Woodrow Wright and Jake Grey Interviews

JUDTIH HELFAND: This parade, uh, well, well --

GEORGE STONEY: Just say after the 1934 parade, you didn't see any more Labor Day parade like this.

WOODROW WRIGHT: No, sir, not in this area.

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah, say after the Labor Day parade, OK?

WRIGHT: After the Labor Day parade in 1934, it -- it disappeared for about 10 years before they even had a celebration. Then some of the companies, some of them bigger companies, would have celebration parades for it. They'd take a day off and, you know, parade, and after the parade they'd have a big feed. The company would feed the help and if you wasn't an employee of the company, you could attend the feeds if you bought a ticket. Other words, I've attended several of the feeds by just buying a ticket to the meal, you know. They would serve a meal out on the ground, you know, and they'd have the food catered in. 00:01:00And then would serve thousands of people. They still do it over here across the river that y'all, you know, the South Fork River, to all the yarn plants, they still have Labor Day celebrations and -- and they feed the employees and, and everybody that buys a ticket. Sometimes they have from three to 5,000 people over there attending those dinners and it's served on the, uh, well you call it served on the ground, but really they serve it off the tables and you get a -- you get a plate and you maybe have to stand up to eat it or go somewhere and sit down in the grass.

GEORGE STONEY: Now, do those Labor Day parades have anything to do with organized labor?

WRIGHT: No, sir.

GEORGE STONEY: Just say that.

WRIGHT: This celebrations -- the parades they have now -- just celebrations of Labor Day. It doesn't concern the union in no way, shape, nor form. It's 00:02:00just, uh, the people likes to have that celebration for Labor Day.

GEORGE STONEY: Good. OK. I think, cut, Jamie. Anything else that you have?

HELFAND: I, well –

(break in video)

WRIGHT: Start from where I was born.

GEORGE STONEY: That's right. Roll, OK, now.

WRIGHT: This is Woodrow Wright speaking and I'm an employee of this company and I was born down eight miles south of the mill. And I moved from a farm to the peach orchard over on Wilkinson Boulevard. Lived there 'til I began to get a teenager and when I was a 15-year-old teenager, I moved on this village and started employment when I was 17-year-old with the company. And I've lived here 55 years on this village and, oh, I was employed by the company that long and I am now the oldest employee of this company. And I've enjoyed every 00:03:00minute of it. Thank you.

GEORGE STONEY: OK. Could you do it again?

WRIGHT: This is Woodrow Wright speaking to you. Uh, I was born eight miles south of Belmont on the Southpoint Road and when I bec-- when I was eight-years-old I moved over to Hall's Peach Farm on the Wilkinson Boulevard. I lived there 'til I was 15-years-old. I came on this village at the death of my mother in '33, but I was not old enough to be employed with the company until I got -- when I was 17. Three days after I was 17 years old, they employed me and I stayed with the company, 55 years I've lived on the village 00:04:00that long, and I've enjoyed every minute of it. Thank you.

GEORGE STONEY: Great, thank you. Nice stuff. OK, I think --

HELFAND: Mm-hmm.

WRIGHT: The man with the green thumb.

GEORGE STONEY: Absolutely So, uh, I think, now we're going to do this. (break in viedo) Start please.

WRIGHT: Woodrow Wright. I lived here on the Mill Village. Been here ever since I was 17 years old. Was employed here April the 21st, 1935. I'm still here, still happy.

GEORGE STONEY: Tell us what you did here.

WRIGHT: I started in this department. I was doffing twisters in this twisting room right here. I'd oft twisters here for 35 years, then I moved to the spinning room. Stayed in the spinning room 'til April of this year, in 1990.

GEORGE STONEY: OK. One more time, Jamie, any corrections for you?

JAMIE STONEY: I'm good. Nope.

STONEY: I want you to –

(break in video)

JAMIE STONEY: Yes.

WRIGHT: How far up do you want me?

GEORGE STONEY: Well, um. One more thing. (break in video_ Now, oh. Go on.

WRIGHT: All right. This is Woodrow Wright. I've been an employee here ever since I was 17 years old. I was hired here the 21st day of April in 1935. 00:06:00I'm still here, still live on the village, still happy. And when I started working here, the pay was $3.25 a week and the last paycheck I drawed was $264. That -- that much improvement.

GEORGE STONEY: OK.

JAMIE STONEY: Good.

GEORGE STONEY: Now –

(break in video)

WRIGHT: The sheer has been changed one time. It had a smaller ring --

GEORGE STONEY: OK.

WRIGHT: -- and a smaller bobbin.

JAMIE STONEY: We're rolling.

GEORGE STONEY: OK.

WRIGHT: They went to a bigger ring, oh, 20 years ago. And they went from a small bobbin to a big, wooden bobbin and, uh, after they went to the bigger ring and the bigger bobbin, I went to the spinning room. I left the twist room after 35 years, but when I first started here they only had rings about that big. Small rings and the small, wooden bobbin. Uh, and they later got to the large bobbin and changed it from a fill and twist to a three-quarter warp, which was 00:07:00going up and down the bobbin instead of building from the bottom. It was a complete change from the build of the bobbin.

GEORGE STONEY: How much noise did this machinery make?

WRIGHT: Well, it was noisy, but it wasn't unbearable. In other words, you -- after a few weeks under it, you could get used to it. In other words, it wasn't something that would drive you up the wall. It was -- it was a motor noise, mostly. See, every machine has an individual motor and that many motors running in one department, it will hum pretty loud. But, uh, the machinery wasn't all that noisy. And later, they put rubbers under the legs so it would quieten it some. And some of the machines has plastic gears on them to quiet it even more. Not all of them, but they've -- they've pads under most of these 00:08:00legs to help quieten the noise of the machinery.

GEORGE STONEY: OK, Jamie, there's a shot down here I want to get now of the motors. (break in video) You can't see them from here, just --

JAMIE STONEY: Wait start over.

WRIGHT: These motors in this department are 10, uh, horsepower motors, 60 cycles, 1,165 RPMs per minute, with a 550 b--- motor pulling the machine.

GEORGE STONEY: How were they powered?

WRIGHT: They were powered electrically.

GEORGE STONEY: OK. OK, let's go to spinning then.

WRIGHT: OK.

JAMIE STONEY: I hadn't finished with my shot yet, but that's all right. Got it.

(Break in video)

GEORGE STONEY: OK, come on.

WRIGHT: This is Woodrow Wright speaking and when I left the twisting department, well --

GEORGE STONEY: Could you go back? We already know who you are, so you just say when you left the --

WRIGHT: When I left the twisting department, I entered --

GEORGE STONEY: You have to start again.

WRIGHT: I entered the spinning room.

(break in video)

GEORGE STONEY: OK, go on.

WRIGHT: This is the spinning department of the plant. When I left the twisting department, I came in the spinning room and took a job here as a hauler and taper, which was entirely a different job employment from what I'd been used to. I stayed in the spinning until 1990, April.

GEORGE STONEY: OK. Nice.

JAMIE STONEY: Nice.

(break in video)

WRIGHT: Which one's you guys out of? Slubbers or what?

GEORGE STONEY: We, uh, the uh, corners.

WRIGHT: Corners? Yeah. I hope it, uh, we can get away from here now, they're getting on my nerves. I don't know who [Charlie Wetchell?] is, but he sure got me in a mess of trouble. My job here now is being a watchman for the plant, checking for fires and anything that might arise. I -- I come through the plant every hour, on the hour, twelve times a night. And that is my job now is being night watchmen in the plant during the night hours.

GEORGE STONEY: When do you think you're going to -- going to have to move this machine out?

WRIGHT: I couldn't answer that, I don't know.

GEORGE STONEY: It's not important, OK. Thank you. OK, Jamie, you got it?

WRIGHT: I'd be afraid to say.

GEORGE STONEY: OK. It's not important.

WRIGHT: I wouldn't attempt to say what's going to happen to it.

GEORGE STONEY: Trying to get some exposure out of this. (break in video) Had to look at it for three minutes, well, all right, so tell us about the 1934 strike.

JAKE GREY: Well, as I would say, the 1934 strike was more publicity than it was credibility. It was started by a bunch of jackasses who were running around, who didn't have anything to do, who started talking to himself, maybe something about the T-W, T-W-W, takes our word to the world, says you guys are protestors at heart, but, getting all emotional and pull some switches at the mill. So he did that, he got a lot of publicity, but no action at all. Not a single person walked out.

GEORGE STONEY: Tell us about your mill, just name your mill and tell what happened at your mill.

GREY: My mill was called [Spencer Yarn] at that time. They came into me and I would have a various full operation, with three Christians making all the yarn. I said, "What the hell you boys doing here?" I knew both of them. They said, "Something special." I said, "What the hell you doing? I got three Christi-- three people working them." Well, then I moved people. I tell you, 00:13:00you're lucky to have a job. People don't realize how much it costs to provide a job. How much money is in one job today costs you a $100,000 per job to build a liable mill. You know, more than 30,000 people cost $3 million. Nobody knows, they don't appreciate the fact that you're supposed to have a lot of money to buy jobs.

GEORGE STONEY: Describe this stretch out you told us a little while ago.

GREY: Well, I think it was mostly the doffers sitting around all day not having to worry and they get used that. And then maybe some superintendent decided that, that he'd put 'em sweeping or maybe he'd have a spindle and actually set it aside. They worked that thing rightly, nothing wrong with it. That's it, had no credibility at all. Had nobody leading and nobody for it.

GEORGE STONEY: What happened when the flying squad came to your factory?

GREY: I told them to get the hell out of there and they did.

GEORGE STONEY: How did you protect your factory?

GREY: Had a gun.

GEORGE STONEY: Just a moment, oh, oh.

GREY: I was a gun.

GEORGE STONEY: Could you describe that?

GREY: Just a -- police special. There are two special, police special, Smith and Wesson.

GEORGE STONEY: Where were you at that time?

GREY: Sat right at the door when they tried to come in. I wouldn't let them in. I said, "You going to scare all -- I had the ladies running the twisters, I said, you going to scare these girls to death, get the hell out of here." They went.

GEORGE STONEY: Where did they come from?

GREY: Oh, I don't know, maybe, I suppose some of the mills around. More than likely one of the [Pharr Yarn?] mills, Parkdale, or, uh, [Gray Mills?], or, I -- [Parkdale?], where ever.

GEORGE STONEY: Did you recognize any of them?

GREY: Oh yeah, I knew them all.

GEORGE STONEY: You knew all the fellas that came to your mill?

GREY: Yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: Could you just say I recognized them, I could call them by names?

GREY: Yes, I recognized them, could call them by name, but I don't rec-- I don't recall a name because that.

GEORGE STONEY: What ever happened to those fellas?

GREY: They worked after that. They went right back to work if I remember. Most of them, nobody left their job. Only -- only people involved in it were doffers running around that had a motorcycle. They called themselves the flying squadron and they got a lot of publicity. They accomplished nothing. Sound and fury, signifying nothing, is what it amounted to.

GEORGE STONEY: Now the -- you were the member of an association of employers, I believe, who took some joint action?

GREY: No, I was not a member of that. We would not be enough to be in that. We were very small, we were not a cotton mill. We were making rayon, (inaudible) and velvety yards. We were not big enough to be in a yard. We were trying to make a living, that's what we were trying to do. We'd lost everything we had by that time and we were trying to make a living, we were doing the only thing we knew by making yarns. So they had nobody there.

GEORGE STONEY: Well, now could you go back a little bit now and describe what happened? You had -- because I listened to your tape. You'd had a big mill and you lost --

GREY: Oh, we had eight big mills, my father did, called [Gracie Park?]. We'd put them into Textiles Incorporated and Textiles Incorporated went into receivership. We was making $40 or $50 billion and we went to bed in '33, 00:17:00next afternoon, about 4 o'clock, would be like $40,000 would be like a dime. Pretty big blow, but that's what -- it ain't so bad to be poor, but to be in debt for $40,000 is pretty bad. Ain't no way to make it back.

GEORGE STONEY: Now, could you talk about your industry as against the industry in New England?

GREY: Well, what happened, we -- the people in -- that's my grandpa who bought the coal line mills down there. People in the south be getting to really taking an interest in the machinery, and the modernization, and the plants, we had a real efficient plants. That's why you influenced. And it was just so much cheaper to manufacture here than it was in New England. And New England was involved in a lot of labor unions and so forth, and so we didn't have in 00:18:00Gastonia. We had one mill in Gastonia was unionized, and only one mill. And I liked that. Which is 77 years now.

GEORGE STONEY: Can you -- did you -- you didn't have a mill village, did you?

GREY: Oh, my father had eight of them. I didn't have them --

GEORGE STONEY: Just say my father had eight mill villages.

GREY: Yeah, eight villages.

GEORGE STONEY: Just uh, start, my father.

GREY: My father had eight villages. And he tried to do something to help the people, but they really didn't want it. He put the Grey Mills, he ran outside and he got me, he put, uh, bathrooms in all of the village houses. And they had the national go out and check them in the next two or three weeks. It went along fine, then all the bathrooms had coal. They didn't take no baths, they didn't want to take a bath, they're coal. So the mill give in the coal, so 00:19:00they put coal in they bathtub -- it's a nice coal bin. That's coal. So we spent a lot of money for nothing.

GEORGE STONEY: What did you do in the mills?

GREY: What did I do? Every damn thing that you can do. From the picker room to glaze, billing, and winding. I did everything. I came out of Duke University and my father started Threads Incorporated, and so Mr. [Gottlieb?] came down and he started Threads Incorporated, he was an expert thread man. So he gave me a job running the glazing room and -- and -- at Threads Incorporated. Now the glazing room is so hot, it's never got under 120 in there. Yeah, and, here I am a collge man, I'm making $6 a week and I'm working 65 hours a week, I'm working 12 hours a day. Five days a week and five hours on Saturday. Pays $6 a week. Then the NRA came in and they made us work for 40 hours and made them pay 00:20:00us $7 a week, then we had more time and money and didn't know what the hell to do with it. Bought a bottle of liquor, got lit and told them hey, you didn't need no money. You got a little, you could buy all the groceries you could eat for three months for a $5 bill.

GEORGE STONEY: What did you think of Franklin Roosevelt?

GREY: Well, some ways I thought he was great.

GEORGE STONEY: Just, uh, start it -- use the word Roosevelt when you start.

GREY: Some ways, Mr. Roosevelt was a great man, some ways you have to admit that he caused more socialism in this country than any man who has ever lived. There's no question about that, but by the same token, if the things he had proposed had been followed correct -- correctly, the old people in this textile wouldn't have anything to worry about. If all the money and the social security had been put in a separate fund and kept that way, we would be going 00:21:00$10,000 a month instead of a $1,000 a month. There's no question about that.

GEORGE STONEY: Now --

GREY: He, he, he -- his pool would have been a perfect hedge against, uh, any depression. It sure helped some in this time, but it ain't going to help all that much. But if they had done what he had proposed to do, keep it seperatly -- it would be, it would take him -- take it through this period we're getting ready to go through, a lot of people don't have no money depression. But I think, they going -- and they don't know how to act. They're going to have to learn how to act, because it's sure as hell coming.

GEORGE STONEY: Now, I gather that Roosevelt was a friend of the -- the [Calloways?] and the [Comers?] and so forth.

GREY: Oh yes.

GEORGE STONEY: Did you ever meet him and if so, tell us about him?

GREY: No, I never met Mr. Roosevelt. I saw him, he came through Gastonia. But 00:22:00in his first term, we saw him come through on the train when he died. His casket came through Gastonia, you remember us --

GEORGE STONEY: Now, uh --

GREY: No, I never Mr. Roosevelt.

GEORGE STONEY: Talk about the women in the mills.

GREY: What do you want to talk about the women in the mills?

HELFAND: (laughter)

GREY: They were fine, that's the greatest thought in the world, but they were looked down upon, actually. And they would -- would try to export them. But they say it was fine, hard, and (inaudible) -- and they didn't really get done, the exportation. But there were people trying to export the girls in the mills.

GEORGE STONEY: How was that?

GREY: They were immediately -- they had a soft touch. And that sounded true, but a stretch of the imagination. This is nothing but a thing I was guilty of myself.

GEORGE STONEY: Now, one of the things that I'm wondering about, is with so many women in the mills, there weren't any women overseers or supervisors --

GREY: No, oh no.

GEORGE STONEY: So could you talk about that?

GREY: Well, the -- the ladies weren't qualified, we didn't think. They probably were better quali --

GEORGE STONEY: Could you start over and then say women.

GREY: I said the women weren't qualified today, but after a period of time, they -- they came, we found out they were really, and last mill I built was in [New Dawn?], with the first over-headed thread mill in the world. I had lady frictions and lady overseers because they were qualified. We found out they were qualified and did a good job.

GEORGE STONEY: What made for the change?

GREY: I have no idea. They certainly they didn't go to school, they just picked up the kind of tricks by being associated with it. They weren't afraid 00:24:00to associate themselves, no friction or problems.

GEORGE STONEY: But it was your attitude that was changed to and I want to know how that happened.

GREY: I never changed my attitude. I always thought they were capable. But I never gave them a chance until 1970.

GEORGE STONEY: Why do you think that was true?

GREY: I don't have any idea about it.

GEORGE STONEY: Uh, let's talk about the colored in the mills the same way.

GREY: Well, they were not --

GEORGE STONEY: The colored.

GREY: I haven't ever found, I wouldn't find one good -- I had one good qualified overseer, a colored man. Only one. And I hate to say it, but I am becoming a little bigot. I -- but they say, I haven't seen one that's really qualified to be an overseer of people. I had one that was good and 00:25:00people liked. But only one. And I tried several.

GEORGE STONEY: What did -- what did they do in the '20s and '30s?

GREY: They -- they were strictly --

GEORGE STONEY: All right --

GREY: Were at the colored --

GEORGE STONEY: Yes, you want to tell us about that?

GREY: Well, actually, we didn't have many people then in the mills, black people in the mills. We had -- some in the warehouse section. Some of them were in the piers, but actually not many. So they really didn't have a chance to learn, not that they were not capable to learn, they didn't have a chance to learn.

GEORGE STONEY: Why do you think that happened?

GREY: Just because we were the South and didn't believe in of giving colored 00:26:00people the same chance that the white people have. That's basically true.

GEORGE STONEY: Let me ask you something. I don't want to put words in your mouth, so be careful.

GREY: All right.

GEORGE STONEY: But some people have said that if you put colored in the mills, the white mill workers wouldn't tolerate it?

GREY: Could have been true, we just didn't give it a chance to find out whether it was true or not. It could have been true though. The mill workers are the biggest bunch of rednecks that you'll ever find.

GEORGE STONEY: Was there a Klan in the mills?

GREY: No, not really. There was, uh, -- there was, all we had was a Klan, as you called them, like Klu Klux Klan? No, there was never any evidence of that, they didn't go that far, they just had their own notions about colored people. And they probably wouldn't have tolerated it, I don't know how far we could have gotten with it. They always said that we all had been using and that we had a, oh, white people, they don't want to never touch the colored people. 00:27:00They were willing to work, we didn't give them a chance. We didn't know they would have done.

GEORGE STONEY: Now --

GREY: You see these, the -- the white employees. They learned how to run their job by going in as a child and working with their mother or their father or whatever. That's where they learned how to run their jobs. They weren't paid, but they would come in and they would learn how to wind with their sister or their mother or whatever, or learn how to string. This was the training pool that you had, you allowed them to be. This was back in the '20s. They brought these people in, brought the -- see, most of these people came from the mountains. They didn't have anything in the mountains of the Appalachians, so they came down here and you gave them a house and a job, the whole family a job. The papa would be carting, the mom would be spinning, and the daughter would be 00:28:00winding hand, and the boys would be doffers. But it -- the girls would be winding hands and they would learn to trade by --

GEORGE STONEY: Sorry, could you start off with they come down from the Appalachians again?

GREY: They came down and we gave them a house to live in, we gave them jobs, and we gave them an opportunity to learn jobs, so they actually had a pretty good deal. You get four or five people at one house working and bringing in, well, they'd brought in say $10 a week and $50 a week. In those days that was a whole lot of money. So they had really a pretty good job. And they all had jobs, it was -- was something in the '30s, nobody had. It'd be -- these mills were all built in the '20s, they had to build in the '30s as well, they's never had them bulit, 00:29:00they'd never have gotten 'em made. They didn't have money, they wasn't making any money.

GEORGE STONEY: Now, the -- OK. One –-