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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-0131, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Kathryn Killian and her sister Blanche Bolick recall their upbringing near Conover, North Carolina, and their careers making gloves. They fondly remember the distant world of their childhood, rich in family bonds and community connection. They are less nostalgic for their working lives, however. Killian is the more talkative of the pair, eager to share her dislike for factory work. Her work arrangement was an unusual one: after the death of her husband, who was crushed by a tree, her employer, also her brother-in-law, set up a glove-making machine in her home, making her both a stay-at-home mom and a working mother. This interview offers a useful look at the working lives of women in the early twentieth-century South.
Kathryn Killian and her sister Blanche Bolick recall their upbringing near Conover, North Carolina, and their careers making gloves.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
I just wanted to start out by asking you all a little bit about your childhood, about where you grew up.
Right in this area.
Where were you born? Out in the county?
Yes.
What did your father do?
Farmed.
He was a farmer?
We grew up knowing nothing but farming until we went to the glove mill.
When were you born?
I was born in 1916.
What date?
July 5th.
And when were you born, Kathryn?
Blanche.
Blanche. I'm going to get this straight.
June 5th, 1907.
How big a farm did your father have?
Just a little over a hundred acres. We had a big farm.
Uh huh. What did you raise?
Oh, most everything: corn, wheat, cotton, sweet potatoes, hay.
Molasses. Oh my, molasses. We always had our molasses.
How would you gather it?
Well, now he didn't make molasses, he just raised the cane
Uh huh.
And then somebody in the area had molasses milled. You had to haul it there and they made it for you.
You'd haul your cane to a mill. Did you sell molasses or just make it?
Uh huh. Did you all work in the fields?
Oh yes. That's all we had to make a living, was to scratch it out of the dirt.
Uh huh. All the kids?
All the kids. Soon as we got big enough to take a row of cotton or a row of corn, we took it. Up until that time, we helped the others in their rows.
What would the helpers do?
We had no helpers.
No, I mean when you were so young that you couldn't…
We just helped out the larger ones to learn how. They'd go along with the row and we'd go along and help them. We had a hoe, too.
We'd go along and dig that trash out of the middle.
Oh, uh huh.
But, if you weren't raised on a farm, you don't know what we're talking
about.
I wasn't. I was raised in a small town, not on a farm, but I'm trying to learn.
You see, corn and potatoes and all this was grown in rows. You had to
plant it in rows, long, straight rows, and there was a space
Well, how old would that be that you were old enough?
Oh, I think when you were five or six years old we could distinguish, but still we weren't old enough to take a load, but you'd still have to help. I'd say we were about ten or twelve years old before we got hoe to a row ourselves.
How did you feel? Would that be a big day when you got to be old enough to have your own row?
Sort of. And sort of you didn't like it either. It was hard work.
How many kids were there in the family?
Eight.
Seven girls and one boy.
Oh, so it was almost a family of girls?
We had to do boys, too. We had to do boys' work.
You think if you had more brothers in the family, you would have had different work to do?
I doubt it. We all enjoyed it. In a way, we enjoyed the work, because as I grew up I would rather do the boys' work than the girls' work.
I started cultivating, plowing, at eleven.
You were plowing at eleven? What was considered girls' work?
Just the hoeing.
Oh. As opposed to plowing?
Yes. See at that time you worked with a horse.
And you'd rather plow than hoe? Why was that?
I guess because it looked big.
Uh huh. What about your mother? Did she…?
Oh, right out in the field with us, she worked daylight 'til dark.
It's a hard living.
Get up early in the morning, milk the cows, feed the hogs, chickens. Come in at lunch time and feed the chickens. Go back out, then come in at dark, go back over and feed the chickens and horses, the cows, milking the cows. You milked the cows twice a day, morning and evening.
Uh huh.
We didn't know anything else. Just routine. Look back now it was wonderful.
Really?
Oh, yes.
When you think about it now?
If we could have those peaceful days again, it would be wonderful.
How do you think things have changed?
Oh my goodness. You can't imagine. You just can't imagine. You didn't
have things back then. You didn't want things. If you had one pair of
shoes… Our daddy went to town and got our shoes, now
Uh huh.
Now, we didn't have shoes like this, we had high, you know, with top to them. And then we had a Sunday pair of slippers.
Did your mother make your clothes?
Oh yes, most of them, yes. And as we went to school and took home ec., well we made our own clothes.
Did your daddy own his own farm?
Oh yes.
Where had he gotten his land, do you know?
Well he bought it all… well, he inherited a little, didn't he?
Later in life.
Yes, later in life. But when they started out, I guess they bought some to begin with when they first got married. But they got it all out of the soil, got a living out of the soil. When he run short and didn't have any money, well, he'd go into the woods and cut some wood and take it to town and sell it, take a few bushels of sweet potatoes to town and sell it. Sell butter, eggs, chickens, cream. They sold cream to the creamery. They had a creamery in Hickory. They had a route through here and they'd pick up the cream each morning and take it and sell it. Then in later years, why they sold to the Carnation Milk Company. Then as they got older, why they got rid of their cows and their horses, and went into the chicken business and raised chickens.
After all we kids were gone, and just them there.
What was your house like?
Oh, I guess there's a picture of it, well look.
This painting?
Uh huh.
My niece painted it for us on a board out of the old house. That old house is torn down now.
Well, we were just small though. We had lived in another house down further off the road. This is the house our daddy was raised in, where he was born and raised.
After his mother and daddy passed away, why he bought the old home place. Oh, no, it was nothing fine. We 've never been used to anything expensive or fine. Just regular, we 've never been hungry. Never in our life were we ever hungry. We always had plenty, but we never had money in excess or anything like that. But that's not what it takes to make happiness. I don't think so.
Uh huh.
We had a very, very plain house. Cooked with a wood stove. Mama did all
of her life, cooked with a wood stove. And they heated the room they
stayed in, and the kitchen, that was the only two rooms they heated. Now
they had a stove in the upstairs, I mean a heater, that they could heat
that room, and they had a heater in what we called the parlor. They
could heat that. And when we were courting, we heated the parlor, and we
courted in the parlor.
What did you do for fun?
Got together! Our parents were just wonderful. They encouraged us to bring our friends home, and they let us just have a wonderful time in the house. There was somebody there over the weekends, all the time. It was nothing for on Sunday afternoon to have the yard full of people. Saturday nights the parlor would be full. We had fun times.
And what would all these kids do when they would gather together?
Well, in our crowd, we had a boy that played the guitar, one fellow that
would come, and his brother was a good singer and different ones would
join in and we'd sing. We had a self-playing piano! And that's what we
entertained so much with. Everybody loved to get around that
self-playing piano. One night, it rained so hard when the thrashers—you
don't know nothing about the thrashers, either, do you?
Just consider me here to be educating.
Well, years ago, when we grew up, the grain fields… you had to go in with a combine…
No, no, no.
First a cradle, a wheat cradle, and cut the wheat, you know and lay it in
sheaves, and have somebody'd tie it. And then you had to have thrashers,
and somebody who had a thrashing machine, to come in and thrash that
wheat out for you. Well, all their workers—it took a lot of
They slept in the barn.
Yes, they slept in the barn. Now this one night it rained so hard—it was right after supper, and they were going to sleep in our barn—and instead of sleeping in the barn because of the storm, daddy invited them into the house and we got in around the self-playing piano and boy we had a time.
Uh huh. Do you remember any of the songs you sang?
"Missouri Waltz"…?
I just don't remember. We finally had to take the self-playing part out of it because we couldn't keep it in tune. Some of the girls, some of the sisters, took music lessons and we had it taken out. One of our nieces has that old piano in her house. It's beautiful today.
What about dancing or games?
Well, one New Year's night—now you wouldn't believe this, but they was willing for us to have a good time. But they had rules. We had to be in. We couldn't be out sitting in a car with a boyfriend after midnight. We had to be in the house. And one night, New Year's night, we took the rug out and put it on the front porch and had a tear down in the house. We had music and dancing. We had a time. Shooting firecrackers. We did that several years.
What kind of dancing?
Square-dancing.
Square-dancing? Uh huh. Did you have somebody that called?
Oh yes. Let me see, his name was Kermit? Kermit Hedrick
Back when we were growing up, young people, why, there wasn't a car along the road—one every hour would be a lot! Don't you think, Blanche? There just wasn't any traffic.
Wasn't very much traffic. We didn't have a car until 1916.
Yes, that was the first car my daddy had, was a 1916 model. Very few cars around here then. He kept that old car until he made it into a cut off wood saw.
In the wintertime, the roads could get so muddy.
Didn't know what a paved road was, and we walked to school. Up until they consolidated down here, we had a church school down here, Old St. Paul's. I don't know what year they consolidated those and we we went to Star Town, and, I think I was in the fifth grade when I went to Star Town.
You went to a church school until then?
Well, it was a church school down here over at St. Paul's, wasn't it, Blanche? It was affiliated with the church at St. Paul's?
I don't know. We just had a school house down there. I think it was just kind of like the schools now.
But it was just two rooms.
It was just one to start with.
I don't remember that, now. She remembers that, but I don't because she's nine years older than I am. I remember the two-room school house. I don't remember whether it was first, second, and third in one, and fourth, fifth, and sixth…? Or didn't they teach the seventh down here? Well, it must have been four grades in one and three in the other.
Back when we only had one.
We had school closing, we had commencement exercises, we'd tell speeches and have programs.
How was the little school that you went to at St. Paul's different from public school in Star Town, that you went to after the schools consolidated? Was that a very big change?
No. Not a thing, except there was only one class in a room there at Star Town, and back at St. Paul's there was three or four in one. And there were just two teachers there.
Was there more religious instruction at St. Paul's?
I can't remember if there was any at all.
It wasn't affiliated with the church, I don't think. Just like schools are now and that's where the school house was.
I just thought it was, because they called it Old St. Paul's.
After they consolidated, why all these other schools, you know, went to Star Town.
Yeah, that was the New Jerusalem church. I guess they just had the school house where the church was. It's just where the school was built.
What about your parents? Did they join in these singings and parties?
Oh, no, no, no! They were over in the other room in the bed.
Your parents, it doesn't sound like they were very strict?
Well now we knew better than to stay out after midnight.
What other rules did you have to follow? What kind of things did you get in trouble for?
We knew better than to disobey, because if we did, he didn't withhold the hickory stick.
Would your father be the one to give you the spanking?
Oh yes. He used to use a leather strap, when we were growing up. I can't remember ever getting it, though, except for one time.
What was that for?
Oh my. Well, I was just a little thing. See, we didn't have a heated house, I told you we just heated the kitchen and the room we stayed in, and I don't remember who the baby was. Anyhow I had a habit of crawling in the cradle and going to sleep at night, and my daddy would have to carry me upstairs then. He told me he'd hit me if I didn't quit it. Well, I didn't quit it and he hit me.
Uh huh.
My mama and daddy's bedroom. They slept in the room that we stayed in. All my life.
You mean there was a couch and chairs.
No. It was a bed. Just a bed and chairs, and a bureau.
But that's where you all… ?
That's right. Where we entertained. But not the parlor, now. That wasn't the parlor.
When guests came you would go to the parlor, but for ordinary life, all seven of you would be in the …
The bedroom, where mama and daddy stayed. We didn't go in the parlor unless we were going to have company.
What about church?
Every Sunday.
What church did you go to?
Old St. Paul's Lutheran. My mother was born and raised in the Methodist church, but back then I guess the rules were—or usually they did—they went with the husband wherever he went. We had double first cousins because my mother and her brother married…well, sister and brother married sister and brother. And mama went to daddy's church. Although it was closer to the Methodist church. And her brother that married daddy's sister lived closer to our church. But he went over to the Methodist church.
Who would you say was the boss of the family? Whose word was law?
I think it was equal. Yes I do, don't you?
Mama and daddy got along fine. They were a good example to us children.
So did they ever disagree about things, about how to raise you all?
I feel sure they did, but they didn't do it in front of us.
So you never saw your parents fighting?
Not among themselves. They believed in peace. That's the way they tried to raise us.
What about church?
We went to prayer group, but we didn't belong there.
No. We didn't belong there.
You meant where we were members?
Well, just how…
Well, we lived close to the Fair Grove Methodist church and we went there. Especially when they would have their revivals during the week.
We went to Sunday school up there some, too. I don't think you did.
You'd go to the revivals at the Methodist church? Did the Lutheran church have revivals?
No.
So you'd go to Methodist revivals.
You see, we could walk up there, we were a lot closer. We enjoyed it. In
fact my first little boyfriend took me up there on his bicycle.
To the Methodist church?
Yes,
How old were you?
[laughing]
Was he taking you to a revival? [laughing]
I don't remember [laughing]She can ride a bicycle, but I can't.
Were any of you children saved at the revival?
No. They would ask for you to come up to the altar, but none of us didn't go because we didn't know what it was about. We just went. I think we just went, more or less, young as we were, just to have somewhere to go. I think it was that more than anything else.
So you'd see the other kids there?
We knew that there were a lot of people that went.
Would your parents go?
Yes. You see, it was my mother's former church. She was raised in that church. Oh, my daddy always said he liked the hymns that were sung at the Methodist church much better than the Lutheran hymns. He used to love to get in a place to sing the Methodist hymns. My daddy sang in the choir until, oh I would say, two or three years before his death, and he was eighty…what?…seven when he died? He sang in the choir for fifty years, didn't he?
Did he do any other singing around?
No. He just sang in the church choir.
Tell me about courting. When did that start? When did you start having serious boyfriends coming around?
How old were you?
I don't remember.
It was so different, again I'll say it was so different because we—I
don't know what other people did—but we didn't date
alone. With the man I married, I'll bet I didn't date with him alone
over a dozen times. We were always with someone else. And that's the way
it was from the time I started dating. We never thought about dating
alone. It was always at least another couple, or usually it was as many
couples as could be in the car. And we would pile up. I mean we would
sit on the laps, because there were very few people who had cars and you
just didn't one couple go in a car.
Was the man that you married the first serious boyfriend, or had there been some other boyfriends before him?
Oh-h-h-h, I had different ones. You know how you get crushes, several, but there was nothing to it.
When did you start going out with him?
About a year before we got married. I got married in 1937. I started dating him in '36, the early part of '36. We got married—no, about the middle of '36—we got married in December of '37.
How did it come about that you decided this was the person you were going to marry?
Well, he just kept coming around, and I just kept wanting him to.
Do you remember when he asked you to marry him?
No, I don't remember. I don't even remember if I told him I would marry him the first time he asked me, I don't remember that. But we got married. Went to the preacher's house and we got married.
You got married in the preacher's house?
Up here in Conover.
So how old were you then?
Twenty-one and he was twenty-three. I was an old maid. I was considered an old maid when I got married. Back then if you weren't married by the time you were eighteen you were an old maid.
Twenty-five, wasn't it?
Who?
An old maid.
No, but back then, when we were growing up, if you wasn't married by eighteen…don't you remember how Charles and Owen teased me? "Ain't you never gonna get married? Ain't you never gonna get married!"
Were you worried about that?
No [laughter].
You didn't think you were an old maid?
No.
What about you? How did you meet your husband?
Oh, I knew him. Grew up with him all my life.
Oh really?
That's been so long ago that I don't remember
You had known him since you were children?
Fifty some years.
If her husband was living she'd be married fifty-three years yesterday.
Uh huh.
You both married boys that lived on farms right around here?
Yes. Well, we built this on daddy's place, it's our home.
This is the home that you built? It's a nice house.
I guess my husband was born here, but he was raised out in the area.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
So how did you first start working at the glove factory?
Actually you went to work in the glove mill what year? Do you remember?
No.
You bought a '24 model T Ford and you was working before that.
I was sixteen when I went to work.
What year would that have been? Twenty-one? two? three?
Count from seven.
That would have been '21. [Rather 1923]
I know they bought a 1924 model T Ford. Now you don't know anything about what a model T Ford is, but she and our oldest sister bought a…it was a '24 model wasn't it? Yes, I guess it was.
So just two girls bought a car together?
My older sister.
You and your older sister. Did you buy the car before you started working?
No.
Is that why you went to work, so you could buy the car?
We went to work and we tried staying over there with Aunt Leila, boarding over there at Newton. And that didn't work out. So we just bought a car.
Oh, so you could live at home and go back and forth? Why didn't your boarding situation work out?
Oh, we'd just rather be at home.
That was in town and we were country people.
Why didn't you like being in town?
Oh, you couldn't make me live in town.
Really?
[laughing]
What did you not like…?
I never did try to live in town, except when I lived in Baltimore a little while, oh! Give me the old wide open spaces.
When you were a kid, what did you see as being the difference between country people and town people? Country life and town life?
I don't know what to say about that, but I never did think I'd want to be cooped up in town. In fact it's getting too close around here.
It's growing?
It sure is. It's growing too fast.
Was one of your other sisters working in the glove factory?
Yes. She and our oldest sister, there's one older than she is, were the ones who worked first.
How old was your older sister when she went in there to work?
Did you go at the same time, Blanche?
Uh huh.
And she's what? Two years older than you?
Yes.
So why did you do that? What made you decide to go in there?
Well, our daddy went and got us the jobs.
He knew the man that owned the company.
And we decided we'd like to go to work, so that's what we did.
Who owned the company then, do you know?
Hub Yount.
Hub Yount?
H. M. Yount.
And so your daddy just went in and arranged for the two of you to have jobs?
Uh huh.
And you went in to Newton and lived with your aunt? Why didn't you just keep working on the farm?
No money. We just scratched out our living, that's all.
Did you have any feeling that you'd rather do farm work?
I don't remember whether I felt any different about it or not, but we
felt that's what we wanted to do, to get out so we'd have a little more
income then. After we went to work, we bought the kids clothes,
Did you give your check to your mother and father?
No. We just helped them buy groceries, and buy childrens clothes.
Did you keep any particular amount of your money for yourself?
No.
They never made any demands on us.
We could use it as we wanted to but we always helped out.
What job did you do?
I made gloves.
Which part of the process? Were you a sewer?
The whole thing.
The whole thing?
Yes, I made the whole glove.
You don't do that now, though.
One person would do the whole glove? You mean cut it…?
Oh, no, no. After it's cut, then we made the whole glove.
What was that like? Did you feel like you were kind of cooped up when you first started working in the mill.
No, not necessarily. But it was different, though
It's hard work, working and making gloves. If you don't believe it, I'll take you out there and show you. I work here at home.
You work here at home?
Yes. I've worked at home ever since I've worked for Southern Glove.
You were working at home at the same time you were working there?
No, I had a machine in my home ever since I started working for Southern Glove. They put the machine at the house and I'd go get my goods and take it back to my house.
You mean you never have worked there, at the factory? You've always done your work at home?
Well now, I started work where she did, over at the Yount Glove Mill. I didn't work but about a year, times got so bad. And let me tell you, the first check I got from the Yount glove mill was for one dollar. I worked six weeks for nothing and then they paid me a dollar.
Six weeks for nothing?
In order to learn. My daddy got me the job, like he did her, and it was such hard times. It was back during the Depression; I started to work in '35. That's the way you had to do. You almost had to pay them to let you work.
That's a long time to go without any income.
Well, you see, I was with mama and daddy. I was with the family so it didn't matter. Then, they laid a bunch off in the early part of the year, and of course the last ones they took on, my sister, and another one of our sisters—she's passed away now—and I had gone on at the same time. So when they let us go, why I got back on at Conover Glove Mill. My daddy knew a man that worked up there and he got me on up there. So I worked at Conover Glove until I got pregnant the first time. Then after I had the baby, why I went back to Newton Glove Mill, and then I got pregnant again. I didn't go back to work; my husband was killed before my second one was born. Then I went to Southern Glove.
How did you find work?
What do you mean now?
How did you feel about it?
Making gloves?
Uh huh.
Oh, I hated it.
Really?
Oh my! I made gloves all night.
All night?
In my sleep
What did you hate about the overall factory?
Oh mercy, everything about it. They made you work every minute. I'd do everything they told me to do and I didn't know what else to do. I don't know, I just couldn't take it. But when I went to work in the glove mill, I got along all right.
You really didn't like to do it?
No. I can't say yet that I really like to make gloves, and I've made them all these years. I wished I had learned something else, but I didn't. Too late to learn now.
Who owns Southern Glove?
Arthur Little.
Arthur Little. And were you related to Arthur Little's wife?
No. Arthur and his brother Percy Little started the business and I don't know how many years ago, Percy sold out to Arthur. Percy's wife was our sister.
Oh, I see. So when you were working there, was your sister married to Percy Little?
Oh yes.
Did she work there too?
Oh yes, until she died.
Was she a sewer or what?
Oh, she could sew, or she could do anything.
She worked in the glove mill before she married him.
She's the one that she and I started to work at the Yount Glove Mill the same day.
Then she also quit Yount Glove and went to work at Southern?
No. They organized. They started together. She quit Yount's, yes. Our sister, Ethel, and Percy Little worked at Yount Glove Mill. So did Arthur for a while. They all worked at Yount Glove Mill and they quit and started their own business.
Where did they get the money to start a business of their own?
Well, they borrowed it. I guess they borrowed it.
And just set up on their own? How many employees did they have when they started?
I really don't know. You worked for them from the very beginning, how many employees did they start with up in Conover? Just a few, wasn't it?
Uh huh.
Very few.
Yes it was very few.
Started in an old store building up in Main Street in Conover.
Oh, I'd hate to say but I can't remember.
When was that company founded? When did they start it?
'45 or '46, I don't remember which. But now, he has five or six glove mills. Two or three in Virginia and in North Carolina.
Percy Little?
Arthur. Percy got out of it. He sold out.
And what did he do?
Percy?
Uh huh.
He's a farmer and cattleman.
He just got out of the business altogether?
He was a farmer all his life. Even while he was in the glove business he was still a farmer. Raised cattle.
Why did he get out of the business?
I guess he wanted to get out of the rat race.
Well, what was it like working in a place where your brother-in-law and sister worked?
Oh, it was real nice.
Did they make it easier or…?
Well, they were real nice to me.
No, they couldn't be easier than anybody. We had to obey the rules the same as anybody else.
There was no favoritism if that's what you mean.
We got along fine.
I mean, it was nice for me because when I first started working for them I had no car, and they would bring my goods to me and come and get it. And they always did until I movedup here. That's the reason I think it was easier on me. See, I didn't work at the plant. No, they wouldn't have favored us in no way, shape, or form. That wouldn't have been right.
Was your sister a forelady?
Yes, I would think in a way, yes.
I think she looked after everything.
Yes, she looked after everything.
I was just talking to a woman named Junie Aaron.
Uh huh.
She worked there.
Yes. And she was just talking about the different people that she'd
worked for and she said that your sister was the nicest forelady she'd
ever had.
I think everybody would say that.
Well, what was the work day like? How many hours did you work, and how much did you make?
You mean for them or when we first started?
Well, both.
I told you I got a dollar. In fact, I wish I had framed it, but I didn't. It was at least eight hours a day.
When you first started you worked ten.
You did. I didn't.
But by the time you started working, it was probably an eighthour day.
Well, when I went to Conover Glove to work, why, they had a night-shift up there, too, and the ones who worked in the day shift could work on into the night, 'til nine o'clock if they wanted to, and I did some, but not very often. That was when times was real good. But your working hours just had to do with how their sales were, you see. Right now it's kind of slow.
Did all of these different places make work gloves, or did they make different kinds of gloves?
Work gloves.
Is that all that's made around here, is work gloves?
Yes. All that I know of, nothing but work gloves.
What did your husband do for a living?
He worked in furniture. Then he bought a sawmill and started a business for himself, then he got killed.
How was he killed?
A tree fell on him.
At the sawmill?
Uh huh.
You were only married for…
Six years.
How did you get along then, when you were on your own and two kids to support?
Just settled down and did it. The baby I was carrying when he was killed lives right here next to me.
Did you live with your…
I lived with mama and daddy for two years after his death then I went back to my own house and lived there one year. Then her husband died and I came up here and have been here ever since.
How did you get along with the different people you worked for in those different plants? Did you find some difference in the way you were treated?
Well, I never did have any trouble. Only once when I worked at Conover, they had a machinist there that I was scared to death of. He'd snap your head off if he wasn't in a good mood, but I never had any trouble with him. I think usually when you work at a place if you're nice to people, they're nice to you.
I still can't get it straight when they put a machine in your home and you started making them here?
I can't tell you exactly when it was because I don't remember. If was
sometime after they started the business. But I can't
So did you ask to have the machine put in your home, instead of going in?
Well you see it was my sister and her husband and of course they wanted to do all they could for me, and they knew that I made gloves and they said that they would do that.
Well, could you make as much working at home?
Uh huh. The only thing is you'd have to stay at your machine at home, just like you would if your were at the mill, if you want to make as much. Oh, it helped a great deal, I'll tell you.
How would your day go? Would you really just sit down and work for eight hours without stopping?
No, no. You were just up and down, up and down. They did it so I could take care of my children and make a living at the same time. It wasn't easy, but some people have a harder lot than I do. I'm just thankful that I could work.
Who were your closest friends over all these years?
Well, this girl that I grew up with. We still are.
Mostly the people that you grew up with, not the people you've met at places that you worked?
Yes, because, you see, I haven't worked anywhere much. I've worked at home. Well, we still get together. Our old friends, the ones I went to school with.
What kind of get-togethers do you have?
Oh, well. I'm not speaking of our old friends now. We just go on different ones' birthdays. Just recently we had a birthday get-together here. I think we had about fifteen here?
On different one's birthdays we get together here or we go out to eat somewhere over at someone else's house. We just have a group of ladies that get together and play cards. Now we're going Saturday to have our Christmas party, and we were together Saturday-before-last. And we just get together to play cards. We each take a dish and go over to somebody's house and we have our lunch. We used to go and have supper, what you may call our evening out, and come home about nine or ten o'clock at night. But we got so that we can't drive at night, our eyes won't let us, so we do this at lunch time and then play cards up until before it gets dark.
And are some of these people you've known since childhood?
Oh, some of them. But there now, we've made a lot of new friends, because
different ones will bring this one in or that one in, and we just meet a
lot of new friends that way. Sometimes we have as much as eighteen. We
had twenty-one, one time. This is a widow's association.
Blanche, did you keep working straight from the time you started when you were sixteen, or did you have periods when you quit working?
Oh, there were a few times when I didn't. I didn't work straight through.
What would happen that would make you stop working for a while?
I don't know. I didn't have any children. I guess I just got a notion to stay home a while.
And you didn't have any trouble getting a job when you wanted to go back?
No.
I'm not bragging, I don't mean to brag at all, but we all could make a pretty pair of gloves and if you can make a pretty pair of gloves you don't have trouble getting on.
Really? Has that always been the case?
We all worked in the glove mill but the youngest one, didn't we?
Yes. We have one sister who works in there now. She goes and works at the plant.
Your whole family had a pretty good reputation for knowing how to make gloves?
Well, we had a reputation for being hard workers.
That means a lot.
You're right.
You go somewhere and stick to your work, why that means a lot, and making good gloves, too.
Or whatever.
Or whatever you do.
Our parents taught us to give a good day's work no matter what we were doing.
Did some people make inferior gloves?
Yes.
Did some people really get away with that?
Well, now they can, but years when we started work you couldn't. You had to make a good glove. It anyways carried back to you. During the years when the work was so good and the demand for gloves was so high, they tried to make more gloves and not so good, and that didn't turn out.
Was there a period when they started raising production?
Yes, oh yes.
Did that affect you since you were working at home?
I had to fill the same load that they did at the plant. If you don't make production, I don't think they'd let you have a machine at home.
How did people react to the work speeding up like that? How did you feel about that?
You had to speed up when they first started coming in—what did they call that when they first started it?—… When I first started making gloves you could work as you wanted to and you could not work. What I mean by that: if you wanted to make a lot you could make it and if you wanted to mess around you could mess around. But then what was that law they started—when social security first came in, wasn't it? You know, they had to pay you thirty cents an hour, wasn't it?
Minimum wage?
Yes. They had to pay you …
They had to pay you so much whether you made it or not.
Yes! That's when they tightened up and you had to work by the hour. You had to make what you were supposed to or you got out! And ever since then minimum wage goes up. So right now I don't know what it is. How they make production—I don't know what minimum wage is.
What is production right now? How many…?
I don't know. I make production, but I don't…
Over production.
Yes, I make over production.
What does that mean exactly? How many gloves do you make in an hour? Or how many are you supposed to make?
Oh, I make six dozen pair, and that's a lot. It's what they call a lot or a pack. It don't take quite an hour-and-a-half to make those.
Is that pretty fast?
No, I'm not a real fast sewer. So you don't have to be a real fast sewer to make production.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
Were there ever any strikes in the glove mills around here during the period that you all were working?
No.
We don't have a union.
What would people do if they were unhappy about something, say, the rate of production?
Go to the supervisor.
Did you even have occasion to make any complaint like that? Did you know anybody to do it?
Well, I just can't remember anything definite, but you know when you work
with a lot of people, there's always somebody who's going to be
dissatisfied in some way, shape, or form. But I just never paid any
attention to it it.
When was that, do you have any idea?
Oh my! That was when I worked at Conover glove. I don't think I even had
a child yet. And my oldest child is thirty-nine years old.
And were there any other occasions when they brought in these time-motion study people, people who would study how you can suggest how to speed up the process?
No.
That's the only attempt they ever made?
That's the only time when I was working there. No, in the glove mill you pretty much knew when you were supposed to make production. I mean, they know it now, and you tried your best to do it.
I don't get the impression that there's been too much change in the method of making gloves over the years. It doesn't seem as though ther's been a lot of new machinery.
No. Well, there was one change. The machine I learned on—the one I'm working on now is quite different—but I've been working on this machine for—oh, how long have they had this type machine in there?—there's no change in that.
What's the difference in this machine and the one you started on?
Well, this is smaller.
This is a little thing, it doesn't even look like a machine.
You wouldn't think it was a machine. The old type used to be more like a normal machine that you could sew on. And the other, old type, had two belts, a small belt and a big belt, and this one only has one belt.
END OF INTERVIEW