[TAPE 1, SIDE A]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]

ALLEN TULLOS:

The place to begin, I guess, would be with you, Mr. Griffith. If you could recall anything, if you will, about your grandparents, or where you grew up, your parents, where you all lived, or any memories that you might have.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

You want me to start now?

ALLEN TULLOS:

Yes, sir.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

We come here at Judson Mill in 1905. This was a plantation where this mill was built. That's where we [pause]

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Where the office is.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Where the office is now. This mill was built in 1912. And so I've been around here practically all my life.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What do you know about why it was your parents came here?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

They worked on the farm.

ALLEN TULLOS:

They were both born down near Mauldin.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Mauldin, South Carolina, yes.

ALLEN TULLOS:

They grew up on the farm?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yes.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What kind of crops do you reckon they used to grow?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Cotton and corn, and something to eat.

ALLEN TULLOS:

How old were they when they came here? You say 1905 is the year. You were told that they came to Greenville? How old would they have been approximately?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

About thirty years old, somewhere along in there.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Was there any particular reason why they left the Mauldin area and came here?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

No. They just came. You know how farmers does.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Your father was a kind of an overseer. Would that be a true?

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He looked out for this plantation?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yes, plantation, yes.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Who was the man that owned it?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

A fellow, Seely, owned the land.

ALLEN TULLOS:

How big a place was it?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Oh, I guess there was about a hundred acres in here, or more.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did he own that place a pretty long time, Mr. Seely?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

I don't know how long he owned it.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Who was working on it mainly? Who was farming it?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Colored people.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Colored people.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

They grew cotton.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Do you reckon some member of their families had been here since the Civil War times?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

I imagine there was, yes, back then.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What was you father's job in relation to the black people that lived here?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

He see'd that they had a different job to do, just like the overseer. And at picking cotton time, all of them went together and picked cotton, and the corn, and stuff like that.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Do you think they just had one big cotton field or did each of the tenants have a separate patch?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

It was just one big field of cotton and one big field of corn, and other vegetables they want to grow, too.

ALLEN TULLOS:

And did each of the black families have a separate house that they lived in?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yeah, a separate house.

ALLEN TULLOS:

And do you know what kind of a house your parents had?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Well, it was a frame house, an old frame house.

ALLEN TULLOS:

How many rooms were in it?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

I guess it had about four or five, something like that.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Just one floor?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

One floor, yes.

ALLEN TULLOS:

You had one sister and one brother? What were their names?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

We called him Bill, W.T. Griffith.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Was he the older brother?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

The oldest one, yes. He was five years older than I was. And my sister's name is Dot Hawkins now.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Dorothy.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Dorothy.

ALLEN TULLOS:

When was she born?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Oh, I believe 1915.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Do you remember anything at all about building the mill, or buying the land here to build the Judson Mill?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

I forgot who built it, but anyway they started building the mill in 1912. I forgot who first started off. I don't know whether Milliken had anything to do with that then or not. But sometime in years to come, Milliken got a hold of it.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What about your father? What did he do when they built the mill?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Well, he helped build the mill. He knowed something about machinery and he went into the machine shop. Then he became what we called a ‘second-hand’ back then—kinda like a boss.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What would a second-hand do? What kind of authority did he have back then?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Well he had the authority to tell people what to do, and if you didn't do it, he'd just get somebody else.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Was he a second-hand in a particular department?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

In the machine shop.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What did they do in the machine shop?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Well, maybe a piece would break off a loom, or something like that. Then they'd bring it to the shop. They'd fix it in the machine shop, all kinds of things.

ALLEN TULLOS:

How was it that he had some experience with machinery?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Well, he worked on all kinds of machinery before then. Then after he got it there he just picked it up more.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Was it mostly farming machinery that he had worked with before?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yeah.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Had he ever done anything else besides farming?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

No, not that I know of.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Do you remember at all the mill being built?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yeah, I can remember they started putting up walls when I was a little fella.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did they build these houses at the same time they built the mill?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

I believe it was about 1913 when they built these houses, or somewhere along in there.

ALLEN TULLOS:

So you were about seven years old. Did you all move into one of these houses?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yeah. Right across the street, and two rooms. And another person had two rooms, back then.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Was it a house pretty much like this one?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Just the same. They just started building them over there, you see. That side over there was built first.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Were these houses divided so that two families could move in?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

There's a hall through here.

ALLEN TULLOS:

And there would be two. . . .

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Two rooms.

ALLEN TULLOS:

On each side.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Now some family on the next street had five rooms. And one person had three rooms, and another person had two rooms.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Sometimes a family would take the whole house?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Just according to how big the family was.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What about when you started to school? Did you go to school when you were here in the Judson Mill?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

They just had one room.

ALLEN TULLOS:

How old were you when you started?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

I was about six or seven, somewhere along in there.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Do you remember much about that?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Not too, too much.

ALLEN TULLOS:

All the different children would be in the same room?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Uh huh.

ALLEN TULLOS:

How many grades?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Then they just again have school. . . you help me a littl bit on that, Polly?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Well, I imagine maybe one through fourth grades, in the same room.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What about your mother? Did she work in the mill?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yeah, she worked in the mill.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What was her job?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Weaver, she weaved.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Do you remember her talking about her work?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yeah. When she first went to work, her and my daddy married, she worked in the mill five cents a day. Five cents a day before her and my daddy married. Then they got to making more.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Where would that have been?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Right down here at Conestee, right down there pretty close to Mauldin. Had a little mill down there.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What was she doing down there? What job would that have been?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

I don't know.

ALLEN TULLOS:

But that's where she had first gone to work?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Uh huh.

ALLEN TULLOS:

When she came up here, what kind of looms do you remember that she was running back then?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

I was small. I don't know nothing about that then.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Do you remember her talking about how many looms she had run?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

No, I don't.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What time would she have to get up to go to work?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

They'd blow a whistle up there at five o'clock to wake the people up, and you had to go to work at six o'clock.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

And they worked ten hours a day.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

And they got off an hour for dinner. Then five hours on Saturday.

ALLEN TULLOS:

She would come home for dinner? And your father, too?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yeah.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Then they would get off work about five o'clock? And the whistle would blow?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

About five o'clock. In the morning about five o'clock.

ALLEN TULLOS:

And in the evening, too, to get off?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

No, I don't think it would blow again.

ALLEN TULLOS:

And there was really just one shift of workers?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

At that particular time, yeah. Then a little bit later on, they put two shifts.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Do you remember when that would have been? About the time of World War II, or World War I or after that? I'm just curious, was she still working there when they had two shifts?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

I don't believe so. She died in 1925.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did your mother work in the mill all the time until her death?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

No, her health went bad.

ALLEN TULLOS:

So she had to retire from the mill?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yeah, she had to quit.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What was the trouble?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Oh, she had an operation I think. Gall bladder trouble back then; they didn't know much about that back then like they do now.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Was there anybody that looked after the children while she was working in the mill?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

No. We had to stay at home. We had to stay at home; [laughter] my parents were pretty strict. They knew where we was at.

ALLEN TULLOS:

They kept up with you?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yeah.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Well, their ages were separated several years apart, so really I guess your brother, Bill, was almost old enough to look out for the younger two of you?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yeah.

ALLEN TULLOS:

How many grades did Bill finish in school?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Oh, about the same thing.

ALLEN TULLOS:

And your sister?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Well, my sister finished school.

ALLEN TULLOS:

High school?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

High school, yeah.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Where did she finish high school?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Slater, South Carolina.

ALLEN TULLOS:

How did she get up there?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

After my mother died, my sister was small, and my daddy married again. And they moved up the country here about fifteen miles, further up the mountains there, called Slater Mill. J.P. Stevens owned that mill up there.

ALLEN TULLOS:

They owned it later? Did they buy it later?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

They built it new. In 1928 my daddy moved up there. He married in '27. Me and my wife here married in the same year. He married about the first of the year, and we married the 28th of May of the same year.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

We married on my nineteenth birthday [laughter].

ALLEN TULLOS:

Where did you all marry?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

At Preacher Gualt's parsonage.

ALLEN TULLOS:

His name was Gualt?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Uh huh. G-U-A-L-T.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What job did your father have with the Slater Mill?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

About the same thing.

ALLEN TULLOS:

He was in charge of the machines?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

The machine shop, uh huh.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Do you remember your mother ever talking about what the conditions were like inside the mill?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Well, she said when she first went to work, she had to have a box. She was small and she had to have a box to stand on and reach what she was doing.

ALLEN TULLOS:

How old was she when she started? That would have been before she moved up here.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Oh, I don't know. She was pretty small.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

I believe he does a better job than I can.

ALLEN TULLOS:

I think you all both do fine.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Thank you.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Why don't we get you to go back in the same way that Mr. Griffith has, if you can, and remember some of your early memories about where you grew up and family and what your family did and things like that.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

We lived in the country in Hendersonville and they raised corn and beans. It was just generally vegetables mostly in that area. And they had apples. They raised chickens. My daddy was just a farmer. And they raised hogs. We grew everything we ate right there at home, except you know, the commodities you'd have to buy in the store. It was quite a treat to get to go to the store. Because everything was made at home, and the things from the store were outstanding to all those kids. We looked forward to go shopping sometimes with my dad. They used to sell eggs to buy other things, you know. They swapped eggs instead of money.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

For coffee.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

For coffee and sugar and things like that. I remember them telling about the first car that came through there. My two sisters were going to the store with a basket of eggs and they saw this car coming. It frightened them so that they ran up the bank to see it go by, so it

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wouldn't hit them [laughter]. Isn't that funny? And then it was rare back then to see an automobile. It's hard to imagine that now.

We had a happy home life. My father was a Christian man, and my mother. We went to church and that was one of the main things in their lives.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What church did you go to?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

At first we didn't have a church. We went over the hill, over a mountain. My daddy would carry me on his back. It was in my aunt's home. They had Sunday school then. They just had a worship service. And finally there was a church built in our area. And my uncle, on my grandmother's side, was the pastor. He had twin boys, Elbert and Albert. It was just a good country church.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Was it any particular denomination?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

It was Baptist, uh huh, and they'd have prayer meetings and singings and different things, you know, to go to. We would go in a wagon, and that was quite a treat, you know, to get to go to church in the wagon. That was a big day.

ALLEN TULLOS:

How often would you go?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

To church?

ALLEN TULLOS:

Yes. Would it be every week that you'd get to go?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Yes. We had service every week. We had a good happy life. Our community in which we lived, the people were thoughtful of each other. We had good fellowship among our neighbors, friends.

ALLEN TULLOS:

When was it that you came to Greenville?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

When I was about seven years old, and I was born in 1908.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Why was it that your family came here?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Well, the crops were kind of failing at that time, and they thought that it would be better to move. It was a necessity to move and get a job, rather than depend on the farm. That's why we came.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Can you remember at all your parents trying to make it on the farm? Did they want to come to the mill? Or would they have rather stayed on the farm?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Well, they would have preferred to stay on the farm, but you've heard of famines in the Bible. It was kind of like that. We could have survived but it wouldn't have been easy. So they thought it would be easier for the family to come. My two older sisters worked, and my father.

ALLEN TULLOS:

They started to work as well as your father?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Yes, they were weavers. My daddy worked in the. . . what was that shop he worked in?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

I forget what department it was.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

It's where they dyed the yarn.

ALLEN TULLOS:

It was here?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

At Judson.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What about your mother? Did she work in the mill?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

No, sir, she never worked in the mill at all. And my mother was never in the hospital.

ALLEN TULLOS:

She looked after the children?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Yes, she looked after us and kept the home.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did she have a garden?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Yes, sir, she had a garden. She had pigs. Coming from the country, they used to allow us to have a place where we could have

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a hog pen. And she liked to do that. And we had a cow, too. We had our own milk and butter. She grew a lot of vegetables in the garden. We all worked and helped.

ALLEN TULLOS:

She was in charge of the garden and your livestock?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Yes, sir.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did she can food?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Yes, she did. We canned up food, you know, and helped out, just like in the country, only it was on a smaller scale.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did you ever notice any difference between the people who had moved here from the mountains where they had grown a lot of vegetables and different kinds of crops before, and the people who were more accustomed to growing cotton, who hadn't grown so many different kinds of things?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Well, I was amazed at the cotton. I couldn't imagine it growing like it did. And as I got a little older, I had some friends whose daddy had some cotton. I tried picking some to see how much money I could make. I picked thirteen pounds and I thought I had picked a bale [laughter]. It was real interesting.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Were there any differences between the people that had come from the mountains and those who were cotton people?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Well, I couldn't tell any difference. At the time that we came to the mill, the mill people had a good standard that the people had to live by. There were no roughnecks allowed in the village. They were choice people. You didn't even have to lock your doors. If you wanted to go to town or somewhere, you could just go to town and come back, and everything would be there.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Would that be true for the several mill villages at that time?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

I guess it was. It was for this one. Because the

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ones that were over the plant, they would just as soon make people move if they didn't live up to standard. They just simply wouldn't have anybody that wasn't the best type people. And it was a good thing. Because, without some kind of stardard, people's lives deteriorated. They're just not up to par, and it affects communitites in the ways they don't want to be affected. We had lots to be thankful for in that.

[TAPE 1, SIDE B]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]

ALLEN TULLOS:

Do you know why it was that your mother and father chose to come to this particular place?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

I had an aunt that lived here, and she worked in the plant. She's the one that got the jobs for them at the time.

ALLEN TULLOS:

How did she do that?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Well, she contacted the bosses at the plant. And we lived in the house with her. She lived on one side and us on the other. There was just a hall in between.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Was she living by herself?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

No. Her husband and three children. But we all lived in the same house, except for the hall.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Until they could get another house. They was building more houses then.

ALLEN TULLOS:

How did you arrange your half of the house? I guess you had five or six people living. . . .

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

I guess that house had six rooms. We had three and our aunt had three. Our brothers were small enough that we didn't have too much problem. They were younger then. I was the youngest girl.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What about the houses then? Did they have any kind of utilities, electricity, water?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Not at that time. And the floors were open. You

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could see under the house, walking along. And in the winter time, it was really airish [laughter].

PAUL GRIFFITH:

That there was when they was in the country.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Yeah. And they didn't have any insulation of any kind back in the mill houses at that time.

ALLEN TULLOS:

You're talking about the mill house when you moved here? That you could see through the floors?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

No, sir. In the country. But back then, we couldn't afford linoleum floor coverings, or any rugs. And we would save our water that we washed with, suds, and scrub the whole house and both porches. That was the way we lived back in that day and we didn't think anything about it. I had washed many a time—the entire house, porches and all—and after a while when the clothes begin to dry, bring them in and iron them, all in the same day [laughter]. We didn't think anything about it. We seemed to have plenty of time. The time didn't go as fast as it does now.

ALLEN TULLOS:

About your aunt: what job did she have in the mill?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

I think that she worked in the cloth room.

ALLEN TULLOS:

She put in a word then with the bosses. Who would that have been exactly? Like a second-hand or an overseer?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

I don't know. See, I was small.

ALLEN TULLOS:

And so your father and your two older sisters?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Worked.

ALLEN TULLOS:

And they went to work immediately?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Yes.

ALLEN TULLOS:

And what did they do?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

They were weavers. My daddy worked in the dye room.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What was it like for them when they first went into the mill? Do you remember them talking about that, what they saw, and felt, and heard?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

They were scared [laughter]. See, they had never been used to having a boss over them, and they were scared to death. And the looms made so much racket, they couldn't hear theirselves, you know. And couldn't hear other people. It took a little while to get adjusted to that. I went to work when I was fourteen. And the big boss came through and he asked me what my name was, and I couldn't hear him. He had a big old gruff voice, and he was a great big man, and I asked him three times what he said. Finally I said, "I don't know. Ask my sister." [laughter]. It tickled him because I couldn't hear him, you know. He went down there and he said, "Vita, your little sister couldn't hear what I was asking. She asked me three times and she felt embarrassed to ask me any more and she said, ‘I don't know. Ask Vita.’ " [laughter]. It was right funny. Back then they just paid about six dollars for anybody learning. So the spare hand—the person that didn't have a set of looms, they called him the spare hand—made fourteen eighty-five. The first ticket I drew was fourteen eighty-five. So I went to this big boss that I was scared to death of, and told him about it, because I didn't want to be dishonest, and he said, "Well, Pauline, I know you could use that money better than the company could. It would take a lot of book work to get on back to that. You just don't say a word about it. I give you permission to keep it." So I started off at the spare-hand wages. I felt rich. [laughter].

PAUL GRIFFITH:

She's talking about the weaving room. When you haven't been used to it and a person goes in there, you can't hardly hear. You just have to get accustomed to it. That's the way she was. She just had went to work, maybe a day or two. It takes you several days to catch people's voices

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when you go in the weaving room.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

But he was a good boss. He was a good overseer. He had a gruff voice, and a great big built body, but he was real mild in his nature towards people. I enjoyed working.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What was his name?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Tidwell.

ALLEN TULLOS:

And he was overseer of the weaving room.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Yes he was. He was Mr. John Tidwell. And he was a mighty good overseer. But later it was right funny. We had this seat, you know, where you could sit? And we all got our looms running and just for fun, we played like we was sitting down—you know how young people are. And this time, a Mr. Copeland had come to be the bigshot. Mr. Tidwell had moved on. And he looked down the alley and saw us, and he got so mad. Here he come, like to scared us to death. And we ran over there and got our looms started. He balled us everyone out. He liked to scared us to death. So from there out, we didn't try that trick no more.

ALLEN TULLOS:

You all were just playing a joke?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

You know how young people are? They'll just play like they're going to do. We could not set in each other's laps without the swing a-falling. We was just playing like we would, you know. There were about five of us. Boy, he got us all [laughter].

ALLEN TULLOS:

Explain how that seat worked.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Well, like the loom is on this side, the leather would be fixed to the seat, and it'd be fastened securely. Then over here would be something to hang it up on and make a seat out of it. But normally it just hung by the loom, all the way. When we'd get tired, we could rest a littlewhile. That was back then, during John Tidwell's time.

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But not in Copeland's day. He didn't allow us to be seated [laughter].

ALLEN TULLOS:

What was his first name, do you remember?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Copeland? I don't remember his first name.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

I don't remember either.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

It was kind of cruel, but we sure knew to tend our own work and to stay on it.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Let me just go back, so I can understand what you all were doing. You were pretending you were sitting in each other's laps?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Yeah. Playing like it. You know, just like the seat was here, you know. And we just stooped over kind of like we was sitting in each other's laps. We really weren't.

ALLEN TULLOS:

All five of you in one seat?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

All one another. [laughter]

PAUL GRIFFITH:

It was just about this wide apart, the looms on this side and looms on that side, and this strap come over here. Like I'm sitting here. Then the other kind of put themselves right on up like this.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

We was just playing like, and we was all young, right in there. You have to have some fun as you go along with your work, to make it interesting.

ALLEN TULLOS:

You were hoping that he would catch your eye, really, or somebody would see you all doing this?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

No, we weren't thinking about that. We was just having fun. We wasn't doing it for anybody's attention. We were just playing with each other, just having fun. Young people play leap frog, and different things, you know, and we was just doing that. Because the one over him, word gets around. And they didn't allow people to be abused back then, which was wonderful. I think it's nice for the people to get to

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work under good conditions. We turned out a lot of work, but we had to have a little fun along.

ALLEN TULLOS:

You said the word would get around: would he hear this from some of the workers, perhaps?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

They probably would, you know. We wouldn't say anything about it, but you know word does get around. If the boss is good and kind, it gets back. And if he abuses, that also gets back.

ALLEN TULLOS:

In other words, you all could really have a lot to say about who the boss was. The people who were weaving or working in the weaving room had something to say, at least, about whether a good boss got to stay, or one that was bad had to leave? Would that be true?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

No. Not back then. Not necessarily. But the one over the top watched so closely until he could sense what was going on. He was just a wonderful person, Mr. Bobo. He was real good. To see that working conditions were what they should be.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Take Bobo. When people go a-quitting, he'd be wanting to know what's the matter. See, he had a second-hand under him, over the people. And if that second-hand was too hard on the help, and they go to quitting—see, there'd be several mills around and a person could just quit and go to another mill. And when several do go, he'd be calling somebody in, wanting to know what's the matter with the help.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

That's the way he found out.

ALLEN TULLOS:

So really the workers did have a lot to say about things indirectly.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yeah.

ALLEN TULLOS:

So people would start quitting, and they'd have to make some changes.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Yes they would, because back then, if you wanted to go down in and work, all you had to do was go over and ask for a job and

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you could just go right to work. The same way these other plants around.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did the different mills have different reputations at different times about one being a better place to work than another? Some overseer being a better one to try to work for or things like that?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

I imagine they're about the same.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

I think they're about the same. They kind of work together, you know, kind of like a unit. Different plant managers checked with the others, and it's about the same.

ALLEN TULLOS:

We should go back a bit to your coming in to learn how to weave. Did someone teach you? Who did you work with?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

My sister, Vita. They put me with her and she had the looms, and all her looms were in one alley. unknown So I just learned two weeks, and they put me on a set of looms by myself in the next alley. unknown And Vita would come and help me, you know. She'd get hers going. And then I had a good loom fixer, Earl Kelly. He was my first loom fixer. And he would start up some of my looms and help me out. In that way, I was weaving, really, in two weeks. I liked it. I enjoyed my work. Even though I had to work to make a living, I really enjoyed it. And my looms, they just run good. Because, if you like your work, you can do a better job of it. I'd pray a lot, too, while I was working. And I felt like the Lord helped my looms to run, and he did. And I made good. In fact, Mr. Kelly said he raised me, because he was my first loom fixer, and he said he'd put me up against any weavers they had. He said I was the best. I did have a good rating.

ALLEN TULLOS:

How many looms were a set of looms back then?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Well, I believe there was about twelve back then, don't you, Paul?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Somewhere along in there.

ALLEN TULLOS:

And so you started out operating twelve looms?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Yes, sir.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What kind were they?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

They were the Crompton-Knowles.

ALLEN TULLOS:

And so they were those box looms? What were you making, do you remember what you first learned how to make?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

I think it was more of a plain weave back then, don't you, Paul?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yeah, it was a plain weave then.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Yes, it was plain weave at that time, but later they put more fancy on.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Were you running several colors when you started?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

No, just one.

ALLEN TULLOS:

But you were still working on a box loom?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

On a box loom, uh huh. But, see they could fix it where it would use just the one shuttle. Or if it was a pattern that needed to put in designs, they could use all of the boxes, to come up.

ALLEN TULLOS:

So you were really operating as if it had been an ordinary Draper, plain loom.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Uh huh.

ALLEN TULLOS:

You weren't using but one of the shuttles. That's interesting.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

They didn't have magazines on them then. We had to thread our shuttles. And we had to watch when the yarn on the shuttle was about out. If we'd catch that and stop it off and put in another bobbin, we'd make better quality.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Before it ran out?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Uh huh. There was a lot of watching we had to do, you know, to keep up with it.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did they have what they used to call the ‘suck shuttle’, do you remember that, where you had to kind of suck the thread through the hole in the shuttle?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

No. Ours had a kind of an eye, and we had to have spindle in the shuttle, and we'd have to pull that up and put the bobbin on there, and push it down and pull it.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Through that eye.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Pull it through the eye of the needle from the shuttle. And then we'd have to put it where it wouldn't make a bad start of it, you know. It was usually best to begin it from the side. Then there wouldn't be a place in the cloth.

ALLEN TULLOS:

If there was a place in the cloth, what would it look like? What would they call that?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

That would be where you started up. I know I had long hair and one time, accidentally, some of my hair—I could have been combing my hair at the time, or some could have dropped down. And so one time I had to go to the cloth room. They said, "Pauline, we appreciate your doing a good job weaving, but please don't let any more hair get in." [laughter] He

PAUL GRIFFITH:

See, if you don't catch that, it makes a little thin place, like a thread out. That's what it is: just that thread.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

In cloth, a lot of times, it sold for first quality, but having been a weaver, I can tell when it isn't. Because a lot of times you pay for first-quality cloth, where there would be a thread out, or where they had drawn the ends wrong in the warp and

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make a fleck, they called it. It looked different. And I can detect it, where people that never have wove, they'd never notice it.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Do you remember when you switched over from running the twelve looms into learning the different kind, or fancier, weaves?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Yes, I worked on crepe finally. But first I worked on, I believe, was casket lining. It was real fine. And the warp was real fine. You could hardly see it. It was wrapped funny. There was a boy that the second-hand wanted me to like and wanted him to like me, and they would run the cloth over a frame and I had to go to the cloth room, and I was doing my best, it just worried me to death, and he finally admitted that he was doing that all the time on purpose [laughter]. I said, "Mr. Dodson, how could you be so cruel to do that?" And he said, "Pauline, I was getting a kick out of that. You was just working yourself to death and trying to improve all the time, and you were doing perfectly good cloth." But he was just trying to get us together to talk. That boy worked on that frame. But he didn't make any success there because Paul and me were courting [laughter]. He started courting with my sister, that taught me how to weave, and I thought that when I went along with them, that he was courting her. And he told me that he was courting her; that I'd be along was why he was courting her.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Her mother wouldn't let her court until she was sixteen. And her sister was two or three years older than she was. So I courted her some, and Pauline went along, so that's the way we got to going.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Where would you all go, when you were courting?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Mainly to church. And they used to have a playground, they called it, up here in the mill yard. And they had swings.

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They had different things, you know, to enjoy. And they would have things up there, you know, for the people to go and be amused and enjoy.

ALLEN TULLOS:

The mill would sponsor it?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yes. They kept it up.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

It was real nice.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

In the meantime, over here—we call it the gobbler's knob—every Fourth of July, they'd have a big to-do over there, with firecrackers. They'd have a greasy pig and baseball game over there.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

It was right funny: we went to a church get-together, and they had a womanless wedding. That's before Paul and I got engaged. And so coming back, we took a girlfriend of mine home, you know, after going to this meeting, and Paul proposed to me coming back from a womanless wedding [laughter].

PAUL GRIFFITH:

I was in one. And they fixed me up with a young girl.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Yeah. He was in a womanless wedding then years later, after he had married. I got him all fixed up and put lipstick on him, and got him a pink hat and a pink dress. I did fine, until I got down to his feet, and I couldn't find shoes big enough [laughter]. But he made a mighty good-looking woman. We had lots of fun.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did they put a black face on then? At some of those womanless weddings, they paint their faces black.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Oh, they had a black mammy and she ‘Boo-Hooed’ at the wedding. It was real funny.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

All of them were men.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

I said that was right funny that we was coming back from the womanless wedding and he decided he'd propose.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Were you all walking, or riding back?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

We had to walk. We didn't know what automobiles were back then.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

They used to have a street car run on a train track, and that was our transportation to go to town.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Would you ever go in together to see movies? When you were courting?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

A few times, not much.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

My mother was real strict, and she knew which way I went. And his mother, in her lifetime, was real strict, too. So we had to tow the mark. So we didn't have too much excitement in life.

ALLEN TULLOS:

You didn't get to go to dances?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

No, sir. Nothing like that.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did the mill have a band that it sponsored back than, with all the brass bands, or anything like that?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

No. I don't think they did. Like I say, they sponsored baseball leagues. Each mill had a ball team.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did you ever play on one of those?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

No, I didn't. I used to box some.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Box? They used to have golden glove tournaments at different mills in towns, didn't they?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yeah.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Do you all remember what they called these hillbilly bands—string bands that played for dances in people's houses?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

They didn't allow that here.

ALLEN TULLOS:

They didn't allow it?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

No

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

There used to be some medicine shows sometimes.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Coming through.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

And they'd put on a little dance or program or something and we'd go see that, you know.

ALLEN TULLOS:

And they would have a couple of musicians, and someone holding up a bottle of medicine?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yeah.

ALLEN TULLOS:

And putting on a show?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

But they didn't allow nothing in the village, what I mean, house-to-house thing, or anything. They'd let them come through.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

They were really strict in that day.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Sometimes I've heard of different string bands having shows at the school house or something like that. Do you remember that? Performances? A band like Bill Monroe's or something?

[TAPE 2, SIDE A]

[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]

ALLEN TULLOS:

Well, let me go back again, before we can too far away from it, and talk about the weaving job and what that was like. At the time, you say that you all were making plain goods on the Crompton-Knowles looms, how many looms would have been making this? All of the looms in the mill, or maybe half of them? Would some be making the plain and some the fancier goods? It looks like they weren't using these looms up to their full potential.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Well, they had different sections that had different materials. Now, some materials could be woven with a drier temperature, and some had to have more humidity. And they had to put them accordingly.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Well, when you were making the casket linings, how many of the shuttles were you using?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

One.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Still just one. Do you remember the first time that you used more than one shuttle?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Well, it wasn't too long. The looms over next to us were weaving handkerchiefs, and it wasn't long until they put me on the handkerchiefs, because they could put somebody on the plain weave better, and they needed someone on the handkerchiefs. That was interesting. We made beautiful handkerchiefs.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Four boxes?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Some of them had three and some four. Just according to what kind of handkerchiefs they were making.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

On the end of the loom, the boxes would come up and come out, you know, according to what design.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Had to make a chain to make them boxes go up at a certain time—different ones—and then they'd drop down. unknown so many unknown in there, and then it'd go back in there in its place, and then that'd come up in there and go and do the same thing. Just like this right here. They had one, two—this here is the same box—and they'd have one for this one. Then they'd weave so many picks right here, kind of like that around your arm there.

ALLEN TULLOS:

And that's what you were doing, making the pattern chain?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yes.

ALLEN TULLOS:

We'll catch up with that, and get you to tell us about that. Let me ask one or two more of these questions. How many sets of looms do you reckon were making the plain goods at the time you were making them?

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Is there any way just to take a guess?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

About four of five alleys.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Yes, about four of five alleys.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

I guess there was about thirty looms in an alley.

ALLEN TULLOS:

So maybe one hundred twenty-five, to a hundred and fifty looms.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

In a section. Weaving all that one time.

ALLEN TULLOS:

That's real helpful. Who made the decision that twelve looms was a set?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

The designers would decide how many looms a person could run, I would think. And Paul worked closely with the designers office.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Maybe we should go back now and kind of catch up where we left off with you, Mr. Griffith. We can start back I think at about the time you started to work. How old were you when you started?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

I was going on about seventeen.

ALLEN TULLOS:

That was about 1923? And you started out here at the Judson?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yes.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What was your first job?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Laying up filling in the weave room.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Could you describe what you would do?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Well. They had a box at the end of the loom, to keep the bobbins in the place, the bobbins with the yarn, so the weavers could get it when they wanted it. I guess I had about four or five alleys I had to keep different. . . .

ALLEN TULLOS:

That's not the same as filling the magazine, is it?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

No.

ALLEN TULLOS:

That was before they put the automatic magazine on there?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yes.

ALLEN TULLOS:

You were just putting the bobbins down where the weavers could get it?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

In a little box, about a foot wide I reckon, and about a foot high. I had to keep so many bobbins in there.

ALLEN TULLOS:

How was it that you got your job?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Well, after that I changed jobs and I got to putting those chains together, and make a different design or colors.

ALLEN TULLOS:

But before that, how was it that you got your first job laying out the filling? Who did you talk to?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Well, my daddy helped me get that.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Let's see, you had gone to about the ninth grade?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

About eighth or ninth, somewhere along there.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did you go right to work after you stopped school?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yes, uh huh.

ALLEN TULLOS:

So you didn't ever have any other kind of paying jobs before this, did you?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

No. I've been in mill work like that ever since. Then I got my left eye hurt. I learned this job for building them pattern chains before I got my eye hurt and they just kept me on there.

ALLEN TULLOS:

How did you hurt your eye?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

A nail flew up and hit me in the eye.

ALLEN TULLOS:

When you were working here at home?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

At the mill.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Could you tell me about that?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

I was helping a fella take down a harness, draw it in. When she got through with it we just put it on the truck. We had an extra piece. One side of it was stationary, and another place was loose.

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And we put that harness over there where it was stationary. And we put this other piece on there to hold them harnesses up. You had to drive a nail in each end to keep them unknown from falling off. I was driving a nail just about waist-high, and the nail slipped and hit me in the eye. I learned that job. I was just helping. I learned that job building them chains working for the designers office, so they just kept me on that job.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What year did you have the accident?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

1926. Last day of November, 1926.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What happened? Did you go to a doctor? Did the mill help?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yeah. They seen what happened, and they rushed me to a doctor, Dr. Carpenter. We called him the old man. He had a boy, retired here a couple of years ago, Carpenter. We called him the old man.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Was he the mill doctor?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

No, just an eye doctor.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

He was a specialist.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

A specialist. And he worked on it, and he didn't give me nothing for pain. He just got me up there about six o'clock. He got me in that chair, put me back where you put your head back there. The way he had his knee and everything, he worked on that thing. I grit my teeth hard while he was doing all that, so my jaw stayed sore for four or five months. It tore my nerves up some.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Was there any kind of accident coverage, insurance, for the mill?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

No. Buddy, he won't give me nothing. But I finally got a thousand dollars out of it.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did you lose part of the sight of it?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

No, I can't see a wink out of that at all.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Was there any kind of accident insurance in the mill?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

No.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

If there was. . . .

PAUL GRIFFITH:

They did pay the doctor bill and I had to stay in the hospital about three days.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did they pay for that?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yeah, they paid for that.

ALLEN TULLOS:

But they didn't really want to pay any kind of compensation?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

No. We let it rock on about a year. Then they finally compromised a thousand dollars.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did you get a lawyer to help you with that, or did you just handle that yourselves?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

We just handled it ourselves.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What sort of person would you have talked with in the mill about it? What level of administration?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

The big boss up there. They had two men talk to me and my daddy several times. But we did never come across any until they wanted to get it settled, then they come across with a thousand dollars. We settled for that.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What would happen today if an accident like that happened?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

I guess they got insurance and things like that. I could have gotten ten or twenty thousand dollars for that now.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

And a thousand back in that day was real money. You could buy much more for it than you can today.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Let's see you had gone to work in '29? Or '27?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

'27 somewhere along in there.

ALLEN TULLOS:

And then this accident happened in?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

'26.

ALLEN TULLOS:

'26? You had been working in the laying out the filling job.

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What was the next job you had? Was that when you first started to make the pattern chains? Was that the very next job you had?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

I done learned that job. And they just let me stay on it.

ALLEN TULLOS:

On the pattern chains?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Uh huh.

ALLEN TULLOS:

How would you learn about that? Did someone teach you that?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

I had to learn it myself. They showed you, and everytime I made a mistake a fella told me that really knowed it. Everytime I made a mistake they made me start from the beginning to go down and catch it myself. That's the way. I had to get it the hard way. Now I can go up there and if a person makes a mistake, I can tell it. I don't have to look on the draft or nothing.

ALLEN TULLOS:

How many of you were there working in that department?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Back at that particular time, there was about four. Building them chains.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What kind of patterns and materials going to make?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Different handkerchiefs and ginghams, crepe, on different looms. They had different places. Crepes in one place and handkerchiefs in one place.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Seersucker, too.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yes, seersuckers, too.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Was the pattern chain job a little better paying job?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yes, uh huh.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Well, how was it that you managed to get that job?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Well, I just taped it out. I've been at it ever since.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

He went by a design. They had a designer.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

To design it. And I went by that, kind of like a blueprint.

ALLEN TULLOS:

When you started to work, how many shifts was the mill running then? In 1924?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

One shift. Then they got to running two shifts. Then they cut it down to eight hours here. They were running two shifts for a while, and then they put it on three shifts. Eight hours a day.

ALLEN TULLOS:

So, for a while they were running eight-hour shifts for just two shifts, and then eight-hour shifts for three shifts?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yes.

ALLEN TULLOS:

When did they start doing the two shifts?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

I don't know what year that was, do you Polly?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

No, I don't exactly.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

But anyway, they put on two shifts, then sometime a little later, they put on another shift, to make it go around the clock.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Was it pretty easy to get a job in the mill in the twenties, the nineteen-twenties?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yeah, you could get a job.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did it ever get to be hard to get a job back then, or was it harder than any other time?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Well, when the war was going on it was pretty hard to get a job.

ALLEN TULLOS:

World War II?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

World War II, uh huh.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What about the Depression? What was that like for getting a job?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

You couldn't hardly find none.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

A lot of people, back during the Depression, were out of work. And some of them had to go and apply for flour and things like that. It was a real trying time, during the Depression. And anybody was lucky to even have a job during that time.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

See, my daddy moved up there to Slater in '28, and I was working then and our daughter come along in '29. So, in the Depression with my daddy working, he helped us out for about three months. There wasn't much weaving up there then, nothing going on. That mill up there in Slater, they was working four and five days a week. And he had a pretty good job, so he helped us for about three months, until the Judson got on their feet again. [telephone call]

ALLEN TULLOS:

So the Judson mill had to close down some?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yeah, there wasn't much running up there. So my daddy helped us. That's the way we pulled through. But it was in the summertime, and that helped us out a whole lot.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Was that the only time, just that three months, that it closed down altogether?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Well, all of it didn't close down, just the biggest part of it did. My department wasn't going so well. So he helped us 'til then, 'til it got started up again.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Back at that time, you could buy a week's groceries for three dollars. Now that's how money was.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Now, were you able to keep working during that time? Now, that was when your daughter was born.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

That's when our daughter was born.

ALLEN TULLOS:

So you stopped for a while?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

I had to stop for a while, and then our little boy came along, so I couldn't work for a while.

ALLEN TULLOS:

How long up to the time your daughter was born, did you work?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Let's see, she was about four years old, when I went back to work.

ALLEN TULLOS:

When was your son born?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

He was born two years later than Margaret. She was born in '29.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

And he come along about '31.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

And he just lived two months and seven days.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

He took pneumonia.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did you work up to two or three months before your daughter was born, and then stop work? Or did you work on like that or not?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

I didn't work after she was going to come along, for a while.

ALLEN TULLOS:

So you went back to work in about '33 then?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Something like that.

ALLEN TULLOS:

And was it hard to get your job back?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

No. You know, if you got a good reputation, you don't have a hard time.

ALLEN TULLOS:

You let them know that you wanted to come back?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

And they were ready.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Just pretty much whenever you got ready?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

They had a dinner hour where they let people go home, and I first started working at that. And my mother would keep Margaret, you know. And that was three hours a day, I started back like that. And that way I could be with Margaret and I could still make some money.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Then when she got a little older, Pauline got to working eight-hour shifts.

ALLEN TULLOS:

So that would keep some of the looms going during the dinner hour?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Yeah. I had three different weavers. One every hour, you know. I worked that way at first.

ALLEN TULLOS:

So all the looms would keep on running, but the people would go home?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Yes, for their dinner, they had an hour off.

ALLEN TULLOS:

You all talked a while ago, about how easy it was to get jobs up until the Depression started, and then it got pretty hard to find work?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yeah.

ALLEN TULLOS:

When could you first tell that in the mills? Would it have been before 1929—a few months, or a couple of years before then—when things started to slow down?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Somewhere along in there, yeah. It didn't happen all at once, it just got worse. Laying off people. We were living in a house and the mill owned it, and we were just paying twenty-five cents of rental and it had three rooms. After I didn't have no work or nothing, they didn't charge us no rent at all, no lights, nothing. Water, nothing then. Then I forgot what year they got to charging us for our lights and water. Duke Power took it over and then we had to go paying for our lights and water. We used to get all that free. Since they went to selling these houses, we had to go paying for our utilities.

ALLEN TULLOS:

When did you buy this house?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

'40.

ALLEN TULLOS:

1940. Is that when they sold all the houses?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Well, they sold some of them in '39 and '38 and '37. It took them about three years to sell. See over yonder knob, they had some. They had some up here at number two, they called it, and some down here, back down thattaway, then back in the mill. And this here was the next to the last one they sold, in '40.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

This was a preferred section.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

And they sold them houses across the street, I'd say about a year-and-a-half after we bought this one. Maybe two years.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Why was it that they decided to sell the houses?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Well, I imagine they had a right smart expense on them. And different mills was selling theirs and Judson went to selling then. Our payment was ten dollars a month, and I had so many years to pay for it. My wife was working then. It was eleven and a quarter and that left us with a thousand dollars. We paid that thing off in about three years. After the mill got going and got to making a little bit more and we paid our regular payment of ten dollars, and what we had left over, we put it on the principal. And we paid it off in about three years, no more.

ALLEN TULLOS:

When did you retire from work?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

It's been about eight years ago. See I'm seventy-three now. And sixty-five—it's been about eight years ago.

ALLEN TULLOS:

And you stayed with the same job all the time?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yeah, ever since I got my eye hurt.

ALLEN TULLOS:

You worked at the same mill, you didn't ever move around?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yeah.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

They gave him a twenty-five year watch.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yeah, this is my twenty-five year watch.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

And he's got another one for fifty years.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Yeah, for fifty years in yonder.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What about you?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

I didn't work that many years because my health went down and I had to quit. I had to be at home.

ALLEN TULLOS:

When did you last work in the mill?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

It was '44 or '45?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

'44 or '45. Maybe '42. Somewhere along in there.

ALLEN TULLOS:

A while ago you talked about how things speeded up, the work speeded up. When could you first notice that?

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Well, as the years went by, there were improvements in everything. And—what year would you say they speeded up?

PAUL GRIFFITH:

I'm afraid to say, but anyway other places were adding more on people and give more work.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

Stretching out.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

Stretching out, and giving more work. I don't know exactly when that happened. But as long as they can stretch out, they give you more.

PAULINE GRIFFITH:

See they do that to make more money. You make more production and so they do that. They stretch you just as far as they can [laughter]. They speed the loom up, so it'll turn out more cloth. They speed you up, too.

PAUL GRIFFITH:

They can put a gear in there and speed them looms up, and make it run a little bit faster.

[TAPE 2, SIDE B]

[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]

PAUL GRIFFITH:

And then they give you more looms. Then they got to

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Page 39

putting the person weaving to stop to see how long it wo