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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-0266, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill”
George Elmore lived most of his life near Gastonia, NC, and in this interview reveals why he exemplifies some of the changes that took place in North Carolina in the first half of the 20th century, including the move from farming to industry and the rise of a managerial class. Elmore and his family followed their financial needs from farming to mill work and back again twice until he earned a management position in a textile mill. His wide experiences allow him to discuss the laboring life from a variety of perspectives: farm and mill town, mill worker and mill management. This interview is richest when Elmore discusses those perspectives, comparing the dignity of farm work with the less respected mill labor, or attempting to see the question of union organization from the viewpoint of impoverished workers and wary employers. This interview will be useful for researchers interested in gauging the temper of southern workers in the mid-20th century and learning something about the rhythms of farm and mill town life.
George Elmore discusses a life that took him from farm labor to mill management in rural North Carolina.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Since Hugh Brinton has done a lot of the work on your life, I thought I would mention a few things—or have you mention a few things—that had not come up in the interview. First of all, I don't know if you ever mentioned your birthdate and your birthplace.
I was born in Gaston County September 3, 1902.
Whereabouts in Gaston County?
What they call the New Hope Road; it's down just below orthopedic hospital. At that time it was Lowell, Route 1. My grandfather had come in there—well, I told him that before—and bought up that land when he came back. He was about twenty years old when he got out of the Civil War. And he came in and worked for a man about a year, and then married my grandmother. And he started buying up land. All the children when they'd get married, he'd give them an acre or two of land and they'd build. They had a sawmill. The house that we lived in, I think my father said he paid for one day's labor. The timber and every-thing was cut and sawed at my grandfather's; and he had a brother-in-law that helped him put the roof on, put up the joists and one thing and another. And they had built that house.
So in other words it was all family-done; no outside labor was hired?
My Dad had it; he was the oldest of all of those children. And he had the store, had the telephone exchange and he had this blacksmith's shop.
Was this sawmill by a creek? Was that how it was run?
No, it was down, and run by steam engine. And they had a well; it was down on one of the farms, by the side of the road.
Did they do anything else besides saw?
We owned a cotton gin (my grandfather did), and he had these shedding machines and thrashers; they went around. In fact, when I begin to remember it (when I was six or seven years old) he had all of the hired equipment.
In that area?
Yes. And I don't know whether he went around with a pea thrasher, but one of my uncles had it.
What kind of thrasher?
Pea thrasher.
Oh, pea thrasher; yes.
Of course I remember when the first thrashing machines, shredding they were pulling that with a steam engine; and they had to watch on account of the sparks setting the barns and the hay on fire. But when I was about eight years old he bought a single-cylinder International gas engine. It had a great big flywheel on it, and it was a Magneta-Sparkin. I had quite a lot of experience with that thing before it was finally done away with.
You worked at the sawmill and with the… ?
No, I didn't work at the sawmill; I wasn't big enough when it was running. We had there a sawmill; then we had a cotton gin. And that gin was one gin; and I think they could maybe gin two bales a day (that's how slow it was). And if I'm not mistaken the press, you had to screw it down more or less by hand.
Hmm, they didn't even have a horse-powered press?
I don't know; I don't recall the gin. And of course
everything
So then your grandfather and your father lived on property that they owned?
Yes. I don't know how much… I think my grandfather had … oh, it was three-quarters of a mile on one side of the road and a half a mile on the other, and he went back half a mile to the south away from the road and at least a half a mile back the other way; we had that three-quarter mile. I don't know, he must have had … pretty close to a thousand acres. I guess a mile square is 840 acres, isn't it?
I think it might be 640: I think, I'm not sure. But you think he had a little bit larger than that?
Well, he had the other farm down on the mountain at one time. Some of those places ran back quite deep. And I know two or three of my uncles took farms off of it.
How large was the farm that you lived on? Do you know?
Well, the section there (we thought it was ours) was only twenty-eight acres; but we farmed, my Dad went out and farmed on shares a lot of land for other people—especially corn. In 1914, '15, '16 we took on my grandfather's three-horse crop; I guess that must have been two or three hundred acres in that part. We took to farming on shares on all of that; had hired hands. My brother (I had a brother that's three and a half years older)…
And you hired other people to work it with you?
Oh yes. My Dad was working away; he was working away then as
Yes.
You know that house on top of the mountain? That used to be, when it was first built, Maysworth. They had a water reservoir up on that. And of course he built around that, and that water reservoir became a swimming pool. My Dad helped build that in 1913 or '14. They changed the name of it to Mayworth. Worth pulled out and went to Ranlow and built one or two mills. Old man Oramer, he made his money out of a humidifier. And he came in there and bought it up, and he changed the Mayworth and made it to Cramerton.
Right. Now, when you were living on the farm you lived on the farm until 1916? Is that right?
Well, I never left that house until 1932.
Oh, you never really lived in Cramerton, did you?
I never did live in Cramerton; it was two and a half miles. We moved in
in 1917 to Groves Mill in Gastonia, in January—it was 1917.
When April came my mother just couldn't stand it, and she
took all of them and went back to the farm to get her garden (she was a
great gardener). And my sister and brother and I stayed on. It was a big
five-room house, and it was new. Nobody had ever lived in it. Then my
brother, he took off and went to that powder plant near Petersburg; my
father was up there. That was after the war had broke out. So my sister
and I stayed on in that house until September, and we went back to
Back in 1917?
Yes, in September.
And after that?
I went to work in Cramerton. My sister, then she started rooming. I boarded the first week, but I went back home.
Why?
Well, it wasn't but two and a half miles, and heck, I could walk it in thirty minutes. I think I had to pay three dollars for room and board, and that was too much out here.
Three dollars a week?
Yes.
Let's go back to when you first were growing up on the farm, for a minute. About how large a farmhouse did you live in? How large a home? You had a large family.
Yes. It was six rooms. Along about 1909 or '10 my father built one more room; that made it six rooms.
And did you have any other people living there with you beside your immediate family?
No.
No grandparents or uncless or aunts or anything like that?
No, no.
Did your father rent out land himself to croppers?
We never owned but one acre of land.
Oh, I see.
My grandfather deeded that to him, and that eventually ended up in my and my sister's name. And, of course, my older brother, we sold it to him about ten years ago. But it's out of the family now—the only place that's still left.
It's still there?
Yes. It's been done over. My brother got it (the one that lives in Washington); he got a hold of it and he put aluminum siding—not aluminum siding, but this asbestos siding—on it. He's been manipulated the last couple of years. My first cousin and her husband who are living next door, they acquired it.
What kinds of responsibilities did the children and parents have on the farm when you were growing up? What did your father do, for instance?
Well for years he did some of the plowing. Most of the time he would get a hired hand and telling them… I got up to about nine or ten years old and I started to make a supplemental plowhand. And of course my brother three and a half years older, the burden fell on him.
Because your father was out doing carpentry?
Yes, and of course he ran that shop. He lost the store, and it was moved down to the crossroad. He could do most any kind of woodwork. And when he was a carpenter he did the finished work, such as hanging doors and finishing off cabinets and things of that kind. And of course he could rebuild and make a wagon, a buggy.
Did he earn very good wages during this time?
I wouldn't think so. His big problem was that he started drinking when he was about twenty-eight. Then he'd get a little bit and order him a gallon of liquor from Richmond.
Richmond, Virginia?
Yes. North Carolina was dry. And he would stay with that. And all his friends and everybody else would gather around the shop until they run out of liquor before things straightened up again. And of course if anybody else gets a gallon of liquor everybody got in on it. Back in that time you didn't say, "This man drinks;" we would point out to one or two men in the neighborhood: "He does not drink." To be a man in that town at all you had to be a man… And they drank, most of them, 'til they got drunk. But there never was too much trouble; all of them had grown up together. And it was quite a community there, six miles below Gastonia. Now it's build up, it's solid; but it was called Elmore Crossroads.
What kinds of things did your mother do around the house? Was she a hard-working… ?
Oh my, I could tell you: she did the milking, she did the gardening. And
she helped hoe and pick cotton in the field, and raised those kids. She
planted all kinds of orchards; she had a green thumb. She was a
whiz-bang. She wasn't but seventeen years old when she
married my father.
Well, I can copy of lot of that later on, OK? I wanted to ask you what were some of the things that you would do with your father on the farm when you were living on the farm?
Well, until 1919 mostly I did some plowing. Of course I picked cotton and did hoeing.
Did you ever spend much time with your father?
Not out working.
Or just around the house? Was he home much?
Well, I helped him an awful lot when he was shrinking tires, and anything in the shop. I had to take out the bolts, my brother and I; and I got to where I was doing a lot of it: took the bolts out of the wheels, took off the tires to shrink them.
This is in the blacksmith's shop?
Yes. And I'd help with any old job like that. And of course I was my dad's pet, and when he went off somewheres to town (to Belmont and Gastonia or Lowell or things), well he'd take me with him. From the time I was three or four years old I was his pet.
Why was that?
I don't know.
Did your father read to you at home or anything like that, or play ball?
He was thirty-five years old when I was born, and he never did take much interest in sports even in his younger days. They didn't start having recreational sports around there until I was a small kid: they began to get some baseball in the horse and cow pasture.
How about your mother? What kind of things would you do with her? Did you spend much time with her, helping in the kitchen or anything like that?
Not much. My job was mostly the wood pile. I had to see
Tell me a little bit about Elmore Crossroads. What kind of community was it? What would people do as a community?
Nothing except in the church. My grandfather had given land for Bethesda Church, right across in front of the house, and that's where the graveyard is now. And one of his daughters lived right west of the graveyard facing towards Gastonia, and my father right straight across. And he had a brother that had his house right behind the church.
Was this a Baptist church?
No, it was a Methodist church. He gave that land and most of the wood to build the first church. And long about 1909 or '10 they built another church; it had two steeples. And of course that was torn away about eight or ten years ago, and the church was moved down right at the crossroad and rebuilt in brick. But there's still a cemetery there and a Sunday school building on the old Elmore plot.
In what ways would you get together with neighbors other than the church?
Well, there was a store there at the crossroad; and Lord have mercy, that
was a clearing place for everything for two or three miles around.
People would come in there on rainy days and chew tobacco and smoke. And
anybody that had a bottle of liquor at night, why they… They
didn't close the store 'til nine or ten
o'clock. And for the men they pitched horseshoes, and maybe
they'd have a turkey shoot or most anything,
Right there at the store?
Yes, that was the gathering spot for everywheres.
Do you remember sitting in and listening to the men talk?
Well, I was hanging around there from the time I was seven or eight years old.
What kind of things would they talk about?
They didn't protect you from any of that?
Oh no. And of course when you went into the mill you heard the dirty side of life all the time.
In the textile mills?
Oh yes. They had no scruples at all.
So you mean the things about the opposite sex, for instance?
Yes.
That's the way that kind of information was communicated to you?
That's right.
No one ever sat you down directly and said directly, "This is the way it is." You just sort of picked it up?
That's it. Well, there was my brother and I, and two Forbes
boys about our age, three Elmore boys (first cousins) that lived right
across the road——they were my age and a little
older—and three Ford
Just to see the dogs run around?
Hear 'em run at night. Then of course we'd go possum hunting and all those kind of things at night. And of course we roamed near the two creeks (one was about a mile west of us and one about a mile east) and that river there at Oramerton. We did a lot of fishing in those.
Dewhart Creek?
Dewhart Creek was one of them; that's the one that runs between our place and Lowell. And the other one west of us was Catawba Creek; it starts in there in Gastonia and moves right on in down to what we call the Buster Boyd section in the South Fork Catawba. It just spills into Catawba, the river proper.
Where would your father take his corn to be ground? Was there a mill nearby?
Used to be Titman's Mill there on Dewhart Creek, and that was about two miles—nearly a mile and a half. And that's one of the places that we used to go in the summer, that mill pond for swimming. Lord have mercy, used to be Sunday afternoon there'd be maybe twenty kids there.
This was a water-powered mill?
Yes, and that was run by Titman.
T-i-t-m-a-n?
Yes; and he was also our mail carrier. He owned the Titman's home place; he had inherited that from his father. But he had a miller to run it for him. Titman, he lived in Lowell and he was our rural mail carrier. He carried a route with a horse twenty-eight miles. And when the road would get dry his sons would ride it on a motorcycle.
What kind of things would you do as a family, either in the house or outside the house? Do you remember anything in particular: corn shuckings or other things?
No. The only corn shuckings we ever went to was when we went back to my mother's place in Lincoln County, up in above Cherryville, six or eight miles up there. We went up there once for a couple of weeks. She had a two-seater surrey, we called it, (didn't have a top on it) and a mule, and she took us in this. And they had two or three corn shuckings back in there (it was in the fall of the year), but we never had those shucking bees. Now the women did have a few quilting bees in their era, back along in 1906, '07 and '08 and those years.
I was going to say that the men seemed to have a place to get together at the store. How did the women get together and exchange information?
I know especially Mrs. Horseley and my mother used to visit back and
forth. They lived a half a mile from us. And Mrs. Horseley was a sister
to mother's uncle by marriage; in fact, they were the ones
that introduced my mother to him. And of course my mother would visit
sometimes.
Did your father or anybody in the neighborhood make sorghum on the farm?
My uncle that lived behind the church had an evaporator. And of course I helped there; and we would always grow an acre of cane and he would make it up.
You had a mill?
Yes, it used a mule to go around. It was two rollers that would squeeze the juice out of there. And he would cook it down. And it was a copper evaporator in sections; and it would go out of the tray and go into another when it came out.
Did you have any candy pulls or things like that with the molasses? Did you make candy?
Not too much.
Who was in charge of making decisions in the house when you were living on the farm as far as, well, whether you would buy clothes or spending money in the family or this kind of thing?
My mother ran, she had to control everything.
Why was that? Your father was too busy out?
Yes. And she always grew her garden. Well, from the time I was seven or
eight years old my sister and I used to take vegetables to
You would sell them to the mill people?
Yes. We sold a dozen tomatoes for a dime; it was just next to nothing. But then the dollar was worth something.
Was your mother in charge of discipline, or was your father? It just depended?
Both of them. She carried a switch. I'd be liable to get a couple of lickings from her a day, and one at night when he come in to finish it off.
They carried a switch?
Well they had them handy. And Mother part of the time carried one in her
apron
What kind of things would you have to do to make her use her switch?
Well, if she'd tell you to do something and you
didn't do it, or if you'd fight with one of the
other kids. The thing that I got switched for more one summer was
running off to that swimming pool, that mill pond, and not doing any
work. She'd hit me at noon and tell me not to go back, and
I'd be back there over in the afternoon. I got another thing
after supper (it was another round), but I'd be right back
the next day. I got two lickings a day for that pond, but you were
chicken if you didn't go
You don't seem that you have any bad memories of getting a whipping from your parents.
Oh no; that was to be expected. I had a teacher once that tried to whip
me in school, and I took the hickory away from her. Then I went home,
and my father and mother said, "If you don't go back
we're going to tan your hide off of you." I
wasn't over nine or ten years old. And I went back with two
great big rocks in my pocket. And she started on me again, and she did
not get me whipped. She might have thought about the rocks.
Was your mother in charge of, like, bathing you and putting you to sleep at night? Who did that? Whose responsibility was that in the house?
You had to do it yourself. In other words, with kids coming along every two years you didn't get too much. We washed out of a wash pan most of the time. We had a back porch there (I don't think it was closed in); of course it got to be awful cold. And they'd get the pot and halfway bathe in the pantry.
Did you have running water or indoor toilets or anything like that on the farm?
No. Had a well; and I've drawn many a bucket of water. The well was about thirty feet deep.
You told me that you and your sister would go into McAdenville and Cramerton, and later you went into Lowell. What was your impression of the mill villages? Or what was the talk on the farms about the mills?
Well, people looked down on millhands, farm people did.
Why was that?
I don't know. We had to swallow our pride when we lost three crops; we moved in. And soon nearly everybody in our particular neighborhood there eventually ended up: the Fords and… Some of the families didn't, but the Ford family had a big crowd of them. And they moved into Cramerton. He was a carpenter too.
So your family looked upon this as a failure, to move into a mill village was not an opportunity to you?
It was a failure in a way. When you lose three crops in a row what are you going to do? All we had was what little… And of course World War I came along, and my father went to army camp and started making good money.
During World War I?
Yes.
Do you remember people ever using the term "public work"?
No, I don't; not at that time.
Later on?
Well, I think when you get back into the thirties you began to hear it; it was when the WPA and things like that come. It come back in there.
A lot of people here that I've spoken to used the term "public work" to mean moving into the mill or moving off the farm and taking a job in the mill. That was why I wanted to know if it was used in that section.
No.
Do you remember the day your parents decided, or your father…? Who made the decision that you should all move to the mill?
My mother made it.
She did? What did she say?
I don't recall. I took her up there and he talked to her. They
were building that mill at Gastonia; it was Groves Thread. A new one.
The man that was going to be superintendent was already superintendent,
but married a first cousin of my father's. And I took my
mother up there; I don't know but what I didn't
borrow a horse and buggy from the Forbeses. And Mrs. Forbes was a sister
to Mrs. Weathers. Clause Weathers was the superintendent; his father was
also the superintendent of Flynt mill. So we went up there and talked to
him, and he said he would give us a house, give us one of the best
houses there (on the corner and back down in the village). And of course
there'd be three of us to work: my father wouldn't
work, but my older brother and sister and I. They gave us …
it was
A good part of the family moved up to Gastonia. Or did the whole family move up?
We all moved. My brother was away at Dallas in school; he was trying to get a high school education.
Dallas, North Carolina?
Yes, that was a farm life school; he had gone there. He took pneumonia and he came home; he lost out of school, so he stayed on there and worked in the mill until (I guess long in June) he went up by Petersburg with my father and worked up there. And he came back then. He went back to Dallas the next year and finished; then he came on to Trinity. And he was in the SATC; and he later stayed on here and got his doctorate in chemistry.
That's your brother?
Yes.
Now did your father move up with you to Groves Mill?
Yes.
He did move. What did he do with the house back in…?
He rented it. I don't know who was in that house. It wasn't but a short time for Mother: we moved in January and she went back in April. She had to have her garden.
That was 1917 now?
Yes. We had started the garden. And too, she was pregnant at the same time; there was another child born, I think, in June of that year. Then in July was when we bought that Chevrolet.
Do you remember what she used to say about living in the village?
No, she never said anything. She was so busy: she made all of our clothes; she was a wonderful cook. One side of her family was Dutch somewhat, the Lutzes. And of course the other side was Wells; they were Irish from the word "go," Scotch Irish.
And they would come visit the family?
Not too much, for we were about twenty miles… She had come down about twenty miles from where she was reared up. She had come into Gastonia and was helping an aunt of hers raise her three children.
That's how she met your father?
Yes.
So you worked in Groves Mill first; and then later you worked in Cramerton?
Yes, in Cramerton.
After the family moved back to the Crossroads?
Yes. Well, they had been down in April or May, and my sister and I moved everything back (what we had) after my brother had left and gone to Petersburg. So we just went on back home. And she roomed with people in Cramerton. I was over there one week, but I stayed home. And later when I got money ahead I paid forty-some dollars for a second-hand bicycle, and I rode that a number of years.
What kind of village was Cramerton? How would you describe it at that time? People have called Cramerton a model mill village. What do you think about that?
It was, in other words especially the newer part. The old part was built
around that water tower, you know, back in the river in the
Was the talk around that Cramerton was a better town to work in than McAdenville, let's say, or Lowell?
Oh, nobody would consider McAdenville. They said in McAdenville there a number of kids never knew who their daddy was.
Well, so there was a difference from one village to the next?
That's right. Now, of course the riff-raff lived in the old part of Cramerton later. I don't know how they'd select them, but they did a pretty good job. I took orders and delivered groceries three years in Cramerton. And somebody in personnel could size a man up: "Now shall I give you a decent part of the village or shall you go over in the old part?" They really segregated them. And there were very few people … if the children of or showed anything, why if they were up-and-coming in a way, they let them move into another part of the village. There was a big class distinction in that village there between 1917-18-19-20. Well, I left around in 1919 and went to Rock Hill on a farm for two years, '20 and '21. Then I came back and I worked in the mill eighteen months, then went on back to high school and finished.
Went back to work in Cramerton?
Yes.
Let's talk a little bit more about Cramerton. You say that it was considered a better town than McAdenville. How about some of the other villages around there? How did Cramerton rate?
Well, it was nicer than the others. They had pretty good people who stayed pretty well. Belmont: there was a lot of mills over there. Lowell: those mills had been pretty well stabilized. I don't think there was too much moving in and out of Lowell mills.
So that when you say the riff-raff or lower elements, you mean people who didn't stay put in one place and moved around a little bit?
That's right. Old Dr. Miller—I'll tell you this—he went over to see a family in the old part of the town, and they were milking the cow in the back hall. You'd have to know Miller to appreciate him, but he said, "Get that cow out, and scrub the back and wash your patient; then call me and I'll come back." They were a dirty bunch, I mean some of them. I used to dread sometimes going in some of those houses delivering groceries.
In McAdenville?
No, in Cramerton.
In Cramerton?
In the old part of town. Some of the people up in the other part, the new part they called it, …
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
… were the nicest people you'd ever run into. Those
people were people we knew from Lowell, and cousins of ours and people
who had come out of the farms. Those farm people that went in there,
they never did sink down
Were these all white people?
Yes.
No blacks?
They had a small … maybe eight or ten houses at Cramerton for the Negroes, but they were back over on the riveror somewhere between there and McAdenville. And of course we knew most of those fellows; we knew every Negro and anybody else in the community. The Negro churches were just above where I lived: two of them, Methodist and Baptist. And all of them went there on Sundays, and of course we knew every one that passed by the house.
Did they do any trading at the store or anything like that?
Yes. We had known them practically … a lot of them we had grown up with: went to the swimming hole together and played ball with them.
So you did play with these other children?
Oh yes.
Did they keep up their houses pretty nicely over in Cramerton?
Yes. Those Negroes, they … it wasn't like a slum area. And I have eaten in some of their houses, especially when we was out thrashing. If we went to a Negro farm, why they would feed us and we'd have to eat there.
There weren't as many blacks in that section of the country as there are, let's say, in the eastern part of North Carolina, were there?
No, I don't think it was Thickly … Well, in the
country
My great-grandfather, he married Captain Wright's daughter? They came from down in there in South Fork and the Catawba River run together. I don't know whether it's mentioned; I told him about it. I don't know whether he recorded it.
I think he did get some of that, yes.
And then
Right, that's right, yes; that's mentioned there.
Well, then I'm just going to …
Let me ask you something. You mentioned to me trainloads of people coming into Cramerton when the mills were starting to expand. Do you remember that?
Well, they said that old man Charlie Armstrong, he was reared down there
and lived with my grandfather. And he was quite a promoter. I
don't think he had had more than a fifth or sixth grade
education—and that at a country school. And they said he
could hoot and holler right down at the corner in Gastonia along about
1914-15-16, and holler a time or two; and by five o'clock
he'd have a new cotton mill organized. I don't
think the man ever could accumulate any wealth, but he had control of
three or four cotton mills. 1915-16 on into '17 in that area,
they built mills galore. I don't know how many were built in
Belmont, and they expanded twice in Cramerton on that mill. Then of
course they built that weave at Cramerton much later than that, along in
the twenties. But Gastonia, I don't know how many
mills… All that south Gastonia, I think there's
three or four there. There were three of the Armstrong mills.
Where would they get the labor for these mills?
Well, in 1916 and '17 there was an old fellow Hall that come from around there in Sylva. And they sent him back up there, and he'd just get enough people together and a boxcar full of furniture and bring them in there. One boy said they had to run him down, catch him and tie him and get shoes—he never had worn any shoes. But he was just a card. But they were good people; they came from back in … Murphy.
Murphy County or Murphy, North Carolina?
Murphy and Andrews, right on the Georgia and North Carolina line, in that general vicinity. I knew a lot of them, and they were a good strain of people.
You said they were different than the farm people.
Well, they had farmed and everything else. But there was one peculiarity about them: you didn't pick on any of them. They'd use a shotgun as well as a pistol; they believed that the shotgun and the rifle was their weapons. And you didn't push anything over on those people.
This was the people from the mountains?
Yes. They were good people if you had gained their confidence. Well, I think in some way they were proud, and you had to be careful and not try to impose your thinking on them.
Were there very many arguments that might break out in town?
It never started showing up too much until on up in the thirties and
forties, the second generation of those people. And there's
been
And this is the second generation of mountain people?
Second or third generation. And of course those fellows came in there. Very few of the heads of the family or the mothers worked, but their children worked. There were some good people in there. And some of them went on into college. A lot of them went back to Mars Hill and those areas.
They weren't considered the riff-raff then in town?
No. They were a little bit ignorant, we thought, in those mountain schools and one thing and another. My wife can tell you more about that area from 1924. She went back up in there and taught at a country school one year, in 1925. But they're good people; they're proud people. But they had come out of there and they had just existed hand to mouth. And of course they'd come down there and make six or seven dollars a week; that was a lot of money to them.
Do you ever recall going into town, into Gastonia to buy anything and having people sort of look down on the mill people? Of course you said that people on the farm…
No, they didn't dare on Saturday afternoons. That was all that was on the street nearly was the mill people there, and they were doing the buying. They were out there trying to get all the money they could out of us. Saturday afternoons we took Main Street.
You don't recall anybody saying, "Well, there goes a linthead," or anything like that?
No. The only thing that I ever had was once with the Ragan
Which one was this now?
Caldwell Ragan; he was the head man of those. But I don't think he ever realized how I felt toward him. I couldn't, I couldn't ever… He had made fun of me. The clothes I had on were neat and clean; my mother had made them. I don't know, I had a big collar around me and it had lace around it. She dressed me up like nobody's business. Just a little old country boy and all, and making fun of my clothes.
He said something about your clothes?
Oh yes: cheap homemade stuff and all that. Of course I invited him out. He was two or three years older than I. And I told my brothers and cousins. They told him a few facts of life: if he ever got out of his automobile he wouldn't be able to get back.
So that's the way of life and growing up.
So you say when you were growing up you were a poor family, income-wise.
Yes.
Were you a close family? It sounds like you had some…
You touch one of them, why you'd have…
I've had the most fights I ever had was boys jumping on my
brother. And I've had my troubles getting at it on my own,
but I'd fight you quicker if you touched one of my brothers
or sisters any time. I was kind of halfway coward until you'd
pick on some of my family. I'd use whatever I could get ahold
of, the first thing. I liked to killed a man one night who jumped on my
brother. I don't know how I did it. But I was on the corner
of the street there, and I threw a rock and took him right in the back
of the head—a man about twenty-five years old, and my brother
was about fifteen and I was about twelve. That ended that fight.
Why did you go back to farming at Rock Hill? What made you do that?
My mother always wanted to farm. So my uncle had had a place at my
grandfather's, sold it and gone down to out west of Rock
Hill. In 1919 cotton was selling for forty cents a pound. My father had
raised a little bit, and I took and made two bales. I took them to
McAdenville and sold them, and got forty cents a pound: 200 dollars a
bale, 400 dollars. That was when the cotton seed—of course we
used cotton seed feeding the cow. And that was a lot of money, 400
dollars, all silver. The children were growing up. I had a brother that
was … let's see: I was seventeen. My uncle, he had
come up there to a reunion, and I had taken his family back in the car
in October. Of course my mother had talked to him, and he said he was
going to need a tenant. Of course my brother and I and a younger brother
twelve years old, we could make a three-horse plowhand, the three of us
together. And we could take
Did you prefer that to working in the mills?
Oh yes.
Why?
Well, I don't know. Farming is prestige, even though we were tenant farming. People, they had pride, plenty of it, and don't abuse it or you're in trouble. That's the code that's always been with them, and you have to be careful in dealing with people.
So working in the mill was giving up your pride?
Somewhat. I always felt like it was, that I wanted something more out of life than that.
Did you dream of being something when you were growing up?
I don't know what. I mean, I've looked at that time
in that mill for twelve hours, and be so tired. "What was the
use of going on a'living? What was there in the future? If I
get old I'm going to do something." So we went down
there and farmed, and raised that forty cent cotton and sold it for six
cents; the market fell in August. We paid sixty dollars a ton for
fertilizer. We put our crop in the warehouse and borrowed money to pay
our fertilizer, and sold it the next spring. And the money I got then, I
took it and paid off the fertilizer. We didn't get anything
for us. My dad was working and the garden we had. And I had an acre of
sorghum, and I had a man come in there with his mill and make up fifty
or a hundred gallon of syrup. Then I took that stuff out to the cotton
mill village and sold it for a dollar a gallon, in Rock
That's a pretty good price.
It was, but it was well worth it. I made more money off that acre of sorghum than I did the whole farm. And of course she had a garden there, and I took some of that stuff in to Rock Hill and sold it. In '21 we planted another big crop and raised twenty-some bales. And the boll weevils were coming into South Carolina; so I went with a bunch of men and drove my uncle's car, the three men (my uncle and two other men) down there. We were gone three or four days, down in below Orangeburg and Fairfax, South Carolina, and saw what the boll weevils had done. I mean, they just eradicated everything. And I came back. My mother was wanting us to buy a hundred acre farm for ten thousand dollars; and I said, "Mother, I can't risk it. Let's go back, and I'll go back in the mill. Because the boll weevil wiped those people out, and I am not going to risk going into debt ten thousand dollars." Ten thousand dollars is an awful lot of money. It was a good farm; the house was about a six room. It wasn't painted, but it was a good substantial house and barn. And I moved them back, and I went back into the mill.
At Cramerton?
Yes. Went back there in January and worked 'til September. And of course I went back to school.
Now when I first quit school in 1917 I don't know what I had
gotten to sixth grade. In 1918, the fall of '18 I went back
to school and went into the eighth grade. Went for five months: flu
epidemic in 1918 and one thing and another, I didn't get but
five months' school. I didn't have any seventh
grade at all. I went three months in the ninth grade,
And you were out of high school?
There were twenty-four months of high school and twenty-four months grammar school. I'd been to school six … it wasn't six years. And I came to Duke then. And I had fifty dollars and a suit and an extra pair of pants and a job. And when I went to get the job the lady said she'd given it to a football player; I didn't have a job. I had fifty dollars, and my brother had to come back here to teach. And he said, "Will you do any work if I get you something else to do?" He thought he had me a dishwashing job; that paid the whole board. And of course the Kiwanis Club had promised me to loan me $175 a year, the Gastonia Kiwanis Club. But I was nearly twenty-three years old—no, I was twenty-two when I entered here. And he went on and got me a job collecting pressing, and I took that. And I worked pressing laundry and that the whole time I was in school. The darn thing paid me $1.25 an hour; I made as much as thirty dollars a week.
That was pretty good for that time.
Well, I made twenty dollars for sixty hours back in the summer working in the store: twenty dollars, thirty-three cents an hour.
Let me ask you just a couple of other things about working the farm and working in the mill. How about the work itself? Which is more difficult, the kind of work? Which did you prefer?
Well, picking cotton is bad on your back, in a way; and hoeing is
something you've got to get done, and you don't
have all week to get it
Repetitive?
Some of them were piecework. Now I worked a winder one time; they paid you so much for the stuff that you produced. They wouldn't put me on piecework, and they were paying the girl running the next line. And I was keeping up as many ends and turning off the same work. They were paying me fourteen dollars and they were paying her eighteen dollars. That was 1921—'22 it was—they gave me a job winding, and you didn't have time to spit hardly.
No time to take breaks or eat lunch?
Oh no.
What did you do for a meal?
Well we could always sit out. If you were working daylight, the hour from twelve to one the mill would shut down then. You worked eleven hours on day shift, and from six to six with no break at the night shift. And I ran warp machines some when I went back in '21 and '22. Well, I ran warp machines some in 1918 when I first went to Cramerton. I doffed twisters at Groves; then I went into Cramerton and doffed twisters. And they took me away from that and took me upstairs linking warps. Then I went to working Friday nights, and they finally put me on running the warp machine.
Did you ever have to punch a clock to come in?
Not in the cotton mill, but I did in one of the rubber plants,
Now I never was late in getting to the tool works, or mighty few times. I never have run into any trouble on being late.
What would they say to you if you didn't make production? Did they have a certain level that you had to… ?
No.
Did you ever have people come into the mill, these efficiency experts come in?
Not at that time.
You don't know when that happened, though, that they came in with stopwatches?
Yes, I took time and study when they first came, my first year in college.
Yes. What was that like? You took a course in that?
Well, I guess it must have been my sophomore year that I took that cost accounting, and there was a lot of time and motion study in that. I wasn't too proficient in time and motion study, but I understood what was going on. And of course I ran into it more when I was with the King mill in 1942-45 in Augusta, Georgia; we had time and motion study in cost there.
The idea behind that was to improve the efficiency in the mill or in the factory?
I guess it was. They were trying to get it up with the piecework rating.
Some jobs you couldn't do piecework; it was just a general
overhead sweepers and things of that kind. Now on production
you'd use
You mentioned that you worked in Akron for Goodyear. Now they're the company that now owns the old Loray Mill, I believe.
That's Firestone.
Firestone, you're right. You mentioned in the interview that you did with Mr. Brinton that you came back to Gastonia two weeks after Captain Aderhold had been killed.
That was Manville-Jenks then.
Manville-Jenks, right. Can you tell me a little bit about what was going on at that time that you remember?
Well, the first thing … when I went in I had to hitch a ride before seven o'clock with a fellow with a car. We were six miles out in the country, and I caught a ride and I went in. The only thing that was open on Main Street until the office opened was the barber shop, and I knew the barber had been away two years, two or three years. And he said, "Why did you come back to this hell-hole for?" And I said, "Well what's the matter?" And he said, "Everything is shot to hell." That was the remark that he made; he said, "This town has had it."
Did you know anything about that before?
No, I didn't know it. I had gotten my job by exchange of a
couple of telegrams to the cashier of the bank, the man who helped me
get money from the Kiwanis Club. And I had paid most of that back. And
he wired me and wanted to know if I'd be…
I'd been writing to him along that I'd like to get
back South. Would I consider taking over in the
So when you got back to there the first thing you ran into was the barber, and this is what he told you? And what did you learn after that?
Well, things were touch-and-go, especially out there. And it was the Loray Mill; I don't know what they were calling it then.
I think it was still called Loray.
The Loray area, but it's a Firestone mill now.
Now.
Right.
You went home back to your family after that. Did they know what was going on over at Loray?
Oh yes.
What was the feeling there? How did people feel about it?
Well, in other words I don't know. A couple of my sisters were trying to teach—no, one sister was teaching school and two of them were away in nursing. We just met things as we could. I know when I got back that they had two or three hundred dollar debts here and there, and as