CYNTHIA CHATTIS: because I don't drive…
GEORGE STONEY: OK, [Doris?] [send this?] OK?
F1 [DORIS?]: You want me to ask her now?
STONEY: Yeah.
CHATTIS: Mamaw, do you remember the first day you went to work?
F1: Yeah.
CHATTIS: You remember walking into the mill –
F1: Yeah.
CHATTIS: Were you scared?
F1: Sure.
CHATTIS: Was it real noisy?
F1: Well, the cloth room wasn't too bad.
CHATTIS: Yeah?
F1: No.
CHATTIS: Did you – how old were you when you went in there?
F1: I was thirteen.
CHATTIS: So you quit school, right?
F1: I quit school in the fifth grade.
CHATTIS: Really? Did you have to quit?
F1: No.
CHATTIS: You didn't have to?
00:01:00F1: They just didn't make me go back. I lived with my grandparents and they
didn't make me go. I walked from North Cooleemee to the old schoolhouse up here. And Rose Tatum was my teacher. And I didn't like her. And in the fifth grade I just quit school and got me a job in the cloth room and went to work.CHATTIS: You remember when you went in the spinning room?
F1: Yes. Right after I got married.
CHATTIS: Was the lint real bad then?
F1: Yes. Terrible.
CHATTIS: Did anybody ever call you a linthead?
F1: Yeah. (laughs)
CHATTIS: You remember that word? Those words?
F1: (laughs) I remember that word. We had an old Swiss brooms we'd brush off
with some, when we'd start home, and then we had air hose. But they wouldn't let us use it. They wou -- if they caught us using the air hose, to blow it off of us, they'd scold us and make us quit. But sometimes we'd slip around, use air hose and blow the lint off of us. But we was called lintheads. 00:02:00CHATTIS: How'd you feel about being called a linthead?
F1: I didn't like it, of course!
CHATTIS: I bet not!
F1: (laughs) Called us cotton mill trash.
CHATTIS: That's more or less changed now.
F1: Yeah.
CHATTIS: Yeah.
GEORGE STONEY: What -– who did that? And why?
F1: I don't know why. Just people from other places, they said, they North
Cooleemee cotton mill trash, lintheads.CHATTIS: So they looked down on cotton mill workers as a lower class of citizens …
F1: Right. Especially people in Knoxville.
CHATTIS: Really?
F1: Yeah.
CHATTIS: Mm.
STONEY: How did it – (inaudible) Ask her if she'd ever been in a mill before.
CHATTIS: Oh OK, I forgot. Had you ever been in a mill before? Before you went to
work there?F1: Yes. I went to – I was in a mill in Greensboro, White Oak. I guess I was
– I guess I might have been about twelve then. 00:03:00CHATTIS: Twelve years old working in a mill?
F1: But I didn't work there very long. And we moved to North Cooleemee.
CHATTIS: What'd you do over there?
F1: I tacked.
CHATTIS: Tacked. Was there any difference working over there and working down
here in Cooleemee?F1: Well, I can't remember too much about it.
CHATTIS: Yeah I bet.
F1: But I worked.
CHATTIS: Mm.
GEORGE STONEY: Now. We were wondering about all the, I mean, the parents who
worked in the mills and the children. How did they look after the children? How'd they take care of the children? Did the children bring the, the babies down to be nursed in the factory? (inaudible)F1: Well, a part-time –
GEORGE STONEY: (inaudible)
CHATTIS: Let me ask you, OK? OK. Do you remember, when people worked in the
mill, who took care of the children?F1: Well, we had a colored girl part of the time. Part of the time I worked one
shift after this split shifts, I worked one shift, my husband worked another 00:04:00shift. When he worked he'd – when I worked he took care of 'em. When he worked, I took care of 'em. And part of the time we had a colored girl.CHATTIS: Did they bring the babies down there for the women to feed 'em --
F1: No.
CHATTIS: To nurse 'em?
F1: No. Some of – some of the women at one time or another would go out to
nurse the babies.CHATTIS: Outside?
F1: Yep. Go home.
CHATTIS: Go home?
F1: Yeah. But I never did.
CHATTIS: And they'd have to come back to work after that?
F1: Yeah.
CHATTIS: Yeah. F1: They'd go home for say, depending on where they lived, for
maybe an hour.CHATTIS: Mm.
GEORGE STONEY: Ask her if she remembers what she -- they paid the colored girl.
CHATTIS: Do you remember what you paid the women to look after the children?
F1: I believe it's three dollars a week.
CHATTIS: Three dollars a week.
F1: (Laughs)
GEORGE STONEY: (inaudible)
CHATTIS: Now you can't find a babysitter for three dollars an hour. (laughs)
F1: (laughs) I think it was three dollars a week. And she did the housework, too.
00:05:00CHATTIS: Did she do the cooking too?
F1: Some. She done some cooking, but not all of it.
CHATTIS: I remember we had one –
F1: Her name was Tilly.
CHATTIS: Tilly.
F1: And then –- another one, let's see, I – [Clemens?], Bessie [Flemens?]?
And her mother, I can't think of her mother's name, but Bessie Flemens used to clean up and stay some. And Aunt [Mag?], we called her Aunt Mag, she helped clean up and look after the kids some. The last one I had was Tilly, a young black girl.CHATTIS: I remember, you know, colored ladies looking after us when I was
little. Guess one that sticks out in my mind the most was named Louise. And she would pile all the neighborhood children in her car and --F1: Yeah, I don't remember -–
CHATTIS: -- take us up to her house and give us ice cream and bring us back. (laughs)
00:06:00F1: Yeah, I don't remember her.
[break in video]
GEORGE STONEY: (inaudible)
CHATTIS: You know, Mamaw, I didn't know – I didn't know about all this
stuff until we started talking. You know, about things that happened in the mill and happened around town and all this. And you know, we found this picture of you, this old picture –F1: Yeah.
CHATTIS: You remember this picture?
F1: Sure!
CHATTIS: When was it made?
F1: Down here on Cross Street, on the front porch.
CHATTIS: What year was that?
F1: I don't know, but I was thir -— fourteen.
CHATTIS: Oh.
F1: Figure it out.
CHATTIS: You were pretty back then. Well, you still are, but you know, you were pretty.
F1: (laughs)
CHATTIS: Those shoes, though. Those shoes lace all the way up?
F1: Yeah, they was button shoes.
CHATTIS: Were they?
F1: Yeah, had a button hook. You took that hook and put it on them buttons and
pulled it through the button hole.CHATTIS: Mm. It take a long time?
F1: Yep.
CHATTIS: Did it? (laughs)
F1: I was married in them shoes.
CHATTIS: Were you?
00:07:00F1: Yeah.
GEORGE STONEY: Ok, the next one.
CHATTIS: This one here.
F1: That's part the spinning room, but I can't remember what -- what it was for.
CHATTIS: Really?
CHATTIS: This is Papaw right here, right?
F1: Yeah.
CHATTIS: These ladies that run the spinning frames?
F1: Yeah, they were spinners.
CHATTIS: Yeah. Looks like it was made during Christmas or something like that,
'cause they've got presents in their hands.F1: I can't remember what it was made for.
CHATTIS: Yeah.
GEORGE STONEY: Where are you?
CHATTIS: She's not in here.
F1: I'm not on there.
GEORGE STONEY: OK. OK, next.
F1: Must have been special birthdays or something. I really can't remember.
CHATTIS: Yeah. You remember this one?
F1: Yeah, that was made – husband in the office. In the spinning room. Sitting
behind the desk. 00:08:00CHATTIS: See what else we got in here. Is that you and Papaw?
F1: Yeah.
CHATTIS: Yeah. Where that was – that looks like it was made in the mountains.
F1: It was.
CHATTIS: Yeah.
GEORGE STONEY: OK, now, pull out the newspaper.
CHATTIS: OK. This is a old newspaper.
GEORGE STONEY: That was, uh, a mill –- ask her that, if that was a mill –-
CHATTIS: So was this a mill paper?
F1: Mm hm.
CHATTIS: Mill put it out?
F1: Yeah. Come out every week or every month, I don't remember which, maybe it
was every week. It's put out by the mill. Mary White named it the Erwin Chatter.CHATTIS: Really? Mm.
GEORGE STONEY: OK. Jamie let's cut. I think we've got that. Except that I
want to just repeat them Jamie.[break in video]
00:09:00CHATTIS: Y'all going to be the talk of the town now. All these people over here -- cars from New York. I like that ring.
F1: That's my mother's ring.
CHATTIS: It's pretty.
F1: (inaudible) them [pinafores?]
GEORGE STONEY: (inaudible)
F1: (inaudible)
CHATTIS: I scratched mine.
F1: I ain't got no balance. I fall all around. I fell the other day and hurt
my elbow.CHATTIS: Really?
F1: Hurt my head. I can't get up, when I fall, I have to crawl somewhere and –
CHATTIS: Well, that's inner ear, isn't it? That's the inner ear.
F1: Well, I don't know what, no, I don't know if it's –- I don't know
what it is. Old age, they say.CHATTIS: Really?
00:10:00F1: That's what the doctor tells me.
CHATTIS: Old age –-
F1: Yeah.
CHATTIS: -- age is not the answer to everything.
F1: Aw, who knows?
CHATTIS: Everything he don't know what it is, it's old age, right?
F1: Yeah.
CHATTIS: And if you're young, everything he don't know what it is, it's a
virus. (laughs)F1: Every time you go to the doctor he says "your age." He said he
couldn't do nothing for my feet and legs.CHATTIS: (yawns) Maybe you need to go to another doctor.
F1: I went to (inaudible) and the –-
[break in video]
M1: Please don't walk on the porch, I'm rolling.
M2: Oh, OK.
JUDITH HELFAND: You know, you didn't -- we didn't know about this gentleman
over there.CHATTIS: What about him?
HELFAND: (inaudible) This man -- this man with the black hair [camera zooms in
to photo] [He's? In?] 78. 00:11:00CHATTIS: Mm hm.
HELFAND: He's been working there since he's –-
CHATTIS: Who is it?
HELFAND: -- ever since 1931.
CHATTIS: That's the – can't tell from here. Alexander?
HELFAND: Yeah. Yeah, Alexander.
CHATTIS: OK.
GEORGE STONEY: What was he doing with his hair? Was he dying his hair?
CHATTIS: Probably.
GEORGE STONEY: (inaudible) look so much younger!
CHATTIS: Ohh …
HELFAND: What color was your hair?
GEORGE STONEY: Oh, I had rich, black hair.
[HELFAND: You did?
CHATTIS: Really?
GEORGE STONEY: Yes, until I was twenty [three?] inaudible] started doing –
HELFAND: [Say?] when you started [inaudible]
GEORGE STONEY: Yes.
HELFAND: Those are friends of your daddy's, huh? Y'all went to school together?
CHATTIS: I don't know that other man.
[break in video]
CHATTIS: He's tired.
HELFAND: He's [funny?]
F1: He's got it made, doesn't he?
00:12:00[break in video]
CHATTIS: I gotta go to the bathroom. And they got me taped down.
F1: Huh?
CHATTIS: I gotta go to the bathroom and they got me taped down.
F1: Oh. (laughs)
[break in video]
GEORGE STONEY: [Are you?] settled?
CHATTIS: OK. You know, I didn't know any of this stuff that I've been
finding out until we started talking. You were – you were talking about the -- the power that the superintendent had, you know, around town.CHARLIE JORDAN: Well, they really in like Cooleemee mill village, the
superintendent, you really say he was the king. Everything went through him. If 00:13:00you got a house, you had to go to the superintendent to get one. The superintendent, anything that happened, it had to go through him. Like I got caught stealing peanuts one time, and didn't have to worry about the law. My daddy got called up in the superintendent's office on Monday morning. And the same thing happened with people, men who drank, if the superintendent would find out that they were drinking over the weekend, he would have them in his office Monday morning chewing 'em out. They really –- he didn't do a lot of firing, but, everybody was –- they were really afraid of the superintendent of the mill. And he –- in the houses, he kind of classed the people, where they lived in the town. It was his own class. It might have been by how many children 00:14:00they had, or it –- what type job they had in the plant. The people that lived on Main and Davie Street, were considered a little better-class people than the ones that lived on Duke and Watt. And it was more how he felt, not the –- not that there were people that were that much different. He just -- he thought, this guy's a little better guy than that guy.CHATTIS: That's what class he wanted to put you in.
JORDAN: That's right, what class he wanted to put you in.
CHATTIS: What, when you stole those peanuts, was there a fear that Papaw would
lose his job?JORDAN: No, huh uh.
CHATTIS: He just got chewed out.
JORDAN: No, I didn't think I'd get caught.
CHATTIS: Oh, OK. I mean, when he went to the superintendent, did he fear he was
gonna lose his job?JORDAN: No, I didn't –- no, I didn't have any fear of him losing his job.
Fact I didn't know he had to go to the superintendent. I found out after he 00:15:00-– when he got home.CHATTIS: Yep, that's life. (laughs) The hard way, too, right?
JORDAN: Yep.
CHATTIS: Did –- do you think he, somebody having power like that, did they --
did that influence bringing a union into the mill, or –JORDAN: Yes, it actually happened that – like, a young girl got pregnant. She
wasn't married. They not only fired this -– the daddy and mother, but they run 'em out of the town. They had to move out of Cooleemee.CHATTIS: That's terrible.
JORDAN: It – I guess different towns depend on the different superintendents.
But this one was strictly -– he was a religious superintendent. But you wasn't forced to go to church or anything like that. You were a little better 00:16:00thought of if you went to church. And they lived in a different part of town. They lived on a street by theirself. All supervisors had their –- all the main supervisor, managers and superintendents and so forth, had their own section of town that they lived in.CHATTIS: Mm. They didn't want to associate with the workers, the everyday
workers. Um – Do you think was more or less like maybe slavery?JORDAN: Well, back then in the thirties, really, textile people were, I just
call 'em, they were white slaves, that's all they were. And they –- 'cause everythi – your whole life was controlled by the plant, or by the 00:17:00superintendent. Everything was owned by the company, all the stores. We did have a recreation area, it was owned by the, by the company. The drugstore, bank, all – every building was owned by the company. But the – even the doctor's office, but they –- they got 'em, they rented 'em from the company.CHATTIS: Right.
JORDAN: But the actual grocery and dry goods, clothing, appliances, was a
company store. They owned that store. And they –- they –- they got the profit from it.CHATTIS: How were the prices? Were they reasonable?
JORDAN: They were not – their prices were not unreal.
CHATTIS: Really?
JORDAN: And you could actually charge the stuff at no interest or anything like
that. And –-CHATTIS: Did you have a certain time to pay it off, though?
00:18:00JORDAN: No. Hm mm. You paid –- you told 'em what you could pay – like a
dollar a week, or whatever you could pay.CHATTIS: Really?
JORDAN: You could even charge your groceries.
CHATTIS: Hm.
JORDAN: But now you had to – you used to have to pay for your groceries in full.
CHATTIS: Just your groceries.
JORDAN: Mm hmm.
CHATTIS: Mm. Um. Do you remember the -- the efficiency people that used to come
in the mills and check the jobs?JORDAN: Yes. They –- started what they called a stretch-out system. This
started in around forty-four, it was before I got back from the service. And the –- the people in the plant called it the stretch-out system, but it was really a "Stevens" [?] system. Stevens sent an engineer in here, and he took local people and trained them as time-study and what we called frequency checkers. The 00:19:00– they studied the job and it was –- it gave you a full eight-hour job. It was – in a way, kind of unfair. They figured a fatigue time in it. And then they would have people that – what they called the frequency checkers –- that'd check different departments, different jobs, what kind of down time they had, and so forth, and if the job got over -- too overloaded, they would cut it down. If it wasn't overloaded, they'd raise it. They –CHATTIS: They ever find any that were overloaded?
JORDAN: Yes.
CHATTIS: Did they?
JORDAN: It could -– it would depend on the –- the type of stuff that they
00:20:00were running. Whether it was, like, a coarse or a fine material.CHATTIS: Yeah.
JORDAN: If you were running coarse material, it was harder to run. And you had
more breakage. And I was actually in –- a frequency checker in the -- all three departments. I'd check the spinning room one day, the card room another day, and the weave room another day.CHATTIS: Oh, you did that?
JORDAN: Mm hm.
CHATTIS: I didn't know that. (laughs)
JORDAN: Mm hm. (chuckles) I did very little time study.
CHATTIS: Oh. Yeah.
JORDAN: The time study was a better-paying job and I didn't get [to?] of it.
CHATTIS: You didn't never ride people –- you know, Mamaw was telling us
awhile ago about, she had a checker one day and said she still didn't like that checker to this day. [laughs]JORDAN: (chuckles) That was a woman.
CHATTIS: (laughs). You know, it is. (laughs)
JORDAN: Yeah. (chuckles)
CHATTIS: Did that –- did that ever have – how did people feel about that?
The checkers? 00:21:00JORDAN: Well, they were local people. And they –- I don't say they really
were too bitter at 'em. They didn't like it to say what should be checked. But they –- they didn't –-CHATTIS: [I don't?] like checked –
JORDAN: They wasn't [run?] – they wasn't real bitter at the people who did
the checking.CHATTIS: Yeah.
JORDAN: Because a lot, like me -- a lot of my kin people, I was checking my own
kin people.CHATTIS: Oh, really?
JORDAN: Yeah.
CHATTIS: How'd they like that?
JORDAN: Yeah, they didn't say anything. (chuckles)
CHATTIS: (laughs). Uh, you were telling me about --
GEORGE STONEY: OK, hold on just a moment (inaudible)
[break in video]
GEORGE STONEY: OK, roll when you're ready, Jamie.
CHATTIS: OK. Um – we were talking earlier about -– an engineer being thrown
out of the plant.JORDAN: Yeah.
CHATTIS: What happened with that?
00:22:00GEORGE STONEY: Wait, wait – slow down (inaudible, crosstalk)
[break in video]
M1: -- return in the middle of the night.
CHATTIS: You want me to start over with this question?
GEORGE STONEY: Sure.
M1: (inaudible) make sure that, um (inaudible)
M2: OK. Next is, someone knocks on the door.
CHATTIS: Or the phone rings. You were telling me about an engineer being thrown
out of the plant. What happened?JORDAN: You know, this was when they were first organizing the union. Plus they
were putting the stretch-out system in, the Stevens system. And one of the engineers come into the weave room. And my cousin raised the window and throwed him out the window. And he was lucky it was on the ground floor.CHATTIS: (laughs) Why'd they throw him out? Just 'cause?
JORDAN: Cause he was an engineer.
00:23:00CHATTIS: Did he institute the Stevens system or whatever that was?
JORDAN: He was –
CHATTIS: Or did he work in the plant?
JORDAN: He was part of the Stevens people.
CHATTIS: Oh. Oh, Ok. Did –- did anything happen to, you know, anybody in the
family -- after -- after, you know, after [it happening? the company?]JORDAN: No. Nothing to him, either.
CHATTIS: They didn't do anything to anybody after that?
JORDAN: No.
CHATTIS: (laughs) When they were striking down at this mill, did Papaw have any
kind of a, um –- did he have anything with it? Did he have to do anything like stand guard? Or anything like that?JORDAN: In the 34, when they were – these people were coming around trying to
00:24:00close the plants, it wasn't unionized. The mill officials felt that they would come into this plant and try to close it down. So they had the –- the men, that worked there, that had guns, to stand guard duty. 'Specially on the dam here, with the water, fed down and fed the water wheel that generated the power. And my daddy had a little .32 pistol, so he had to stand –- he had to stand –- they stood guard around the mill yard too. But it didn't last long until the National Guard were called in.CHATTIS: Oh, that was before the Guard came in.
JORDAN: Mm hm. That was before they got here.
CHATTIS: Oh.
JORDAN: But when they came in, a group did come here -- I don't know where
00:25:00they (coughs) where they were from Salisbury. Kannapolis or where they were from. But the National Guard had set up sandbags. They'd come down one street and the National Guard [would rout?] them out another street. And they had no more trouble with them.CHATTIS: Hmm.
GEORGE STONEY: Could you describe the National Guard here?
JORDAN: Uh. (coughs) I was fair -– I was only about nine years old at that
time. The – I knew in the mill yard they had a machine gun set up. And had sandbags around it. And the Guards actually walked around and -- fact some of them stayed here, I think two or three of 'em married girls here, before they 00:26:00left. Or after they left. That's about all I remember about what the Guards did.GEORGE STONEY: Would you think they were necessary?
JORDAN: No.
GEORGE STONEY: Talk about that.
JORDAN: I don -- I think that it was the mill officials –- uh –- thought it
would be worse than it really was. I don't think it was really as bad as they thought it would be. The mill officials thought it be bad or they wouldn't have called in the National Guard. But – far as the people, I don't think they thought it was that bad.CHATTIS: Mm. Uh -- You remember when you were little, and Mamaw was having to
work in the mill?JORDAN: Yeah.
CHATTIS: How – how did that affect you?
00:27:00JORDAN: Well, it, uh – till my mother went to work, we didn't have a heck of
a lot. And her going to work gave us more, so I reckon we were probably glad of it. Because -- I had a little bit of age on me, but my daddy worked on one shift, mother on another shift, so, we wouldn't really stay by ourself very long. It was just two of us then, me and my brother. And if it hadn't been -– we had really maybe more than a lot of children in Cooleemee did, because –- my mother had a credit with Sears and Roebuck's, and we were the first in Cooleemee to have the Sears and Roebuck's streamlined skates. I was probably one of the first to have a bicycle in this town. And when she wasn't working, 00:28:00our family had it pretty tough.CHATTIS: Yeah.
JORDAN: We'd –- we had to walk for about a mile and half to school. And then
you had to run home and eat lunch, and Daddy would fix our lunch for us.CHATTIS: They didn't have lunches at school back then?
JORDAN: No.
CHATTIS: Hmm.
JORDAN: They didn't have nothing but teachers. [chuckles]
CHATTIS: (laughs)
GEORGE STONEY: Talk about the education.
JORDAN: Well, um, I'd say –- I didn't really get a good education. It's
partly –- could be partly my fault because in my senior year, I went to work. And I lacked a half a unit of finishing high school. And I tried to go back and do that half a unit, plus work, and I just couldn't do it. It –- we had good 00:29:00teachers, and I'd say in this town, we probably had a good an education as anyone else for these times. But today my education wouldn't -- probably wouldn't equal the sixth grade now.JAMIE STONEY: Need to reload it.