Bill Winn Interview 4

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BILL WINN: My name is Billy Winn and this is my house behind us. And I was born 00:06:00right up there in that window you see up there and I grew up looking out over the Indian lands out there. I used to see the Indians and smoke signals and things coming. And that's what made me what I am today.

GEORGE STONEY: Can you take us inside?

WINN: Yes, but mother ---mother's a little weird I eh has to do with dogs I – I don't want to explain it if I don't have to.

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JAMIE STONEY: (inaudible) we're rolling.

WINN: I – This house ehm behind me is the old (McElhaney?) home built in the 1850s and 60s. It was for many years in Columbus a school eh so-called for (dinner toaders?) the little children who carried baskets and buckets of food to the workers in the mill. Eh, until World War I children in the mills in Columbus 00:07:00eh could work as young as 12 years of age. And actually younger than that if they were orphans or if they had no other means of support of if their mothers or fathers were dependent. So we had six and seven and eight year old children working in the cotton mills here. 66 hour weeks by the way were minimum. Eh, after WWI, eh, we, we had some legislation which raised the legal age to be employed in our cotton mills to 14 years of age. But still there were exemptions possible if you eh were a hardship case. (Dinner toaders?) were required to go to school 12 weeks a year. And this school, eh, which was both for boys and girls, eh, was in operation eh throughout the first half of the 20th century. 00:08:00Children would come here in the morning and eh leave eh usually at around 11 o'clock to go get their pails of, of food or baskets of food and walk the mile or two miles either up to Little Swift or down town to Muscogee and Eagle and Phenix. Some children would make two trips and three trips a day. They got paid oh a quarter a week or 50 cents a week for doing this, depending on how many adults they served. It would take about an order, eh, an hour for a child to walk from here to the mill and home to get food and to the mill and back. So if you had two or three eh adults you were required to feed, it could take three hours or four hours a day to do it. Therefore, the educational opportunities for the children was minimal. They were taught here basic eh reading and writing. 00:09:00Eh. There were some rules about child labor that eh required the child to be at least able to sign his or her name before they could be employed in the mills beyond a certain age and so some effort was made to teach them at least minimal skills in reading and writing. From this portico up here you can look out over the Chattahoochee River to the Indian lands and to (Ingershall?) hill. (Ingershall?) hill was where the Ku Klux Klan used to meet and when I was a boy and where they would burn crosses from time to time. The Ku Klux Klan would also, which was very active in the mill and in the police department, eh would also take ehm mill workers who were errant in their behavior eh in the opinion of eh certain people in the community and take them over to (Ingershall?) hill and frequently if they were male beat them or strip them and beat them and 00:10:00sometimes eh subject them to other eh mistreatment, punishment and then eh bring them back home. And one incident that I have uncovered here was involved a couple of policemen who broke into a mill worker's house to punish him one night eh dressed in Ku Klux Klan robes one came in the back door and one came in the front door eh only he had been forewarned eh at that time he was quite a young man and he killed both of them with (his?) shotgun. And eh that case was eh never came to trial in Columbus. Eh, the Ku Klux Klan was tied in very closely eh to eh discipline in the mills and also with the police department. The Columbus police department was for many years here eh the head quarters of the Ku Klux Klan and the meetings, actual meetings of the Ku Klux Klan were held in the was held in the police department. Ehm, this is the little town, Columbus 00:11:00is the little town where Julian Harris, the son of Joel Chandler Harris won a Pulitzer Prize in the 1920s for his editorials against the Klan and eh and it has been a very active force in this community and in the mills eh throughout most of the 20th century. Not now, it has, the Klan has ehm is not anywhere near as powerful as it used to be. Eh but when I was a boy growing up here eh it was the force to be reckoned with not only in the society at large but in politics and in getting jobs and keeping jobs ehm so the Klan is linked with the anti-labor movement in this town, the anti-union movement and with, the general eh textile world, the larger textile world here.

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GEORGE STONEY: Now there seems to be a contradiction because (inaudible).. all the unions and (the end of the parades?) there was a eh (inaudible Ku Klux Klan summer school? And the end of the labor day parade? Inaudible).. Can you explain that?

WINN: Yes, ehm, the Klan was violently anti-union eh because the Klan of course was, was violently anti-black and it's no coincidence that the head of the Ku Klux Klan here was the, was a the Reverend Johnson who was eh head of the Ku Klux Klan and who published eh a newspaper here that was an anti-union and anti-black newspaper. Those two themes are closely linked in the history of this city. And really, and really in the history of textile workers and unions throughout the South. So you frequently saw ehm union people eh who would 00:13:00demonstrate separately from eh Ku Klux Klaners. Ehm, real union workers, AFL workers or other workers, eh, didn't associate with the Klan and vice versa. And one of the hidden stories of violence here is the conflict between the union workers and organizers who must have been awfully brave men and the Klan which was very powerful.

GEORGE STONEY: You must be hot.

WINN: No, I'm fine. Just my head is hot.

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JAMIE STONEY: Rolling. OK, Bill.

WINN: Behind me you'll see what's left of what used to be ehm a large number of cotton warehouses in Columbus and in this particular instance it's the WC 00:14:00Bradley Warehouse which is still used here by the WC Bradley Co. Old man WC Bradley came up to Columbus right before the Civil War from southwest Georgia and eh opened a warehousing and shipping company. You can't see it from where you are there but just behind me to my left is the river and that's where the river boats came to get the cotton that Mr WC would ship down river to ports in Apalachicola, New Orleans and eh elsewhere. WC Bradley was one of a small number of men, four, five men, who dominated the city's economic life through control of the textile industry and the cotton industry for more than a century here, well over a century. The mill owners included, in addition to men like WC Bradley, a large number of New Englanders, the (Kyles?) and the Swifts and the 00:15:00(Elgises?) and others, the Youngs, who came south either immediately before the war or shortly thereafter and made heavy investments in the mills in Columbus. These families are sometimes viewed, by locals particularly, as still controlling the town's economy and its social life. Columbus is one of those textile towns that was purely textiles eh for nearly a century and and had no real competing industries. One of the reasons is that certainly the eh people who controlled the mills did not want competing industries in here because of the eh threat to raise the wage level. And there are many people in Columbus today, in fact, I just did a survey of some 4000 people, and one of the suspicions people in Columbus still have is that well-paying industries are kept 00:16:00out of this city today by the same families and/or agents of the textile industry. Interestingly enough this town, Columbus, has the lowest manufacturing wage of any town in the state of Georgia eh and that is eh that has been true for many years. It also is last in some sixty-two southeastern cities as far as job growth is concerned. So, the depressed economic picture has been perpetuated in Columbus, eh, and again some people would say that it's the result of the attitude fostered initially by the people who owned and controlled the mills.

GEORGE STONEY: Perfect, ok Jamie, just get (inaudible)

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GEORGE STONEY: Action.

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WINN: The Columbus Ledger Enquirer for which I work eh has been in operation here in Columbus since really before the war. It was owned most of that time by a series of private individuals and eh is now owned is now part of the Knight Ridder chain and in a sense its history parallels the history of the mills you see behind me in the background here which have also been purchased eh recently in the 60s and 70s really by eh large corporations, Fieldcrest, Canon etc. The mill eh the mills had eh this is the mills had a a eh eh anti-union stance throughout most of their history here so has this newspaper the Columbus Ledger Enquirer. In fact, this has been a newspaper that is known eh throughout the south as having a very strong anti-union ehm policy. During eh most of the 00:20:00strikes in Columbus and most of the violence here in the mills starting in the 1880s and going eh really until the 1930s eh the newspaper supported management eh which is not surprising. The owners of the newspaper and the owners of the mills were friends eh they eh socialized together they were members of the country club here they were members of the big (inaudible) club today eh their families spent a good deal of time together and they had this, they were members of the same boards of directors, of the bank, eh and frequently served on the boards of directors of, of their own companies; that is the publisher would serve on the board of directors of the bank or on the board of directors of the cotton mill and vice versa. So it eh we had here in Columbus just as in most southern textile towns our our big news. That is our small group of business men 00:21:00who dominated the city's economic and social life. And the newspaper played its role eh in that eh just like the other businesses, just like the mills.

(inaudible crosstalk)

GEORGE STONEY: Eh, I think we gotta try that again it could (inaudible) and make it much briefer and much more like Columbus was no different from other Southern towns.

WINN: OK

GEORGE STONEY: The mills and the newspapers were pretty much tied together

WINN: OK

GEORGE STONEY: and then we can do our pan on tie it together you see

WINN: Oh, OK,

GEORGE STONEY: and then we can go on from there.

WINN: Alright.

JAMIE STONEY: still rolling.

WINN: Columbus was really no different from other textile towns in the South. The newspaper and the textile mills and the other major businesses in the city were tied together eh they supported each other. The owners and management eh 00:22:00supported each other. The newspaper…

(STONEY?): Hold it, hold it, I'm sorry.. (inaudible)

JAMIE STONEY: We're rolling

WINN: The newspaper here, the Columbus Ledger Enquirer is really no different from eh other newspapers eh in the South and in particular in its relation to the textile mills and to other businesses eh they were mutually supporting the for most of its history the Columbus Ledger Enquirer had a very pro management very anti-labor union stance. Eh in the 1940s a movement to unionize the paper was broken by management here. During the 1934 strike and the earlier strikes the newspaper was very strong, a very vocal supporter of the ehm management eh textile mill's management in the city which it eh remains today by the way. It's still very anti union.

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GEORGE STONEY: Ok, I'm sorry I'm just

JAMIE STONEY: I'm waiting for the (line?)

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JAMIE STONEY: We're rolling again

WINN: Columbus is no different from other towns, the newspaper and the mills work together. The management of one supports the management of the other. Both are very anti-union. And, eh, very much pro management.

GEORGE STONEY: Fine, that's it, then we can come back to you, all of that, that's fine.

WINN: Ok.

GEORGE STONEY: Thank you Jamie ok, we can come back to

JAMIE STONEY: Ok, we can come back to him.

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