Families started settling in one community once jobs grew scarce during the Depression
Families tended to move often seeking new job opportunities, but that changed during the Great Depression when job security became essential.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Letha Ann Sloan Osteen, June 8, 1979. Interview H-0254. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- ALLEN TULLOS:
-
So it'd be real common, to have people just moving.
- GEORGIA:
-
Yeah, everybody done that. I mean, back when I was a kid . . .
- LETHA ANN SLOAN OSTEEN:
-
While they was kids they . . .
- GEORGIA:
-
There was just a few people that stayed here. The Leagues, Lora,
and-I could almost call 'em over, the people that stayed here
say, maybe twenty years. Why you'd look out the door any which a way and
there's trucks that are backed up to the houses and people are moving
and then in two or three hours or the next day, there's another family
in there. It just went on constantly.
- ALLEN TULLOS:
-
And that was pretty much the way it would be in most every village.
- GEORGIA:
-
Yeah, it was that way everywhere I found.
- LETHA ANN SLOAN OSTEEN:
-
It was at all the mills.
- GEORGIA:
-
People didn't stay in one place. If they could make more money at another
mill, they'd go for a year to Monegan or Judson or anywhere.
- ALLEN TULLOS:
-
Did that change after awhile, and people begin to . . .
- GEORGIA:
-
Oh yeah, when they begin to settle down, I guess, well when the
Depression come on. People had to hold what they had
because-let's see, that started when?
- ALLEN TULLOS:
-
Twenty-nine, '30.
- GEORGIA:
-
Yeah, yeah. People quit rambling after that. If they had a job, they held
to it.
- ALLEN TULLOS:
-
Did jobs get scarcer?
- GEORGIA:
-
Oh yeah.