Frank and Zelda Gosset Interview 2

 ZELDA GOSSET: Well, uh…

FRANK GOSSET: I'm a little hard of hearing

ZELDA GOSSET: -- conditions and trying to get out of debt with the company, that was the main --

STONEY: STONEY: Okay, talk about, uh, tell us when you first got married and what you did.

FRANK GOSSET: Man, uh, that's one for the birds, but anyway, when we went together, I went with her and she was thirteen and I was sixteen. Well, we never had an argument about boyfriends or girlfriends, it was just ordinary arguments. Then one night, the night I asked her to marry me, we'd been to a movie and walking down to the park, and up in front of a store, drugstore, they had bricks laid in there, they set laid in a pattern. I said something about the bricks and 00:01:00how they was laid in there, looked pretty nice. And she said, no they were laid so and so. And we got down sitting there in the swing, and that's the things we argued about. But they usually heated up so much that we'd break up until we meet again. We sat there that night, and she's sitting on my right --

ZELDA GOSSET: We argued and argued and argued about the way the bricks --

FRANK GOSSET: I finally said, oh hell, let's get married. She looked at me real funny and said "All right" and that ended the argument. We set a date when we were going to get married and, uh, then we wasn't settled down as married people, anything like that, you know. And she worked part time out at Cook Peabody, and I was working at the mill, the woolen mill was running full-time, but most places shut down the cotton mill and stuff a few days a week and we 00:02:00rode streetcars back then I made her and she'd come in, I'd get off of the Quinn and [she'd be full?] when she got off, and we'd go downtown to and go to the Palace of Sweets have us a ham sandwich and then a banana split, they had the best banana splits in the world, and then we'd go to a movie. And on the weekend we'd go down and stay for the late shows, and the trolleys quit running at a certain time at night. We didn't think, back then, you didn't think nothing about walking two or three miles back home. We went to the late show and go back home, if it started raining we'd duck in, they had these little old stands, hamburger, hotdog stands, and they'd stay open all night, just trying to get a dollar worth of business. We'd duck into one of them, get a hot dog or something, until it'd slack off, then walk to the next one and duck back in, get home -- sometimes it'd take all night to get back home. 00:03:00But, we did that for several years, well almost two years.

ZELDA GOSSET: Almost two years.

FRANK GOSSET: And she got in the family way, and that's actually when I got -- we got in trouble. She had morning sickness and I was working full-time. So I went down to the bank and borrowed money to pay her hospital and doctor bills, and told her to quit working. Well, she told me, said if she worked five months she'd get some hospitalization.

ZELDA GOSSET: Maternity benefits.

FRANK GOSSET: I told her if she kept getting sick like that, then heck with it, just quit. Well, two weeks after she quit, my mill went on short time. We was working two days one week, three the next, they was dividing it up, everybody. We didn't use seniority, this one worked, that one was laid off, you didn't 00:04:00have unemployment insurance, stuff like that thing. And so they was dividing it up, you work two days and we had a pretty rough time of it. It took me a little over three years, about four years to pay that bank. I went down, just got a ninety-day note and I figured I could get some overtime and then, bang, I'd go up and have the damn thing -— pardon me -— and have it renewed, hoping something'd happen, three months go by but I didn't get paid -- It's about four years before things started picking up. Thirty-nine, I think it was, this was, uh, well, actually, when I borrowed the money, you was in the family way in '35. [Charlie?] was born in '36.

ZELDA GOSSET: Thirty-five, Charlie was born in '36.

FRANK GOSSET: Thirty-five to '39, when things started picking up and getting full-time, I was able to pay the bank off.

STONEY: Now, I was asking you about the phrase "lintheads," how did people regard you as cotton mill people? Talk about that.

ZELDA GOSSET: They didn't. The lint was not in the woolen mill. But they did call the cotton mill "lintheads". But we did not have the lint in the woolen mills.

FRANK GOSSET: See, Your wool is blended 'wool-on', and, it didn't have the fuzz. In other words, it stuck together. If just a little bit dropped to the floor, it was heavy enough it went to the floor.

STONEY: How did you feel about that attitude? Did people look down on you if you lived near the cotton mills?

FRANK GOSSET: Well, the cotton mill --

ZELDA GOSSET: Yes, [even?].

FRANK GOSSET: Like I said, the wool was a little different. But if somebody said you worked in a mill, everybody already knowed they meant the cotton mill. You know what I mean?

ZELDA GOSSET: Assumed it was a cotton mill. But when they realized the 00:06:00difference, it was a little more friendly. And even to the churches, which is supposed to be, we went to a church outside of the community, because that was the nearest Methodist church. And we were always clean, we might not have the fanciest clothes in town, but we were, went to church there, but we wasn't as welcome as we could've been if we'd went in one of the churches in the village, or the community that we lived in, but we didn't, because my father wanted, he said "We're as good as anybody." And he wanted us to go to that church because there wasn't a Methodist church down there, and we were Methodist, and we did go, and he thought he was as good as anybody, and he was. And we did too. But there was a difference, the children couldn't play with 00:07:00you, if you lived down in there. They thought you's just lower class, is what it amounted to.

FRANK GOSSET: Well, I never did, when I got married, we got married mill life was something entirely new, you might say. And after we was married, we found us a house, and it was away from the millage -— the mill, in other words, we never actually, after we was married, except for a short time, stayed with her mother, until we could find a place to move, that we lived in mill town.

ZELDA GOSSET: And, shortly after that, Mother and Daddy moved out too.

FRANK GOSSET: When they started getting a better salary, both of them worked, she was an expert weaver, and he was a loom fixer, and --

ZELDA GOSSET: Then she went to [smash hand?].

FRANK GOSSET: Her older sister and her, they both got married, that just left 00:08:00two more, two at the house. And the income they had, and one thing or the other, they could get out on their own, see, get away from the mill.

STONEY: Now you told me they worked for so many years, and when they quit, they had nothing.

ZELDA GOSSET: They had no retirement.

STONEY: Could you explain that? Just say that - tell them about the situation.

ZELDA GOSSET: Well, they liquidated the mill, Mother'd worked forty-something years there and daddy, not quite as long as Mother, but they both absolutely had nothing except Social Security. It was all the income they had. Daddy did go and was a night watchman for the Linen Service Company after that. That was the only job he could get, because of his age and all, but he would --

FRANK GOSSET: There was no retirement whatsoever. I was working at the time, I had eighteen or nineteen years in there.

ZELDA GOSSET: I think it was forty-eight years my mother'd had in that plant.

FRANK GOSSET: But, uh, they'd really, some men bought the mill out from Union, Georgia. They was friends with Mr. Nixon, and when Mr. Nixon died, and he had one son that worked in the mill, that run the mill. And he had several other children, and the other children wanted the money out of it, and so, uh, these people from Union, multi-millionaires, with the understanding that they'd give him the chance to run the mill, and if he couldn't pay them back what, you understand what I mean? What they had to pay his family. And he didn't quite make it. But, uh, so they took over the mill. And we had a union in there. It was strong. And it come up time for contract, and the union wanted certain 00:10:00things added to the contract, and they said no, they just said no. And the union threatened to shut the mill down. Said, well, if you won't bargain with us, they just refused to really try to bargain with us, we said we're going to strike and shut it down. They said okay, then they turned around and beat the union to the punch and liquidated, said, two weeks, I think it was two weeks, run everything exactly like it was, and on a certain date, shut everything down, just like it there. They had yarn and everything going through the cards, and the looms loaded up with [warp?] and everything. And they just stopped it just like that, everything went, just sold everything, auctioned everything away.

ZELDA GOSSET: And then sold the building.

FRANK GOSSET: And that's when I went to the cotton mill, I was the supervisor. I went to the cotton mill. Two of them. I went one, I didn't even stay around then, on account of the lint. I think it was Fulton Bag I went to, I talked to the overseer, and he seemed real interested in wanting to hire me, the supervisor. And we went out and walked around the weave room, and this lint was just flying all over. And we went back in the office, and I told him, I says, let's just forget it, I said, I don't care to have to try to walk around and breathe in here. I says, maybe it's because I'm not used to it. But I said, I have trouble breathing like it is. I said, I just don't care to work here, I'll find something else.

STONEY: Now you told us a story about Mr. Lee.

FRANK GOSSET: Oh, Mr. Lee, they passed a law in Georgia, I don't remember just what year it was, or anything, but it was at the NRA, that the mills could not, in other words, no company could not take your whole paycheck, in other words, they had to get a junction against you, then they could just collect a certain percentage of your pay. And, Mr. Lee seen the people, a lot of people were scared they could cheat them out of two or three dollars on their pay, and they looked at it, they was scared to go to the office about it. And complain. And I went in for one or two, and I was young and independent, been that way all my life, from the time I was a baby, almost. But, anyway, he was sitting there with money in his hand, in an envelope, and tears running down his cheeks, and I thought maybe it'd messed him up, and he was scared to go see about it, and I 00:13:00walked over, and I said "What's the matter, Mr. Lee? Did they mess you up your paycheck?" He said, "No." I said, "Well what's the matter?" He says, "Frank, this's the first money I've had in my hands in eight years." I said, "What do you mean?" He says, "Well, I -- he come from Rolston, mill up there."

ZELDA GOSSET: Roswell. Roswell, Georgia.

FRANK GOSSET: Roswell, Roswell. They moved him down, put him in a house, and charged him for it. He was in debt to the company. And he never did get out of debt, he owed the company more than what he made, he never did in that length of time. If you wanted a blanket, you went to the company store, they'd order it for you. You wanted a flashlight, they'd get you a flashlight, put it on your bill, charge you whatever they wanted to. I know, uh, boy was going up, about a 00:14:00mile up to Big Star one day, and not going in, and I didn't -— we didn't buy hardly any groceries, like I said, we'd take off downtown and get a ham sandwich, banana splits, and he says, "Let's go, Come on, Frank, go to the grocery store with me." I says, "You've got a company store right here. He said, "I can't afford to eat -- buy down there." So, I never used to buying groceries, Mother and Dad always done that, you know.

STONEY: I want you to go back and tell me the story about Mr. Lee, a little shorter, so that we can use it with a little less time, because it's an important story.

FRANK GOSSET: I don't know where I started.

ZELDA GOSSET: About Mr. Lee outside crying.

FRANK GOSSET: Then -- I'm pulling a blank on it.

ZELDA GOSSET: [Laughing] Pulling a blank.

FRANK GOSSET: But, but, see I told you I think about this guy come in, Mr. Lee getting in debt and all that.

STONEY: That's it.

FRANK GOSSET: I was starting to tell you about going to the grocery store. I checked, just to find out, they charged twenty-five cents a can for tomatoes in the company store. You'd see everything at Big Star four for nineteen cents. They'd charge forty-five cents for, I bought a pound of pork chops one day, forty-five cents. But I paid for it, you know, I wanted it that night, didn't want to go up to the other store. I knew I was paying outrageous, but pork chops 00:16:00at that time were running twelve, thirteen cents a pound in the Big Star, them store.

ZELDA GOSSET: In West End, there.

FRANK GOSSET: In West End, there. But, uh, that was the difference. I was reading the paper, it couldn't get out of debt, when it was in debt, and the company's taking all the money away from them to get out of debt.

ZELDA GOSSET: But Mr. Lee, he was one that told him that after using that -- getting the money he could go buy groceries.

FRANK GOSSET: He told me, "I can go buy groceries anywheres I want to now." He said, "I'm going to the grocery store and get some good groceries now." Because they, the groceries in the company store was so high. They had to skimp to keep going too far into debt. You know what I mean?

ZELDA GOSSET: He didn't have but four dollars and something, but he could buy enough for a week's groceries with that. To feed his family.

FRANK GOSSET: You could go, you could go back then, I lived, oh, I guess about 00:17:00as far from here up to the corner, when my daughter was a baby, '36 I think, '37, you'd go in the grocery store, and for two and a half, three dollars, you could buy more groceries, and I -- I was a strong man at that time, two great big grocery bags, firm full of groceries, and it'd be so heavy, I'd have good steak and pork chops and everything in it, and there's a wall down there, about two and a half feet high. And I'd get down there, and I'd sit down and rest my arms to walk the rest of the way home. That's how much groceries you could buy. But you'd go in that company store and that much money, you wouldn't even have a half a bag full.

STONEY: Now, uh, Mrs. Gosset, you told us about a Miss Twait and a rat, tell that story again.

ZELDA GOSSET: [Laughing] Miss Twait, she was up in age, she had grown children 00:18:00too, and a rat run up her leg one time, and she was not a lady that cursed often, but she cursed, coming out of her clothes, in that mill, with that rat, they wanted to know what in the world was the matter with her, and she says "A rat ran up under my dress," she had a long dress on, it went up under there, and run up her leg, she had to get it out. But she really did curse like a sailor, and she ordinarily didn't do that.

STONEY: Tell us about conditions in the mill.

ZELDA GOSSET: Well, the conditions was bad in some respects, they're cleaned up now. But, they did chew tobacco, they did dip snuff, and they'd spit it on the floors. And, uh --

FRANK GOSSET: It wasn't nothing, doing, see a loom fixer walk behind you, pull the wool apart, and spit down under the loom. Maybe half hour later, he'd be 00:19:00called up there fixing the harness or something.

ZELDA GOSSET: But it was rather dirty at one time.

STONEY: Now, do either one of you remember, uh, the '34 strike, I believe you were telling me about what happened when the National Guard was there.

FRANK GOSSET: Yeah, uh --

STONEY: Just hold it just a moment there's a plane going over head.

FRANK GOSSET: The --

STONEY: Hold it just a moment.

ZELDA GOSSET: The airplane. (break in audio)

STONEY: All right, sir.

FRANK GOSSET: Uh, they called a strike, and, at the time, I knew nothing about the union or anything else, like I say, I was nineteen or twenty years old. And I didn't really have too much understanding or anything of it. And so I went on and worked. And the pickets'd be out there, and, to tell you the truth, they knew me, and not trying to be smart or anything like that, nobody fooled with me. I can handle any of them very easily, you know what I mean? And so, they'd talk to me, but they didn't try to block me. And so I went ahead and worked, and they'd try to talk to me into staying out. And then one morning, I went in, and here was the National Guard out there. National Guard fellows out there. 00:21:00And those that would try to go in, some of them would go in but they were scared, you know. But the National Guard, they had the bayonets on them, and they came up through with they bayonets, and they'd start poking you with them if you didn't get back out—the strikers didn't get back out of their way. As far as I know, wasn't none of the fellows there were took to the concentration camp -— I call it concentration camp. They put up tents outside of Fort [Mac?] out there, down at the backside, on [Campbellton?] Road. And put a fence around it, and put up tents, and kept them down there. How long they kept them there, I don't know, but I don't know of anybody that was actually taken from my plant. And they finally, we got a union in. Your cotton mills didn't. But we did. And they started bargaining, and one thing and the other, 00:22:00we had some, well, lawyers got into it, and we had some pretty good fellows that, they wasn't rowdy, you know what I mean? They wasn't trying to make trouble. And they got a contract, and I began to realize that it was a good thing, because before that they got a union in there, if the overseer had a friend come from some other town or something and wanted a job, he'd just come up and tell you, say, "You go and get your time, we don't need you no more." You'd say, "Well, what've I done? What's wrong?" "Nothing. We just don't need you no more." And then he'd put his buddy on the job. And when they'd pull that after the union got in there, that man went back to work. And then I began to realize, the union was a good thing, to me. They 00:23:00couldn't treat people like trash no more. That's the way they -— and I joined the union after that. But like I said, first I didn't see no sense in it.

STONEY: Now, you talked about your parents and the union.

ZELDA GOSSET: They, uh, they didn't join the union right off, and then they finally did. They went in during the strike and worked, although they's a little apprehensive, I don't know whether Mother went in so much --

FRANK GOSSET: I think your mother stayed out.

ZELDA GOSSET: She stayed home, Daddy did go to work.

FRANK GOSSET: Right. They was concerned with retaliation or something. And they was concerned about that, but.

ZELDA GOSSET: They did join the union later, like Frank in a sense, you know. They realized it was --

FRANK GOSSET: Well, when I, I realized what it was, I explained to them, also, you know what I mean? Why the union's good. They get the vacation, they get a 00:24:00vacation. And if you're sick, you didn't get nothing while you were out sick, but you weren't penalized.

ZELDA GOSSET: You had a job.

FRANK GOSSET: Threaten your job, or something like that, you know? I'd seen people, before the union, they'd come in half-dead, scared if they stayed out, they'd fire them. And it was bad, even in the woolen mill, but it was worse in the cotton mill.

ZELDA GOSSET: In the cotton.

FRANK GOSSET: They'd, they'd, cotton mill is just -- if you get right down to it, I don't believe, they talk about the nigger slave, but I don't believe the nigger slaves was treated as bad as the people in the cotton mill was.

STONEY: Well, now, we've been talking about, I was over at LaGrange the other day, and a fellow was telling me what a wonderful thing Mr. -- oh okay, we just have to change the battery and then we'll get back to it. (break in audio) All right Mr. Gosset, you were telling me about how people were treated in the cotton mill. We went over to LaGrange, and this fellow was telling us all the 00:25:00wonderful things that Mr. Calloway did for those people, like putting up clubs, and having swimming pools. Talk about all of that.

FRANK GOSSET: I can't say for that down there, I think it was after Wage and Hour Bill, and all that stuff, I don't think he'd gone back to the old days. Your cotton mill people, even after they got the Wage and Hour Bill, and everything, then, they began to come out some. Uh, they had a little more say-so, they had, they, uh, they could do a little more. When they come out with the Wage and Hour Bill, and passed that law, that they couldn't take all their salary. Now, I've heard of some places like you're talking about later, when things picked up, but I think they're talking about things along around the 00:26:00'40, uh '41, '42 area, where they was doing everything they could to keep help see, he was begging for help. Take around '40, around 1939 it started picking up, by 1940 every mill was running full blast by '41, they was working every -- uh, every day a week, twenty-four hours a day, and they was doing everything they could. And they was taking anyone they could. And they got the salaries up. Zelda here, figured I was going to be drafted before I went to the shipyard, and she wanted to get a job, and she wanted to work in the mill.

ZELDA GOSSET: I didn't want a desk job.

FRANK GOSSET: And she was making more as a secretary down in the office.

ZELDA GOSSET: I learned to weave at that time.

FRANK GOSSET: And she was making more money than the secretaries and stuff. But she didn't want an office job, she wanted something to keep her active while I 00:27:00was away, you know what I mean? And then I went to the shipyard, well when I went to the shipyard, I joined a pipefitter, and they automatically gave me a deferment from one year to the next, you sent your word, but I was there about fifteen months and we decided we wanted to come back, I told Zelda, within three months -— the mill was trying to get me back, I said, within three months, I'll be drafted. She said do what you want to, Frank. I said, hell, I don't -- I don't care, I said, I don't want to go, but it don't make that much difference, let's go home. But it turned out I was turned down on account of my feet. They say, as I argued then, I had two brothers in there and their feet was flat. But they said there was all degrees of flat feet, and mine's fourth 00:28:00degree (laughs). Other words, when I stand up, my feet go this way instead of that way, you see? And they said I could never make it through boot camp. I tried to argue with them, I got mad, hell I was the most physical person you ever seen at that time, except for my feet. And I said, hell I can drive a damn -- I can take a truck, a tank or something like that and drive it twenty-four hours a day. I said, if I can work twenty-four hours some days, I said. They said, yeah, but you can't get through boot camp. They said we'd have to give you a medical, and you wouldn't be no good to yourself, no good to us either.

STONEY: Now, at -- around the time of the strike, the mill had a lot of people who knew how to use guns, so they gave people guns. Could you talk about that? People who were deputies.

FRANK GOSSET: Had guns?

STONEY: Yeah.

FRANK GOSSET: I've never heard of guns coming up.

ZELDA GOSSET: Not around the woolen mill.

FRANK GOSSET: Never heard of anyone going through the mill with a gun on, or anything like that. Uh, in fact, they couldn't, I don't know if any of them 00:29:00could afford a gun. Now, her daddy, after he got to be watchman, that was a little later though, he had a little money, and he bought him a thirty-eight, you know, for the uh, the watchman job. But people didn't -- .

ZELDA GOSSET: Until then, he didn't have a gun.

FRANK GOSSET: As far as I know, I never come involved with anybody with guns at all.

STONEY: What about the deputies? [Inaudible] So, you didn't know anything about that?

ZELDA GOSSET: No, not --