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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-0142, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Murphy Yomen Sigmon entered the workforce at the age of fourteen and held a variety of jobs in North Carolina industries before a mill shutdown ended his long working life. He began his laboring life in a shoelace factory, held a number of positions in a cotton mill, ran his own sock-making outfit, worked in a hosiery mill, and at the time of the interview, was dabbling in furniture-making out of a home workshop. In this interview, Sigmon describes these experiences, from taking swimming breaks while working as a doffer in a cotton mill, struggling to find work during the Great Depression, or enlisting his wife to help him start a sock-making business. Most of this interview addresses the details of the mill as a workplace, but the interviewer does take some time to ask Sigmon his opinions on subjects such as unions and social stratification among southern laborers.
Murphy Yomen Sigmon reflects on a working life, most of which he spent in a cotton mill in Hickory, North Carolina.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
I wanted to start out with some real general information about your early background. Where were you born?
I was born July 26, 1913, in West Hickory. You know where they tore down the old schoolhouse up there? Right down that street, used to be a big red house, a two-storey. That big two-storey house that was down there, I was born in it. My daddy built that house. And it's still standing. That's one of the houses he built, and it's still standing. And he built the old Secker place, there on the lot where the Kerners Outlet is there. He built a couple of houses in there, and they done been tore down. He was a carpenter. He worked for Elliot Builder, a building company. I guess he worked for ten years for them. He would travel with them, and he went to Florida back in the early thirties, back when they was a-building all the train depots and stuff down through Florida. He'd go down there and stay a couple of months at a time.
So he was away from home a whole lot.
Yes, with Elliott Building Company. I don't know whether it still originates yet or not in Hickory.
Did you ever work with him when you were …
No, I never did go off with him to work. I used to help him when I was a-growing up around here, when he was down in, they used to call it Bobtown.
Bobtown. What was that?
That was down in Hickory, down in the colored section. Him and Bud
Setcher, they was good friends and he was a carpenter, and they
How old were you then?
I was about twelve years old, I guess, or thirteen. I just finished the fifth grade.
What did you do after you got out of school?
I went to work in the shoelace factory. It set right there on the corner where Kerner's building is now.
Did they tear down that building?
Yes, it was in the old schoolhouse building. When they built the new schoolhouse, they just tore down
But they didn't run the school in the same building that they ran the shoelace …
No.
It wasn't at the same time.
No. They moved it across the road, the old building, and the shoelace
factory put it in. And the new schoolhouse, we had the playground where
the old schoolhouse was. They cleared it off. There used to be a little
old jailhouse out there, in the thirties. That's where one of my boy's
good friends, a friend of the boys, he got killed over there. They had
one of these big old steel drags, and we was back there a-smoking
I went to work in 1928.
In the shoelace factory?
Yes, and my brother and my sister. The one you talked to down there, Mareda, she was a-running braiders, and my brother was a-running on the third shift. And they needed somebody, and I'd been down there helping out after school, and I knowed pretty much how to thread them up and run them. And they wanted to start up all of them on the third shift—my brother was just running about half of them—and he got me on. But I couldn't work on the third shift if they found it out.
Why not?
The child labor law had just come in around then, and they couldn't work under sixteen. See, I wasn't sixteen yet; I quit when I was fourteen from school. They said they'd let me work; if the labor man come along, I'd have to quit, though. Checking.
Did one ever come along?
Yes. I worked three months, and he finally come along and I had to quit.
How did he find out? Tell me about that.
He checked the books. See, they had to have me down in the book. He found it out that way. And I was making pretty good; I think it was $14.40 for a week, forty hours. And that was away back there when times was rough. That was before the Depression hit. And over at the mill, they wasn't making hardly anything.
So you were making more than people that were making …
Oh, yes.
The cotton mill?
Yes. And my brother was making, I think it was $18.60.
But my brother was working over at the cotton mill, Ivey Weavers.
Which brother was this?
That was Frank. I've got two brothers living yet. He'll be seventy-seven
in October. And he got me on over there a-sweeping. They had two
sweepers sweeping the spinning room, and they started me in at eight
cents an hour.
Really.
But I went on and went to work, working eleven hours a day, five hours on Saturday. And I learned to make bands. That was what pulled the spindle; the thread went around. I learned to make bands on the band machine, and they raised me to ten cents an hour.
How did you learn how to do that?
They had time, you know. I'd sweep the spinning room every hour, two of
us, and it wouldn't take us but about ten minutes to run up and down the
alleys with brooms, two brooms, and keep the corners of the
sparehold
Can you tell me about that?
The weave shop left a little thread on the back of the bobbin, and it
would skin that thread off. You had to put it down in a slot, and
What did you do during that time?
Fished.
Were you living at home all during this time?
Yes, we was living on the mill village down there. They had a village for the mill. And we didn't have to pay no rent when the mill shut down. Just only when it run. And N. W. Phelps, he run a grocery store down there, and he'd take care of the people. He would give them credit till they'd go back to work. When the Depression hit, we got on what they called the doogeling or doogeloo. The government sponsored it. You'd go down and work on projects. My daddy went down and signed up, and I told him I'd work the card. That was back in '33-'34.
Work the card?
Yes. We had to sign up, and we had to have a card. And I could work his
card; it was all in the family. And I told him if he'd go down and sign
up, I'd work the card, and the pay was ten cents an hour. Worked nine
hours a day, three days a week. Didn't get no money; we just got
groceries. And we got enough about to live on, all but a few things such
as bread and stuff like that, milk. We'd get
Did you have a garden?
Yes, in the summertime we'd have a garden. We had a place where we could have a garden. And raise the hogs. We could, down at the end of the mill down there where the transformers and everything is now, Duke Power. You know where that is. That's where we had our hog pens then.
Did different people in the mill village have their hogs penned up there?
Yes. I guess there was fifteen or twenty a-raising hogs down there, and each one had a pen. And all that could, raised their meat. We'd carry the eats for the hogs from the house down there, every evening and morning. When we'd go to work, we'd take a load full of slop down and feed the hog, going to work. And every evening we'd feed him.
And he done that till he… Mr. John Geitner. His daddy, and they owned the mill.
Had you ever met them before?
When I went to work for them, I knew them.
I was just wondering what they were like.
Oh, they was nice people. John was more business than his brother was,
Jake. Jake died in 1937. He was superintendent. He had a heart attack
and died. He had just about built his new home over there in Hickory. He
just about had it finished when he had his heart attack and died. You
know where John lived, over there on the River Road? There used to be a
big house set up on the right as you go down past
Used to be a moving picture show in there, before they put the office in
there, and a barbershop and a cafe. And when I was small and growing up,
me and my brother, we lived up here on Longview, and we'd walk down
there to the moving picture show. And my daddy worked at the Southern
Desk then; I was just six, seven, eight years old. P. D. Short run a
taxi in town then, and every Wednesday there was a continued picture on.
I don't know whether they've got them anymore or not. Every Wednesday
they'd have episodes of it, in fifteen episodes or… And we'd go down
there. P. D. Short would run the little picture show and owned the taxi
in Hickory. And when it would be raining on Wednesday, he'd come up and
get us and take us to the show. He wouldn't charge us nothing for taxi
fare, so we wouldn't miss the show, you know. And it was Jack Hawksy
that played in that continued picture. My daddy and we'd go every
Wednesday night. It was me and my brother—he's three years and a half
older than me—and my youngest sister, Carrie. She was just real small
then. Pretty nights, though, we'd walk down there, and next morning we'd
ask Mama how we got home. She'd say, "Well, you walked," and we
Did your father also work in the mill?
Yes, he worked some in the mill.
What did he do?
He worked out in the opening room, and the outside carpentry. He baled the waste and done carpentry work on the houses and stuff. They owned the whole place then, the Geitners did.
I remember when the eight-hour law come in, when I was making $5.60 a
week for fifty-five hours. And Charles Jones was over the spinning and
carding, the spinning room boss. And I was a-running twisters and
doffing seven frames at that time when it come in, and I was making
$5.60. And he come to me and said, "You know, they raised the minimum
wage, eight hours, forty cents an hour." That's what they started it off
at. And he come to me and he said, "You're going to get a big raise.
You'll be making twelve dollars." He said, "I got you $12.50. I got you
fifty cents more than they have to pay you."
No. I think more of the big raise the government gave me.
Yes. And I went on from there, doffing, and then I learned to fix the spinning frames. Before we got into the War, it was 1941 when I went on the third shift. They just had the two shifts running then, and they was wanting to start the third shift up. And they didn't have nobody to go on and look after it. Charlie come to me, and he wanted me to go on the third shift. He said it would just be a few weeks. He said, "You can doff, and you can look after it. You can put on tapes or bands." (It was bands then.) And he said, "We'll just start up twelve frames. It will just be a few weeks. It will be two spinners and you." I said, "Well, I'll try it." And from then on, every couple weeks they would start up a little more and add a couple more hands on the third shift. And I was still looking after it. And we got the whole shift a-running on the third shift, running three shifts. By the time the War broke out, in 1943, I believe it was. And I stayed on it until about '47 or '48. Then they had an opening on the first shift, fixing, and I took it.
How did you learn how to fix?
Just watching the other ones and helping them a little. I was doffing; I had time when I'd get around. Maybe I'd have thirty or forty minutes before I'd have to start back in doffing again, until the frames got full. I'd be around with them, watch what they done, help them a little.
They didn't mind.
No, they didn't mind showing you back then. They was glad for you to
learn, before you could step up. I stayed there on the first shift, and
then they wanted somebody on the second to fix, and I went on the
second. All totalled, I was there forty-five years and nine
This was Burlington?
Burlington's, yes. When John died, Burlington bought the mill from Geitner's heirs. Burlington had it about fourteen years. They was a pretty fair company to work for. Everybody thought they'd be so hard, but they wasn't too bad.
What did people think was going to happen when Burlington bought it?
They thought they'd have to quit, they couldn't take it, and all this and that and everything. They finally settled down into it. They laid off a few hands and built it up a little more, but …
They made you work a little harder?
Yes, making you work a little harder, a little steadier. You didn't have as much time to go around and aggravate other people.
Oh, yes. Back in the thirties, why, the doffers would go to the swimming hole.
Really?
Yes. Go in swimming. They had what they called the head doffer. He would
get out and whistle them up; about fifteen, twenty minutes before doff
time, he'd go hunting his doffers up. He'd run down used to
work, but when the Burlingtons bought it they cut all that out. Well,
before Burlington bought it that was cut out. The Geitners tightened it
up some, you know; they had to, for competition.
Did maybe this tightening up come with the eight-hour?
Yes, it did; a whole lots of it did. But that was back when we was working eleven hours, when they done that. People didn't work as hard back then as they did when the eight-hour law come in in 1936.
How did you or how did people feel about the eight-hour law?
They was glad for it. You didn't have to work as long, but you knowed you was just going to have to work harder while you was a-working. But about then, all you had to do was just go to work, sleep, and eat, about. You'd work half of the day, eleven hours. We'd go to work at six o'clock. They'd have it shut down an hour for dinner—everybody'd go home for dinner—and we went to work at one and worked till six. Eleven hours.
When you were working, did you always get to go home for lunch and home for dinner, or did you have your dinner brought to you?
We always went home when we was working eleven hours. We didn't have no break when the eight-hour law come in; we worked straight through, eight hours, like they do now. And they had people bring their lunch, what they wanted to eat, and then they got to putting in these little cafeterias, drinks and stuff like that. That was all right then.
Did any of the wives or the children that were at home bring men's hot lunches?
Oh, yes.
Did you have anybody bring you hot lunches?
Sometimes Mama would send us hot lunches, hot sandwiches, such. But most of them went home for dinner. They shut down. But in the eight hours, if anybody had time they could go to the cafe, send to the cafe to get… Go around amongst the hands, when somebody'd have time, say have thirty or forty-five minutes. If you wanted a sandwich or a drink. That was before they got the machines and stuff in. They'd go up to the cafe up there at the right corner and get a big poke full of stuff and bring it back. Yes, that was pretty good times back then. It wasn't too hard.
How did you get involved in the hosiery or the machines that you bought?
I built a house down there in Burke, and I built me a building behind it.
When was this?
Back in the early fifties. I was still working at the mill; I just done this on… There was a fellow up at the Cape Hickory Hosiery Mill—my wife, she worked up there then—and he had some machines. Frank Johnson; he lives out here now. I bought them from him. He was a fixer.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
She (wife) was on the second shift; I worked the first. And I got to going up there and helping around the knitting machines and helping her turn socks.
Did you get paid for it?
No, I was just up there helping her. And I got to where I liked it pretty good. And Frank come to me one day, and he said, "I've got some knitting machines I'd just sell you, if you'd like to go into that business." I said, "Well, I've got a pretty good building down there." It was twenty foot wide and forty foot long, a block building. I said, "I'd have to have it wired." He kept talking to me about it. He said, "I'll let you have them. I've got fifteen pretty good machines. I'll let you have them for three thousand dollars. I believe you could borrow that much on them." So I got to talking around down at the bank, and they said they would finance it. So I just took them. Had the building wired and started them up. And Cape Hickory took all the socks I made. They had plain white cotton men's work socks, and he said he'd take all I made.
How much were you paid?
I think he first started on seventy-five cents a dozen. After we got set
up, me and my wife would run them eight hours. I'd come in from the mill
at two o'clock, and I'd start them up and run them. I hired a fixer who
come down and helped me fix; I didn't know how to fix them. It was a
fellow who worked down there; he was about my age. He said he'd help me
out when he went home. He'd come up every evening, and if I had any down
he'd fix them and get them back a-running. My wife would run them a
while every morning. She was a good knitter over
Like while you were at work.
Yes. Run them eight hours. My wife's sister wasn't doing nothing then, and she come out there. She was a knitter, too.
What was her name?
Bernice Carpenter. She lives out there right on the other side of that church, the Church of God. That's over on the next corner. Then she run them a while for me, and we got so we could make six hundred dozen a week. And we done that for about a year, and me and her working and running them, too, I paid off the machines in about a year and a half. Then she run off and left with another man, after we got …
After you got your operation all going.
And I couldn't handle it by myself, so I just shut them down. And I sold them.
Were you able to get a pretty good price on them?
No. Well, they was about three to four years older, you know. I got two thousand dollars out of them, but I had bought three more. I had eighteen when I sold them, and I sold the whole bunch for two thousand dollars. They was all in working shape, running. She stayed gone, and I got a divorce. Then I married Eva, and I've been married to her for eleven years June the first of this year.
Has she ever done any work outside the home?
Oh, yes. She used to inspect for this mill down here, and
That was for two weeks?
No, for a week, for work, and they give me a six weeks' bonus. What they
call mustering out pay. Then I had to wait till them six weeks got off;
I couldn't sign up till they run out. See, that was money I made, and I
couldn't sign up. I wasn't unemployed. I was still unemployed, but I got
paid for it, six weeks. And then when they started to have you sign up,
why, I signed up all of '74, about. I drawed ninety dollars a week. And
I didn't care about looking for no job much about that; of course, you
had to look for a job. The last of that year, I think I lacked about a
week of drawing all of my unemployment out. I'd keep in touch with
Shuford's Mills—that's about all the mills around here then—and they
wanted somebody over at Granite Mill. And I told them yes, I'd take it.
I was about through signing up anyhow, and I went over there and worked.
But when I got sixty-two, I was put in for my old-age pension. I went to
Shuford's that winter; I believe it was in '74. Yes, it was just a
little while before Christmas. And I was
Just to get your Social Security.
Yes. They let me do that. But this year, I ain't got to go back no more.
Do you think they're cutting that out?
I worked over at Dudley Shoals for two years and at Granite for three. And I went back over to Dudley and I thought I was going to get back on, but the man come back had quit, on fixing. So they said they'd let me know if they had anything at all.
You're still waiting to hear?
Yes, I'm still waiting to hear. Of course, I ain't hurting too bad.
How did you get involved in doing the woodwork?
After I went out of this hosiery mill business down here, me and my brother made a few swings. He had a saw, and we started making a few porch swings and selling them. Then I made a few cabinets for people. Mrs. Braden wanted some cabinets made. And stuff like that, and I just kept adding a piece of machinery now and then. I've just got me an old hobby shop out there now.
What kind of machines do you have out there?
I've got a 10" big saw and a 7" big saw and a drum sander and a band saw
and a little 6" planer, and that's about all the machines
Do you have a lathe?
No, we don't have no lathe. Never did have much use for that, making cabinets and porch swings and yard sets. So I ain't been doing much of that till recently.
Which brother was it that you went into this with?
Ralph.
Did he ever work at a furniture place?
He worked down at Hutton Bourbonais for years. Then I got him a job at the mill in 1942; he come up there. And he worked at the mill until he retired.
How come he switched from Hutton Bourbonais up there?
It got so cold down there. They didn't have much heat. In the wintertime you'd about freeze to death, had to wear heavy coats and work in them.
Why didn't they put in …
An old building, I guess they thought they couldn't heat it. They had steam pipes in there and stuff, but you'd have to stand right on top of them to get a little warmth.
It is a real old building.
And he said if I could get him a job up there… He come up there and run the quilt machine on the third shift with me, when I was looking after it. And he stayed up there till he retired; he quit at sixty-two.
How did the pay compare between working furniture at Hutton Bourbonais and working in a cotton mill?
In some categories it paid about equal. The upholsterers and stuff like that, they make good money. But that's where you're skilled. But textiles, it come up after the eight-hour law come in, tremendously. It growed more than other things did; it caught up, eventually.
It caught up to the furniture.
Yes. They make about as good now as they do in furniture factories, cotton mills.
Was furniture considered a better job than working in a cotton mill?
Oh, yes, back then it was. And hosiery mills paid lots better, too, than the cotton mill did until the eight-hour law come in and they set the minimum wage. And then it started climbing. But the hosiery mills and the furniture factories, woodworking plants, was paying more than the minimum wage was when the eight-hour law come in. Yes, you could go to town and tell they were cotton mill workers that worked in the cotton mill.
Why?
Well, they didn't have enough money to buy decent clothes, and they'd just wear their old work clothes to town and didn't have too many to change. They might have one change to go to church on Sunday or something like that, a good pair of pants or a suit. Maybe it was handed down from somebody else. They kept that to go to church with, and if they'd go to town, they'd just go in their work clothes, cotton on them and everything.
From working in the …
Yes, working in the mill. But after the eight-hour law come in and they got to making more money, they got coming out. By 1940, if you'd go to town, you couldn't tell who was working at the cotton mill and who wasn't, then. They caught up and was making more money, and it was a better living, and they could buy better clothes. But cotton mill people had it rough back in the early twenties and teens.
Did people in town consider them a lower class of people?
Yes, they did. People that had better jobs wouldn't associate hardly with
cotton mill people. They called them cotton mill trash.
Did you call them that?
No, I worked in the cotton mill. My people worked in the cotton mill. But they come out. There was more change in the cotton mill than there was in any other industry, as far as coming out. Now people in cotton mills go dressed to work a heck of a sight better than they did on Sunday way back there. They had it rough.
And textiles didn't run all the time, neither. In the early thirties and late twenties, they'd shut down two or three or four months at a time. We had it rough.
And this was even before the Depression.
Oh, yes. The way John Geitner said, when they couldn't sell their goods, they just had so much worth in capital, and when they would get that all run up in cloth, that's all they could do, nothing else but shut down. They didn't have more capital, you see, to pay off and to buy their cotton and stuff.
Would he come and tell the workers and explain that to them?
Oh, yes.
Did he call them all together?
Yes, he'd have meetings. And Burlington's, when they bought it, they'd have periodic meetings and talk to the help, tell them what was going on. If they doing good, or say they're doing bad. Of course, Burlington was a big concern. They had so many other things to back them up. That's the reason they bought so many cotton mills out. They was in furniture and hosiery and household… Everything, I guess, you used in the house was Burlington-made.
Did they give a reason for why they moved overseas?
They was a-getting down. They made sateen and pongee cloth. The market fell out of the sateen, and they couldn't sell it. That was when most of this synthetic stuff come in. And they went to corduroy then. And we could make the yarn all right upstairs in the spinning room and carding room, but they couldn't weave that corduroy downstairs on the old looms they had. So they said there was nothing else to do but just to shut down. They was making anywhere from twenty-five to forty percent seconds. The machines wouldn't weave that type of cloth, you see, they was just wore out so bad. And they said they couldn't afford at that time to replace them; they said it would take a million dollars to replace the looms with modern looms. So they just closed it down.
And sold the machines to someone overseas.
And I don't know who they ever sold the building to. I think it's a storage place now. I see big trucks sitting out there.
Why was it called Ivey Weavers?
I don't know whether I can explain that to you or not.
What kind of cloth did they make? Was it all cotton?
Yes, all cotton. They tried synthetics a couple times, but they couldn't make no headway at it, the weaving it, and some of our spinner frames wouldn't spin synthetic, old machinery. And they just decided to do away with it.
What was it like inside the mill? Was it airconditioned?
They airconditioned the carding room and spinning room in 1959. They never did aircondition the weave shop, though.
Was there a lot of dust in the air?
Quite a bit, but we spun fine yarns, and it wasn't as bad as a coarse mill.
Like stuff for blue jeans?
Yes, stuff like that, heavy yarns. All ours was fine yarns. We made that
pongee and sateen. They was what they called counts of fifties and
sixties, numbers of yarn. Their warp was always the heaviest; it was
around forties count. And the filling that went in the
Did you ever hear tell of anybody getting brown lung or getting sick from breathing the dust?
No, not down there. We never did have no complaints down there, as I ever heared tell of. And some of the people worked there all their lives.
All their lives, and never did get any kind of lung disease. I want to go back to when you were running your hosiery operation in the back of your house. Was that pretty profitable?
Yes, it was. We made enough to pay for the machines and buy our yarn, and everything come out of that. And we paid for the machines in about a year and a half—not over two years—three thousand dollars off. And the upkeep of the machinery and stuff all come out of what we made [with] the socks. We kept it separate from what we made. We didn't put none of our money, what we made, in the hosiery mill. We couldn't do that.
You just put the money that you made out of the hosiery mill back in.
Back into it, and paid off the hosiery mill debt, you see. We had to keep it separate. That was the only time I ever had a checking account, when I had the hosiery mill. We put the money in the checking account, and we wouldn't write checks for nothing but just for the hosiery mill.
I understand a fixer in a hosiery mill gets paid pretty well. Did you have to pay him pretty well?
Back then I think we paid him three to three and a half an hour, and he'd come up there some evenings and maybe work two or three hours on the machines.
So he wasn't there all the time.
No, he wasn't there all the time. He was just a parttime fixer. He had a regular job; he worked eight hours at another mill as a fixer. He just come up there to help me out.
Who was this?
I forget his name now. He lived down there on Longview.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
… raw materials?
Valdese Manufacturing Company.
And they specifically made yarn for hosiery mills?
Yes, they made hosiery mill yarn. I'd go up there and haul a case back in the back of my Chevrolet. A case weighed about 150, 175 pounds. Little cones about that big around. You'd get a case of them.
How much would a case cost?
I think the price per pound was about thirty or thirty-five cents. I'm not sure. And that little case would run you maybe a hundred, a hundred and twenty-five dollars.
And then you would sell your finished socks?
Yes.
What kind of socks were they? Were they sewn in the toe or did you have them looped?
I had them looped. They had loopers back then.
And your wife did that?
No, I had to have that done extra. I had to have a looper. Frank Johnson that I bought the machines from, I'd bring his sister sacks full up there, and she was looping for me. And I paid her so much a dozen.
So she had her own machine at home to loop them on?
Yes, she had her own little looper. There was lots of them around in homes then. Women would stay at home and work. A mill would be glad to put them in homes where the wives had smaller kids. Just pay them so much a dozen for every dozen they'd do. Then they could work like they wanted to.
So this was what Frank Johnson's sister did?
Yes. She had a looper in her basement, I believe. She looped for other mills, too. I'd bring her maybe fifty, seventy-five, a hundred dozen at a time and leave them, and then she'd call me when she could get them done and I'd take her some more.
And then you'd take them back over here to the Cape Hickory Hosiery, and they'd pay you seventy-five cents?
Seventy-five cents a dozen. You know about things going up and up. I think the last we made was about ninety-five cents or a dollar a dozen. Of course, the wages and the yarn was going up, too.
Was it a pretty competitive kind of industry?
Yes, there was lots of people had little hosiery mills back then and done
work like that. But the reason I bought them from Frank Johnson, Frank
Johnson worked for him; he said he'd take all I
So you had a ready market. You didn't really have to worry about selling them.
No, that's the reason I took it pretty quick. He told me he would take all I made, so that was good enough. I knowed how to work it for him, just getting the machines in and getting them set up and things like that done, and get started. And he stuck to his word. As long as he hanged on at the mill, he bought my socks.
Frank Johnson was just the fixer for them?
Yes, he was a looper fixer.
And he must have set up his own little operation, too?
No. His sister had one. Anybody could buy a machine, anybody that was a looper, and put it in their home, or a mill would be glad to put one in your home. But he just done that work at the mill, fixed the loopersdown there. He had about twelve or fourteen. Cape Hickory was a pretty good-sized mill. Back then they didn't have no seamers like they got now. They seam all of them now except on big heavy socks. But everything was looped back then.
Which do you think makes a better sock?
The seamers now don't leave no ridge or nothing in the toe loop. Back then, the old seamers, when they first come out, some of them left a ridge in the toe. But they got that down pretty quick and got it a-working. The seamers took over pretty good. The loopers went out. They don't loop nothing now, only them big heavy socks. If you'd seam a big heavy sock, it naturally would leave a ridge on it.
Were the machines you had the circular knitting machines?
Yes. The top would go around, and the thread would come in at
Did you ever learn anything about fixing them?
Yes, I got so I could fix them fairly good. I couldn't tear one down and put it back, probably, but just put in needles, and where cams would wear out and stuff like that, I'd do all that.
Replace the cams.
Yes.
Mrs. Sigmon, were you a knitter or an inspector?
Inspector, mender, tier; anything they wanted me to do, I did.
You worked for what was his name?
Louis Marston.
What was the name of the mill?
Longwear.
Longwear Hosiery Mills, down here in Hickory.
How long did you work that work?
Twenty-some years.
Did you like it?
Oh, yes. I mended for them several years. Then when one of the inspectors
quit, I started that. And he come and asked me if I'd go to the
finishing room and work, that they needed somebody there and putting
them in the bags. I went in every morning at four o'clock I'd run(
Did you ever want to be a knitter?
No, I never did care about that. I knitted top knitting way years back when I was young. But I never did care nothing about knitting. They wanted me to learn to seam, but I wouldn't do it.
When did you first go into working in hosiery?
I don't know. When first I went to work, it was top-knitting, you know
top-knitting. I don't guess you do, though.
No, but I've heard other people talk about it.
That was back in the forties, wasn't it.
Then I stayed home for years and years and raised my young'uns. Then I went back in after I got my young'uns raised.
How old were you when you first went to work?
I guess it was '29; I was eighteen or nineteen years old.
And you went into hosiery?
I
Oh, did you?
You know where the snack bar is? It's an old mill. Back then it was a
mill right beside it. That's where I went to work,
Upstairs in that house?
I don't know what …
That's where the garage is now, isn't it?
Yes, that's right.
On down there where Groves …
He built a crossroad back down there.
He built on down further. I remember when the Groves was in there.
I remember being upstairs on the third shift, and had to work all night long.
My goodness.
And when I finished, I come to Hildebran for Floyd Tillis, and worked downtown.
That was when they was working eleven hours, before the eight-hour law come in.
Mr. Sigmon, when you were back in elementary school, why did you decide to go to work rather than finishing out school?
Well, I was always wanting to go to work, and I thought I never would get
fourteen.
What did your family think about it?
They wanted me to go on, but I wanted to quit.
So you went to work in the shoestring factory.
Yes, the first place I ever worked was the shoelace factory. Then the cotton mill, and that's where I stayed until I retired.
When you were working in the cotton mill and were learning all
There wasn't nobody like that back then. I guess you run up on people like that now. Back then they'd be glad to show you and help you out so you could get a better job, come up. They was needing help; they was wanting people to learn. And the companies would tell their people to help learn other people. I never did run into nobody who ever did fail to show me anything or try to teach me something, when I was interested in it.
That's neat. We had run into some people from some of the hosiery mills, that the fixers really didn't want to teach anybody else how to fix. Did you run into that, Mrs. Sigmon?
Yes, I did.
They were afraid, maybe, that someone might take their job.
You ran into people like that.
Now, but back then there were so many jobs and new jobs were coming open and new things coming in.
And they were trying to fill out a third shift and everything.
Wanting more people to learn.
Was there a kind of labor shortage here in Hickory?
It used to be back then. Lots of people that lived on the mill hill back
there in the twenties, they'd bring their kids out there and let them
see what they was doing and show them. And the bossman would let them do
that, so when they got through schooling, if they wanted to come to work
they could have a job, and know a little
So they would help their parents at their work?
Yes, help their parents. I went out there and helped Mama lots of days. She was skinning quillers—before they got the quill-skinners—by hand. And I'd go out there and help her skin quills lots and lots of days.
How long did she do that?
About four or five years. Her and another woman would keep all the strings down off of the quills by hand.
What would happen to the younger kids in the family while she was working?
I had a younger sister, and we would stay with the neighbors.
Would she pay them a little bit to take care of you all?
Had a good garden, might give them a few tomatoes every time we went
there.
Why do you think she decided to go to work? I know she didn't do too much work outside the home.
I don't know how come she went to work. She just thought she wanted to, I guess.
You were a little young then, I guess. It's hard to remember. In the
early part of working at Ivey Weavers, if people had a complaint about
something or something was wrong or they didn't think something was
being done right, how would they go about getting it corrected?
Yes, we'd go to the bossman if it was… You see, they had an outside boss that looked after the upkeep of the houses and the pump houses and everything like that. My brother done that for years and years. What they called master mechanic. And he seen after the machine shop, too.
What was his name?
Irving Sigmon. He worked there about all his life.
Did he die about the time John Geitner died?
No, he lived a little longer than John did.
Because I had talked to somebody who worked under him, I think, as a mechanic there. Red Canipe?
Yes, I reckon. He worked there for years under Irv. He took leukemia, I think, the year that Burlington bought it. And he retired. He was rundown in his health when they bought it. They wanted him to stay on, but he told them he didn't want to. They bought the mill in October, and in January he found out he had leukemia. And he died a couple days after the next Thanksgiving. But he was there for years and years.
Mareda was talking to me some about her husband and what he had done in the mills, and she had mentioned that he was at one time working with a union. Was that at that plant?
No, that was up here at Longview Shuford's Mill.
Did they ever have any kind of campaigns or organizers come around the Ivey Weavers mill?
No, we never did have no cause for it. I think they tried a couple times, but people wouldn't go for it.
What do you think about unions, back then and now?
I believe they contributed some about getting the textile wages up. But as far as working under a union, I don't believe I'd ever like it.
What do you think you wouldn't like about it?
The union has got laws, too, to go by, and if I'm working with the plant, I just don't feel like I can satisfy both of them.
It would be like a second boss or something.
Yes. And rules of the union. So if I'd see something that I could help the company out, I would do it. And I don't know whether the union would agree with that or not. We never did have no big hassle over unions down there. Once or twice while I was working there I think they tried to unionize it, but they voted it down.
Why do you think the Shufords had so much problems with …
Shufords' was pretty hard on their help back then. They say it now, but I
never did work for them only just for that reason. But they're a good
company to work for, I think, now, from what I've been working for them.
I worked at two of their plants. I worked some out here, at Quaker
Meadows, and at Granite Number Two Plant, and over at Dudley Shoals. And
I wouldn't want to work for no better people. There you got freedom, but
they, everyone expect you to keep your job up. I think if you just lay
out in the canteen room and go back and your job would be all tore to
pieces and you wouldn't care about straightening it out if something was
wrong, you can't blame a company for that. As long as you do your work
for Shuford, I… They say they used to be harder than they. Textile help
may be a little bit harder to get, too, now than it used to be back
then.
So you think they're having to be better to get the quality help?
Yes. If they can finish school, they want better jobs, in an office of a textile plant or something like that. But as far as going and taking a job, they don't look for no jobs like that.
What have your children done?
I got two kids, a boy and a girl, and he worked down there before the mill shut down. And then he went to Carolina Mills in Newton. A bunch of them went from Ivey Weavers down to Carolina Mills. They was a-wanting help at that time. He's a fixer in the carding room. He lives in Startown, and my daughter does, too. She's working as a clerk down there at one of those chain stores.
Did they finish high school?
Neither one of them; they went to the eleventh grade, but they didn't… My boy, he was playing football and broke his arm, and then he wouldn't go back. And my girl had trouble with her teeth, and she had to have her teeth pulled before she finished school, so she quit on account of that.
She didn't want anybody to see her without the teeth in?
She had an upper plate before she was fifteen. They both went to the eleventh grade, but they didn't get to finish. Now they've got a boy and a girl, and my girl's got a boy and a girl. My boy's got two girls. And my girl's children both finished high school.
What are they doing?
He's working in the grocery store, and my granddaughter's
What's her name?
Connie.
I just thought I might know her, because I worked down there for a little while.
She works in the office in the Emergency Room. Then one of my boy's girls graduated this year from high school, and he's got one more who'll graduate next year, and all four of them will be through high school.
Have any of your grandchildren gone on to college or anything like that?
No.
It sounds like you've got a hard-working family.
Yes, they've been working pretty good.
When you had your building back there for your hosiery, why did you build that in the first place?
I built it for that.
I was wondering whether you had some other kind of shop out there.