Bill Winn Interview 3



GEORGE STONEY: Should have a piece of watermelon in my hand… (laughter) I usually carry a piece with me wherever I go.

BILL WINN: The mill behind me is the old Muscogee Manufacturing Company, which was for years the property of the Swift and Kyle families in Columbus. My uncle was George Kyle, and he was one of the men who owned this mill. And I worked in it, when I was a child in high school during the summers. I didn't work in the management end of it, I worked in the weave room and in the other parts of the mill. I was a painter, and I painted in the dye room and in the weave room. Weave rooms were quite -- were quite something to be in in those days. Of course the mills were not air-conditioned. This was in the fifties and forties. And they were extremely hot in the summertime, I'd say the temperature in the mill room, in the weave room, was 100 degrees plus for most of the days I worked there during the summer. The work was hard, the hours was -- were, long. It was 00:01:00a, a tough environment to work in, with cotton lint floating in the air, and the air was extremely moist and humid. Often when you breathed in and out you could see your breath. And we painted the ceiling of the weave room in the summertime. And the ceilings, of course, the heat would be trapped from the machinery, and it was much hotter than 100 degrees there, it was more like 120 degrees. But, conditions throughout the mill were awfully rough and, particularly down in the dye room, and, and also up on, in the loading sheds. It was rough work year round. The pay I think that I got, if memory serves me correct, was about 50 cents an hour. Which was, I believe, what the rest of my coworkers were making at that time. They were men who had worked in the mills virtually all their 00:02:00lives. I was of course there merely for the summertime, just as a -- as a summer laborer. They on the other hand had no other way to make a living. And this was their way of life.

GEORGE STONEY: Talk about your relationship with them?

WINN: I became good friends with a number of the people I worked with. I think two of my fellow painters, particularly, they're now both dead. They were uneducated men, I guess, by the standards of the day, that is, they had no formal education. But they knew a great deal about life, and they had seen a great deal in this mill. And had a lot of stories to tell. They were both in bad health when I knew them. One, whose name was Smith, I thought was in his fifties, but it turns out he was actually in his twenties. He had no -– from a 00:03:00bad diet, he had no teeth, and he was just in generally poor health. The other, a man I knew, was named Jones, and I thought he was in his thirties or forties, and he was –- turned out to be much younger than that, I don't know how old he was. And he died shortly thereafter too. We would go fishing together, and go out and drink a little beer together, and they would have me over to their house. Of course, I could not reciprocate, they would not come to my house. It would have embarrassed them to do that. But we were friends, nevertheless. And I got to know a number of other mill workers, I remember particularly a Leadbelly-like character, a black man here, who was a tremendously strong individual and who was used in the mills to throw around heavy – these five hundred pound bales of cotton. And as a consequence he had two hernias, had 00:04:00double hernias. When I knew him, he couldn't do any lifting. But he was a character that was very reminiscent of Leadbelly. Black people of course at that time could only work in the mills as laborers, and they did the hardest sort of labor. Throwing around a five hundred pound cotton bale on the end of a cotton hook is dangerous work indeed, but that's the sort of labor that they did in the mill. They were also sweepers, cleaners, picked up trash, all the very lowest and most menial laboring jobs, you would find blacks in.

GEORGE STONEY: Tell the story about when your uncle --

WINN: Oh. Of course, since my uncle owned the mill, I had to be very careful. And he wanted me to be careful. We didn't want the boss to know, we didn't –- my foreman, to know that I was the nephew of George Kyle. Nor certainly did 00:05:00we want my coworkers to know that. I wasn't as self-conscious about that, because I was just a boy, but we knew that it would make them uncomfortable. Throughout the summer, I -- they accepted me as just a high school kid who was working, I had a summer job. But towards the end, my uncle came into the paint shop early one morning, and reflexively, without thinking about it, I say – I said, "Hi, Uncle George," and the paint shop foreman dropped his paint bu-- his paint, into uh, his paint brush into his paint bucket and I thought my friends were going drop dead. Thereafter, they of course regarded me differently, and I realized, many, many years later, that those two men may have thought I was some sort of plant in the mill, put there to spy on them or, or whatnot. I always regretted that. I wish they had never found out.

GEORGE STONEY: Do you know anything about spying in the mills, uh, anything like that?

WINN: No, I don't. Um. I don't.

GEORGE STONEY: (inaudible) all right. OK, Jamie, that's it. Good. Thank you. You've got some stories about that. (inaudible)

[Shots of mill exterior]

[Silence]

GEORGE STONEY: (inaudible)

WINN: When you first look at these large homes in Columbus, the homes of the rich, you can -- you can easily be misled into thinking, that, ah, I recognize this, this is an old antebellum Southern community. An agricultural community. Well, some of these homes that you're seeing are tied to the plantation economy, but most of them are the homes of, or were the homes of, well-to-do 00:08:00textile mill owners and operators who came into this city in large numbers in the 1840s, and again, after the war, in the 1870s and 80s. Some of these homes are -- were built entirely with slave labor, and housed the wealthy plantation owners who lived in the city but had their plantations, their cotton farms, in the bottomlands in Alabama. After the war, when many of these people were ruined by the war, and certainly by – by slavery and by losing their labor force, by emancipation, these homes were taken over by the cotton mill owners, whose descendants in many case –- in many cases have occupied them ever since. They range from the large Corinthian-columned, typical antebellum Southern plantation 00:09:00home, to Italianate villas, costing a -- millions of dollars in money today. There's been another transition that has taken place in recent time, since the 1954 Supreme Court decision integrating public schools, many of the families of well-to-do whites in this city have moved out of Columbus to the northern suburbs, and -– where they can send their children to all-white or nearly all-white schools, and therefore have abandoned some of these homes that you're seeing here. A few have been converted into restaurants, radio stations, and the like, one or two are standing empty. Many have been razed in my lifetime, whereas you are seeing here four, five examples of this kind of home. When I was a boy growing up here in the forties and fifties, there were 00:10:00man-– a dozen or more of these homes. When the -- these homes are finally abandoned, they will represent the second time that the cotton culture in Columbus, the homes of the cotton culture in Columbus have disappeared. Previously, before the war, we had a Golden Row downtown, which was the talk of the South, and which contained homes much more magnificent than you're seeing here, which were the homes of the original settlers of this part of the country, based on land that they stole from the Indians and also planted in cotton and also the original mill owners lived downtown. Most of the homes you're seeing on this film are in [Wynnton?], an old antebellum plantation home settlement 00:11:00that was almost destroyed by the Civil War.

GEORGE STONEY: I want you to start and talk about, look at this house, [just?] imagine how much money went into it. (inaudible) as compared with the houses we've just seen on [tenement?] row.

WINN: OK. All right. Sometimes it's difficult to – especially in modern times, to tell the difference between operatives in the mill and mill owners. One of the most visible symbols, and the easiest way to see the distinction, is to compare the homes of the rich, that you're seeing here, with the homes that we saw earlier of the workers themselves. The workers' homes were by and large built by the mills themselves, and therefore they followed a standard architecture and standard form. So they could be built quickly and cheaply. They were built largely of course with paid labor, often by mill employees, the 00:12:00mill's carpenters, the mills, large mills like Bibb had a construction office and carpenters on staff. If you look by way of contrast with thee antebellum homes, you're seeing homes that were built almost entirely by slave labor. And by slave artisans. There were some free blacks involved, but basically the homes of the wealthy here were built by slave labor and largely on money that was derived from the cotton mills themselves. I might add that many mill owners in Columbus maintained residences outside of town, in fancy resort areas. Nearby would be Highlands, North Carolina, or [Ponte Vedra?], Florida or in some other exotic locale. And so many of these mill owners and their families don't spend 00:13:00the hotter months in Columbus, they vacation at their second and third homes elsewhere. The mill workers who live in the small, shotgun shanties that you see, they really lived in Columbus year-round. They couldn't get out.

GEORGE STONEY: Could you talk about the mention of the –- why the bosses went through the mills.

WINN: OK.

JUDITH HELFAND: You might want to use your uncle as an example.

WINN: OK. Of course the cotton -- the textile culture was a tough culture, and –- people who ran it and people who worked in the mills in the old days had to be tough and hardy people. And that included the mill owners and the managers, the foremans and the executives who ran the mills. I remember my uncle getting up at -- very early in the morning, 4:30 or so, six days a week and long before dawn he would be at the Muscogee Manufacturing Company, and going through the 00:14:00mill. And this was in the era of management by personal appearance. You walked through the mill and you spoke to the employees. And some people would say it was for paternalistic motives. Others would say it was out of genuine concern. You could interpret that however you wish. But the presence of the mill owner and of the executives in the mill was a constant thing. They did not turn the mill over to -- entirely to a foreman. They watched what happened in the mill. They had a very definite schedule of operations in the mill. Many of them were trained engineers, and they watched the machinery very closely because of course, a down loom, any down time was very expensive. And so they were very close supervisors of the workers. And I can remember walking through the mill with my uncle, who was knowledgeable to the smallest detail of what went on in 00:15:00the mill. And this was true of all the mills. It was a labor-intensive business and a management-intensive business at the same time.

GEORGE STONEY: Good.

HELFAND: When we were standing in front of the houses, on the -- in front of the mill houses, one of them -- the issue of

[loss of sound 15:19 - 15:25]

WINN: It's difficult today to, to get people to believe that the Lost Cause, the extreme patriotism which Southerners show for the Confederacy was in part a result of a deliberate program by the -- launched by the mill owners -- the textile mill owners and manufacturers in the United States, including those in the North. The South, following the war, was desperate for industry, and 00:16:00textiles was the most promising industry and also was in place. What happened was that a very deliberate program was instituted by the manufacturers' association, to inculcate into Southerners, poor Southerners particularly but all Southerners, that poverty was patriotic and that working for a little money was an absolute necessity if the South was going to be, quote, rebuilt, end quote. This applied to education and it's one of the reasons why we were so late coming back to public education in the South. Because education cost money, and state legisla -- state legislators and governors were loath to vote for money because that could be interpreted as unpatriotic. Well, this sort of jingoistic, bellicose patriotism that one still sees in the South today 00:17:00originated in that movement. And all of the conflicts, the disagreements that were characteristic of the South in antebellum times, and during that war, were buried. And as the -- as gradually as patriotism and lamentations for the Lost Cause was established in the minds of the people, it was very cleverly linked with racism, with an anti-black sentiment. And the wedding of the two, that is, of a rabid anti-black feelings and reverence for the Lost Cause, was a potent force and is a potent force today in all Southern politics and social life. It was a most effective way to, for example fight labor union -- the labor union movement in the textile mills, because they linked the anti-black sentiment and 00:18:00this extreme patriotism which included the necessity of working for almost nothing, as a sign of your love for the South and your patriotism for the country.

GEORGE STONEY: Could you talk about the right to work legislation and the yellow-dog contracts?

WINN: In what regard? I'm not sure I can.

GEORGE STONEY: The right to work laws came along as a part of that. And before that, getting people to sign yellow-dog contracts saying that they would never join a union. Did that happen, to your knowledge?

WINN: I don't – I know it did happen, but I don't know anything about it. I'd be talking about something I don't know anything about.

HELFAND: OK.

GEORGE STONEY: (inaudible) I think this is it.

[break in video]

M1: OK, right now (inaudible)

WINN: Using this same process that we've just been discussing –

GEORGE STONEY: No no, just (inaudible) Start off with that.

WINN: OK. Ready?

GEORGE STONEY: Mm hm.

WINN: The mill owners were thus, were able to link low wages and patriotism and belief in the old South with the belief that the labor union movement actually represented a thrust on the part of Northern mill owners to take over the Southern mills, and this became very much a part of the propaganda used to fight the labor union movement. And you ended up with a situation in which to be poor was to be patriotic and Southern and an absurd notion that in some degree persists to this day, and certainly did when I was a boy in this town. Textile wages remain, despite recent raises, very low manufacturing wages relative to the rest of the manufacturing field.

GEORGE STONEY: And the differential between the North and the South?

WINN: The differential in the wage scale between the North and the South was also a part of this, of seeing the recovery of the South as a patriotic necessity, everybody denying himself a living wage. And it helped promote the wage differential between the Northern textile worker and the Southern textile worker, a differential by the way which obtains today.

GEORGE STONEY: Uh, could we do that again and say "justification"? Using the word "justification"?

WINN: OK. You –- in –- OK. To a certain extent the difference in wage scale between Northern textile workers and Southern textile workers is justified -- was justified in the propaganda by the mill owners as a gesture –- a patriotic gesture on the part of Southern textile workers. To be poor and Southern was patriotic, and it helped create the differential -- wage differential between 00:21:00the Northern and Southern textile worker that persists to this day.

GEORGE STONEY: Good. Thanks.

(inaudible)

[break in video]

GEORGE STONEY: (inaudible) OK. Let's go.

WINN: One of the explanations and justifications for the wage differential between the Northern mill worker and the Southern mill worker was part of the propaganda of this campaign to convince the Southern mill worker that it was his patriotic duty to work for lower wages so that the South could be rebuilt. The truth was, the mills in Columbus were mills in place the same as mills in Lowell, Massatu – in Lowell, Massachusetts, and it had nothing to do with rebuilding the South. At the time that the wages in the mills in the South were the lowest it was common for a textile mill to pay dividends to its investors between 65 and 90 percent.

GEORGE STONEY: Good, solid, excellent, that's great.

[break in video]

M1: Keep it rolling.

GEORGE STONEY: All right, sir! Yes.

WINN: Of course, when I grew up here in the forties and fifties, Columbus was a small town. So you tended to know people from many socioeconomic groups. And I knew the mill owners and their families, and went to high school and elementary school with them. At Columbus High School -- in those days, the high school educational system was rather rigidly separated between vocational high school for the mill workers and children, and Columbus High School for the children of professional classes who were going to go on to college. That distinction doesn't – is not as operative today as it was in the past. Behind me you may can see the bridge over the Chattahoochee River that leads to Phenix City, a bedroom community for Columbus. For years it was the locale of many shotgun 00:23:00shacks which were built over there by the mills to accommodate their operatives who lived in Alabama. Most of these –- this housing has disappeared, just as it has disappeared in Columbus. And Phenix City is now no longer a bedroom community for the cotton textile mill industry here in Columbus. At one time a mill worker who lived in Phenix City could simply get up and leave his house and walk across the bridges leading from Phenix City into Columbus and come out right at the mill, the Eagle and Phenix, or Muscogee Manufacturing Company and go right to work at his job. So they almost lived in the mill, you might say.

GEORGE STONEY: OK.

M1: He's good. Ok fine Going to go for shot of the bridge.

[Silence]

GEORGE STONEY: Get them in We've got a whole one set up in --

M1: Yeah?

GEORGE STONEY: -- just a moment. And I think he just set me up to do the asking about the strike he said only his father talked about, the strike nobody talked about (inaudible).

JAMIE STONEY: OK, I'm gonna come off the bridge on the instant, you start going.

GEORGE STONEY: So if you could just tell that story again, to the camera.

WINN: OK.

JAMIE STONEY: Go on.

WINN: Of course, in -- I guess you could say I grew up in a mill family and that 00:25:00-- I had a grandfather who worked in the mills and I had an uncle who owned a mill. And yet despite that I heard very little discussion about strikes and union unrest, labor unrest, except from my father, who died when I was very young, twelve or thirteen years old, but I remember his telling me, with considerable anger in his voice, about conditions in the mill. And he must have talked to me at some length about the labor movement here and the strikes, because I had no other way to know about it, and I think that fueled my own interest in the subject. Unfortunately, I never knew my grandfather who worked in Muscogee County Manufacturing Company and in Eagle as a dye man. I wish I had.

GEORGE STONEY: I'm afraid I'm going to ask you to do that again because I want you to identify your father as the doctor.

WINN: Oh. OK.

GEORGE STONEY: It makes a big difference. (inaudible) start.

M1: Turning.

WINN: In a sense I guess you could say I grew up in a textile mill family. My grandfather was -- worked in the dye room, they called him a chemist but he was nothing but an employee in the dye room. And I had an uncle who owned a mill. My father was city physician here for many years, and he is the only person I ever heard talk about strikes or labor union unrest or conditions in the mill. They made him very angry. He would both go to the mills as the city physician and make regularly scheduled visits.

[break in video]

JAMIE STONEY: Rolling!

GEORGE STONEY: OK, Bill.

WINN: In a sense I guess you could say that I grew up in a textile mill family and that –- I had a grandfather who worked in the dye room. They called him a chemist, but he was nothing but a worker in the dye room. And an uncle -- I had an uncle who owned -- who was part owner of Muscogee Manufacturing Company. My father was city physician here in Columbus for many years and he's the only 00:27:00person I remember really talking about conditions in the mills, and labor unrest or union movements. My father was very much angered by what he found in the mill. I'm sure that he told me these –- he told me stories about the conditions. Sometimes he would go into the mills to treat the operatives. Sometimes they would come to him. And of course I'm sure that his father, my grandfather, told him a great deal about the conditions in the mill. But other than that, growing up here as a boy in the forties and fifties, I don't remember anybody talking about the plight of the mill worker, conditions in the mill, brown lung disease, or any of this. It was just not a part of the consciousness of people in this city outside of those involved directly in the mills themselves.

GEORGE STONEY: Cut.