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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-0182, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Mill workers Carl and Mary Thompson describe their experiences as skilled employees and active members of their local communities in this 1979 interview. The first part of the interview is dominated by Mary's narrative. As a pattern maker, Mary's job moved her around the Southeast, but as was true for many highly skilled workers, improvements in technology eliminated her job opportunities after World War II. She sought employment in the mills because her parents had been mill workers, and she attributes her abilities in negotiating the factory system and in supporting herself as an independent working woman to her upbringing. Though her parents were strict and expected all family members to contribute to the household income, she remembers her childhood fondly. She married at fifteen, but her first husband left her just after their daughter was born. She describes how she found childcare and also the social censure she faced as a young divorcee. Carl enters the interview during this part of the conversation. He and Mary reflect on how Roosevelt's New Deal policies affected mill workers. They also talk about the power structure in the mills and discuss why the nearby townspeople looked down on the textile workers. When asked about the religious practices in the textile towns, Carl and Mary both emphasize the importance of church in community life, particularly the Pentecostal or Holiness meetings. They both also share their conversion stories. In the mill villages, the Thompsons remember that people looked out for each other, lending help, money or other assistance when another person needed it. The end of the interview focuses on Carl's story, and he describes how he came to work in the mills at an early age. As a skilled male worker, Carl was often asked to work more dangerous jobs such as running the carding machine. He chose to protect himself by refusing to do anything he believed was unsafe, and this caused him to lose several jobs. Unlike Mary, Carl had few responsibilities as a young man, which enabled him to quit jobs when he wanted, enabling him and some of his other friends to hitchhike around the country during the Depression, visiting other places and searching for jobs.
Mill workers Carl and Mary Thompson describe their experiences as skilled employees and active members of their local communities.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
… my mind. I just can't remember names. I tried to think the other day of
some of the names at the company that I worked for, and it's hard to
remember. Because it has been a good while ago. But I first came in 1933
and worked down here a few months, less than a year, and went back to
Greenville, South Carolina. I went to Slater, South Carolina, and worked
there a while, and then I went to Judson and worked there a while, and
then went back to Slater. At that time it was Carter Manufacturing
Company. And then I went to South Boston, Virginia, and stayed a while.
Now I don't remember how long I stayed, because I would just stay till
the job was caught up. That was Carter Manufacturing Company. Then I
went to Alta Vista, Virginia, and worked there a while, and that was
Burlington. And then I worked at Radford, Virginia, and that was
Burlington, and went to Roanoke, Virginia. And it seems to me like that
was Burlington. I ain't going to say for sure. And then I came back to
South Carolina, and I went to Johnson City, Tennessee, and worked a
while. Went back and worked at… What's that little place in South
Carolina I worked?
And you came back to Charlotte in what year?
I think it was about 1939.
So you did all that moving in six years.
That was during the War.
And I worked at a chemical plant up there, the Chesapeake Bay Chemical Plant.
Why were you moving around so much?
Mostly it was the work I did. I made patterns, and then they made the cloth like the pattern was made. After they got all the looms filled with the patterns, you see, they laid us off or either sent us somewhere else to work. If there was somebody else wanting work, they'd call. I was a… I guess you'd call grass widow or something. Anyway, I had a little girl, but she stayed at my mother's most of the time. Sometime I'd take her with me. And so I was free to go, and I could make more money like that, and I had a child to support. So that's the reason I went around, because I couldn't afford to lay up several weeks a month and had my child to support. So anywhere they wanted to send me or I found out there was a job, I went to and worked till they'd catch up, and then I'd go back somewhere else.
You said "they." Were you working with one company that had a number of plants?
Not all the time. I worked for several companies. I worked for Burlington, I worked for Carter, and I worked down here at Cone. And then I worked at Bessemer City, and I forgot the name of that company. And then I worked another place in South Carolina.
They sent you to Bimburg one time from down here, and you went down there and stayed.
And then when I come back I worked down here a while, and then I went to
Baltimore and went to work up there at a chemical plant. And I worked up
there till sometime in 1945, and I came back here and worked here a
while. Then me and him got married. And then I went to that Cone's at
Pineville and worked after that. Then I worked at Bessemer City after
that. But then I decided that this running around wasn't for married
Was it Knievel or Charlotte …
Chadbourn.
Chadbourn. And then I went and put in for my Social Security on disability, and I got it on account of my heart. So I haven't worked since.
Could you explain to me a little more what this job of setting up patterns was like?
It was drawing patterns. They had frames, and they put these warps on the frame and had lots of threads to it and they put it over. Well, I had to draw them threads through the drop wires harness and reed. And then they were taken to the weave room. We went by a pattern, and the way we drawed it is the way the cloth come out. Like yours would be a stripe, and his'n would be a check. And I worked on fancy work most of the time. They have got plain work, but most of my work was always on fancy. And that's the reason I was more able to travel around and get jobs, because it took special drawing-in hands for the fancy on account of it's harder to do, and I had worked so much on it. And you made more money on it.
Didn't the mills have drawing-in hands of their own?
They usually all of them had some, regular help, and then they'd get laid off sometime, but some of them had husbands and they didn't care. They'd draw their unemployment till they were called back to work. But the only one that I stayed with, I stayed with Slater about ten years. When I first started to work, I was at Poe Mill Manufacturing Company.
That was at Greenville.
I was just fourteen years old when I first started there and worked there in the summer, and then went back to school in the winter, and then worked again in the summer, and then got married.
I don't understand exactly why the labor was so sporadic. Why would they all of a sudden need a lot of drawing-in hands?
Because they'd change patterns. They'd change the styles, just like everything else, you know; they always have changed different styles. And when they had to change styles, they had to draw a new pattern for it. They finally got draw-in machines for them. That's the reason there ain't no more of it now. There's still some. I've got a sister—I believe she's working at Poinsett now—but she's more of a plain drawing hand. And she's still working some, but she just works a while and they get caught up and lay her off. It's never been a fulltime job, that I know of, for anyone. I've worked as much as maybe a year or two and then get laid off, but that was very seldom for some people to run that far. But that's what we did, we made patterns, and then they'd run weave room. See, they'd tie them back behind the looms and just keep on running the same patterns till they changed styles, and then they'd have to be drawed again.
They'd all have to be done over again.
Yes.
Instead of printing the stripe, it would be woven in.
Yes. You don't see too much woven material now. It was better then than it is now, I thought. They just kept making different kinds of patterns and had to have different things as styles come in. But all of that's about gone now. And what they do have, mostly, they've gotten machines to do it.
Them draw-in machines would take care of a lot more hands. They could take one machine, and it'd take the place of maybe ten or twelve hands, what maybe ten or twelve could do. And it was a whole lot cheaper and a whole lot faster, too, put out more work.
But I was born and raised in Greenville, South Carolina. I was borned up there in town, but I was raised there at Poe Mill.
Let's talk about your childhood some. What did your parents do?
My father worked in the mill. My mother, till she got married, worked in
the cotton mill. But she had seven children.
I think he was a mechanic in the machine shop.
Was he a fixer?
He run all kind of things, but when he retired he was running a lathe. Before then he had a cancer on his hand and had to have his hand took off. And they fixed a clamp, and he could run the lathe, because he had always worked in a machine shop. He couldn't run his other jobs, so they put him on a lathe, and he run the lathe then till he retired. He was seventy-two when he retired.
Why did he move so much?
Well, he didn't move so much. He stayed at Poe Mill from the time I was about five years old till I was about eighteen, I guess. And then he got a better job in Georgia. An uncle of mine knew about the job in Georgia and told him about it, and he went down there a while. And then he come back and went to Union Bleachery, and he worked there for several years. And then he went to Poinsett, and he was working there in 1945, and I forget what year he retired. He was seventy-two when he retired, but I forget how old he was then. But he worked there a good many years. But he didn't move too much, but it was always a better job, mostly. But the Union Bleachery got to where it hurt him, that dyeing stuff, you know, there, and so he got the job at Poinsett and stayed there then till he retired, until he was seventy-two years old.
What do you remember about your childhood? What things stand out in your mind?
Why did your parents object to dancing so strongly?
I don't know. That was just the way they were raised.
But did any of you ever sneak off and try any of these things?
We used to get under the house and get this rabbit tobacco and roll it in
paper and try to smoke it, but it tasted bad, so we never did do very
much of it.
Just more devilish than anything else.
Yes, we didn't do any harm. We didn't smoke cigarettes; we never thought
about such as that. One time there was a girl who had some snuff, and
she wanted me to taste some, and I took just a little bit on my tongue
and like to strangle myself.
You said if your mother had found out, she would have whipped you. Was she the one who did the disciplining?
She's the one who done most of the disciplining. We were a little scared
of Daddy when he got mad at us for anything, but Mama was the one,
Who handled the family's finances?
My mother did. My daddy was one of these "Live today and let tomorrow
take care of itself."
Did she ever give him an allowance or something like that?
Very seldom she give him anything. Of course, he always had an
automobile. And she managed enough to pay the things that he needed, but
I have knowed him to want a Coca-Cola, and she'd fuss that that was
throwing away money. She didn't let her children throw away money. She
wasn't mean, that she wouldn't let you have what you wanted, but there
wasn't too much money to spend for things like that then. Not with seven
children to raise. He was pretty good; he never did fuss at her about
the way she managed the money, because he knowed she was a better
manager than he was. He couldn't have kept an automobile to drive all
the time if… There wasn't too many people around there had automobiles
then. But we usually had an automobile, and if my father wasn't working
at all on Sunday we'd always go up in the mountains or somewhere and
take a picnic dinner, all the
So you saw her as kind of the mean one, huh?
You said you had your own animals and all. I guess you had a garden, too.
Yes, we had a garden. The mill company gave a place to put your hogs. And
the cows was back in the backyard. They had barns, with four stalls in
it for four houses, and every house had one stall for a cow. But our
hogs had to be on down. There was a place down there fixed for them. We
had chickens, mostly, in the yard, but we had a little garden. But about
three or four blocks from there there was some open land, and we had a
garden there. They let us have gardens there. And we always had a
garden, raised our own things and had our own meat and our own milk and
butter. And my mother sold buttermilk. We liked butter very well, but we
wasn't crazy about milk, so she sold milk and made money
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
That's really interesting, that you kids would hire yourself out to help neighbors.
Oh, yes, sir, we was going to make a dime every way we can.
Yes, that dollar would have went farther than five dollars would go now, though.
Did you have to give that money to your mother, or was that yours?
We had to give it to Mama, but the only thing is, she usually bought us some cloth to make us a dress, or the boys would get a shirt out of it or something like that. We'd get cloth; then we'd have to make us a dress. Of course, if we had enough dresses right then, we wasn't allowed to have too many; we couldn't afford them. But then she'd spend the money maybe to buy ice cream for all of us or something like that.
So, in a way, you always got a little of it back in some kind of treat.
I got some of it, and we'd have ice cream suppers at our church, and we'd get some of that money to buy us ice cream at the church. And boys and girls would get together and play and sing at different homes, too, and we enjoyed ourself thataway.
Tell me about some of this. I was going to ask you what type things you did when you had some free time, what type games you played and what you did to entertain yourself.
We went to parties and done about the same thing… Well, I don't know what
they do at parties now. I don't guess it's the same thing
What would you talk about?
Like all boys and girls.
When did you feel like you had grown up, that you were an adult?
We was just then like they are now; we thought we knowed it all when we was fourteen years old. All boys and girls thinks that. Then after they get up around thirty, they find out they didn't know nothing. That's the whole thing about it. It's the same thing. They've always thought they knowed it all when they started about fourteen.
How old were you when you married?
I lacked one month of being sixteen. I was fifteen.
How did you meet your husband?
At a party at my house. He had lived in the mountains about all his life, and his daddy and him had come down and got a job in the cotton mill there at Poe Mill. And they moved down there, and his mother had twelve children, I believe, but one of them was married when I met him. And he come to a party one night there, and that's how I met him. And then after we got married, his people moved back to the mountains. They didn't stay down there very long, and then after we separated he went back up there above Slater. He went to work at Slater and stayed up there with his daddy and them.
Did your parents approve of your getting married so young?
No, they didn't want me to, but I did.
Did you run off? Did you elope?
Yes, run off. Like all of them, nearly. Back then, we thought that if we
just got married, we could be free then, do as we pleased, and found out
you don't ever get free in life.
You said you had a child real quickly. How did getting pregnant so young make you feel?
I was eighteen when she was born. Back then, I guess everywhere, around
where we lived that was mostly what they did. They got married young and
started a family young, but I didn't have but one. I stopped.
You said once you got married and had a child, that put an end to things.
It put an end to running around to parties. You see, married people didn't go to parties then, not with the single ones.
Did that upset you any?
No.
It sounded like maybe you were just a little …
You worked so hard you didn't even think about things like that. I didn't. After my baby got two months old, I went back to work in the mill. We worked so hard, and then we got two rooms there on the mill village and we kept house there on the mill village.
Who took care of the child after you went back to work?
My mother, till she got bigger, and then you could hire colored people for two dollars a week to come there every day and take care of them, so I hired a colored woman after she got big enough, weaned and all.
I was talking to a woman this morning who told me that while her child was young, they allowed her to come home during the day to nurse the child.
I did.
Did they allow you to do that?
I sure did. I worked there after me and my husband separated. My father
then was living at Union Bleachery. I don't know whether you know
anything about Greenville or not, but it's about a mile or a little more
from American Spinning Company. I don't know whether they still go by
But they didn't give you any special time off, did they, to do …
No.
I talked to this woman, and they had given her breaks during the day.
Well, they would, practically, in some …
They didn't let me have no breaks to go home.
I remember several there at Rock Hill that had babies, and they let them go home and nurse.
They lived right close, but you see …
But you were a good ways away.
In other words, they could walk home maybe in ten minutes, and they'd give them about thirty minutes to go home and nurse the baby, then go back.
After my daughter got up in school, I went back to work at Slater and I
took her and we moved up there. And I'd always work all I could. If they
had plenty of drawing in, sometimes I'd work sixteen hours a day. And
after she got in school, when they wanted me to work late I'd go home
and get her and bring her some coloring books and pencil and paper, and
bring her down there and sit her by the drawing frame, and we'd sit
there and I'd work till eleven o'clock and take her home.
Did many women do that? Was that a pretty common practice?
No, there wasn't too many of them that was single like me that was raising a child. That wasn't as common then as it is now. Most of them was married people, and if they had to work they worked them hours, some of them did. Some of them that had husbands wouldn't even do that, if they had more than one child. But I just had one. And they didn't have to do it, to tell you the truth, but there wasn't very many. There was one once in a while that would bring their child if they had to have work, but it wasn't a common thing.
You said you had a black woman to come take care of her. Would she just come take care of the child, or did she help you with your housework?
She'd do the housework and take care of the child. You could usually pick up right good colored people. Of course, sometime you'd have trouble with them. I never did like to, but I had to do it anyway. I went to the welfare office lots of times and asked for somebody to keep my child, and I'd always have to let them live in. And they'd send me somebody, and if they didn't work out they'd take them off of the welfare. If they done something that they could have helped doing and just didn't work out, why, they'd tell them that they'd have to work or they'd be took off the welfare. If they'd do that now, they'd be better off. Then they'd send me somebody else. But very seldom I had to report them, that something happened. They'd steal money or steal food or something like that, and I'd catch them and have to let them off, and then they'd just turn them out of the welfare.
You said they would live in. Was that pretty common? Did most of the women you had work for you live in?
Most of the time they did, because when she was at that age
When did your mother start taking care of your daughter?
She taken care of her before she started school, from the time she was a baby on up. She'd go sometime and stay with Mama a week or two at a time, but she didn't take care of her after she started school. I'd always hire somebody.
How did you feel about this having to travel around and leave your daughter in Greenville?
When I'd leave her, I'd leave her with my mother, so I never did worry
about it. And if I was on a job that I had to stay a while and couldn't
come home, if I could come home once a month I'd come home, and if I
seen I couldn't—it was too far, or I had to work on Saturday (I wouldn't
have had time to come home and go back on Sunday)—I'd call Mama or send
money, and then Mama would put her on the train if it was somewhere that
she didn't have to change. You know, Altavista, Virginia, she'd send her
up there, and she'd send her to South Boston. She'd put her on a train,
and then I'd meet the train. She'd come by herself. And then I'd send
her back on Sunday night. So I was with her. It never was over three or
four weeks at the most that I ever wasn't around her, as far as
Did you feel then like it wasn't working out very well?
Oh, I'd get worried lots of times about having to leave her at Mama's and
her wanting to come to me, and sometimes I couldn't take her. But I kept
up with most everything she done. I knew about whether she was behaving
herself or not, and so I worried some but not too much. I knowed I had
to work. There wasn't no way of keeping her up, and I had her spoilt so
I had to… I'm just like all the mothers; I'd give her things she didn't
have to have. I wasn't like my mother; I wasn't as tight with her as my
mother was with us. And it might have been better if I had been, because
now she don't pay too much attention to that dollar
How old was she when you and your husband separated?
We separated so many times, it's hard to say. The first time, she wasn't but five weeks old, and then we went back together so many times. After she got about two years old, we never did go back together. We was around one another, because we worked at the same place a good bit. He went to Detroit, Michigan, and I went up there and stayed with him two or three weeks and left to come back home.
Why did you separate? Do you mind telling me?
He loved the women too well.
He was running around?
Yes. He didn't want to settle down, and so we separated for good.
Did you get a legal divorce eventually?
We did finally get one, but it was about twelve to fifteen years.
How did people treat you?
I had my friends, just like everybody else had. Really, I'm always a person, I don't meet no strangers, and I can make friends with most everybody. If they didn't like me, it didn't make no difference to me; I'd just let them alone.
Did people think you were doing something wrong by not pretending to be married?
Oh, I knew they did, but they didn't have the guts to tell me to my face.
Did it bother you that people thought that way?
No, it didn't.
Did you say "grass widows"?
That's what they called them back then, grass widows. Now I think they just call them, what? I don't know what they call people that's divorced now, or separated.
Do you know where that term originated? That's an interesting phrase.
No, I sure don't.
I don't, either.
I've heard that all my life.
I've heard it all my life, but I don't know where it originated at. But now they say, "I'm separated from my husband," or "I will divorce."
Yes, that kind of branded the woman.
Yes, they've quit using that "grass widow."
They didn't call a man that. They were just single after they had separated, but a woman was branded a grass widow. I guess that's to separate a widow from a divorced person, is all I know. It didn't make any difference to me noway.
But now, if they're not divorced, they'll just say, "No, we're not living together, we're separated," and that's all. And after they get divorced, say, "Well, we're divorced."
I know they don't brand them now.
Yes, I don't think it's quite such a social stigma anymore.
No.
I don't think so, either.
It's been a long time since I've heared that word "a grass
I hadn't heard it in years. I have to think about us calling people that's separated …
You used to hear it rather often back years and years ago, but it's very seldom you hear it now.
But it didn't make any difference to me. I never did worry about it. I
had my own friends. I always made lots of friends, so I never did have
any trouble. I still make lots of friends, and I don't worry about the
ones I don't make, either. I always just try to hold my head up and do
right and live as close to the Lord as I can, so I don't really worry
about things like that. If nobody don't like me, well, that's just their
hard luck, not mine.
Let's talk a little bit about how you first went to work. You said you worked in the summers when you were young.
Yes. I was fourteen when I went to work in the summer. I went to work there at Poe Mill, and I went to work creeling on warpers. And then I run the warpers, and then I went back to school. And then the next summer I went to the spooler room and worked in the spooler room a good while; then I went back to school. But I quit then in school and went back to work, and I worked in the spooler, and then I went to the draw-in room and learned to draw in. And so I stayed in the draw-in room from then on.
And drawing in was your first permanent job?
Yes.
How did you get those summer jobs?
My daddy was boss in the machine shop, and you know one always has pulled
for the other; they always tried to work one another's
How did you learn those jobs? Did you get any formal training, or did they assign you to someone?
You have somebody to show you to get started. Then you just keep learning. Then, in some of the jobs, you had to work six weeks to learn, but then we never did. I never did work but three or four weeks.
Did you get paid while you were learning?
No. But that mill quit that. They quit and got to paying. I think they give them about two weeks to learn, and then start paying them. But I don't think I ever worked over two or three weeks without pay to learn anything. And then when I went to drawing in, that was piecework. And my sister drawed in, and she was the one that taught me, so I got the pay from the start there. They paid you so much for a warp, and so I got pay from the start. Of course, I was slow and I didn't make very much. When your speed picks up, you make more and more. But my sister taught me there. Now anyone that come in there that didn't have nobody to teach them, had to pay somebody to teach them. They wouldn't hire you unless you could hire somebody to teach you.
Oh, you paid somebody to teach you.
Yes.
Why would they do that?
Because it was expensive to teach anyone.
But that person would lose their pay, I guess, while they were…
Yes, that's right, while they was teaching them. But most people had somebody that would teach them. But it didn't cost me nothing.
Had you ever been in the mill before the summer jobs?
I hadn't worked any.
Had you been in? Had you visited?
Oh, yes, my daddy was the bossman. He'd take us down there and take us all the way through, and so we'd been in the mill ever since I can remember.
But did you have someone to teach you those summer jobs?
Yes, but you didn't have to pay for that. They'd just start you off, and
it was all piecework. Now creeling, you tied the threads on at the back,
and you had to fill up a whole thing, and it run up on the warps then.
That's the first job I ever done. Somebody showed me how; I wouldn't
have been able to do it. And then after I learned to do that, I learned
to pull the threads through, and then I just learnt myself warping. When
the warper hand would go off to the rest room or somewhere, it's a
wonder I hadn't tore up the warps, but I had seen her enough that I
learned
Was drawing in the only job you had to pay to get somebody to teach you?
That's the only one I know of.
I guess that took a lot more skill and a lot more practice and all.
Yes, it'd take more skill. And the bosses couldn't teach you that,
because they didn't know it theirself. So they'd have to get somebody
that knew how to draw in to teach you, and that's the reason you had to
pay for that. Now that was just when I first started. Now years
Labor for nothing.
And they run it a long time like that. And then, you see, the laws …
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
… when they got to talking about Roosevelt, when he come in he was going to put it on forty hours? And I said, "Well, that's dumb, going to pay people as much money to not do nothing." I thought that was the craziest thing I ever heard tell of.
You thought Roosevelt and the forty-hours thing was dumb?
Yes. Well, I'd been working ten hours a day. I didn't mind it. And he
wanted to cut down to eight hours a day and then pay the same
I says, this was what was
That's really interesting, about hiring those young boys out of the country.
When did you say those laws changed so they couldn't do that?
Well, that's been years and years ago.
That was back in the twenties.
Back in the twenties that they stopped that no-pay training period?
I imagine so.
I think we missed it on the first tape. That's why I wanted to get that on here.
I don't remember just what year it was. No, Nola was born in 1929, so it was in the early thirties.
According to that, then, it wasn't long before Roosevelt came in.
It wasn't. It was after I went up there to work, but it was in the early
thirties. It was before Roosevelt come in. But when he come in, he
changed lots of laws. He was the best President we ever had.
How so, besides changing the minimum wage and the hours?
The minimum wage, and cut it down to forty hours, and that was a big help. And then they'd keep raising the minimum wage, and naturally we'd make more money. And from then on, things has been building up. Now it's gotten to where inflation's about to take over, but he's the one that started the country building up to where it is now. And people working eight hours that had been working ten, that's a big difference.
Well, I've worked eleven hours.
We worked ten hours, and then worked five on Saturday, too, you see. We worked fifty-five hours a week till he put that forty hours on. And they wouldn't pay that time-and-a-half unless it was an emergency, so we didn't have to work overtime, just forty hours. Now that was a big cut.
It gave you a lot more time off to spend with your daughter.
That's right. But we never had had it, so we didn't know what to do with
it for a while.
Tell me a little bit about this travelling around to the different jobs. How would you hear about jobs around?
Through the company. They would call the company and tell.
Was there a group of you that would sometimes travel together?
Sometimes there was more than one go, but most of the time I'd find out by myself. Sometimes somebody else would go with me. There was a crowd went to Tarboro, North Carolina, from here, but I wouldn't go up there with them. I had a chance to go there, but that was after me and Carl married, and I wouldn't go up there.
You mean Bimburg?
No, it was Tarboro, when they first started going up there. Then we did go up there and try to get a job, and Carl got one by the time the drawing in was give out, so I didn't get one. I went to Calvine Mill, too. I was working there when it shut down. I don't know whether you know where that's at.
Yes, I've been by there.
And I don't know what company it was—I didn't go—but they called there
wanting some drawing-in hands to Puerto Rico, and they sent some of them
around. But he couldn't send none from Calvine, because we had plenty of
work at the time. I said something about I'd like to go, but he said I'd
be leaving the job, because he'd have to hire somebody in my place. So
he called some of the drawing-in hands that we knew that was out of
work, and some of them went to Puerto Rico. But that's the way it all
So most of you that travelled were the ones that knew how to set up the fancy?
Yes. Most of them was wanting fancy, because it didn't pay them to learn
a bunch of people just for the help they get.
Would the plain mills usually have their own draw-in hands?
They usually had theirs. They didn't use very many, and it wasn't too hard to teach people the plain work, because that was just drawing straight threads through, so that wasn't hard to teach people.
Where would you stay when you would go off to a mill?
They'd get you places to stay in boarding houses and hotels and anywhere close that they had. And I stayed at hotels at some of them; I stayed at boarding houses. Most of them was boarding houses, because I preferred boarding houses. I'd a heap rather stay in a boarding house, because it wasn't as lonesome away from home. But it was mostly either hotels or boarding houses.
What was it like, living in a boarding house?
It was kind of family-like. Most every boarding house I ever lived in was
real nice. Usually someone real nice runs it, and it's kind of like
living in a family. You know, I was raised in a big family
Yes, you'd get used to everyone after you stayed there a while, stay maybe six months or maybe sometime a year. And you'd get acquainted with them, and you'd just hate to see them leave, or you'd hate to leave yourself whenever you would leave, because you'd made a lot of friends and enjoyed yourself and all. And it was almost like leaving home, whenever you'd stay a pretty good while thataway.
I wouldn't stay in just any kind. I've heard of broken-down boarding houses and rough boarding houses and such as that, but I wouldn't stay at places like that. It had to be a nice respectable place.
Would people in the houses get together and …
Play cards. They mostly played cards and maybe checkers and dominoes and
things like that. We'd do that every night, nearly. If there was enough
there, sometime we'd go uptown or something like that, you know, at
different places. But we'd play cards till eleven or twelve o'clock at
night lots of times. He never would play cards
I'd like to know a little bit more about this job. You said the supervisors wouldn't know how to do it. Did that mean you could kind of go about your work the way you wanted to?
Sure. They knew if you made a mistake. When it went to the weave room it
showed up, and you had to go in there and straighten it
Do you feel like that gave you any more freedom than other workers?
I enjoyed it more than anything I've done. I tell you, lots of people would complain about the work, but honest to goodness, I'd rather draw in than eat when I was hungry. I never got tired of drawing in. And it kept your mind occupied all the time, because if you didn't keep your mind on it you'd make a mistake. It was something that you had to keep your mind going all the time, and counting in your mind. Every thread had to be counted. And you knew just when to drop off and start another pattern and all, and it was interesting to me.
It sounds like you took a lot of pride in it.
I loved drawing in. I was a person who always liked things that took a mind to do, and not just labor. Now when I went to school, arithmetic and algebra, something that took a little studying. Now I enjoyed that. But when you come to other work, reading and writing and such as that, that was boresome to me.
And of course your job was really kind of a practical application of that math.
Yes, so I really loved it. I always did love to draw in.
Did those of you who were draw-in hands ever set some kind of informal rules about how long you'd work or how fast you'd work?
No, you could work as fast as you wanted to. Of course, there was laws;
if you worked over eight hours after the law come in, you'd have to be
paid time-and-a-half. But before the law come in, they didn't have to
pay time-and-a-half noway, but you still got paid for the work you done;
it was piecework. And the more you worked, the more money you made, but
you still didn't get time-and-a-half. But if the bossman wanted you to
work and you wanted to work, there wasn't no law that said that you
couldn't work or nothing like that. So maybe I'd want to work late, and
if they needed me the bossman would ask me, and I'd tell him I would. I
always was right up to working late, getting all the work in I could. So
that's just the way it was. It was all piecework, and if I drawed in
fast I just made more money. Somebody else fool around and go to the
bathroom or sit around and talk and such as that, why, they just lost
their money. But I was out for making all the money I could.
Did you prefer piece rate over an hourly wage?