Negative effects of technological advances in the textile and hosiery mills
Often technological advances are remembered as being positive signs of progress, but as Yelton explains, sometimes the changes actually caused greater injury to the workers.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Mareda Sigmon Cobb and Carrie Sigmon Yelton, June 16 and 18, 1979. Interview H-0115. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- JACQUELYN HALL:
-
Did you have any bad bosses?
- CARRIE SIGMON YELTON:
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I've always got along with my bossmen, everywhere I worked. And I've
tried to do what they told me to do and all. But I didn't like that one
too much that took my job away and give it to his wife.
[Laughter]
- JACQUELYN HALL:
-
If you had a supervisor that nobody liked, was there any way to get rid
of him?
- CARRIE SIGMON YELTON:
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Yes, they did where I worked at the hosiery mill, Kayser-Roth.
They were looping then; they used to loop, but now
it's all seaming. This woman and I were doing the same work, only I did
the long and she did the short, inspecting. We had a looper whose
machine was making a little hole in a gore, and you just couldn't hardly
see it. Over at the finishing plant at Dukes, they caught it and they
sent maybe ten or fifteen boxes back, because they thought it had to be
done over. This bossman liked this other girl, because he went hunting.
They had a big farm and went hunting and would sell meat and stuff. They
was farming, too, down in Catawba. So they come back, and he wouldn't
let her do none over. I had to do mine over, and some of the rest helped
do it. And he'd just keep saying, "These damn inspectors are
not going to cause me to lose my job." So they didn't find as
many in mine as they did in this other woman's that I'd let go through,
and he just kept on and kept on, and I was about to have a nervous
breakdown. So he went on and on, and he got fired, but it wasn't over
the inspectors. But after that I just couldn't like him as good as I did
before, the way he treated me.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
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He was blaming you for not ...
- CARRIE SIGMON YELTON:
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It was her fault, too, but he wouldn't say nothing to her.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
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Did all that stuff have to be done over, and you didn't get paid for
it?
- CARRIE SIGMON YELTON:
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No.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
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So you had to do it over during regular work hours, but you weren't being
paid anything at all?
- CARRIE SIGMON YELTON:
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No. And that's what made me so mad, and he didn't let her do any of
it.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
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How long did that take?
- CARRIE SIGMON YELTON:
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It didn't take but a day or two, because they had other... Not
regular inspectors, but others, like the floor lady and some of the
others, would do it, help get it done.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
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So you just had to lose a couple of days' pay.
- CARRIE SIGMON YELTON:
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Yes. I had, I reckon, four or five bosses over there.
