Irene Medley, L.T. Medley and Harry Barton Interviews

 L.T MEDLEY: If we was to see Luther we wouldn't know it.

IRENE MEDLEY: Mmm-hmm, can't tell too much, cause—

L.T MEDLEY: Look at that old car.

IRENE MEDLEY: Mmm-hmm (cough)

GEORGE STONEY: Did you know anybody who was in the guard?

IRENE MEDLEY: No.

L.T MEDLEY: Naw, I didn't know anybody in the guard.

(cough)

STONEY: What do you think of those people? Some of the guardsmen came right out of the mills, picking up, uh, there workers.

L.T MEDLEY: I don't know.

(cough)

STONEY: Do you think that it was right that they did that?

IRENE MEDLEY: Back then I guess they thought it was. Anything was right back then.

STONEY: Well I guess the troops didn't have a choice.

IRENE MEDLEY: No.

L.T MEDLEY: No the just sent here to get them. I imagine most of them troopers is dead.

IRENE MEDLEY: Yeah.

(inaudible background conversation)

[break in video]

IRENE MEDLEY: Homer Dunn (?), I could not think of his first name a while ago, and Truitt Sims (?) and, uh—

[break in video]

M1: Let's just point a little bit more of this picture.

IRENE MEDLEY: Ok.

M1: Take your finger, you got it.

IRENE MEDLEY: Ok. I would (inaudible) I really don't know other than –

STONEY: Name anyone you see.

IRENE MEDLEY: Ok this is [Toots Benson?], and James Medley, [Howard Todd?], [Truitt Sims?], [Gorda Hanson?], [Homer Dunn?], and that's all that I 00:03:00recognize on this, now.

M2: That's pretty good George.

[break in video]

IRENE MEDLEY: That's Ruth right here.

L.T MEDLEY: (inaudible)

IRENE MEDLEY: I don't know when she first went to work in the mill.

L.T MEDLEY: (inaudible)

STONEY: Ok we want to start over again Snookums. I want you to say this is my sister, how old she was and all about it.

IRENE MEDLEY: This is my sister, she was about 9 or 10 years old and was in the mill, she w—she is deceased now and uh she worked in East Newnan Mill most all of her life.

L.T MEDLEY: And lived there.

IRENE MEDLEY: And lived there, lived there in East Newnan most all of her life.

STONEY: Ok we want to do it once again.

[break in video]

IRENE MEDLEY: This is my sister, Sally Ruth uh Harris Roberts, and she was born around 1900. And this is probably when she was about 9 or 10 years old. What else?

STONEY: When she worked—

IRENE MEDLEY: And she worked at the East Newman Mill most all of her life. Lived there on the village too. Raised her child there. All—the whole family is deceased now.

STONEY: Good, thank you.

[break in video]

STONEY: Okay. Harry, you were telling me something about the grandfather and being a child laborer in the mill. Can you tell us something about that?

HARRY BARTON: About my grandfather? What part do you want me to start on?

STONEY: You were telling me--

BARTON: I told you about him jumping out the window.

STONEY: I want you tell that cause we didn't get it on camera you see. Pretend we never talked before.

BARTON: Well, my grandfather, he was just like a lot of children, you know. He was -- I guess he was a little hard-headed and hard to handle and he jumped out of the window the first grade in school and went a half a day and that's all he ever went to public school. Well, my grandfather, she was a high school graduate and she began to teach my grandfather things that he needed to learn, such as math and other things, and to be in the profession that he was gonna be in, which was the leading profession in that day, which was textiles. And so he, ah -- he took it from there and he became one of the best textile men in 00:06:00this country. And he -- people were after him. Everybody was after what they called a good carder or a good spinner or good weaver. That meant that they knew what to do in the operation of this product, getting it out and good finished goods, good quality goods and have a good human relations with the people in the mill.

STONEY: And what did your grandfather do in the mill?

BARTON: He was a overseer.

STONEY: Just say, "My Grandfather was an overseer.

BARTON: My grandfather was a overseer in the mill.

STONEY: Where was this and what did he do?

BARTON: What do who do?

STONEY: Where was he and what did he do in the mill?

BARTON: Well, he was in charge of a certain amount of machinery, and this particular process is several processes and you start with an open bale of cotton and you come up with a nice shirt on. And he was in a certain process 00:07:00that he was in control of this -- going through this process, these processes, and turning out good work where he could carry it on through the next process to a finished material.

STONEY: Well now, how did you get into textiles?

BARTON: How did I get into textiles? Well, I was born in it, I guess you might say. On June the 7th, 1909, Greenville, South Carolina, the day I was born, and my father followed his dad and I followed my dad. And, ah -- well, that -- this was the customary thing with cotton mill people back in those days. You -- they -- the people who owned the mill liked to hire a man and his wife that had 4-5-8 or 10 young 'uns, or children, if you'd rather have a better word for it. The 00:08:00more children they had, ah, the better off they were. They liked to have big families and this just happened that my daddy didn't have such a large family with five of us. As I say, I quit school. I begged him to let me quit school where the others could -- some of 'em could go through and finish high school, which they did. And, ah, I went to work. And then I went in to taking different courses, many, many different courses that the company that I worked for -- I worked for U.S. Rubber Company for the longest, and they offered a lot of courses. They had men who were well qualified to teach and I took many of these courses and then I, upon my own self, I -- I answered an ad about international correspondence schools and I taken a course in cotton carding and 00:09:00spinning. And I left off weaving. I shouldn't have because this is what I would up a-being, working with for about 30 years. But, anyway, I had -- I finished that course completely and completed it and did a good job with it. And then, later on, after I went to work, ah, they were offering a course at Georgia Tech. You had to be a high school graduate. And so they had a record of all my accomplishments of whatever they were down at the office at U.S. Rubber, and, ah, a plant manager came to me about it and he says, "What do you think about -- would you like to take this?" I said, "Well, I noticed it, but," I said, "you've got to be a high school graduate." He says, "I think I can get you in because you have more than a lot of 'em do as far as what we need." And 00:10:00so I was accepted on this course and I had to ride a bus ever afternoon, as I told you, to the bus station and go to the A. French Textile School there on campus. And I did this for about six months. And, ah, the man that was my teacher was also the one who wrote most of the textbooks in the ICS course that I had. I forgot his name. And I began to, ahm, get better jobs as I -- and make more money. And get on salary, you get a whole lot better benefits. And that's what I did.

STONEY: Going back to your younger days, tell me how old you were when you went into the mills and what you did first.

BARTON: Well, in February, I -- I began to --

STONEY: And say February of what year?

BARTON: February of 19-and-23, I asked my dad, begged him, to let me go to work where the other children could -- could have it better for the rest of the year. And, well, he -- he finally --

STONEY: Sorry, I'm going to ask you to start that again, cause I want it tight. In February 19—the year when I was so much old and then you tell.

BARTON: That's right.

STONEY: Ok. Try it again.

BARTON: Well, in the year of 1923, in February, I was 13 years old. And in that date, those days, you had to be 14 before they would hire you in the mill. I don't know whether they had any particular laws on that or not or whether it was just a company policy. But I lied about my age and I told 'em that I was 14 years old the seventh day of February. They gave me a job and I went to work 00:12:00and I made $9.50 a week, 15 cents an hour for 60 hours work. Eleven hours for five days and five hours on Saturday. And that's -- that's how I went to work.

STONEY: Tell us what you did.

BARTON: Well, I went in there and they told me -- showed me how to push a wagon with wheels on it and put cans with the cotton in it that was coiled up and came from some operation which I didn't know much about, but I hauled what they called drawing from -- it was at the East Thomaston plant, in Thomaston, Georgia, and they had, ah -- they had three mills built there in one, the number one, number two, and number three. Number two couldn't produce enough drawing material to go into the fly frames and I pushed drawing on this wagon from number three mill to number two, which was a distance of about, I'd say, 50-60 yards.

STONEY: Now when did you come to Hogansville?

BARTON: I came to Hogansville in 19-and-24. I forgot -- it was just before Christmas sometime. And I went to work in -- I came down to go to work in the big mill down there, Stark Mill, they called it. And they put me over at the other mill and then I wasn't making the money I was supposed to have made, and my dad, meantime, moved to a little town of Grantville(?) up here and he didn't like it, so he had me to come home and go to work up there, where I picked up about six more dollars a week and stayed in Grantville until, as I said, I was -- I worked at Sergeant, Georgia, and I left Sergeant and came to Hogansville. I had a sister that lived here and I boarded with them and this is when I moved 00:14:00when I came down here was on account of this Howard Holbrook, the band director of Hogansville, the band down at --

STONEY: I want you to start telling me about that just as if you never told it to me before.

BARTON: Well uh—

STONEY: It sounds like—I told you yesterday just pretend like you'd never told it to me before.

BARTON: Well, in Sergeant over there, there was a couple of guys that were friends with my dad. In fact, they were in my -- they were overseers over at Thomaston. Well, one of 'em was overseer over there and the other'n was what they called a second hand, next to the overseer. And they -- they played in the band over there. And so they -- they wanted to get a band started and they got in touch with Howard Holbrook in Hogansville, Georgia, and he came over there and Howard was the band director here, and that's all he did, was the band 00:15:00director, but he sold instruments for Conn Instrument Company. He was an agent for them and, ah, and he went over there and, ah, they decided that -- the Arnold Mill people decided they would go ahead and sponsor a band -- finance it. And so we had a meeting there and Mr. Knight asked me, said, "Harris, are you going to be at the meeting?" I said, "I guess so." Next door to where I lived was where they were going to have the band hall. And so the different ones -- Howard Holbrook, the band director from Hogansville, he was talking with different ones. A lot of 'em never had an instrument in their hand, but I had played a trumpet in Thomaston, Georgia, in the band. And so he asked me, said, "What are you interested in?" I said, "Well, I'd like to have a trumpet." He said, "Do you know anything about one?" And I said, "Well, I played one for about two-and-a-half years when I's younger and I started 'bout 11 or 11 00:16:00and-a-half, something like that. And I could play that thing." And he says, "Well, take this one here. It's a brand-new one." And he took it out of the case and handed it to me. But to play a trumpet, man, you gotta work at it a while and work up a lip. It's not like sticking a clarinet in your mouth, a reed instrument in your mouth, and blowing. You got to -- you got to use your lip and your tongue. I said, "I don't know whether I can play the scale or not," but I did, I played the regular scale. He said, "Well, give me some of the chromatic scale." I got about 10 or 12 notes of that. He said, "Well, he's pretty good, I think." And so he kind of got me off on the side, he said, "I want you to come to Hogansville. I don't want you to stay in this place." So he's the one that got me to Hogansville.

STONEY: Now that was 1924.

(knocking)

STONEY: Hold it just--

[break in video]

BARTON: -- to call (inaudible) of the red mill. It was the old International Cotton Mill and, ah, I didn't make any money there and my dad didn't like it. 00:17:00So he got me to come to Grantville. Then when Mr. Ogletree was superintendent of the Stark Mill, which belonged to New England Southern Mills then -- New England Southern Mills was very prominent up North and they got me to come back down here and, ah, they told me, said, "I want you in the band down here." Says, "I'll give your daddy a job, too." Told us who to go see, but he didn't contact him. That was Mr. Singletary that was the overseer of the department that we were going to work in. And so he hired us. My dad was a good mill man. He was a second hand up there and he needed one bad and he needed a frame man and I was a good frame man. And he said, "I'm just happy to have you." Give us a house to move in. The overseers had so many houses they could let the 00:18:00employees have. And, ah, Papa thanked him, says, "I'm glad we could come down here on account of my son there, because he plays in the band. He's a trumpet player." He says, "I don't want no horn tooters." And so we was which was hired and fired right there on the spot. And so we went back to Grantville. Well, it wasn't many weeks -- I had been coming down here playing in the band. There wasn't many weeks that Mr. Ogletree called me at the office up Grantville, at the mill office there -- they came out in the plant and got me, said, "Somebody wants you on the phone. Long distance." Long distance then from here to Grantville. And, ah, so he says -- he told me who he was. Says, "Now don't call my name," because, you know, he didn't want to get in trouble with that company. But he says, "I want you and your dad to come down here. Can you do it?" I said, "I think so." I said, "When you want us?" Said, "I want you 00:19:00Saturday morning." So on Saturday morning we came down and he wanted to know what -- Papa told him what happened. He said, "Well, that's gonna be straightened out." He said, "When you ready to go to work?" He said, "Well, what kind of conditions? Because he dislikes the band, is the working condition gonna be all right with him?" He says, "I'll assure you the working conditions going to be all right." And so we came back on, ah, Monday to see Mr. Singletary and, oh, he was whistling up a beautiful song, ready for us to move right then. And that's when we moved to Hogansville.

STONEY: Tell me something about the life in the band. Did you play for dances?

BARTON: Well, we had, ah -- we had different groups, the best musicians in the -- you'd pick out a pretty good little group. You'd call it whatever you wanted 00:20:00to call it, whatever -- at the present time, whatever you was playing for. We played a lot for dances. I played for dances. I played in church. And back in those days we didn't have talking movies. And I played trumpet and, ah, another fella played a saxophone and we had a drummer. And it was a lady played the piano. And you got with your movies -- what come with the movie was some music telling you when to come in loud and them horses coming in with them hoofs making a lot of noise, you know. And I -- I did -- we did that. Now that's something you probably didn't know about.

STONEY: That beautiful theatre in Hogansville, tell us about that theatre.

BARTON: Well, that theater was what is this community building up there now. You know where the community building is? Well, it was in the auditorium there, 00:21:00and they had a -- and it was a nice theater. People from all around here came here and, ah -- and they also had a basketball court in there for the high school to play basketball. The mill company furnished that. They'd take all the seats out and they'd play basketball in there.

STONEY: Now tell us what happened when Roosevelt got elected.

BARTON: When Roosevelt got elected? Well, from the band standpoint, the -- Mr. Holbrook rallied the band together -- now wait a minute. I'm going to have to back up there. Naw, he was still here. He rallied the band together and, ah, some of the boys drank a little. I didn't fool with it. But we carried the band and went up to Grantville, Georgia, to celebrate. They wanted us to come up there. And back then it was a smoking tobacco- that everybody had to smoke. 00:22:00I forgot the name of that, but it was in a great big old bag and I know the man ran a store there and he came out of there and poured out several boxes of it on the fire and everybody -- and we was playing "Happy Days Are Here Again", you know. And that was in March. That wasn't the election time, but he took office in March. And election time was before Christmas, the year before. But that was just like the Lord coming back and taking us all back to heaven back in them days, because that was poorly times back in there.

STONEY: Tell us about the changes that came about with the textile code.

BARTON: The textile what?

STONEY: Code. Textile code.

BARTON: Well, I think, ah, it's a growing process, people growing up.

STONEY: What I mean by that is, uh, they cut your hours and raised your wages. Do you remember that?

BARTON: Yeah. Well, that -- that came about when Roosevelt -- you know, the many, many things that he promised was an 8-hour law. And he really stuck it for the union with union labor. An 8-hour law and we started that in 1936.

STONEY: Actually it was '30, '33.

BARTON: '33. '33 I mean, '33.

STONEY: Ok let's start over and you talk about Roosevelt and—

BARTON: '33 we started that.

STONEY: Let's start all over again on Roosevelt.

BARTON: On Roosevelt? Well, in his campaign he made a lot of promises and he snowed, ah, old Hoover. He was a Republican. He snowed him under and was elected and everybody was happy because everybody was looking for better times, 00:24:00everybody. And, ah, from there, we, ah -- as the Congress was able to enact the programs that he ran on the platform, this was one of the first 'uns that they got, got through the Congress, was the 8-hour law. And so we got the 8-hour law in and, ah -- and then we went from -- well, I was making about $10 or $12 a week. I got to making $18 and $19 a week and working 8 hours a day in place of 11 or 12 hours a day.

STONEY: What did that feel like?

BARTON: What did it feel like? Well, I thought I's rich. I mean people -- the people -- as I told you the other day, the people working in cotton mills in them days was salt of the Earth, and they still are. They were poor people 00:25:00never had anything. Very few people had anything that worked in the mill, but just a living. But I always felt like that everybody was worth more than a living, I think they ought to have a little something extry. And, ah, we felt like that we was rich, we had a little something extry. It was a good feeling to know we'as going to a job and you could do it -- do a better job and get off more production and did a better job for the company -- it was better for the company, too.

STONEY: Now right after that, within a year, there was a big attempt to unionize cotton mill workers. Why was that and how did that take place?

BARTON: Well, this was on that platform, you know. We didn't know anything about unionized -- organized labor, you know. And so they began to come in here and this fella came in and got to talking, going house to house at night, you 00:26:00know. And he laid his groundwork there over a period of, I'd say, about two or three weeks, or four or five weeks, something like that. And we begin to get key people together and the more people you could get together, he could get together and talk to, the more they would talk to in the town, out in the plant, or wherever. And so the first thing you know, we had about 300 or 350 people up the railroad cut above Hogansville up there and this is where we met. And this is where we decided that -- and in another meeting after that -- that we would organize. And we organized into a labor union. And I forgot that guy's name.

STONEY: Was it Homer Welch?

BARTON: What?

STONEY: Homer Welch.

BARTON: Homer Welch was one of the men that later took over as president of the 00:27:00local here. And, ah, he was the leader and this other part -- I don't know whether you want me to get into that or not.

STONEY: Sure.

BARTON: Well, as I told you -- as I told you, Homer Welch was elected. Homer was a nice boy. I thought a lot of him. And I think his picture's on that picture right there. Ah, everybody thought a lot of Homer. He was nice looking guy and he did a lot of good work in church. And, well, he got a little bit radical on this thing and, ah, I don't know. But, anyway, he led the people and so he came to me and another fella, Mr. Barker, and he wanted us to -- this guy wanted Homer to get two men to go to LaGrange to Calloway Mills and organize a 00:28:00-- sign up the people down there. All they had to do was announce where they was gonna be and so he rented a place down there and we -- we worked down there three days signing up people. I never seen so many people. Calloway was a big textile outfit. They had, ah -- I don't know -- 10 or 12 mills there in LaGrange. And we worked there and my boss encouraged me, my second hand boss, not the top boss, to go. I didn't much want to go, but he encouraged me to go. Said, "We need you to go down there. You go." And I said, "Well, what about the pay?" Said, "Well, they'll pay you. You know they're going to pay you." Well, when I worked those three days, on Saturday night and it was all over and we turned over our money and the names of all the people and everything, he gave me $3 and he gave the other man $3. I ought to beat the hell out of him right 00:29:00there, but I didn't do it. (inaudible), on that camera? Excuse me I won't say that word no more.

STONEY: Okay. Do you know how much you collected down there?

BARTON: Well, we collected a dollar apiece from each person, and I'd say I must have signed up 300, at least 300, and he signed up not quite as many as I did. I think we signed up 500 plus people. And this was the first -- first time that anybody's been down there. There was a lot more joined later.

STONEY: Then what happened? Ok, just, just hold a minute, ok.