GEORGE STONEY: They give us hell if they see one little speck of stuff on the
tape, so.RAYMOND MILTON: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, OK.
GEORGE STONEY: OK, can you say that again now?
MILTON: Yes, you want me to say it now?
GEORGE STONEY: Yes, yeah, yeah.
JUDITH HELFAND: I think we need to press, right --
MILTON: Back in 19--
GEORGE STONEY: Oh, hold it, hold it, hold it, hold it. Should be pressed. OK.
All right, so what you're saying about the preachers.MILTON: Back in 1934, when the union came to Kannapolis and whatnot, about all
the churches that you went to -- I went to several different churches when I first came to Kannapolis -- and it was nothing for any of them. They'd get up and preach about the union was wrong and this and that and everything. So that Cannon, Mr. Cannon, the reason they'd done that -- I would say Mr. Cannon, he supported these churches around where the people went. He gave every church in 00:01:00Kannapolis money and naturally they all -- they were for Mr. Cannon. The union didn't give them anything so that left the union out. So they could preach for Mr. Cannon. (laughter) It was a one-sided situation, but like I say, I was afraid of the union back then myself. And I was afraid to even be seen talking to my uncle that was a union man.GEORGE STONEY: When did you get over that?
MILTON: When did I get over it? Well, I got over it after I learned to -- know
Robert and he explained some things to me about this and that. And I learned some of the people might benefit by becoming a member of the union. And, but, since I wasn't with the mill company, I didn't, uh, work too much on that. 00:02:00I was afraid, too, in another way. See, the Cannon mill then hired me and put me later on in the years, put me on the Kannapolis Police Department. Well, they was -- what you call that thing they was doing? Putting the money down there, in uh, in Cabarrus County to pay the Kannapolis policemen, uh.BOB FREEMAN: You know they paid the county commissioners and then, Cannon did --
MILTON: Yeah.
FREEMAN: And the county commissioners give it back.
MILTON: Yeah, Mr. Cannon, he paid the county a certain amount of money. I
don't know how much it was, but I became one of their -- supposed to been -- one of their best officers. So they told me. I was a big man to go to Mr. Superintendent A.L. Brown's office to take him the day before's work sheet. I was picked to go up about 8:30 in the morning and take him a work sheet up 00:03:00there soon as he got in his office and got set down good. And some of them didn't like to go up there because they was afraid of Mr. Brown, I think. But I didn't care, really. And I'd go there and I'd take a pause at the door and he'd say, "Come in." I'd walk in and hand him the day before's daily report so he could look on that and figure out how many he wanted to fire. They'd be arrested for this and that and they fired them. They fired them. If a man got drunk, and got arrested, and got in jail, he got fired. If he's living in a Cannon mill house and if he had 8 or 10 children, it'd make no different, they fired him. I never did think that was right. I never did think that was right. But anyway, I was afraid to say anything about the union because I was working with the police department then. You could only arrest 00:04:00whoever they wanted you to over there. I was told over there one time when I was working with the police department that I couldn't arrest any close associated friends of Mr. Cannon's, or Mr. Cannon, or have anything to do with that. We had done -- the chief of police handle, there was one instant where a big official, uh, had a wreck. A hit and run in town one night and I was working that shift, besides what, the man had run off and left him. But the man -- I was on duty that night on town and I worked that wreck out and the man, I asked him, I said well, can you describe what the car looked like? Or this or 00:05:00that? He said, I got his license number. I said, oh yes. I said, I can work that out real good through the police department. I went around, looked it up, and it's a big buddy of C.A. Cannon's.FREEMAN: Superintendent of schools --
MILTON: And I went to the police department and asked the desk sergeant, which
was the justice of the peace at the time -- Mr. [Putzy Davis?], serving as J.P. and sergeant, my boss on that shift -- and I says, "I want a warrant for a certain fella" -- I won't call his name -- "a certain fella for a hit and run." He says, "Uh, Raymond, I can't give you a warrant for that man." I says, "Why?" He says, "Oh, SOB is no better than anybody else," but says, "me and you -- if I give you a warrant for that man, you and I would 00:06:00both be fired. This will be the last night you work on the Kannapolis Police Force and mine too." And said, "I'd been here a long time and said you'd only been here a short time." Said, "I'd tell you the best way out is for you to let the chief handle it to get it off of your back and mine too." And so the chief worked it out, I guess. So I found out who it was and this and that and told the man to come back and they'd stay and this and that. And so he went in and saw the chief and I imagine the man worked it out with him and paid him for his damages and this and that. But me wanting a warrant for this man -- I had already been commended for being one of the best officers on the force, but by me being kind of straight about stuff like that and not wanting to use partiality in any way, I kind of felt like -- that I was working 00:07:00in the wrong place to some extent. I think they watched me because I wanted to run things straight and, but the chief had called me in and commended me for being one of the best officers on the force prior to this.GEORGE STONEY: Now, you were around and were you still on the force in '74?
MILTON: No, I quit in '53.
GEORGE STONEY: OK.
MILTON: Yeah. I left the police department in '53 because I found out that it
is too much for me. Their policy didn't work right, to suit my heart. If I didn't arrest some poor fella that wasn't able to pay a fine, if he got drunk or a little out of order some way, you couldn't correct him and send him 00:08:00home altogether. You had to haul him to jail. But if he's some big wheel, you had to let him go. You didn't -- you didn't arrest them. You had to get the OK from the -- from your sergeant in the police department, who you could arrest and who you couldn't.GEORGE STONEY: Mr. Freeman, uh, they -- you've run, what, two strikes here?
JUDITH HELFAND: Campaigns.
FREEMAN: Two campaigns?
GEORGE STONEY: Two campaigns, I'm sorry.
FREEMAN: No, I only ran one, that's 1974.
GEORGE STONEY: OK. How was that done and how was it affected by the history of
'34 and '21?FREEMAN: They still dwelling on that, still using --
GEORGE STONEY: Start it. To start it, just put my question in your answer.
FREEMAN: They still, um, bring up the 1921 strike, the 1933 strike or --
actually there was no strike here in 1934. There were a group of people who was 00:09:00trying to form a union but they never struck and there was never no problems in Kannapolis. But they still use that. The main thing they use against you is that they set up union stores and filled them full of food and that if things got rough, then the workers could go over there and get something to eat. And then they said they went over when times got really tough on them. It was tough if you were working, you'd starve at work and you're starving staying at home. But when they went over there, they said there was no food in there. That the people had took all the food and left town. They never left town. But they go back, they're still living 50 years ago or 60 years ago in the past. And that's what they use. They use something because they can't say anything about organized labor. Organized labor is something you can't talk about because it's workers, so what to do is dream up imaginations, ghosts, 00:10:00and talk about those. It's something that people can't see, something they can't question, and that is their union. And they always, always on all campaigns and I've been in hundreds of them, always in the south. It's never the worker involved in it. It's always union and management, the workers in the middle. They never, never let the worker believe he's any part of the union. It's always the outsider that's in here. And they'll continue doing that until unions expose who the true enemies of the workers are. And the true enemies are the -- are unions, and that's the merchant's association. Not a factory's association, the bar association, medical association, the chamber of commerce. They're the strongest unions on earth. They're the ones that rob the people, they're the ones that determine what kind of clothes they're going wear, what kind of education they're going to have, what they're going to eat. They control every aspect of their life, but 00:11:00they're in the closet. They're the enemies and unions have never exposed them.GEORGE STONEY: Why?
FREEMAN: I really don't know. Uh, I can't -- I can't figure that one out.
GEORGE STONEY: Well, it's interesting that, you can stop it for a moment.
(break in video) You just kind of exposed the ghost you're saying to me, that's one of the things we're trying to do in this film, you see.FREEMAN: Yeah, there would never be a strike anywhere in this nation if the
manufactory didn't create the strike. The company, I mean the countries now that have ceased to be world -- through third world countries, are countries like Germany, Japan, Swissland, who have made unions a part of their business. They sit down with their workers, they talk to them, they work out all their problems together. It's also, it is the most prosperous countries on earth. North Carolina, for instance, a third world country. You've got the -- all 00:12:00these companies coming in from Japan building and they're coming here for one reason. Because the workforce in North Carolina will work cheaper, much cheaper than the workforce in Japan and Germany. And they can work them over here and compel them to do two and three people's jobs for less pay and no fringe benefits. Their complete relieve, retirement. Any kind of thing that would be health insurance, that would be a liability to the company, they don't have to put up with. They get all that for nothing. So they're building them, they build, they're coming in here. North Carolina is one of the hotbeds for Japanese, Japan, Japanese industry.GEORGE STONEY: I'm curious, where did you get your ideas from? Are you a
native? Did you grow -- did you work in the cotton mills? I'm just curious about your own background.FREEMAN: Yes, I worked in the cotton mills. I worked in there while I was in
high school three years. But anyone that would even look and try to see, could 00:13:00see that where people work and their mill villages are polluted with pellagra and with itch, tuberculosis, any and all kinds of disease that destroys people. And they can't see that who their enemies are, that there's something bad -- wrong with them. I knew who their enemies were because my granddaddy, Jake Freeman, told me who they were when I was a kid. And I followed him around and he was the greatest teacher I ever had. And I never forgot what he taught me, that a working man who don't work with other working people is nothing. They're no more than a mule. He has to go to work when the farmer says go to work. He has to work the hours that the farmer says he has to work. He has to eat what the farmer gives him to work -- to eat. And he has to sleep in a kind of a barn, the farmer. So there's not a bit of difference than a working man 00:14:00that don't have a union than a damn mule. The only thing he's better off, because the mule don't have to pay taxes and the working man does.MILTON: I got something to say about Randy when I get a chance. My son.
GEORGE STONEY: All right, OK.
MILTON: You ready?
GEORGE STONEY: Yeah.
MILTON: My son worked himself up to a supervisor with Cannon mill and they
worked him so many hours, so he quit. He got tired. And I don't know if he made any more pay or anything, he thought it was getting a little more, but come to find out they about to work him to death. About 70 hours a week. And he worked 16 hours straight through many of a day. And so he got disgusted, he said I won't live to be 35 years old if I keep working like that. But anyway, he quit and they hired him at another plant, which was over at Huntersville, 00:15:00North Carolina. And Randy -- Robert knows my boy, son -- is a good fella. He's a good boy. He's 20 and he's sharp. Smart as a tack, not because he's my son, but he's a smart boy. Intelligent. He went to work at this plant in Huntersville over here and two or three women -- so he said -- told him this big superintendent, assistant superintendent or something, that he was trying to get the union in over there. And Randy has never mentioned union. Has he ever talked union to you?FREEMAN: No, unh-uh.
MILTON: The boy has never mentioned union to nobody, but he got fired because
they said they couldn't use him anymore. That'd there'd been two or thee that said he was trying to get the union in over there. Well, there was a plant 00:16:00next to it up there somewhere in Huntersville or Cornelius. The union tried to get in there or did get in there and they tore that plant down. And the people around Huntersville, North Carolina, they are really fired up about the union. But my son -- but they told a lie on my son. They -- some of them was jealous of him because they thought he was going to get ahead of them some way because he's pretty sharp. And uh --GEORGE STONEY: Now either of you gentlemen could tell me. We're interested in
the spy system inside the plant. We've heard about in Georgia, we've heard about it in Alabama, we've heard about it in Tennessee. Nobody here has yet talked about whether or not there was a system of snitches or spies or anything like that in the mill. Were you familiar with that? 00:17:00MILTON: Oh yeah, yeah. They -- and all of them, regardless where there's a
union on or not, the textile worker is notorious for trying to butter up the boss to get a promotion. He'll tell him anything, it don't have to be the truth. He'll tell him anything against anybody to try to butter his own bread. And the campaign, the union campaign, the plant is full of them. The company encourages them to come to them and tell them everyone that even speaks union. Even mentions it. And they'll send them to your union meetings to report on who's there and go back and tell them. And the campaign, they a lot of times you might think is a secret campaign, but the company knows a lot more about what's going on than the organizer knows what's going on. And this is -- and as it gets close to the end of a campaign, it's a 24-hour thing. They, they put pressure on these people, it's almost impossible for them to bear. There's only -- there's one solution it and that's for the people to have 00:18:00the intelligence to work together and come out. And just say to hell with it, we're coming out, let's stop. Or the next solution would be, and I don't think you'll ever get any type of a law that has any teeth in it to help working people until working people help themselves. Just like in this campaign, they kept talking about foreign in-- about the job moving to Mexico or Japan, and about the millions of workers that they'd throw out through imports. But the bastards didn't tell them that the American people are the ones that's committing treason for buying that stuff. You've got five major Japanese car companies in the United States today, we only have three left. All of them were gone, but three. And Chrysler's in bad shape, it can go. But the very people that they're talking to about unions creating problems are the very people that created them problem for the sales by buying cars from Japan, textile machinery from Japan, textile machinery from Swissland, textile 00:19:00machinery from Germany. They're -- the American people will commit treason against themselves to save a damned dollar. The Japanese people will not. The Japanese people will not buy American-made cars. If they did, they would be looked upon as committing treason against their own country. My daughter's in school, she's had two Japanese roommates. They're wonderful people. Polite, intelligent, but they will not buy one article made unless it's made in Japan. A lot of them over here on grants we're paying for. But they will not buy anything that doesn't have a Japanese, made in Japan on it. That's cars, anything that they have. They're true and loyal to their country. These people over here aren't true and loyal to it. You'll never have nothing until the American people realize that they, themselves, are destroying their own nation. The only friend they have is organized labor. That's the only friend they have. The preachers aren't their friend. These preachers 00:20:00are still preaching against union. Jesse Helms is still their god, and he's never done nothing. Jesse Helms will give a 'thrillion' dollars to a foreign nation but he wouldn't give a working man a five cents an hour raise for nothing on this earth. But the people's got to know that. Until they know it, you just said it, now you're spinning your wheels trying to organize.GEORGE STONEY: OK, load the tape –
(break in video)
HELFAND: OK.
GEORGE STONEY: OK, roll. OK.
MILTON: [Mr. Hulshouser?], I believe, is the man standing that superintendent
over spending with the town.GEORGE STONEY: Could you tell us anything about Mr. Hulshouser?
00:21:00MILTON: Other than he's a hard rock, that's all I can say. He tore an
application up on my brother whenever he had a pass to go in the mill to look in the job because he was one-eyed. He took the pass and tore it up. And my brother got his ear -- uh, eye speared out by a white-legged rooster back when he was a small child. But he could see good out of that one eye, but he just didn't want him in there. But other overseer that took a liking to him, uh, helped him to get another job.GEORGE STONEY: Now this is a question for both you gentlemen. When the -- when
00:22:00they were having the strike in '34, did you see any signs of firearms or clubs or rock throwing, anything like that?FREEMAN: No, I never saw nothing like that. There wasn't any firearms as far
the employees. They had no firearms.MILTON: Yeah.
FREEMAN: They were deputizing employees and putting firearms then. As I told
you a while ago, Cannon Mill controlled the sheriff department completely. He controlled the state of North Carolina and he could deputize whoever he wanted to. So he deputized people and put pistols on them and a lot of those people were convolutes. They -- they had no -- they would just as soon shoot one of those people they was working with in there as they would take a biscuit and eat it.GEORGE STONEY: Could you talk about that?
00:23:00MILTON: Well, all I saw was the deputized people as Mr. Freeman said. They
carried guns, weapons, like a police officer. And National Guard, they had weapon. I believe that they had -- did they have -- was that machine guns that they had out back?FREEMAN: Oh yeah. Yeah.
MILTON: They had machine guns at that time and they were set up for war, it
looked to me like. But I didn't see anyone giving in -- any union, nice people giving anybody any trouble. They was just set up there because of that man's a leaving. Robert, your friend, I don't know. But anyway, I don't know much else to say. They was -- they was just doing what Mr. Cannon wanted them to do. The people that was deputized and --GEORGE STONEY: Could you hold it because I think it was a little on this side.
00:24:00We're going to get you to start over, just tell that whole thing just one more time.HELFAND: Wait until he pulls it out.
MILTON: About the man leaving?
GEORGE STONEY: Yeah, just about, just about --
HELFAND: Yeah.
MILTON: (laughter)
(break in video)
GEORGE STONEY: Hold it, just a minute.
JAMIE STONEY: Ready.
GEORGE STONEY: All right, sir.
MILTON: Ask the question again.
GEORGE STONEY: Did you see any weapons in the hands of strikers?
MILTON: Oh, I didn't see any weapons in the hands of any of the strikers
whatsoever. No. They was very peaceful and un-belike to me, it was uncle -- my uncle was one of them and they wouldn't fight a man no more than he was. And uh, so I didn't see anybody giving any trouble. But they almost starved to death whenever they did strike. When they struck, uh, got without a job, I 00:25:00think there's a couple of stores around that helped some of them. But the people really got hard up at that time --GEORGE STONEY: Uh.
MILTON: But the union didn't pay them anything back then, I don't think. I
don't think the union gave them anything and uh, some of them people, including my uncle, understand, got in pretty foul shape. If it hadn't been for a couple of good-hearted grocery men in town, they might have starved.GEORGE STONEY: Mr. Freeman, can you tell us about what those union stores -- we
took some pictures of them this morning, but nobody could kind of explain how they got there, why they got the name, anything like that. How long they've been there.FREEMAN: Well, they've been there before my time. They were set up originally --
GEORGE STONEY: Sorry, could you start off the union stores?
FREEMAN: Yeah, the union stores started off in 1921 when they did have a union
here at Cannon. And that was their headquarters, that's where the people met and uh --MILTON: That's right.
00:26:00FREEMAN: That's where they had their grocery store setup to try to take care
of the people. But you have to remember, in 1921 there was no money in the United States. The unions had no money, the people most certainly had money, and there's no way that the unions could have any since the people are the union. Uh, the organizers couldn't have any money. But that -- the union stores were here way before I was born. And the skeletons of them are still here and they're still know as the unions stores.HELFAND: Now, a big myth -- the story that we've heard on the street -- is
that someone took all -- someone took all the money from the grocery store, the union official took all the money from the grocery store, people couldn't get anything. The union official split and left town and left all these folks to starve. That's the only remnant that they seem to remember of that whole situation.FREEMAN: Mm-hmm.
HELFAND: Is that -- could you comment on that?
00:27:00FREEMAN: No, that's just a myth. As I previously stated, there was --
GEORGE STONEY: You'll want to look over here and tell me that.
FREEMAN: Uh, there was no money in Kannapolis. The union people had no money to
take. Most of this in Kannapolis was local, strictly local, all their officers was local people. They had an organizer, I've been told and I didn't see him, by the name of [Green?]. He certainly never went nowhere, he was here after -- after all the strikes and everything was over with. But they use that as an excuse to try to keep people from organizing. There was no money for the people to leave with. There was just no money in Kannapolis, just like there's no money in Kannapolis now among the employees.GEORGE STONEY: Sir, have you heard that rumor?
MILTON: I think the union stores was named after the union. I fully believe it
was named after -- where the headquarters, some man that run a grocery store 00:28:00down there furnished the strikers people groceries until they could get more work, or do this or that, or leave town, or go somewhere. In fact, I imagine a lot of them lost money helping the people.GEORGE STONEY: Now, it's interesting to me that, thinking of the preservation
of the history of this place, that you got all of that fake Williamsburg fixing up in Kannapolis, and you've got all the history of the Cannons, you have no history of the thousands and thousands and thousands of people who worked in that factory. Could you talk about that?FREEMAN: There is no -- as far as the Cannon employees themselves are concerned,
there is no history. There were just people, subjects, that was in there 00:29:00working to make a man a millionaire. Made -- took a small plant and developed into the textile center of the world. The textile towel city of the world. And there's no history for the workers. The workers have never done anything to create history other than if someone wanted to write a book about how they took a small plant and built it into a textile empire. But, as far as their history and what they've done, they've never really had any history because they've never done anything for themselves. They never tried to accomplish anything. They always been followers, not leaders.GEORGE STONEY: OK.
MILTON: That's right. That's right.
GEORGE STONEY: OK.
HELFAND: I --