Robert Howard and Bill Woodham Interviews

 GEORGE STONEY: -- with a note on it. Use this cob and save your job, but the boss found out. Who did that?

ROBERT HOWARD : Well I'll tell you right now I've seen some of the funniest things and queerest things, but on the after the last ten years I ran a job as what they call a frequency checker. And frequency analysis of course this was with [Milliken?]. And they uh, the man that hired me for that job told me says, "You only check on person at a time. One job. If anybody else comes on your job, you tell them to go to hell, and get off your job." So I went out there 00:01:00and went to work. Everything was going smooth, and one day this same man got promoted, to plant manager. And he came in on my job. And he was the one that hired me. I went over there and said, "Do you remember what you told me?" And he looked at me and said "What?" I said, "I expect you better start going to hell." I said, "You in the way out here." He looked at me just as hard, he didn't say a word, he just turned and walked off. Well I figured he turned me in. So I went in that afternoon and everything was just like normal nothing was happening. And I stood just as long as I could, I went over to my supervisor and I says, "Has the plant manager been in?" He said, "He came 00:02:00through." I said, "He didn't say nothing?" He said, "No." I said are you sure?" He said, "Positive. Why?" I told him, he said, "You didn't tell him?" I said, "I don't know of a better person to tell. He was the one that told it to me." But the supervisors was worse when I first went to work on that job, then the help was. They'd want a job done and they'd get in there and start helping. And if we hadn't had some good supervisors in our industrial engineering department we would have been out of luck. They'd help us, they'd take care of us.

GEORGE STONEY: Now could you go back to '34? I know you were in high school at the time. Did you ever see the National Guard come here?

HOWARD: Oh yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: Could you talk about that?

HOWARD: Well no, not actually. The only thing I know, Momma wouldn't let us go around the plants. And all I know is when we – when people would come in and tell us the guards was down there. And when the older brothers and sisters come 00:03:00in that they were down there, just make it safe for them to get in. But actually as far as me knowing, -- cause momma wasn't one of those that would let you roam all over the place. You were lucky if you got away there, you had to be real smart, cause she believed in knowing where her kids was at all times.

GEORGE STONEY: Now we have some newsreel footage of the guards (inaudible, clattering noises), rounding up these people—

HOWARD: She's all right.

GEORGE STONEY: Rounding up these people in Newnan, Georgia and carting them off to Fort McPherson. And --

HOWARD: We had some of that here but I didn't see it. I wasn't --

GEORGE STONEY: And the Rainwater sisters actually recognized some people. We put it on their VCR and showed it to them. I wonder if we showed that to if you be able to recognize any of the people from, from -- they said people were from 00:04:00LaGrange also were involved in that.

HOWARD: There was some now I heard about it.

GEORGE STONEY: Would you like to see that footage?

HOWARD: I wouldn't mind.

GEORGE STONEY: I'll just put it right up there on your television set. Okay.

JAMIE STONEY: Dad, where's the VCR? Out in truck?

[break in video]

HOWARD: I wouldn't be surprised, but I don't remember anything about saying getting on one of those trucks.

GEORGE STONEY: This is Macon I think. Not up too Newnan yet.

HOWARD: I can guarantee you they didn't air them right in the middle of it.

GEORGE STONEY: Did you pay off?

HOWARD: No I didn't ever pay off like that. I've seen people that paid off like that. All the time that I was paid off in checks. I've seen them paid 00:05:00like that. I know uh, I'd been down to the plant to get some of the brothers and sisters money when they was working and go pay bills.

NEWSREEL: (inaudible)—Flying squadron methods, National Guardsmen round up a group of pickets and place them under arrest. Women as well as men are taken in the militia's net. Strikers submit peacefully and are hustled off before bristling bayonets. State highway trucks are used to transport the prisoners, numbering about 200, many of them women and girls. This drastic action authorities explain is taken to prevent threatened violence. Specifically those arrested are charged with attempting to prevent the reopening of the Newnan Mills. Reminiscent of World War days, a hastily constructed internment camp in which the strikers are confined. This one is at the back of Fort McPherson in Atlanta. Armed guards patrol the barbed wire enclosure surrounding the camp; while the prisoners learn how it feels like to be on the inside looking out. Chow time finds a lot of healthy appetites and the incarcerated ladies make the 00:06:00best of their predicament. Its good old army grub, plain but nourishing and the state is paying for it.

GEORGE STONEY: Now I'll cut out the sound cause the rest of it is not a sound. The rest of it is silent footage but see if you spot people. Why did that turn blue?

JAMIE STONEY: (inaudible)

HOWARD: Our color --

F1: Just goes and comes.

HOWARD: Sometimes you have color sometimes you don't. Even on the same program.

GEORGE STONEY: Well that's gonna be hard for them to see.

JAMIE STONEY: Let me see –-

GEORGE STONEY: Ok.

HOWARD: (Inaudible) to bring this one up here.

JAMIE STONEY: (inaudible) Yeah it's slipped into -- it's gone blue. It's an old color controller. You can see --

GEORGE STONEY: Ok Jamie, should we go out and get our set?

JAMIE STONEY: Yeah, I'll bring the monitor in.

GEORGE STONEY: We've got another set we --

HOWARD: Well --

[break in video]

GEORGE STONEY: More of that footage that was shot then.

HOWARD: Look at the car Momma. We had those antique cars out at the (inaudible) last weekend. Not this weekend but the last weekend.

GEORGE STONEY: Recognize that guy?

HOWARD: Mm-mmm. Isn't he black?

GEORGE STONEY: No. Look at his hands.

HOWARD: I see it now.

GEORGE STONEY: Tell us about your brother.

HOWARD: Well he was just one of these high strung people.

GEORGE STONEY: Just start my brother.

HOWARD: My brother was just one of these high strung people. He went out with the people on strike. And he just didn't think that anybody was supposed to go across that picket line. And you had to watch him cause, comes up and you did something he might be one of those who would whoop you one with one of those picket sticks.

JAMIE STONEY: You called it a picket stick and I've heard people call it a picker stick. Is it the same thing?

HOWARD: They're called the same thing. It's really something that looks like a rifle except it doesn't have that big of a handle on the back. And they'd just hold them in that grip and use them. And they must have been made out of good stuff cause it would have busted all to pieces on them hard heads.

GEORGE STONEY: How did the factory, how did the plant handle protection here?

HOWARD: Well they had some of the National Guards to come down and they'd just stand there and watch people as they came in and out of the gate. To a -- and actually I think they had some National Guards that walked , like you saw them from that barbed wired fence a while ago. That's about when they started 00:10:00fencing in the mills was when -- They's have the National Guard walking across --

GEORGE STONEY: All of this is at Fort Mac.

HOWARD: I remember hearing about it. They picked some of them here at LaGrange got trucks to carry them up there. And I've heard that. That's why I'm wondering if my brother didn't accidently get into one of those. He had a heart of gold, bless his heart, but he thought he was right. (inaudible) old 00:11:00dresses? I don' see how women worked in the mill with those long dresses on, swiping the floors.

F1: (inaudible)

GEOGRE STONEY: These girls got picked up when they were out picketing you see.

HOWARD: Like Oak Grove down here at the fair. All the people-- Is that one of the ladies you had a picture of?

GEORGE STONEY: Yeah.

HOWARD: That second one there?

GEORGE STONEY: Uh-huh.

HOWARD: I thought I recognized that.

GEORGE STONEY: They kept them down there for a week.

HOWARD: But they did feed them. I stayed in Fort McPherson when I was inducted.

GEORGE STONEY: So did I.

HOWARD: See I went in on the 25th stayed till -- I was back home at work on the 30th worked all day that day and married that night. And went back to the army the next week.

GEORGE STONEY: Okay now, you want to look and see if your brother is in any of this.

HOWARD: Well they look happy enough. They're comparing what they're eating. 00:14:00What's the number for?

GEORGE STONEY: That's a code for us when we are cutting film.

HOWARD: Uh- huh.

GEORGE STONEY: It won't be there on the final print.

JAMIE STONEY: It's kinda like a catalog number.

HOWARD: That girl that was doing the talking just then. She looks like somebody from LaGrange.

GEORGE STONEY: Which one?

JAMIE STONEY: The one's that looking up?

HOWARD: Yeah the one that's right next to the first face you can see left side there. The woman that you can't see her face it's the next one.

JAMIE STONEY: Do you happen to remember her name?

HOWARD: I'm trying to put them in in with something. I can't remember. Well who's serving them?

GEORGE STONEY: The army!

HOWARD: I don't think I've seen a face of one of them that brought the food 00:16:00out. Was someone pouring coffee out of the way?

GEORGE STONEY: It's kind of like a chow line.

HOWARD: Yup. (inaudible) when I was in Texas and they was giving us shots. Great big guy ahead of me, the nurse hit him, well two nurses, one on each side hit him and he hit the ground. Scared those nurses to death. Cause they were civilian nurses. Our camp wasn't big enough to have a nurse, they just had civilian nurses.

GEORGE STONEY: Some of those fellas might be from LaGrange.

HOWARD: You know people look so funny in there. Just think they are old men. You know one of the pitiful sights is when you'd see those people that didn't go back to work. Had to move, and they couldn't afford a moving van. They'd just have to get somebody that had a truck to move them. It always broke my heart when I saw -- and I said "Why should it?" I said, "They asked for it." They're the ones that are in trouble. (inaudible) his drink?

F1: (Inaudible)

GEORGE STONEY: What happened to your brother? Tell us about your brother.

HOWARD: Well he finally moved on to Pine Mountain. You know, remember when the Callaways owned that place. And they took these people and gave them a place to live, well actually they were supposed to have sold it to them, and they were supposed to pay something, I'm not sure how much. And he lived on that several years. He had a great big garden, a good house. They were all new houses when Pine Mountain was just built down in the valley. And that's where a lot of strikers from LaGrange was Pine Mountain. They were given stuff, sold stuff to 00:19:00them cheap, where they could get back on their feet. Shoot, I went down there and stayed some, I enjoyed it. Had a big time down there. Saw the people I had known from here in LaGrange down there. (inaudible). Boy, that's that same girl again.

GEORGE STONEY: Notice they all have fancy hair dos. Well so that's it.

HOWARD: Well I didn't –- That one girl is the only one I think that I might have known.

GEORGE STONEY: Uh-huh.

HOWARD: But I can't remember.

GEORGE STONEY: Talk about your brother on Pine Mountain. AS I recall it Pine Mountain was a government project wasn't it.

HOWARD: Mmm-hmm, that' right.

GEORGE STONEY: Do mind telling us about that?

HOWARD: Well I don't know a whole lot about it cause at that times, see I 00:20:00wasn't nothing but a kid either. That was before I came out of high school. I'd just go down there, they had enough space to have a real big garden, cows, hogs, chicken and grow like everything else. It went bad cause everybody kept abusing it. They wouldn't take care of things down there. And a lot of them wasn't farmers to begin with, they didn't know how to take care of it. My brother and his wife had six kids I believe. I believe they only had three when they moved down there and there was three afterwards. And after that his wife 00:21:00finally divorced him. He was punch drunk and his health was bad and he couldn't work, and we had to take him. But bless his heart, he'd go back and try to get work. He worked down at Opelika. It just got to where he couldn't work anymore. He came back up here and lived in the housing projects for several years wasn't it?

F1: (Inaudible) he died.

HOWARD: And that was his second marriage and he only had one child. His second marriage.

GEORGE STONEY: I didn't realize -- I think we can cut now Jamie.

[break in video]

JAMIE STONEY: Rolling!

GEORGE STONEY: Alright Bill I want you to start off by telling me how you are and how you got into textiles. Right from the beginning.

BILL WOODHAM: Yes.

GEORGE STONEY: (Inaudible)

WOODHAM: Tell me when to start.

JAMIE STONEY: Any second (inaudible). Whenever you're ready Bill.

WOODHAM: I'm Bill Woodham, I'm seventy-eight years old, I was seventy-eight back in February this year, and I got my start in textiles when I was born. My mother and daddy was in the textile business when I was born. As I grew up and got old enough to work I went to work in the mills. I went to work in the mills August, I think it was, of 1926. And I become 14 and half years old, I went to work in the mill and I've been in the mills ever since. With the exception of two years, over two years I was in service in the Navy during World War II. The 00:23:00rest of my time I spent in the textile plant. Yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: What have you done?

WOODHAM: I started working in the weave room. My father was a weaver. And I had two sisters old than I am already weaving. And so I went to work in the weave room with them. Back in those days families all working in one department. They don't that now, for business reasons. In case someone is sick in the family or a death in the family. They'd have to shut a department down. Try and scatter them out throughout the plants. So I went to work in the weave room, doing various cleaning jobs, supporting jobs. I worked about six months I guess or a year, six months, or nine months before I started to learn how to weave. Put me 00:24:00on the (inaudible) looms. And I wove, I guess fifteen years. When I started fixing looms.

GEOGRE STONEY: Could you go back and tell us how long you worked, when you got up made what you made?

WOODHAM: Back then, 1926, '27, well up until the NRA come into effect, we worked from six o'clock in the morning until twelve in the day time. We had an hour off for lunch, had meal whistles back then. They'd blow whistle at lunch time and had whistle to blow as a notice fifteen minute notice. Give you time to get to the mill. Well we had to walk from home to the mills. So we go back into work at one and work until five and if business was good we'd work until six. 00:25:00And the night shift would come in at six. The night shift usually worked from six till six, twelve hours. There wasn't anything such as overtime back in those days. Work as many hours as wanted to or could, but there was no overtime figured. But one of the things hard for people to understand now a days is we got paid in cash back in those days. Money in a little envelope, dollar bills, two dollar bills, five dollar bills and the change in silver and pennies. They'd figure down to the penny. It was written on the front of the envelope how much money you had in the envelope. And at quitting time Saturday morning, or whenever the last shift finished we'd line up and had little slips of 00:26:00paper. We'd walk up and claim out pay slip our pay envelope. I well remember the first envelope I got. It was seven dollars and a half. My mother let me take it and go buy me a shot gun. I walked all the way to town which was about two miles. Bought that shotgun, brought it home two miles. I was only fourteen and half years old. I felt like I was a grown person with that gun on my shoulder. Yeah, mills run along like that until President Roosevelt was elected and he brought the NRA in effect the eight hour shifts. That changed everything in the 00:27:00textile industry. We could just see a gradual improvement, a change (inaudible) in the way of running the mills. Now they just had to figure out some way or another to keep us on the jobs, keep us busy where they could make money cause we had to have a guaranteed wage. I think it was twenty-five cents an hour when it first came into effect. Of course back in those day a quarter was a big piece of money. Management had to keep us busy make us earn that guaranteed wage, or try to make us earn it. We noticed improvements steadily, as the years progressed, you know.

GEORGE STONEY: So did the management change to make you earn that money?

WOODHAM: They would try and keep us busy doing something. If we caught up a job they'd try to find us something else to do. Like if a -- when I first started, I was in this supporting group you know, I'd pick up quills and yarn off the floor and this that or the other. As I learned to do other jobs, when I'd catch that job up they'd put me around helping the others that wasn't caught up. Person having trouble with their job. That's the way they started improving work schedules for us.

GEORGE STONEY: Now I've heard people talk about the stretch out. Could you talk about -- use the term and explain it.

WOODHAM: Yeah. They used the term the stretch out as when they'd give us more workload. Talking about a weave room that I was in, you'd be running ten looms 00:29:00and you'd be making pretty good money on ten looms, well they'd give you two extra looms, no extra pay. That's called the stretch out system. Now I go into a plant and one person is running a whole acre of looms just about. But they have improved so it is possible to do that.

GEORGE STONEY: Well now in 19--