Weaver children and Neil Joroloman Interviews



TONE

CR WEAVER: -- until he was home after dark. We waited supper, my mother did. We would eat and --

JUDITH HELFAND: We've come across a lot of people in our travels who had no idea -- and they even work in textile right now and they had no idea had ever had anything to do with the union. And they were rank and file people who went back in the mill and now we've said your daddy is a leader.

CR WEAVER: Yeah. See, that's a surprise to me, what I -- what I know now, but what he was going through then, I didn't know that he had been in a strike. I didn't know he had been out of a job. I knew it was times was hard and he had a hard time getting a job. He couldn't get a job. He couldn't go to a plant for a public job. He had to -- well, I've seen him leave in the mornings in probably January or February with an old wooden toolbox with a broom handle in it and he'd walk down Kingston Pike knocking on doors and want to fix porches or 00:01:00roofs or just anything, fix the yard. And he'd make 50 cents a day. He wouldn't take the streetcar because he didn't want to waste the dime. But when he came home that night, he would have enough money to feed us, though, or to pay the rent with.

HELFAND: You just said before, "I knew he was blacklisted, or blackballed, but I didn't know anything else." I'm amazed. Can you repeat that and juggle it around, I want you all to talk about that.

CR WEAVER: (inaudible) No, I didn't know he had been blacklisted or blackballed. I didn't know why he couldn't get a job.

HELFAND: Now you knew he was blackballed.

CR WEAVER: I didn't know that. No, I didn't know that.

GEORGE STONEY: Could you say that again.

HELFAND: I'm sorry.

CR WEAVER: I didn't know that he had been blacklisted, or blackballed, as far as public work was concerned in the plants. All I knew, he was out of a job. And it was hard to get one, and he set about getting one anywhere he could, any way he could.

SD: With these kids, it was immediate feeding 14 hours a day. He was working for somebody else and they didn't hear it. I heard a lot about it because when I was growing up, he was the boss. He had his own company. So there was more time. I saw more of him than they did, and so when I was reading in the history book about organization of labor or blacklisted, that term, what does it mean, "Well, I was blacklisted, you know." But as far as -- as him being a leader, he didn't share that with all of us. You know, our oldest brother knew, but the rest of us -- I mean I saw his picture in the paper on the front page and it said, "Leader," and that's my dad and I didn't know that.

CR WEAVER: Yeah. When I was at the University of Georgia and taking a political science course, of course, we studied unions, unions busting, Haymaker Square Affair, and I had no idea my father would have been involved in anything. In fact, that was something "way over yonder". Those type of people, you know, I didn't know about. But to find out that he was involved and in fact a leader --

SD: At that level.

CR WEAVER: -- yeah, that was something. You can't believe that, but I think it's made him the kind of person he is or maybe he always has been. He thinks about other people. People in this community that would get without a job and he would hire 'em, I mean make a job for 'em, pay 'em a dollar, two dollars an hour and all. But he's always been that type of person.

SD: I just immediately thought of that old storefront down there and he'd gamble on Friday night and take all these young guys' money, grocery money, and before they left at night he turn around and give 'em their grocery money back to make sure their kids could eat, because these kids, the five --

MARILYN NICHOLSON (MN): You can remember that?

SD: The five earlier kids didn't eat. I mean she can't abide by macaroni today.

NICHOLSON: No, I can't.

SD: She can't eat macaroni.

NICHOLSON: No.

CR WEAVER: Well, he was telling about that while ago, I think in the earlier part of the segment. You could buy macaroni real cheap, and when you cooked it, it would swell up and there would be a lot of it, you know. And --

NICHOLSON: There's no seasoning or no -- no cheese, you don't want it.

CR WEAVER: But I've seen her get a whipping because she wouldn't eat the macaroni and that was the only thing on the table.

NICHOLSON: Right.

CR WEAVER: You going to eat or you going to starve.

HELFAND: Now, Marilyn --

NICHOLSON: Yeah?

HELFAND: -- you worked in a plant, didn't you?

NICHOLSON: Yeah, I worked at Palm Beach and I worked at Levi for a while, but I couldn't take the dye on account of my eyes, you know. I have three daughters that worked at Standard Knitting Mill. I had one that worked four years there and she worked in spinning and doffing. And we begged them not to work in those places because of the lint and I worried about their health. And I had three that worked, all three of 'em worked at the Standard Knitting Mill.

SD: Kind of ironic that Daddy doffed some and then one of the granddaughters doffed.

NICHOLSON: Yeah. My oldest daughter, Debbie, she did doffing there.

CR WEAVER: Yeah. What the thing about it is these young people today, like your daughter, is taking advantage of what Dad did a long time ago, a forerunner of making things better in the plant.

NICHOLSON: But they don't have -- didn't have a union at Standard.

CR WEAVER: I don't understand that.

MN: They would try to get a union started, but --

CR WEAVER: It was voted down?

NICHOLSON: -- it was voted down, yeah. They never did get one started at Standard.

CR WEAVER: It took a lot of nerve back then, I'll say. I wasn't a grown person, but I can imagine what you -- jobs was hard to come by anyway and to have him bring somebody out on strike when you got a job --

M1: Sorry its sprinkling, I can't

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JAMIE STONEY: We have speed.

GEORGE STONEY: All right, sir. Just tell us who you are, when you were born, and then how you got into the, this, into textiles.

NEIL JOROLOMAN: Well, my name is Neil Joroloman. My father, Leon Joroloman, who was a lawyer here in Knoxville, and five of his friends, six gentlemen all from Knoxville, decided that they would get the mill started in Knoxville to use the cotton down here in the South, rather than shipping it up east and north to have it made into men's and boys' underwear. So they started up a small mill, which they named the Standard Knitting Mill, on Washington Avenue here in Knoxville, and bought an old furniture factory as a plant. It was a rather small brick building, but it served very well for the first two or three years 00:07:00of production and later was added onto many times. It started out with a few employees, as I recall, the figure was about 35, making men's and boys' underwear, which in those days was what we call "long handles," shirts and drawers, they were. Just those two items. And they used part wool, all wool, some silk, some linen mixtures with the wool to make different types of garments.

GEORGE STONEY: Now they were competing with New England. Could you talk about that competition with New England?

JOROLOMAN: At that time the competition was primarily from Utica, New York, where most of the underwear mills at that time were located, in and around Utica. And they thought it would be wise to put a plant in the South where it'd 00:08:00be nearer to the cotton supply. And that's what they did, as I say, with a rather small plant at the beginning.

GEORGE STONEY: Talk about the financing of that.

JOROLOMAN: The financing was completely handled by these six gentlemen, each of them putting in several thousand dollars and, I think, a total of $50,000 started the plant. My father had 10% of it at that time, later adding to his holdings. But every bit of it was financed by these gentlemen. In fact, two of the men were bankers, the president and vice president of one of the banks here in Knoxville. So they had plenty of money to invest.

STONEY: Now did they have any training in this business?

JOROLOMAN: Only one of the men --

GEORGE STONEY: Now incorporate—

JOROLOMAN: Excuse me. One -- one of the gentlemen in this group was a mechanic and he knew a little bit about knitting mills because he had been repairing looms from some of the mills in the vicinity of Knoxville and he thought he knew enough to help get the mill started mechanically. And, ah, so they, of course, trained other employees to handle the knitting and they also had to find ladies who knew how to sew to sew the garments together.

GEORGE STONEY: You spoke about an Englishman.

JOROLOMAN: Most of the -- the equipment that was handled in mills at that time, most of the spinning and carding equipment, came from England. And an English gentleman came with that equipment that was first installed at Standard to help the installation. And, ah, he was so good at it that the owners employed him to 00:10:00operate the spinning and carding departments and he stayed with the mill until his death some, oh, 40 or 50 years later.

GEORGE STONEY: Did you know him?

JOROLOMAN: Oh, yes, very well. He was a bloody Englishman.

GEORGE STONEY: Talk about the -- the kind of employees you had.

JOROLOMAN: The employees at Standard were all high school graduates. The management figured that it would be rather awkward to send out some written instructions to an employee who couldn't read, and a great many people in those days could not read or write. So they made it a policy of the plant to hire no one other than with at least a high school education.

GEORGE STONEY: Well, where did they find such people?

JOROLOMAN: They found these people in the City of Knoxville or in the counties surrounding Knoxville.

STONEY: Hold it, hold it Jamie.

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JAMIE STONEY: Speed

GEORGE STONEY: All right, sir. Tell us about the employees, where they found them.

JOROLOMAN: Most of the employees of Standard came from the City of Knoxville, though we employed a great many from the counties surrounding Knoxville, particularly Union County and Granger County, north of here. And the mill management made it a policy not to hire anyone unless he had at least a high school education, because it would have been rather awkward to send out instructions, written instructions, to any of the employees and find that they couldn't read or write. And so that was one of the main policies of the plant, to hire only high school graduates or better.

GEORGE STONEY: Now that must have been very different from the rest of the 00:12:00employees of the cotton mills around. Could you talk about that?

JOROLOMAN: I believe that the majority of the mills in the South did not follow such a policy, but hired uneducated people in the main, particularly Down South. I'm not too certain of that fact, but I rather think that's true.

GEORGE STONEY: Talk about your own entry into this field. You might mention that your father died in 1920, uh when you were so many years old. And then how you decided to go into textiles and what you did.

JOROLOMAN: Well, my father died when he was in his 70s, but, ah, I was rather young at that time. It was 19-and-20 and I was a young fella of 13 years old. So I had my education to complete, which I did at the University of Tennessee, and then, since my father had founded the mill and Mother had her only income 00:13:00from the mill, owning some stock in it, I thought that it'd be wise for me to enter the man-- in the employ of the mill myself. When I went to the mill with that suggestion, they suggested to me that I didn't know anything about textiles and perhaps it would be wise to further my education and both Mr. McMillan and Mr. Ashe, the two gentlemen who ran the plant at that time, had graduated from the Philadelphia Textile School in their youth and they suggested that I go to Philadelphia and take a two-year course in cotton, which I did, graduating from there in 1932.

GEORGE STONEY: Now when you came back in 1932, that was in the middle of the 00:14:00Depression. Could you just describe what that was like?

JOROLOMAN: The Depression went underway --

GEORGE STONEY: Sorry could you start by saying, "When I came back from Philadelphia" – oh and by the way, sorry, you should also mention that you worked in the plant during your vacations. Alright, sir?

JOROLOMAN: When I returned from Philadelphia, I entered the plant really as a sweeper down in the carding room. My bosses thought that I should know ever part of the manufacturing process and it was quite a while before I got to be in any position of a real job at the plant. I had worked there off and on during the vacation years from the Philadelphia School and I knew a little bit about the plant operation, but they sent me for a tour of duty of three or four months 00:15:00in each department in the plant before I was really given a permanent job there.

GEORGE STONEY: What did you make?

JOROLOMAN: The plant made at that time mostly heavy weight underwear, the shirts and drawers. We had added a union suit to that, a combination of a shirt and a drawer, the reason for the name of "union" suit. And, ah, no lightweight at all. One of the very first jobs I had was to uncrate some of the (inaudible)rigging machinery which makes the plain knit which is used for tee shirts primarily and that type of underwear. So I learned about setting that machinery up and how to operate it, along with the other machines in the knitting room.

GEORGE STONEY: What were they paying you for all of this?

JOROLOMAN: For the first two or three years that I worked there, my salary was 25 cents an hour, which was, I guess, pretty good for Depression days. But I was a long time before I got up into any kind of money at all, a good many years really.

GEORGE STONEY: Could you tell us about what happened when the NRA came in?

JOROLOMAN: The NRA came along in 1933, I believe, and, ah, made a big imprint on our plant because we were paying 10-15-20 cents an hour, and they made a minimum payment at that time, I think, of 25 cents an hour. And so it improved the quality of our employees. It gave them more confidence in their job and certainly they were better pleased with their job, and it made a big impression 00:17:00on the whole industry as a whole. In fact all of America, all the industry had to follow this minimum wage.

GEORGE STONEY: What about hours?

JOROLOMAN: When I first went to the mill, shortly after the Depression, our hours were not regulated by the NRA or anything else, and we worked a 55-hour week, 10 hours for five days of the week plus 5 hours on Saturday. And, of course, that was rather tiring and by time I got home at night, I was really ready for rest.

GEORGE STONEY: What happened when the NRA came in?

JOROLOMAN: NRA, of course, stopped that and set up a 40 hour week in the entire not only textile industry, but all work in America. Henry Ford was one of the early sponsors of more wages than anyone else, but the NRA really made it 00:18:00more enjoyable to work. You really thought you was making some money, 25 cents an hour.

GEORGE STONEY: Now but that must have raised the price of the production and how did the textile manufacturers cope with that?

JOROLOMAN: Well, I'm not too sure about, ah, the effect that this had on the industry. I'm sure that it did improve the work, improve the employee morale to have more money, but not being in the management of the plant, I don't know how that affected us as to competition with other plants. Of course, everyone had to go to that as a minimum wage and I'm sure that it improved the morale all over the country.

GEORGE STONEY: Now we have talked with a number of people, both management and labor hands, and they -- they talk about introducing efficiency methods. Some of them talk about the bee-do method and other things. Could you talk about that and how the machinery was made more efficient?

JOROLOMAN: Well, you speak of the bee-do system of management. We had not that plan in our plant, so I'm not at all familiar with it. I do know that there was such a plan. Naturally, the manufacturers of the machinery were always improving something about the machine, something that would make it run faster or smoother or make a better product. And when those improvements were made, quite often we would trade in our older machinery for this new type and always 00:20:00with the idea of making something a little bit cheaper before -- because we were in competition with other plants and, of course, had to stay in competition with 'em with the equipment.

GEORGE STONEY: What about the number of employees? How did that affect the number of employees?

JOROLOMAN: Of course, when we got an improved machine that would run faster, that meant that the employer, or, rather, the employee could get out more production. And so we would usually have less employees as a result. Normally, we would not fire anyone because his machine was running faster, but by attrition, by the number of employees dropping out of work every day, we would give them other work to do in some other part of the plant.

GEORGE STONEY: What about -- I'm going to use their phrase for it -- "short time"?

JOROLOMAN: You've asked something now that I'm not familiar wit

GEORGE STONEY: Was your factory running full capacity, three shifts a day, all the time?

JOROLOMAN: They -- I don't know as I can answer that really other than just when there was a Depression, naturally we went on short days. We would cut out our night shift, for example, run only the day shift, but other than short hours, short time, very little. Very seldom did that occur at Standard.

GEORGE STONEY: Did you work on the night shift at all?

JOROLOMAN: I did at the beginning of my tenure at the plant.

GEORGE STONEY: Start it I worked on the night--

JOROLOMAN: I worked the night shift just to get acquainted with the fact that there was such a thing and that I had to readjust my sleeping hours and give me a touch of how the employees felt who did work the night shift. In fact, we had three shifts. We had the day shift, the night shift, and the third shift, but, ah, each of them was 8 hours, of course. The mill ran constantly.

GEORGE STONEY: Now was there ever a -- an attempt to have unions in your factory?

JOROLOMAN: The mills in Knoxville, two or three of them, I think, were unionized back when I was an employee at the plant, and occasionally they would try to get the employees at Standard to join up with them. But as long as I was 00:23:00in the plant, the employees were always satisfied with their work, felt that the unions couldn't offer them any more than they were getting under the present management, and the union was never successful at Standard to get an -- an entrance there, though they did try.

GEORGE STONEY: Now you were in a particularly good position to answer this because you, as somebody who was coming from a management thing, was then working with the ordinary worker. Could you tell about their attitude towards that kind of thing? You were among them and you heard them talking.

JOROLOMAN: Well, I don't know that I really could answer that intelligently about their feelings toward the union. Of course, we preferred to have employees who were under the management's direct orders and not from any 00:24:00outsider coming in to interfere with the orders or the type of work that they were given to do. I -- I just don't really know, because not being in management, I couldn't really give too sensible an answer on that particular topic.

GEORGE STONEY: Mr. Regan, who I told you about in Charlotte, told me that a lot of these people regarded unions as almost un-Christian. That's the way he put it, that they were against it. I wonder if you heard anything about that when you talked with the employees.

JOROLOMAN: I don't, ah, recall any un-Christian remarks about the unions or really any derogatory remarks about them other than that they were, ah, different. They would give out their orders. One thing they would do, for 00:25:00example, they would not let anyone handle any job other than his own. You could not have an employee who was trained to do one job switched over to another job without the union's approval, and that was one basic reason that the Standard management did not want to have to deal with a union. They felt they could transfer one employee to another part of the plant at their will and train him in that new job. But the union, as I understand it -- I never had any connections with them -- but, as I understand it, a man couldn't do two jobs. He was trained to do a job and that was it. He couldn't touch the tools of someone else.

GEORGE STONEY: That's a very good statement about that, the management's attitude, why they didn't want it to come in.

JOROLOMAN: As I understand the job, that was one of the main objections of management to unions.

GEORGE STONEY: Now in 1934, there was a big nationwide textile strike. I don't know whether you remember that or not. It was all over the state, and yet your mill seemed to have escaped that. Do you recall being in town when that happened?

JOROLOMAN: I'm sorry. I do not recall that particular –-

GEORGE STONEY: Ok, let's--