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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-0132, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill”
Milk delivery boy Arthur Little hated getting up early to deliver milk and dreamed of owning a glove factory instead. In this interview he describes realizing that dream and details the glove-making industry in Newton, NC. Most of this interview focuses on Little's life as a factory owner and his observations about work in his mill. He describes a relatively unchanging industry, where work methods and the young, mostly female workforce have evolved little over the course of decades. Little disapproves of unions and government spending, which may reflect his struggles during the Great Depression and his hard-earned financial success. He sees the role of the Ku Klux Klan in the aftermath of the Civil War positively, however—a view that perhaps reflects the beliefs of many of his generation in the rural South. This interview will offer researchers a useful top-down look at the glove-making industry in North Carolina.
Arthur Little describes glove-making from his perspective as the owner of a glove mill in Newton, NC.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
… spreading the material out on… Is there …
Spread it up one way and come back the next. That makes a right and a left.
And then it moves on a conveyor belt SIDE and it's cut. And those men are cutters. Is that what they're called?
They're glove cutters.
And how many layers is it?
Forty-eight single layers.
And then it's put in the boxes.
Put in boxes, and the boxes then are put in buggies, you might say. And they're rolled out close to where the operators, the glove sewers, can get a-hold of them, and they take them to their machines and lay them out and sew them, and they put them back in the same box. And they shove it on down the line a little further, and then that wrist is put on. And then it goes one little step further, and they turn it, reverse it, and put the right side out. Most anything sewn is made wrong side out, as you call it, and then it has to be reversed, packed, and they inspect it all they can. Of course, there's some will get by. But then it's put on the conveyor and rolls down to the inspection table where they take them apart and go through them again. And then they're packed. There are twelve pairs to the… Which is called a dozen gloves. And then they're tied in bundles or either packed in cartons. It all depends on how they order it.
And you told me that this machine that does the bundling was invented by Cyrus McCormick?
The knotter is the same thing that Cyrus McCormick put on the oldtime reaper. And it's not been changed, not one bit. It's got the same features and everything. It's the same knotter; it's the same thing.
And the sewing machines that those gloves are made on are called…
We have different types of machines. We have flatbed machines, where the needle goes straight up and down. Then we have machines that the needle is on a slight slant, those little black machines.
Are they called angle machines?
They're just angle needle machines, and they're faster, but they can't sew as heavy a goods as the flatbed machines.
Those heavier gloves you're making, were you calling them "hot …
They go mostly into steel mills or people where they handle hot metal.
So you call them "hot mill gloves"?
We call them "hot mill gloves", is what they've always been called. And they go mostly into heavy industries where there's a lot of heat.
And they're made somewhat differently, aren't they?
The palm part of it is quilted together, two, sometimes three layers quilted together. And it's got a band on so you can sling it off if your hand gets caught in heat, you see.
And it's made in more separate pieces, isn't it?
It's made practically the same way, except the hot mill operators here don't make but parts of it, and then they're brought together, and the main operator puts the fingers on all at once and closes the glove, sews it together, and then puts on the band. If they don't put on the band, it goes to the gauntlet outfit, and they put on those gauntlets.
And then those gloves are turned one at a time.
They're turned before that gauntlet's put on there. That machine is a cylinder machine; it goes around. Now if it's just the band, they put it on, and it's turned with the rest of the gloves.
But they have to be turned by hand.
We turn all the hot mill gloves here by hand. Some glove factories turn them on those automatics, but they tear up a lot of them. Then they're inspected and packed. They're usually shipped six dozen to the case or twelve dozen to the case; it depends on the order.
And then you make a few gloves that have knit wristbands.
Yes, they're called knit wrist gloves. And there the glove operator makes the whole glove, except the operator that puts the knit wrist on. And then it's turned. It's not turned until they put the knit wrist on.
Did you make more leather gloves at one time than you do now?
Yes, we made more leather gloves at one time than we do now. Now I'll tell you—of course, this is not for publishing—we've got a leather plant over at Banner Elk. The Banner Elk Glove Company.
Yes, I've seen it, I think.
That's my plant over there, too. As a matter of fact, we've got six plants. You ever been through Mountain City, Tennessee?
I've heard of it.
It's on beyond Boone about twenty miles. We've got a plant there bigger than this one. It don't make a thing but single gloves, and they make about 7,000 dozen a day.
What kind of glove?
Singles, where they just put the knit wrist on it. The others are double, so what is quilted together are double gloves.
Did you say that it's hard to get people to work on the leather gloves?
Oh, we can't hardly get anybody to work here on gloves.
It's
Is it harder work to do leather gloves?
Oh, yes, it's a lot harder to do leather gloves.
Is it harder to find …
Yes, it's harder to get anybody to stay with leather operation than it is the cotton operation. We find it that way. And since we have another operation leather, we're not pressing it too hard.
Let me go back a little bit and talk about you. When were you born, and where did you grow up?
I was born August 14, 1908, and I was raised just about two miles, as the crow flies, right in this direction here. I was raised on a cotton, grain, and dairy farm. I used to deliver milk through the city of Newton when I went to high school. And when I graduated from high school in 1927, I was sent to State College to school, and there I went to school and was educated to be a CPA. But I got cold feet. I got out of college in 1931 at the bottom of the Depression, and instead of taking up the accounting later, why, I got into the glove industry.
How big was your father's farm?
It was about 250 acres.
That's a pretty good-sized farm.
Oh, we still own it. Me and my brother got part of it, and then I bought another one besides that. We're still farmers.
Do you know anything about your grandparents, where they came from or anything about your history?
Oh, yes. My grandfather, my great-grandfather, my
great-great-grandfather, my great-great-great-grandfather, and my
great-great-great-great-grandfather came from Pennsylvania to Salisbury
about the year 1750. And he
How was that story passed on to you?
Different members of the family just kept handing it down to us. It goes back to Captain Daniel Little, he was called. He's buried right in the middle of the graveyard in Salisbury, which turned out to be the Cemetery. He died December 10, 1775. That was before the American Revolution. He was captain of the colonial militia there; that's where he got his name. So he died before the American Revolution, which one year. Of course, all of my folks have traced back to get DAR papers. They go straight on to him, too. Even Peter, the same year his son.
What about your mother's family?
My mother's family I don't know quite that far
back. She was Dalsey Hufmann, and my great-grandfather was Alfred
Hufmann. He was in the War Between the States, and he had a son that was
in the Army, too. His son was killed at Frazier's Farm, which
was a small skirmish out southeast of Richmond. And the enemy was so
close on them, they didn't have a chance to bury him. They
took his belongings off of him and wrapped him with a blanket and
covered him with leaves. Now some side of the family says he went back
the next day and buried him. My mother never did tell me that, though.
That's the length of that. I've not had time to
check it out. But there's Hufmanns all through this country,
and it goes in with the
Were they all farmers?
They were all farmers. They were all laborers. Now Hufmann was a machinist or a mechanic, too. He could do blacksmith work. He could even make darning needles and put a hole in it, back over a hundred years ago.
Any storekeepers or lawyers or …
No. We are all of German descent and people that worked for a living on the farm or things connected with the farm. Of course, in later years some of us turned out to be… They've got the inheritance from my great-grandfather Hufmann, and they've turned out to be carpenters and architects and tinners and what-have-you.
Did you work on the farm when you were coming up?
Oh, gosh, yes, I worked on the farm. As a matter of fact, me and my wife lived on the farm until 1950, and then I moved to Newton to put my twin daughters in school at Newton, where they had me to go to school when I was a kid.
When you went to school, did you go in and board with somebody?
Oh, no, I walked and rode a bicycle. It was just two miles across there.
I drove an automobile when I was fifteen years old, delivering milk
through the city of Newton. Of course, they wasn't so tight
on a driver's license then. As a matter of fact, you
didn't have a driver's license. But I used to
deliver milk all through the city of Newton when I was from fifteen on
up till nineteen. I graduated, and then I didn't deliver milk
much after that. My father retired in 1929 and left the farm. As a
matter of fact, I lived with him and Mother for eighteen months after we
left the farm, and I walked back to the farm every day and helped my
brother with the farm. And then about 1930 we divided the farm between
my
Were there any slaveowners in your family?
Oh, yes. My great-grandfather owned eighteen slaves. My grandfather owned one one time, but he got killed. A tree fell on him. He had so many boys of his own, I guess he figured he didn't need any. But my great-grandfather was a slaveowner. All through our family, we've never found where they ever had any trouble with their slaves, that they always liked each other, and they worked in the fields with the slaves. They didn't have many.
Were they all Democrats, mostly?
I think up to my great-grandfather, but after that, why, it went the other way.
Republicans?
Yes. They tell on my grandfather that he wrote a write-in vote for Abraham Lincoln. Me and my brother consider ourselves to be the oldest Republicans in the country, just about.
When the Civil War came, then, were they against secession?
Yes. My grandfather hid out. George Washington was taken to the army, but he escaped from them and hid out, and then he hid out with a number of his cousins. One of them was killed by the home guard. They lived over in Alexander County where they didn't have but a few slaves, and they just didn't believe in slavery in the first place. Now my great-grandfather, who had slaves, he was looking the other way. But there was a division there.
There was a division in the family.
Well, it was at that time, but it never did amount to anything. They
didn't like my grandfather because he hid out. Well, he
wasn't the only one that hid out. The neighborhood was full
of boys that hid out.
That's right.
We've lost more people in that war than we have in all other
wars put together. Disgrace. What was it over? Nothing. Turned out to be
nothing.
Are you saying that the boys that were hiding out to keep out of the army would come in and help with the cornshucking and then change back to hiding?
Yes. See, here is the way it worked. Some of the boys could volunteer for
home guard service, that is, getting around to keep the boys in the service. They had a job to keep their boys in
the service. To round them up and take them back, they escaped so
much.
This county, though, voted for secession, didn't it?
Oh, yes, the State of North Carolina went to… Well,
it's just in the paper here. They cut off the men.
I'm reading about the Charlotte men.
Did it cause hard feelings between your family and the southern Democrats in the area?
Well, yes, there was to some extent, but over in Alexander County most everybody felt that way except the older ones that had had some slaves. It wasn't as bitter in the neighborhoods as it was in the American Revolution. That was so bitter. Oh, that was bitter. You know, a lot of families had to leave here on account of it. Some of them, I read not too long ago, went to Nova Scotia and all up into Canada. But it wasn't that bitter.
After the Civil War, in the 1880's and '90's, did you have any relatives that joined the Populist Party?
Oh, yes, my folks were in the Populist Party.
Oh, really?
Yes. You see, that Populist Party came in here before, really, the Republican Party got very much in the… Yes, when the Populist Party went out, it joined the Republican Party. Oh, we had Congressmen elected in the Populist Party. Shuford was one, I remember. Of course, I don't
Which Shuford was that?
That was the Shufords over here on South Fork River. Some of these
Shufords, it seems, probably would know. He was elected on the Populist
ticket. 1
* Alonzo C. Shuford, elected in 1895.
Do you remember any stories about the Populist Party that you could tell me?
Not particularly, except I've heard rumors and things that
there was a lot of gunfire between each other. I remember this one
nigger when I was a young boy. He was a driver for one of these fellows
runing on the Populist Party, and they started shooting at him, and he
said, "I got down in the buggy as low as I could to keep the
middle horse a-going as fast as I could, and the old boss was sticking
his head up over the back
What did the Populist Party stand for around here?
More or less what the Republican Party stands for now, conservative. They were the conservative part of the party. And of course they stood more or less for equal rights for the Negro, too. They were probably against the Ku Klux Klan, but they had to have theKu Klux Klan back in those days, of course. If you read history, you couldn't have never done what …
Back during the Reconstruction period?
Oh, yes, they had to have that. No question about it.
Why is that?
Well, because you never would control the nigger at all. You just wouldn't have no… You just couldn't control him at all. He wouldn't work; he wouldn't do nothing. And the carpetbagger would think you owed him a living and all that stuff, you know. Go down to the old State Capitol. You see where the stones are all broke off the steps? Well, they say that it come about by rolling whiskey barrels down the steps, and break them off. It was under carpetbagger government. We couldn't have existed under such as that.
Was the Klan strong in this area during Reconstruction?
Oh, yes, it was strong all from here on through the South. Sure it was, and they did a lot of good. Of course, there was a lot of… It's just like everything, you know. It's the way with anything the human element's got anything to do with. It'll swing from one extreme to the other. And then other people got to taking it up. If they had a spite at somebody, they'd give him a good whipping and they'd pin it on the Ku Klux Klan when it wasn't. See.
Did you have people that were in the Klan in those days?
Well, yes, all my folks were in the Klan.
What kind of people would have been in the Klan at that time?
The people that wanted to try to set up a government that we could live under, and wanted their laws obeyed some way or another, and keep the nigger in his place. He had to be kept in his place. If you didn't, why… Carpetbagger government through here was terrible, and further south it was worse.
Were the same people in the Klan that later on joined the Populist Party?
Yes, they was sent
But isn't that a contradiction?
Well, it evoluted; it didn't just change overnight. Of course, the Klan through here wasn't very active many years after the War. Things began to settle down and the Democratic Party began to get hold of the government a little better. But immediately after the War, under the carpetbagger and all that stuff that was feeding to us from the South, why, that was the only recourse to keep the black man in his place. Some people don't believe that, but, now, I do.
Were any of your relatives elected on the Populist Party ticket?
No, I've had no politicians in my family. I had a first cousin that was chairman of the board of county commissioners here a few years ago.
But they were supporters.
Oh, yes, they were supporters of the Populist Party.
About the Klan, have you been reading about this stuff that's
been going on in Greensboro? 2
* Reference is to the killing of Communist Workers Party members
by the Ku Klux Klan in 1979.
Oh, yes, that's altogether a different… That's not even an offshot of the old Klan.
This is a completely different thing.
Yes, yes. I don't have no sympathy for them. I think it's out of place. I don't think we need it. I don't think we need the Communist Party, either. So there you go. It's the misfits on both sides. No, the Klan lived its day, and after that, why, I think it was out of place.
So you graduated from high school, and you went straight off to college after that?
I went straight to college.
Did you have other brothers and sisters that had gone to college?
No, I was the only one. I have just only one full brother, and I had a half-sister and a half-brother that were older. They went into what would be considered high school here at old Catawba College. You know, Catawba College was first located here at Newton, and they went there in what was called the prep school at that time, and they went in that pretty far.
How did it come about that you got to go off to State?
Well, they had just raised me that way. I didn't know it would be any other way, that's all.
You always knew you were going to go to college.
I was to have gone to Columbia University in the fall of '31
to get my master's degree in business administration, but
things was so tough, and I felt like I'd been a liability
long enough. And I had my credits. I remember I took a dollar bill and
sent it to State College, and they sent them to Columbia University. All
of our seminars and most all of our textbooks were written by professors
out of Columbia University. Therefore, most all our boys went to get
their master's degree in business administration, went to
Columbia University. You could get it in a year at that time, but
it'd take two years now. And it would have taken two years at
Harvard at that time, too, and Yale. I just regret it so bad
Oh, really?
But I didn't.
That happened to a lot of people in the Depression.
I could have went anyhow. I was still a single boy, and marriage was off a few years, but I declare, things was tough. You can't imagine how blue things was in 1931. And to this day, I don't buy no stock, because I was in school to study banking, financing, and all kinds of investments when that crash come. I just can't do it. I just can't buy stock. I can buy gold. Can't buy stocks, I just can't. So many families just wiped out. There were a lot of them here at Newton, too, just completely wiped out. They had everything they had in stock. My daddy was never a stock man. He never had any stock in anything. We had it in farm land, and, of course, farm land went down low, low, low, but it came back. But you can't come back with stocks when it's wiped out, and the company is bought and taken over by somebody else, you see. You just can't do it.
What special memories do you have of your years in college?
Loafing around with nothing to do, to tell you the truth.
Oh, really?
We didn't have no classes in the afternoon. Of course, I know I studied. I done my studying in the library, too, a while. But what I got didn't come easy. I majored in accounting, and that's a lot of work, a lot of bookkeeping. But I didn't have lab but one year, from two to four, three days a week. No kidding, they paid my way all the way. My daddy just give me a checkbook with…
Those are the checks that paid your way to college?
There's the checks that put me through school.
Wow. Had he saved up enough money from farming to do this?
Oh, yes, my father was pretty well anchored. Yes. Of course, you could go to school at State College then for about six hundred dollars a year, and eat in the dining hall, good eats.
Before we move on to your career, I wanted to ask you just a little bit more about your childhood. What kind of person was your mother? What do you remember about her?
My mother was, of course, a heavy-set person, and she was a hard worker and a wonderful housekeeper and worked in the field a many a many a day, just right with us. Of course, we all worked. Me and my brother and my father and mother raised a lot of wheat and grain to feed the dairy cattle, and we had colored tenants that raised the cotton. This is not for publication, but my father at one time was the second biggest cotton farmer in this county. I remember in the hot wheat harvest, my mother would always bring up in the evening, about two-thirty or three o'clock, a little jug of wine and cake and pickles to give not only to us but any of the hands that was helping us, which she said was a custom that was handed down to her from all the Germans, Dutch. They claimed that good wine would counteract the bacteria in your stomach from drinking water when it was hot. There's a lot of things. And, of course, my mother was wonderful to bake persimmon pudding. And she could make the best sausage and liver mush that you ever eat. And, of course, we raised our own hogs and our own beef and all that stuff.
Were you closer to your father or to your mother?
Well, I don't know whether it would make any …
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
We came with a couple of my friends that I know in the neighborhood. They went to a different school, but I knew them; we were farm boys. When he caught hold of my hand, and when I got on the train he said, "Son, you do what's right." That I'll never forget. [Tears come to his eyes.]
When he was sending you off to college?
Yes. And, of course, I came back home a lot. That was in the days when they called it "bumming," you know. It started in that age. And you could bum home faster than you could on a train. But today there's been so much… You know, that's the way; a good thing gets going, why, some people ruin it, you see. So many holdups and all. You can't get out here in the road and bum anywhere now, but I used to. Of course, I never did leave to bum up here unless I had money to catch a bus or a train. I never took a car down to use while I was in school there. We had cars that I could have taken, but I didn't. And my father would have let me taken, I know, my senior year, but I didn't. I didn't have to take any examinations much during my senior year. Of course, it's not that way now. You have to take exams. You don't get good enough grades to get out of examinations, do you?
No.
Well, we could then, back in those days.
What did you do when you first came back home then in '31?
Well, I was glad I had a farm to come to then. Most all of my classmates
owed for their education and had no farm to go to nor no nothing. A lot
of them took jobs in a cotton mill, just running a loom or weaving. Some
of them took jobs with Jewel Tea Company delivering
So you came back and …
Stayed here at the farm about five or six years, and then I kept books in Hickory for a trucking line for about three years, and then I kept books at a hosiery finishing plant for about three years, and then I started this thing. I was a little too old for the service. I'm seventy-two years old. I started this thing in 1945, me and my brother and sister-in-law.
Tell me a little bit about your brother and sister-in-law and how they …
Well, we lived on the same farm. They lived on his side that he had, and I lived on the side that I had. And they had had experience in the glove business.
Where had they gotten their experience?
At Newton Glove down here. So we started in a little building uptown. It was right where Bowman Drug Company now stands. It was a big old brick building there; it had two storeys to it, and we started there.
What had they done at Newton Glove?
Oh, they were plain workers. She was a sewer, sewed gloves. And my brother turned and formed.
Was he farming and turning at …
Yes, he farmed and worked there, too. Him and his wife worked there, I think, seven or eight years while I was working in Hickory with the bookkeeping and different things.
You had gotten married meanwhile?
Both of us had. He got married before I got through college. I got out in '31, and I got married in '33.
How did you meet your wife?
We were raised in the same neighborhood. Her father's farm adjoined my father's back on the creek, on the branch. We used to meet back there and sleigh ride in the snow, all together, the whole family.
When did you start courting her?
Well
Oh, really?
Yes, we all through when I was in college and then three years after I got out of college.
What took you so long before you got married?
Well, I don't know. We just wasn't in no hurry. She was teaching school. She was luckier than I was. She went to teaching school right out of high school. Well, she got two summer sessions at Lenoir-Rhyne. Started teaching in a little country school out here, and then she'd go to school in the summertime and then go to Saturday school and all. She had it rough to get through school back then.
Where did you all get the capital to start a business of your own?
Well, it didn't take as much as we thought it did. We had collected a little money along. Cotton prices began to get better. Then we had worked off, too, you see. We lived at home and didn't have to spend money for eats, you know. And then my wife taught school.
So you had just been saving.
We were thrifty, and we saved our money. It didn't take as much money as you thought it did.
How much money did you expect it to take?
I thought it would take at least $20,000, but we started with less than fifteen. In a very small way, of course.
What made you decide to start a glove mill? How did that idea even come up?
Well, I knew that was coming.
I don't know whether I ought to tell all these things. I don't know where it's going.
Well, it's just going into a collection in the library, but is there something …
Well, when I was delivering milk in the city of Newton as a boy from fifteen to eighteen years old, we had to get up early in the morning, milk the milk, and cool it, and bottle it. And you had to get up early to do that and get to school then after you delivered it. And I'd go by Newton Glove, and it was maybe about three times as big as this complete office. And I'd think to myself, "Some day, if I could just grow up to have me a little business, a glove mill like this, and not have to deliver this damnable cold milk, I'd be a happy boy." And that never did get out of my mind; it never did. I never had a desire to get into anything else.
Wow.
Never had a desire to get into anything else. Because all during the
Depression, they would run at least two days a week when other companies
were busted and closed for years on end. In Newton, I don't
know of but two things that stood that thing, and that was the old
Newton Oil and Fertilizer Company and the two banks. That one bank
there, when Roosevelt closed the banks, they said was the strongest bank
in North America. It didn't even owe a corresponding bank any
money. You know, banks work through each other. But it didn't
even owe a correspondent
So was it your idea to start the mill then, rather than your brother's? More your idea than his?
Well, yes, it was mine. I was the originator. I had to beg him awful to get him to come with me.
Were they kind of afraid to take the chance?
I think they was afraid, yes. Was afraid to take the step.
What did they think might happen? Were they afraid that you might lose your savings?
They figured that we'd probably go broke.
But we didn't.
Tell me about how you started out.
We lived out in the country, and we had at that time a Lum and Abner
telephone. Do you ever hear of them? The old-time telephones, you know,
that you pick it up and you twist a crank and ring it. In my workings at
Hickory, I had got in touch with the Cutters' Exchange in
Nashville, who catered to the needle trade. I wrote them and asked them
if they had any machines. I knew the kind of machines we'd
have to get. And they answered me back, and they said they did. Well,
the man that
How did you get your first workers? Were they people that you knew?
Yes, they was people here that we knew. My brother's wife had
a couple sisters that knew how to make gloves, and we trained
… * See interview with Kathryn Killian and Blanche Bolick.
So you had a hard time getting the material?
No, I didn't have a hard time, because this all was made down here at Newton, close by, and I was in on the drag and I knew all the people, and they knew us, too. And I had priorities. I went to Charlotte and got priorities to work with cloth. Cloth was the biggest thing to get priorities. We could get thread pretty easy. And I got a good bit of my equipment from Mrs. Rankin's husband, [Adrian L.] Shuford. Oh, he was a great friend of mine. And we'd talk to each other five and six times a day on the telephone.
Oh, really?
Yes. So we got a small cutting press from him. And then we went up there with a tractor and put it on skids and just pulled it up the street and put it in the back of that building and pulled it on up to its place with the tractor. I sold him a lot of gloves, too. I sold him 10,000 dozen gloves the day the Korean War started. We had already moved down here. This is built on the back end of a small farm we own. It runs from here plumb on up to the other road. And I sold him a lot of gloves; he bought a lot of gloves from us.
You mean you would sell him finished gloves and …
Yes, and he'd resell them.
Why would you do that, rather than sell them directly yourself?
Well
Was there very much competition among the different …
Oh, yes, we was in competition with each other. Yes, all the time, but I
always tried to stay clear of them if I could. I remember I spent one
night up near Richmond to see Reynolds Metal Company. I called on them
on Monday morning, and they said, "Oh, you're from
Conover. Do you know Shuford down there at Warlong Glove?" I
said, "I sure do. You buy gloves from him?" He said,
"Yes. Is he a Jew?" I said, "Oh, hell,
no."
But he didn't get into any trouble?
No, no. Well, in the Depression we all was in trouble then, but he come out of it with a flash Well, that's his son that runs Jackson Buff. You've probably interviewed them.
I've talked to him on the phone, and then I interviewed his mother.
They're fine people; they're great glove people
Did Warlong Glove go out of business?
Yes, they sold out.
When was that?
Oh, it's been a number of years. The Riegal Textile Corporation bought them. That's not up to me to be a-telling. They ought to tell that to you themselves. But it was a big deal.
What were the biggest problems you had during those first ten …
Getting them made was the big problem. Getting them produced.
What was …
Well, you've just got to train help and all. It was slow. It would take from eight to twelve months to train an operator to make gloves.
Oh, really? Eight to twelve months?
Oh, yes, sir. It sure does. Sweatin' blood.
Were your first twelve operators all women?
Yes.
Were they young or old or what …
A couple of them's retired now. They were
Did you hire mostly young girls?
Oh, yes, when we'd get into training, we'd hire young people from eighteen to twenty-five years old.
So you preferred young people.
Oh, yes, because they would be with you much longer, you see. When we went up to Mountain City to put up this big plant… They say we've been over there seventeen years, and I know some of the young girls are showing a little age on them. And our people from seventeen to twenty-five years old. Then we had one girl to lie about her age. She was twenty-eight, and oh, did she make a glove. She's a-working today. She married an Eisenhower, and the Eisenhowers are in our family, too. It's the same line as General Eisenhower. General Eisenhower was supposed to have lived in North Carolina, but they went to Texas. The General was born in Denton [Denison], Texas. And when he was about two years old, they moved up to Abilene, Kansas.
But that's just the same line.
It's the same line, but it goes back to around the 1700's and the early 1800's.
How would you pay people during the time they were being trained?
Of course, we had the minimum wages, you know. All the time you had to pay them the minimum wage, and then of course we would set production. When they got to making more, to pay their own way, why, then they could get to making extra money for themselves.
How does piecework work, exactly? You pay a certain amount an hour …
All the glove factories that I know of, most of us through here work in six dozen to the pack, we call it, and then you pay them so much per pack. And by the way, this is the work glove hub of the world. More work gloves are made and controlled from this point than any other spot on earth. That's not for big publication, but that's a fact. It's been that way for years.
Do you have any idea how many people work in glove manufacturing around here?
I don't know how many works in it now, but there's
a thousand
That would be Warlong Glove and Newton Glove?
Yes. Then the next year there was another one started. Then after Riegal liquidated, there was another one started. Now we've all got branch plants away from here. I don't know whether any of the other manufacturers have told you that or not, but that's literally the truth. More work gloves, and oh, the whole industry knows "the Catawba boys," they call them.
Is that right?
Oh, yes. They know us.
What about the changing technology? Has it been pretty much the same machines from the beginning that you're using now, or what kind of changes …
The machine is the same sewing machines, except they're made
stouter and run faster. The glove is made today just like the first one
was made years ago in the West whenever there was snow on the ground.
They made them in the West in their families. The men would cut them out
with scissors, and the women would sew them up. The same today.
We've made progress in how to cut them and how to do a lot of
the other things to them, but that sewing is the same old way. The
machine's got to be guided every move it makes, just like the
first glove was made. I had an uncle that spent a lot of time in the
West, in Illinois, and he said they cut them out with scissors in the
wintertime when there was snow on the ground, and the women would sew
them up. They used them in working in the fields in the summertime, and
the wintertime, too. They husked corn
In this county?
Yes. Just like, you know, the old tobacco poke things. They were put
together and made, and they'd send them in here, and women
would run thread through them, you know? You've seen people
with these thread tobacco
Yes.
These folks in here made them. And that's what got the idea here.
Are you saying that there were factories here that rolled tobacco?
There was ladies here that sewed gloves.
They'd sew gloves in their homes.
Yes. Sewed gloves in their homes and then sent them back to wherever they got them from. Now I'm not as well versed in that as some of the Hermans over here, but that's where they got the idea to make gloves first. They were among the first to make gloves here, and then, of course, Warlong came along. And when Newton Glove came along, they …
So women were sewing gloves in their homes.
Yes.
Do you know who they were selling the gloves to?
They sent them back to the people that sent them the cut goods.
Do you know who sent them the cut goods?
They might could come from Wells, Vermont, or some of those bigger factories in the Midwest. I just don't know.
And they'd send cut goods all the way down here.
Yes, sure.
Are the Hermans a family that's been in the business a long time?
Yes. I don't know if any of them are living any more or not. I don't know of any of them. They're all dead. But they run a glove factory over here on the railroad, right pretty close to Carolina Glove. Have you called on Carolina Glove yet? They could tell you a lot, too.
Not yet.
One of them worked for them a long time. I don't know whether he lost his arm in the glove industry or not, but he was sales manager for them for a good while. But he's dead now. But they was still made in this county that way before they started making them commercially here.
What about accidents? Is it dangerous, the cutting and
Well, no. We've had some boys… Now this fellow that said he'd worked for us fourteen years got his hand mangled up in a press out here.
In a cutting press?
Yes, he wasn't watching hisself and joking and going on. But that's the only bad injury we've had in the thirty-four years we've been in business.
It looked like you could easily get a needle in your finger on the sewing machine.
Well, they do run the needles into their finger, but we've got
guards on there. It's pretty hard to get them through there.
We have had people to run a needle in their finger, but that
don't amount to nothing. It scares them to death. It would
me, too,
Back, not in the forties when you started this mill, but when you
Oh, no.
There wasn't any feeling among people that women shouldn't …
No. We've had people to say that a woman's place is in the home, but all the gloves that have been made in this country have been made by women. Oh, yes. Of course, they didn't have no labor laws back when I was a young boy, but I had a lot of girlfriends that I went to school with and all. They went to work at fourteen and fifteen years old. And some of them walked two and three miles to the factory, too. And they worked ten hours a day, some of them did, especially in the wintertime. No, there's never been no hard feelings.
Did your wife quit teaching school after she got married?
No. Well, she had to.
They wouldn't let married women teach?
They wouldn't let married women teach. Then they come back on
their knees begging her to teach. So she went back to teach the first
year we started the glove factory. And she taught a total of thirty
years, and she's retired now.
Very pretty.
One of them lives on one of the farms I bought. She built a new home
I sure haven't, but I'll …
That's where we see him. They live out from Durham off of Cole Mill Road, which is out north of Durham, in a development out there. They've been married a good while. They have a boy eighteen years old.
It looks like these sewers are sewing really fast. Are some people much faster than other people?
Oh, yes, some are just… You'll get elements in there just like everything else. Just like in classes, you've been with people that can learn right fast, and other people that have to work hard for it. We have people that drag and can't hardly make production; we have people that can make forty dollars a day.
What do you have to do to make production?
What we call "production" is when you make enough to count for the minimum wage. The minimum wage is $3.10 an hour now, I think. When your tickets all add up that you make $3.10 an hour, you're making production.
And that's so much a dozen?
Yes, he'd give you so much a pack, or six dozen. Then, of course, if you make more, then you get it, you see.
And how much do you pay per dozen?
Well, per pack, I don't know the rates. You see, I'm trying to retire. I'm getting away from all of it. I don't do no detail work at all. I come up here, and I read the magazines and the papers, and usually I go home by two or three o'clock in the evening. I don't know what the rates are. I don't even know what they're going to give them for a Christmas present. My son-in …
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
Well, we'll close down here now. At this plant we'll close the twenty-first; that's next Friday, a week from today.
You stay closed for …
Then I imagine that my son-in-law will go up to the Banner Elk plant and close it on the twenty-first, too. Now Jack'll have four to close. He'll have the Mountain City plant and three in Virginia. So he'll probably close some of them on Thursday and the others on Friday. We work about 1,000 people in all of our plants.
Do you find that certain kinds of people make better workers than others? When you used to be in charge of hiring, how would you decide who to hire and who not to hire?
Well, you just more or less have to try out. You've got some
things to go by. If you can get their grades, that's a good
thing to go by, but that's hard
How much does it cost to train somebody?
Well, you just figure the minimum wage for from eight months to a year and a half.
During that time, can people …
During that time, they're not making enough… What
we call their makeup pay will be terrible, between what the minimum wage
is and what
People that have been with you a long time?
Yes. Even if they've not been with me but two years, and they're good operators. Valuable, they're valuable. And they know it, too. Oh, I tell you, they can boss you if they want to. They know it. Oh, and step out here and go to the competitor, and just go to work the next morning. Oh, yes.
Is there a labor shortage?
Oh, yes.
So they're always looking for …
Here in Catawba County, I don't know what it is now, but it has been less than one percent already, unemployed. Whenever you get that low, why, you're not finding anybody unemployed that wants to work.
How do you keep your good hands from going off and working for somebody else?
Well, we try to be as good to them as we can.
What does it take to make people happy and satisfied …
Well, it takes a lot of things. We try to give bonuses. We pay the hospitalization on all of our workers. Then we've got a good rate for them on their dependents. And we give two weeks off, one at Christmas and one at the Fourth of July, with pay. And we try to pay rates that's going, or either above the neighborhood rates. And we try to have good working conditions. It's just so many things that you can't mention, that's all.
What about just good personal relationships with people? Do you think that makes a difference?
Well, I get out among the folks, and I joke and talk with them. I try to be not exactly down on the level with them. I try to keep myself a little above them, which naturally you have to. But if I've got any enemies out there in that plant, I don't know it. I know one thing: when I'm a-travelling around, me and my wife, to these other plants, they're always concerned about me. They're concerned about me. We've got a plant that we just finished building in Springs, Virginia. I don't know whether I've got a picture of it here or not. I don't believe I ever got a picture at home of it. It's as big as this building here, 28,000 square feet. And me and my wife was over there summer, working with it. We had started over there about seven years ago in a gymnasium building and just outgrew it. It wasn't satisfactory for a glove operation, no way.
What kind of changes have you seen in the industry over the years you've been involved in it?
We have different ways to make a lot of the things that goes into the glove, but as far as the glove making itself, it's the same thing. And they're sold more or less the same way. Now we sell thr