did tell Sheriff Davis. He said, "You needn't worry about that." They was one, I don't know who he was, he was a deputy, sit on our front porch on the steps and one sit on the back porch on the steps all night long while we slept. We got up next morning and went. They didn't scare us.
Do you know if they threatened anybody else? Did they threaten a lot of people?
Not that I know of. I don't know whether they did or not. They just made that remark to us. That did sound, so we told Davis. He didn't like that sound at all.
Was there any kind of trouble like that? Did they burn anybody's house?
No they didn't do anything like that here.
They did at the Plaid Mill.
Dynamite on the mill up there. Not at the Burlington Mill. Well the way they got that stopped. Cal Ketner was the weaving room boss. Well his brother, what was he, he was …
He worked in the weaving room.
Yeah. So they bunched up out there one night. We all got out on the porch and watched them. He got the hose pipe from the mill, you know, one of them big old water pipes, and he brought it out there. He stood on the inside of the fence and they was all around the fence. He drowned them. And they moved then. And we didn't have no more trouble with them. That's the way they stopped it.
How many people were there out there?
They was just all of them out there. Me and you and Jean Coleman.
There wasn't more than a half a dozen of us in the winding room went in.
Myrtle. They went.
Wasn't more than a half a dozen that went. In the winding department. I don't know whether anybody went in the weaving room back or not.
Miss Birch did, I know she went. Because I remember what I heard them say. They hollered at her, somebody did and made a smart remark. She told them, she said, "I got two little children. I've got to work." Her and her husband was separated. He didn't help her any. She raised her children. She said, "I've got two little children and they have to have milk."
What did people give as a reason for going on strike?
They never did say why they wanted to strike, what it is all about. It's just a bunch of hoodlums. They come from Danville and got it started up. Then over at Danville them people was out. They wouldn't take them back. The people that worked in the Burlington Mill made up and bought food and carried over there and fed them.
How long did this go on?
I believe they was out a week or a little over a week. May have been two weeks.
Were some of the other mills in town, did a lot of people go out?
Now they was out up at the Plaid Mill, but I don't know how many. I wasn't up that way. They were out up there. Didn't they have a strike at the same time down at Haw River?
I don't remember.
They was coming out. They wouldn't go in down there.
Must have been an interesting time.
Yes it was.
Was your daddy working up at the mill then?
No.
Did he ever work in the mill?
He had, he worked a little bit. But he never did work much. Our daddy wasn't able. He was a coal miner. He was a retired coal miner.
Then he opened a store?
Uh-uh.
Did he have a store here in Burlington as well?
No. He always runned it in Guilford County.
So what did he do when he came to Burlington?
Well, he opened up that.
He lived in Burlington and opened up …
No.
I'm confused.
We lived in Guilford County and then come to Burlington.
But what did your daddy do when he came to Burlington? Where was he working then?
He didn't work. Like I said, he was a retired coal miner.
Who was working in the family then? Your mother was taking care of the house?
Yeah. Me and you was working. Our brother was going to school. 'Cause he was a little boy, wasn't he? Because he finished high school in '35 and then he went to Elon and then he went to State U.
What did he end up doing?
He worked over here at Western Electric. Now I can't tell you honey what he did. It was something in the government business, something over there. Because he was traveling right much. He worked there. He's been retired how long?
Two years.
Now he wasn't old enough to retire. But he retired on his years.
When did you two retire?
I retired in '65.
I retired before she did and she's older than I am. But I got hurt and I come out on disability. I had to.
How did you get hurt?
I fell and crushed my hip.
Was that up at the mill?
No, here in the home.
Did they give you a pension up there?
No.
Did they have some kind of workmen's compensation?
Well now, I had an insurance up there and I could draw on that for three months. And they had a share-profit up there, but they wouldn't give me mine but that I was able to come back. And I wasn't able to go back. They marked me up total disabled over here at Alamance County Hospital. They marked me ‘total disabled to work’. My doctor did, too. But still they wouldn't give it to me. I just let it go.
How come?
Well, I said, "Well, if they could live with it, I could live without it."
Did you miss not working?
Yes, I did. I did for a while. After a while I made up my mind and I said, "This happened to me. Maybe there was a reason for it. I don't know." And I just asked God if he'd just let me walk. But I wasn't worried about work, I wasn't worried about the money or nothing. And I didn't.
You seem to be doing O.K.
Yeah. I went two years without walking. That's all I asked, I just asked God to let me walk.
Did you both enjoy working in the mill?
Yeah, at one time I did. I worked up there two years on the third shift and never lost a night.
When was the third shift? What time would that be?
From eleven o'clock to seven in the morning.
Did you like working the night shift?
Yeah, I really loved working on the third shift. I'd rather work on the third shift than any shift.
Really, how come?
I don't know. I just love working on the third shift.
(To Mattie) What shift did you like the best?
I worked the first.
Did you like that?
I enjoyed working the first shift. When we first come over here, like I said, we worked all day or all night, whichever shift we was on. But when we first come over here we worked on the night shift. We'd go to work in the evening and work till. Plenty of time we'd go to work at four o'clock in the evening and work till four o'clock the next morning. Part of the time it was six o'clock in the evening to six the next morning. But we got an hour for lunch of a night. See that knocked off just ten hours.
Where would you eat?
Up there in the mill.
We'd take our lunch with us on the start. They didn't have no eating place in there. Then later years they did put a place in there and we could get hot lunches and all in there.
When you got to take your lunch hour then, did they shut down the machines?
No.
Now, we shut off our machines.
But the weaving room couldn't. But we could shut our winders off if we wanted to. Or eat and run, either way we wanted to do.
What did most people do, did they shut them down?
Most of them left their machines a running.
How come they did it that way?
Well, I reckon they just left them running rather than stop them off and go back and start 'em back up is all I know.
Did they pay more if you worked on the night shift?
Yeah, they paid more on the third shift.
They paid more on the second shift than they did on the first.
So would people try to work on the second and third shift?
No, they'd all try to get on the first.
How would they choose who got to work on which shift?
Well, if they needed anybody on the second shift they'd tell them it was all they had. Sometimes you could swap with somebody. Maybe somebody would rather be on the second shift so they could be at home in the morning. They would swap with some of them. Back at that time they would try to change them around, people that didn't have children, put them on the third shift.
Did most people live in the neighborhood that worked up at the mill?
When they first started off they did. But after they sold the houses they didn't. We had a lot of country people come.
Was that at a certain time a lot of country people came in?
That was in '28.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
Were they mostly farming people?
Did they farm? Yeah, they'd go home just like they do today.
So they'd work in here and then go back to the country?
Yeah, they went back and forth.
What was it like here when this area wasn't incorporated?
Just as rough as pig-iron.
Really? What was it like?
They'd get out and fight and cuss and carry on like that.
Did you feel like it was a dangerous neighborhood?
Yes it was. I don't know whether they'll all give you that or not. But we felt like it was.
Who were the people out there fighting?
We didn't know them all. After they sold these houses they got rid of them.
So they were the people living in the houses and working in the mill? The ones that were originally here?
Uh-huh. They'd fight, honey, up there in the mill.
What did they fight about?
They'd just get mad and fight. They were rough. I was working out there in the weaving room. You know they had a winder out there and they'd change them out there one day. I was out there working, just like going from one room to another. And I heard something go "clammety". I looked down and the blood was coming down the floor. Right above me laid a man and another man had took an iron pipe and knocked him in the head.
It was rough, honey. Don't put all that stuff in there because they'll think it's awful.
Now after we got incorporation it changed.
After Preacher Swinney set that church.
Yeah. That changed a whole lot of it, too.
Oh, yeah, it changed it all.
What happened then?
Everybody, people got going to church. I guess they seed the wrong they was in and they changed.
Was there no church around here until Preacher Swinney came?
He started up that church over here at Glen Hope in the school. Wasn't that where he started that?
Uh-huh.
He came here a little while before we did.
He come here in '27.
Then he went …
He had an old building up there on the corner of Graham and Beaumont Avenue. And he held service up there. And I believe the Glen Hope Church was set up this new church up here. I believe it was set up, it seems like '32, I don't remember.
Now we don't go up there. We're Catholic.
It was long about '32. The front part of that was built after the back part. There was a back part and then they built the front part on to it. Now he did brought it out.
Yeah, he did brought it out. Him and Sheriff Davis. Them's two that really brought it out. Then they got incorporation. Then we got city.
Was it just like when Preacher Swinney came and found a church and …
Yeah, he'd hold revivals and that.
Did most of the neighborhood go?
Yeah. They finally got them. They'd go around to their homes and hold prayer services.
What would Deputy Sheriff Davis do about all the fighting?
He'd go get them.
Did he live in this neighborhood?
Yeah, he lived up here on Beaumont. You know that big house up there that used to be? Oh, you don't know this neighborhood.
I've probably gone by it but I haven't noticed it.
It's that big two story building when you come straight down Beaumont Avenue.
Where was the jail?
In Graham.
He'd take them over there?
He'd take them over there. I see him load up a man one night. He lived in the back alley. He lived down on Parker Street at that time. Him and his wife was down there. He beat his wife going and coming. They was down there fighting. Sheriff Davis come down there in a little truck and I don't know how in the world he got that man in the truck, but he did and tied him and carried him to jail.
Was Sheriff Davis a big man?
Yeah, he was a pretty good sized man. He was good.
What did all the women in the neighborhood think about all this fighting?
They didn't care. We didn't go out. We wasn't raised to nothing like that and we didn't know.
Did you think there was a big difference between living here and living in the mountains?
Altogether.
What things were different?
Wasn't no fighting going on up there. It was quiet, we didn't have no
trouble. Just as much difference in this place now and when we came here
as is between daylight and dark, as the saying goes. Of course we have
some around now, but it's not like. Because we have one of the best
police forces there are in the state now. You are from Chapel Hill.
Did the women used to fight, too?
Yeah, they said they'd fight. We didn't go out and see them.
Who did you hang around with in the neighborhood, or did you?
Now, this next door and us, we always visit. She was polite. She was from Edenton. Was called Draper, wasn't it then.
Miss Johnson, she didn't move here until '35. But she did work up here.
Now that's a good person.
She was very nice.
Uh-huh. She's a good person.
But we knew her up there in the mill.
We knew her a long time before she moved down here. Because I used to work up there and ride back and forth with her and Mr. Johnson.
She didn't move over here until they sold these houses.
Honey, I used to walk up that road on Sunday night at twelve o'clock and there wasn't a street light over there.
When did they pave the streets and put in street lights?
This street out here, it was paved in when?
'68 I reckon, somewhere along there. It was after I retired.
We didn't get nothing until after the city took it over.
The mill had built all the houses?
Yeah. Uh-huh.
Would they take care of any of the work around the neighborhood? Keep up the houses?
Yeah, sometimes they would if a roof fell in.
Most of these houses were built in '23.
Yeah, they was built a long time before we come here. They didn't pay no light bills then, did they?
No, it went in with the house rates. We didn't have to pay any water bill
either. I think the house rent was about a dollar a week, best I
remember, something like that. About a dollar a week. But you know,
people would burn their lights all over the house. Then after people had
to pay for their lights they turned them out.
One woman said she never could reach the lights to turn them out.
I wouldn't do anything like that. Somebody else paying my light bill I'd be just as safe as if I was paying it.
We don't ever turn them out nowhere. SAM SYKES!
What was he like?
He was a good person to work for.
Now he was the boss in the winding room?
He was when we first went to work up here.
And then Finley Stewart.
No, Daddy Smith.
Yeah. What was his name? We just called him "Daddy Smith."
I never heard his name.
He was our boss man.
Mr. Lee. He was a German. He was a good man to work for.
Was he the one in charge during the strike?
Uh-uh. No. Finley Stewart was here then.
Were they very strict with you up at the mill?
Not then, not when we first came here they wasn't. But they got to where, you know, just like all places. Got to where they was pretty strict.
What was it like working in the mill?
You never worked, did you, in the mill?
No.
Have you ever been in one?
I've just been in one when it was shut down, not when it was running.
You ought to go through when it's running.
A lot of the mills won't let visitors in, though.
Wouldn't they let you go through up here?
Well, we haven't tried to go into this one up here, but we called a few places and they just don't let people in when the mill's running.
They'd let you go through up here.
I believe they would because, I tell you why, honey. Because I have knowed them to bring crews through from these colleges. And they take them around and explain all the machinery to them and how it's done and how they got the work off and everything.
I've read a lot about how the machines work and what they made, but what was it like working with the other people? Did you get to talk a lot?
Yeah, we could talk. When we'd sit down to eat our lunch. We could talk now. Some people can't work and talk but I was always one that could. It would be another girl on the other side of my machine and I'd be over here on this side of the machine. We could talk through to one another. But some of them did and some of them didn't. Because they said they just couldn't get their work done and talk.
Were you working on production?
Yeah.
Nathan Sykes, now he was another Sykes. He was a boss man. They made a
rule up there one time. They said you couldn't talk to the other one on
the other side of you. Well, he went around and he told all of them. He
got down to me and he said, "Bill, I'll have to tell you but I know it
won't do no good."
They knew you pretty good, huh?
He knowed me. I asked him what it was and he said you ain't supposed to talk to each other. I said, "Huh?"
He said, "You're not supposed to talk to each other."
I said, "God give me my tongue and I'm going to use it."
It didn't last long. He didn't want to do it. But you see, the man above him put that on him.
How many bosses were there that people had to take orders from?
Well, we had just one, but there was one over him. And he would tell him and then he would come around and tell the help.
Would that boss over him be the superintendent of the mill?
He would be the supervisor, the head supervisor.
So were people kind of able to get around any rules they made up?
Yeah.
Did they ever fire anybody for doing something that they didn't want?
Yeah they would. They'd fire you if you done something wrong if they caught you.
What things would they fire you for?
Well, that woman's dead and gone. May her soul be at rest. One morning they fired her for stealing, cheating.
Oh.
Yeah. I was working on third shift. She worked on the first shift. She called here one morning before I went bed and was talking to me. I thought it was this lady from Elon College. I didn't ask her who she was. I thought it was this lady from Elon, talked just like her, you couldn't tell them apart. She wanted to know how things was going on at the mill.
I said, "O.K. Fine."
She said, "They're laying off help up there, aren't they?
I said, "Not that I've heard any tell of."
She said, "I heard they let some go up there."
I said, "Well, I don't know but one they let go."
She said, "What did they let her go for?"
I said, "Well, she was a cheating on her work and they caught her." And I called her name. And you know, she was a preacher's wife. I hated that so bad I felt like two cents. And I said, "It was Claire Vickers."
She said, "Well that's me. I'm the one."
Oh, my goodness. Why did she call you?
I don't know.
Had you known her?
Yeah, I knowed her up there. Knowed her for years. I hated it, but I just thinking it was Mrs. Taylor at Elon. I didn't say Miss Taylor or nothing, we just started talking. 'Cause she would call here. You couldn't have told them apart. You know how I felt.
She was a preacher's wife?
Uh-huh.
Was he a preacher in the neighborhood?
Uh-uh. He preached out. About four or five miles out from here.
Did they lay off people a lot up there?
Yeah, when the work would get bad and slack and there wouldn't be no work, they would lay them off. Sometimes they wouldn't lay off but for a week or two weeks or something like that. Then you could draw your unemployed while you was out then go back.
When did they start having unemployment? Did they have that all the time?
'36.
What did people do before that?
Well, they'd just… They just made it the best they could. Now we had the Depression up here in …
'28.
No.
'29. No. '32.
What was it like then?
Oh it was rough, honey. People suffered.
But Burlington Mill run the best around.
Yeah, they run the best of any other mill in the whole county.
They made stuff and packed it back for weeks and months at a time in order to give the hands …
Now we had plenty all the time. 'Cause we'd go to the mountains. We'd go up there and stay.
They packed their stuff back for months at a time in order to give the help work.
Were you laid off at all during the Depression?
Yeah, there wasn't no work.
Well, we worked a little bit. Maybe we'd work one day today and maybe go up there and stay all day a day. And it was on production, what we was running. Maybe we'd sit up there half of the day waiting for the yarn to come up from the dye house for us to run it, you know. But we didn't get no pay while we was sitting there cause they didn't pay us at that time. Maybe we'd make seventy-five cents or a dollar that whole day waiting on the yarn to come up from the dye house. They just didn't have the orders to get it going. But they did, they worked the best of any mill around to give the help all they could. And when they'd lay off a lot of people like that, they would try to lay off the ones where there was a man in the home to work that he could pick up something somewhere else. Me and Bill there and Miss Johnson up here.
And Mr. Johnson was working.
They tried to hold the ones that didn't have somebody else to work.
What were you saying, you'd go back up to the mountains?
When that Depression, we went up there a whole lot and stayed. We'd bring a lot of food with us back.
We went up there once and stayed six weeks. During the Depression here.
Did you still have family up there?
We had our people. We had an uncle up there.
What did people do here in the city who didn't have any place else to go?
Well, didn't they start a bread line, or what's that they called it?
I guess that's what you'd call it, up here on Flannery Street in Burlington. People'd go up there and get coffee, sugar, bread, stuff like that. Meats and stuff like that.
Wasn't welfare. They didn't have no welfare.
No welfare at that time.
Did most people vote for Mr. Roosevelt when it came around time?
I think, yeah, they did. They was some of them though, that didn't. I think the majority voted for him.
When did things start to pick up, get back to normal?
When Roosevelt went in. He was in a year, wasn't it, or two years?
Yeah, it started picking up. You know he went in in '32. I'll say from around '33 on up things went to picking up better. Then they put that eight hour shift on then and that helped out a whole lot, you see. That would give more people work on eight hour shifts.
Did the company oppose that at all? Did the company try to not put in the eight hour shift?
Not that I heard of.
Spencer Love was living then and he would
Did you ever meet Spencer Love?
Oh, yeah.
What was he like?
He was just one more great man. He was a fine man. He come through that mill. He'd stop and talk with the help. He was just one of us. He'd come in there and he wasn't dressed a bit better than nobody working in that mill.
What kind of clothes did people wear to work?
Well, they'd just wear ordinary print dresses. Then we got one boss man up there, Daddy Smith. He wanted us all to wear a uniform. And of all things, white uniforms. You know, you'd get awfully dirty in there. They didn't clean. You'd get grease all over you. You'd have to change them uniforms every day, of course. Kept you busy washing. Didn't any of us like them. Not too many of us, hardly any of us.
One day, you know, Mert Odell was the superintendent at that time. He said that if people didn't want to wear them uniforms they didn't have to. He said they wasn't no law to make us wear them. That was just his rule.
We went in one morning, and oh me, I was always the leader. We went in and I didn't wear no uniform. He said something to me.
What did he say?
He was going to send me back home. I didn't do a thing but just walk on down through the mill down to the superintendent's office. I went in there. They come trotting along behind me. Anyway, we went on down there and I said, "Mr. Odell, do we have to wear them old white uniforms?"
He said, "No, ma'am. If you don't want to you don't have to. And they
can't
From that it got out and every one of them began to shed them off.
Did they pay for the uniforms?
No!
You had to buy them?
We had to order them. He had his niece come in there. She measured us all up.
She modeled them all.
Yeah, she modeled them on herself and walked up and down through the mill. Didn't none of