Mabel Sturges and Geraldine Orr Interview

GEORGE STONEY: Okay. Could you just tell us about when you first started working in the cotton mills? Give me the date and how much you made and all of that, how old you were.

MABEL STURGES: I was 11 years old.

GEORGE STONEY: Just start and say "I was 11 years old when I first start work in the cotton mill and I'm", how old you are know.

STURGES: Well, I was about 11 years old when I started working in the cotton mill. And I'm 75 years old now.

GEORGE STONEY: Tell me what it was like.

STURGES: Well, when I first went in, I got scared 'bout near to death because I went out to the house. My head kept itching is all. So I got me a big piece of 00:01:00cloth and I spread it down and I started. Okay. What did I find? I was mad. I was hurt. And the girl came in I'd been going to work with of a morning. She said, "Don't get mad at us that it's all over the roping and all over everwh--" Hermitage Mill in Camden. That was it. Then we went from there to Lancaster, and I worked there a little while. And you'd have to put a -- a roping bobbin on the, ah, top where the roping shelf was to find your way. If you had to go to the bathroom, you had to do, you know, had to fine your frames before you come back. So we moved then to Rock Hill here and I worked at the Arcade Mill 00:02:00for about five years. And, ah, it was pretty rough. We was working all day long then. It was dark when you went in and dark when you come out and you had about 15 minutes to eat. So all worked and the kids tended to theirself and did the best they could for theirselves. And, ah, Dad, he worked at night and, ah, me and Momma worked in daylight. So that left nobody really up with the two smaller children. But that's the risk people had to take then because they not make enough money to hire a sitter. So we -- we existed. That's what we did. It was hard. It was no -- nothing like bathrooms or anything like that, no convenience of any sort. Of course, I guess they thought they was giving us a 00:03:00lot and with the outdoor facilities, but, ah, it's much nicer now since we have these other things.

GEORGE STONEY: You were living in a mill village?

STURGES: Yes.

RON: George

GEORGE STONEY: Yes?

RON: Sorry, I have a--

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GEORGE STONEY: Well that's a real demerit for you.

RON: Well at least I told you. I could have left it. People would have—

GEORGE STONEY: We have to rag him for the next 3 days about that.

RON: (inaudible)

JAMIE STONEY: We're rolling

GEORGE STONEY: Ok.

RON :I never would have--

GEORGE STONEY: Okay. Now tell us did you live in the mill village and what it was like?

STURGES: Yes, we lived in the mill village and, ah, you had to be awful careful. One place we lived was -- the super, he would watch the girls when they went to town, I guess to see what they got into or something and if your neighbor played music very loud, why, it was turned into the mill, and all -- all that stuff, you know. You's pretty well guarded what you could do and what 00:04:00you couldn't do. And --

GEORGE STONEY: Why did they do that?

STURGES: I don't know, but if one did something that wasn't, ah, thought right, I guess, they would fire one and the whole family had to leave. So that made it kinda hard on people and, ah, that's what happened with us at the Arcade Mill. Daddy got into it with one of the boss men and we all had to leave. Well, the rest of the bosses, my mother's and mine, came and said they never had better help in their life and they hated it so bad, but just one of those things. It was a rule that they had and, ah, kids would get in fights and things at school -- at the village and all that way. And lot of times they'd take it to the mill and caused big stinks, (laughs) but, ah, it was rough.

GEORGE STONEY: Now when did the union start coming in?

STURGES: That started coming in --

GEORGE STONEY: Just start it, the union started coming in.

STURGES: The union started coming in, let me see, I believe -- what -- in forty -- about thirty -- it was in the late thirties, but I never made enough for 'em to take out nothing on me, nor noth-- you know, in the mill like --

GEORGE STONEY: Well now, do you remember back in '34 there was a great big strike that closed down all the mills?

STURGES: That's right.

GEORGE STONEY: Could you tell about that?

STURGES: Not very much, because (clears throat) really I didn't pay it that much attention. I was glad not to be in the mill at work! (laughs) But we got along very well, but there was a lot of people suffered from it, yeah. We were talking about sharing a while ago. Nobody had nothing to share with people, you know. So --

GEORGE STONEY: Well, talk about your canning. What do you do with your canning now? I notice you got all kinds of stuff --

STURGES: Well, as I told you a while ago, I, ah we don't use all of it ourselves.

GEORGE STONEY: Start with your garden and then say that.

STURGES: Yeah. We've had a -- we have a garden and usually we have three. Back when my husband was living, we had three gardens. Well, we would raise, ah, say, like every space we could find for collards late in the fall. We had, ah -- we canned and we'd give away. Maybe we'd find somebody sick and in need or something, why, we'd help to -- out all we could with that. And that made me feel good, and I know it did them. So -- yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: What about now?

STURGES: Well, I do the same thing now. Yeah. One of my neighbors called me -- it's been a good while back -- and asked me, said, "Mrs. Sturges, have you got any -- you got anything to eat?" I says, "Plenty of it. Come on up." And, ah, he said, "Well, you have some sacks ready. I'm going to help the other feller." 00:07:00And I said, "Well, that's fine." So he come and took it up. As I said, we have to watch because there's a lot of people will not work, they're lazy, and I think it's a torture to put your body through this thing and then give it to somebody that could do theirself, felt more like it, you know, than I do, the canning and all, but, ah --

GEORGE STONEY: Now you -- back then you told me that you couldn't afford to have a babysitter.

STURGES: No.

GEORGE STONEY: But the last 20 years you've been doing something else. Tell about that.

STURGES: Yes. Ah, well, I've been retired from that now for, what, about five-six years, something like that? And, ah, well, I went in it in '61.

GEORGE STONEY: You said, tell us what – you went into babysitting and keeping children and foster children.

STURGES: Yeah. I kept foster children for 20 years and, ah, the little ones 00:08:00was my thing. I loved the little ones right out of the hospital, you know. We -- we met some, ah, some pretty hurtful-looking things where people walk off and leave their children. They would be undernourished and some of 'em had rickets and we'd have to build 'em up, you know. It was sad, but, ah, thank the Lord, He would bring 'em out and give me strength to help 'em and it done be good. I got a good reward for it.

GEORGE STONEY: Now back in the '30s did you see anything like rickets?

STURGES: Yes, I saw that and --

GEORGE STONEY: Start it, "Back in the '30s I saw rickets—"

STURGES: Right. And you saw pellagry.

GEORGE STONEY: No, no, sorry just start it "well back in the '30s you saw—"

STURGES: Yeah. Back in the '30s and even before that, in the late '20s, people couldn't get nourishing food. Even my mother had, ah pellagry. And, ah, we find out that it's because you don't have the nourishing things that you should 00:09:00have. And so I guess that goes right on into babies and things when they don't get the right things. And so it leads to trouble and, ah, I've seen some pitiful, pitiful things like that.

GEORGE STONEY: How did you get rid of the pellagra and rickets back then?

STURGES: The only -- the only thing is to try to build up with the medicine, of course, from doctors, if you can get to one, and, ah, start eating properly, the right diet. It brings 'em out. But it hurts you anyway. It settles somewhere, in your body somewhere.

GEORGE STONEY: Now did you -- what was your family's background?

STURGES: My family's background was, ah -- you mean like in labor?

GEORGE STONEY: Hold it just a minute.

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GEORGE STONEY: Ok, you ready? Jamie?

JAMIE STONEY: One second, let me check focus.

F1: (inaudible)

STURGES: My -- my daddy was a farmer.

GEORGE STONEY: Just, just, just a –

F1: Let me straigent up some.

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JAMIE STONEY: (inaudible)

GEORGE STONEY: Ready?

JAMIE STONEY: Rolling.

GEORGE STONEY: Ok.

STURGES: My daddy was a farmer and he was a sharecropper. Ah, I hate to say it, but just as we was speaking in the living room there a while ago, he was a man that believed in a new car ever year, although they were about, what, $500 at that time. He loved the Ford. So he'd get one and, ah, in the fall I can remember he'd give mother about $10 or something to go and get material to sew with. We had no machine, no sewing machine. And she would do what you called a backstitch and sit down and cut it by guess and sew it on her fingers, our -- my little dresses that I had to start school in, and I had two. And we'd fix one 00:11:00and then, you know, clean up the other one so I could go to school the next day. Very little I got to go because we was like the man that (laughs) moved his coal pile so much that, you know, he wore it out. He didn't have no coal. He thought somebody had got his coal. (laughs) But I don't know. We have love. That was the main thing. We had love.

GEORGE STONEY: Tell us about your education.

STURGES: I never went through the first grade of school because people didn't -- wasn't made to put the children through school. And it's very rare that a father or mother doesn't see the great need of an education for their children, but mine seemed to think if you learned to work, that was the main thing. So that's what I did, but now, you see, today, except for my little things here in 00:12:00the house and I'm 75 years old and I can't go out and do anything else -- lack of education. So that was wrong.

GEORGE STONEY: Where did you learn to read?

STURGES: After I was married.

GEORGE STONEY: Just start and say " I learned to read—"

STURGES: I learned to read after I was, ah, married. That was in '3--'35. A little bit. I'm not up on it real good, but I can read enough to read the newspaper and the Bible and that's -- that's enough.

GEORGE STONEY: Okay. Tell us about your family's background in the union.

STURGES: Well, we didn't have one.

GEORGE STONEY: We didn't have a what?

STURGES: A union.

GEORGE STONEY: Just say we didn't have a union.

STURGES: We didn't have a union. And I joined when it came to Rockhill Print & Finishing Company. I joined there, but I didn't stay long enough for it to amount to anything with me, you know, but I could understand that it was a good 00:13:00thing to have, because if they come through and told you that you was going to be cut, say, like 2 cents on the side, and I was bringing home -- what was it -- about $9.20 a week -- that's a-working -- let's see -- that was running 9 sides and, ah, you worked, as I said, all day for that, until Saturday 11:30, and that's what you made. So they had no unions there and they've never had one at this Arcade Mill over here. Or else there's no mill in there now. But I don't know very much about it, but I did see to where you've got help now if something happens, someone runs and tells something that there's nothing to it, but yet they'd send you out for it, you know. But they don't do that anymore. They 00:14:00have -- they have somebody to go to that can stand by you with things like that with the union. So I'm real proud of it.

GEORGE STONEY: Now this may not have happened here at all, but we've heard over in Columbus that, ah, the girls were suffering from the foreman's kind of harrassing them sexually. Was there anything like that happening here?

STURGES: It never happened in a place I worked, no. Uh uhm.

GEORGE STONEY: Just wanted to make sure.

STURGES: No, sir, it did not.

GEORGE STONEY: It's interesting how strict they were --

STURGES: You could go to one with -- with some-- somebody picking at you, you know, or threatening to put something on you or something, a bug or something, you know, and he'd fix that immediately. He'd go to 'em and talk to 'em. Now they're very nice about that, you know. I've had nothing insulting or anything.

GEORGE STONEY: Now we've heard people talk about lintheads. Could you talk about that and attitudes towards people that worked in the cotton mills?

STURGES: Well, it was not counted very much, I can tell you. No. Even after I married, my mother-in-law told me, says, "Don't talk about, ah, factory people much, see?" I says, "Why not?" She says, "Well, Mr. Sturges," which was in his '80s --that was Granddaddy Sturges -- ah, "he thinks that they're trashy, you know?" I said, "Mrs. Sturges, you know where they get that?" I said, "People moving in and out. You never know who your neighbor is. You don't know where they come from. You don't know whether to associate with 'em or -- or not." I says, "And that would give him a reason there, but they are fine people on the villages." And we find that in life everywhere, I think, you know, that it was mixed.

GEORGE STONEY: How did that make you feel?

STURGES: Well, I -- my reply to her when she said that, I says, "I hope that he never mentions that to me, because I do have a temper and I know how hard I have worked, and I know how hard the rest of 'em had worked. And," I said, "because you make a dollar in there, you've earned it." So I says, "I don't want to hear it." (clears throat)

GEORGE STONEY: Do you want to say that again so that we can cut off the cough?

STURGES: Yeah. I says that I don't want to hear it, because you earn every dollar that you get from a mill work -- from mill work. Yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: Okay. Is there anything else you'd like to tell us?

STURGES: No, not that I know of, only I think working conditions are better now. I hate it because so many people's losing their jobs and all, but, ah, the 00:17:00working conditions are much better. I know I worked -- I went -- the last part of '42 I went to work a little while in the bleachery over here. And, ah, I just tell you the truth, I wondered what they paid me for. You know, I've been used to working like a dog -- we'll just put it that way -- in a mill, and you'd just stand there and pull that cotton off of them things till you feel like your fingers was going to fall off. It hurt so bad. But, ah, they'd say, "Oh, I'm tired. I have worked so hard." I says, "You ought to get between spinning frames just a couple of days." I says, "You'd know what it's all about." So things are much better, I think, everywhere now, that way. I don't believe that your put on like you was at that time. No.

GEORGE STONEY: Remember when people were dipping snuff or chewing tobacco?

STURGES: I used to do it myself. Yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: Talk about that.

STURGES: Well, I think maybe it was to keep the lint down, from getting choked on lint. (laughs) I really think that. (clears throat)

GEORGE STONEY: Start off and just say—

F1: Wait a minute, you can hear—

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(laughter, crosstalk)

JAMIE STONEY: -- closeup so we can cut it in.

STURGES: Well we'll go back to spreading the white cloth?

GEORGE STONEY: No just start with the first time you went in the mill.

STURGES: Yeah. Now? When I first went in the Hermitage Mill in Camden, I went in --

GEORGE STONEY: I'm sorry let's just start again and tell me how you were when you did that.

STURGES: I don't know. I must -- I wasn't quite 11 years old.

GEORGE STONEY: Ok.

JAMIE STONEY: One more time, say it again.

STURGES: I was not quite 11 years old when I went in the Hermitage Mill in Camden. I went with my aunt in there and so -- that lived in Camden at that time, and I, ah, put up the end, you know, and it was very easy to me. So they put me on a side that afternoon. Well, a day or two after that I walked to work 00:19:00with these girls. And I come home -- when I come home, my head itched me so bad till, oh, you -- it was terrible. So I got a piece of white cloth and I laid it down and commenced combing with a fine-toothed comb. And it was lice, what they called head lice. I says, "Oh, my Lord," and I was going on when the girls come in. Says, "Honey, don't get mad at us." Says, "Everybody in there's got 'em," says, "They even on the roping." So I said, "Daddy, we got to move." I made 75 cents for running that side the coupla days. I says, "We got to move. We can't stay here. I don't want them thing, uhm." So he was ready to go, too. (laughs)

GEORGE STONEY: Now why did you move so often?

STURGES: Well, it was just that he wasn't satisfied with the jobs that he was 00:20:00on. And, ah, just we didn't like it.

GEORGE STONEY: What did your father do in the mill?

STURGES: He run cards.

GEORGE STONEY: Just say, "My father ran cards—"

STURGES: My father ran carbs -- cards in the mill. He was what they call a card stripper. He stripped cards is what it was, and he had to wear a mask and he was doing it where that cotton was going, just like you were a fog all the time. Yeah.

GEORGE STONEY: Do you think that hurt his health?

STURGES: Yes.

GEORGE STONEY: Just tell about that.

STURGES: Definitely, I do. It was for years that he -- he laid his coughing and all that on, ah, getting shot when he was just a boy -- he and his brother out hunting? And Daddy stood upon a stump just about the time Uncle Ashley got ready to shoot the rabbit and just the sprinkles, you know, and went. And that left scars on Daddy's lungs. So they tested him for TB and everything else, but they never did find nothing. They called it, ah, emphysemia, I believe. And, 00:21:00ah, I really don't think it was that. I think it was a-working in all that cotton and everything that caused it, but, you know, you mustn't say things like that, huh?

GEORGE STONEY: Why not?

STURGES: Well, I'll tell you something that happenend one time. My uncle, Thomas Gipper -- he's passed away now -- he and a Mr. Balentine went up in North Carolina somewhere where they did have a union, were starting a union. He picked up a lot of the literature and as he was coming back through the Aragon Flat down there, they called it, he looked and Mr. Balentine was a-letting these papers float out the window. And so they fired Uncle Thomas and the other one, I don't think he had a job. But, anyway, everywhere that man would go -- he was 00:22:00a jacquard loom, ah, worker, you know, (clears throats) but he -- he would go and stay about three weeks (clears throat) and they'd find it out and they'd fire him there. He had a terrible time. They blackballed everywhere he'd go. And so finally he went over here to this little mill at what they call Red River over here. They paid off in loonies(?) and they had what they called a company store, and that was where you could spend 'em, you know. So I've been through quite a bit of it and didn't hear too much about unions. The people was scared to death of it, scared to even breathe it, you know. You'd lose your job. Then what would you do? And they'ad make like it wasn't that, but it was that, I feel sure.

JAMIE STONEY: What was a loony? Was that company script?

STURGES: That's, ah, it was like a dime --

GEORGE STONEY: Just start, loonies were like a dime.

STURGES: The loonies were like a dime. They looked like a silver piece of money. Now I don't know if there was any bills. I didn't see that. I wish I had kept one, but people needed 'em, you know, and they spent 'em as they got 'em, of course. But, ah, that's what they paid off in.

JAMIE STONEY: So it was company money?

STURGES: Yes.

JAMIE STONEY: And you couldn't use it anywhere?

STURGES: Well, they would exchange it. They would exchange it, yeah.

JAMIE STONEY: Would other merchants take it?

STURGES: I don't know. I don't know about that, but they would at that store.

JAMIE STONEY: Because we've heard a few stories about other merchants that would take company money, company script, but at a 50% discount.

STURGES: Well now, it could have been. I don't know. (clears throat) Uncle Thomas didn't stay there very long. Excuse me. (clears throat)

GEORGE STONEY: Could you talk about the company store?

STURGES: Well, I never was in it in my life, but now they've made a mill out of it. What is it called? Something kinda like Fire Yarn over in Clover. I can't think of the name of that thing now, but it's in Red River.

GEORGE STONEY: Do you remember ever when the National Guard was here?

STURGES: I heard 'em talking about it, but not a great deal.

GEORGE STONEY: You never saw them?

STURGES: No.

GEORGE STONEY: Ok.

STURGES: I never saw that.

GEORGE STONEY: Ok, Ron, do you have any questions?

RON: No.

GEORGE STONEY: Ok Jamie?

JAMIE STONEY: (inaudible)

GEORGE STONEY: Do you have anything that you would like to tell us?

STURGES: Not really. Only times is better now than they were then. I can't say they're good, but (laughs) they're better'n they were then.

GEORGE STONEY: What about voting? When did you first start voting?

STURGES: I've never voted in my life. I'm sorry.

GEORGE STONEY: Why not?

STURGES: Well, I just never did. I -- I just don't, ah, (laughs) --

GEORGE STONEY: Well, ok there's a family secret here.

STURGES: I can't understand what she's—

F1: She didn't want to serve on a jury.

STURGES: Mo that's it, that's realy the truth. I didn't want to go up there –

GEORGE STONEY: I see, well ok.

STURGES: No.

F1: I'm the voter.

JAMIE STONEY: Why, is it because you didn't want to judge somebody maybe you knew?

STURGES: Well, I don't want to judge nobody, because if you're not there and you don't see it, a lot of times you get mixed up. There's these mistrials and all that stuff, you know. Whenever I did go with my husband -- he served on juries lots of times -- and I was so tickled because the boy come out of it (inaudible) 00:26:00and I got called down. It liked to scared me to death! (laughs) But I guess I could go if I had to. Now I don't have to, so I don't have to worry about it.

GEORGE STONEY: Now (inaudible) in some places the churches got messed up with either union or anti-union. Did you church ever get messed up like that?

STURGES: Not that I know or have ever heard of. No. It tries to stay -- the one I got to tries to stay on the Lord's side and that's it. It don't, you know, straddle the fence, so to speak.

GEORGES STONEY: Ok I think we got that.

JAMIE STONEY: Ok, I'm just gonna pull back.

GEORGE STONEY: Ok.

JAMIE STONEY: Just keep your hands in cause I'm getting real close to you.

GEORGE STONEY: Ok , if you hand me my camera I might get a couple of stills here. Yeah beautiful, ok hand me my – the camera.

STURGES: No.

GEORGE STONEY: Let's see what kind of exposure I can get.

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GEORGE STONEY: Uh action!

GERALDINE ORR: Aunt Mabel, we'd better get started for the family that needs some food, packing it.

STURGES: Well, what would you suggest that I put in there? What do you think they could use most?

ORR: Well, give 'em a jar of that soup and a jar of tomatoes.

STURGES: Just the routine stuff?

ORR: Right. Just a little of --

STURGES: (inaudible). This is delicious. It's vegetable soup. That'd go good.

ORR: Well, that's good.

STURGES: Pickles to go with it.

ORR: Here, give them some of this cabbage pickle you just made.

STURGES: Yeah, that's nice. The kids can enjoy that. It's not hot.

ORR: Here's some pear honey that you made the other day.

STURGES: Oh, yeah, that should go good.

ORR: Have you got some hot peppers over there?

STURGES: Yes, and this is just the plain tomatoes. That's good fixed most any way.

ORR: When you get through there, we might put, ah --

STURGES: And this is the peaches.

ORR: -- (crosstalk) peaches. Oh, you've got peaches to spare.

STURGES: I've got some canned peaches, but we also have some fresh peaches and apples and --

ORR: Well, here's some of the real hot peppers to put.

STURGES: Yeah, maybe they'll like that.

GEORGE STONEY: What about some of that jam?

ORR: That's in the box there.

STURGES: Oh, yes.

ORR: The kids can eat that.

STURGES: That is pear preserves. They'll love that. That about it?

ORR: Yes, I think that's about it unless you want to give 'em some of these peaches down here.

STURGES: Well --

ORR: The kids might eat -- want to eat some of those.

GEORGE STONEY: Tell us where all that stuff was grown or you found it.

STURGES: (inaudible)

ORR: This -- these peaches here came from between Chesnee, South Carolina, and Fingerville, South Carolina, the white rose peach.

STURGES: The pear preserves came from a tree at the old Sturges homeplace. Of course, the peaches, they come from different places that I have in here, and the tomatoes were grown here at, ah, the Sturges place. So is that about it?

ORR: Well --

GEORGE STONEY: Okay. I think that does it.

STURGES: Okay?

GEORGE STONEY: I thank you. You were good.

JAMIE STONEY: Could we just get one little wide shot here?

GEORGE STONEY: Ok.

JAMIE STONEY: We'll be alright in a moment.

GEORGE STONEY: You can start unloading it now.

JAMIE STONEY: Yeah just start unloading it.

GEORGE STONEY: Ok, I'm just gonna--