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Excerpt from Oral History Interview with Gladys and Glenn Hollar, February 26, 1980. Interview H-0128. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) See Entire Interview >>

A poor glove-sewer angers her colleagues

Gladys Hollar received bad training as a glove-sewer and produced sloppy work as a result. Here she notes that she angered her fellow employees by sewing sub-par gloves, and she adds a few words about the changes in glove-making technology that have taken place in the 1920s.

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Gladys and Glenn Hollar, February 26, 1980. Interview H-0128. 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 your supervisors get angry when you made a lot of mistakes?
GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:
No, not really. They never did say anything to me. They'd just bring the gloves back, and I'd have to repair them. The boys that steamed the gloves were the ones that got mad, because they didn't like to have to do them all over. See, they'd bring them back to me, and I would do them over, and then they'd have to take them back and steam them again. So it was double trouble for them; they were the ones that didn't like it. But I wasn't the only one. Almost everybody got a lot of… The learners, especially. Except the ones that were taught by good teachers. I just happened to get a bad teacher.
JACQUELYN HALL:
I've gone through a glove mill recently, but I was wondering how the process of making gloves is different now than it was in the twenties or thirties when you all got …
GLENN HOLLAR:
There's not any difference in it much. It's practically the same thing. The only thing they've improved on, it's nothing in the sewing. They've got better machines, yes; they're faster. But just from start to finish, it's all the same thing as it was when it first started out.
JACQUELYN HALL:
What about cutting?
GLENN HOLLAR:
Cutting the same way. Of course, they started with one little single die to cut everything. Now they've got them in sections; it cuts all the way across the table at one time. They've improved a lot of things, but as far as the sewing, it's all about the same thing.
JACQUELYN HALL:
That's what I thought.
GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:
That is, making the glove is about the same, but …
GLENN HOLLAR:
They've got automatic turners and all that stuff. It's just tempered().
JACQUELYN HALL:
How was turning done in the twenties, as compared to the way it's done now?
GLENN HOLLAR:
Four or five steamed up like that. Four prongs come down and a pedal down here, and you tramp on it. Turn your thumb, and then turn the rest of the glove. Everything was by hand and foot.
JACQUELYN HALL:
They still use a pedal.
GLENN HOLLAR:
Some of them, yes. But some of them, they've got the big automatic turners on the regular work instead of by pedal. They don't have to have that foot turning.
GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:
They just slip them on these hand-like things and turn them automatically.