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#336
Dewey E. Helms
This is an Appalachian Oral History Project interview with
Marion, North Carolina who is retired textile mill worker.
Dew~y
Helms of
He was inter-
viewed of January 10 , 1976 by Sam Howie .
Q:
First of all , where were you born?
A:
I was born in Mc Dowell County.
Q:
Do you remember the township?
A:
I was born in Marion.
Q:
Marion?
A:
Yep .
Q:
Was it outside the town or within the town limits?
A:
It was about a mile out of town .
Q:
What year were you born?
A:
1903.
Q:
What did your parents do for a living?
A:
They farmed part of the time and my father was a carpenter.
the carpenter trade for a while .
He worked at ..
�2
Q:
Was it a fairly large family that you were born into?
A:
There were eight of us:
Q:
When you and your brothers turned eighteen or twenty, what did most of
you do?
four byys and four girls.
Were most of you staying on your fattl.er's place or did you go out
to work-to what they called public work?
A:
We stayed at home most of the time until we finished school and worked
kind of part-time.
I worked between school terms in a furniture factory and
my older brother sold insurance.
I believe he was in Greenwood, South Carolina
and the girls stayed home until they were married.
Q:
Which furniture factory?
Was it · one in Marion?
A:
Yes, Drexel Furniture Factory.
Q:
Do you remember when it opened?
A:
No. I don't re.member.
Q:
I remember you told me that you first went to work in the mills in 1923.
A:
Yes, right, July l, 1923.
Q:
Was that for Clinchfield?
A:
Yes, it was.
Q:
You were saying earlier that one of the Clinchfield mills opened in 1916.
A:
There were two mills, the north and south plant.
.
The south plant I''m
absolutely certain opened in 1916 and I believe the other one opened in 1911.
�3
I'm not sure.
Q:
Which one did you go to work in?
A:
I went to work in, ' I reckon, what they call the north plant.
The older
mill.
Q:
Do you remember when East Marion might have been opened:?
A:
1905, I think.
Q:
You don't recall when Cross mills first opened do you?
A:
No, but it was later, probably around 1917 or 18.
Q:
Did you do any other kind of work besides furniture before you went into
It started in 1905.
the mills in 192 3.?
A:
No . Nothing but farm and cut wood.
Q:
So you knew how to farm.
A:
Yes, pretty much
Q:
What kind of farming did your father do?
A:
No, mostly corn.
vegetables.
Q:
Did he raise beef or what?
Well, that was our biggest crop ... corn and just
We pl!actically lived on what we made.
Was it possible to have some income from farming in those years?
�4
A:
No, very little income.
Q:
Can you
~ay
why it was you decided to go to work in the mill?
Wli:y you
were first attracted to the mill, to working in the mill?
A:
Well, like I told you, I worked between school terms and I tried the
furniture factories.
I only made ll¢ an hour at the furniture factories.
were paying more at the mills and I decided to try the mills.
work
. 11re one summer, but I wound up staying.
and we were running five days and a half.
til eleven o'clock on Saturday.
eleven hours a day.
I intended to
I went in the weave room
At least we run, the mill run un-
About sixty hours a week.
We worked about
We went to work at six o'clock in the morning and worked
until six o'clock in the evening.
clock in the morning.
They
We were supposed to go to work at seven o'
We were supposed to have a ten hour work day in North
Carolina, but it was never enforced.
Q:
You mean there was a ten hour work law?
A:
Supposedly, yes, supposed to be.
It was enforced in South Carolina, but
it was never enforced in North Carolina.
We went to work at six o'clock in the
morning and worked until six in the evening.
Saturday morning and worked until eleven.
We went towork at six o'clock on
I went to work for thirteen dollars
and eighty five cents a week.
Q:
What was that an hour?
A:
(Laugh) I don't know.
Q:
Okay.
A:
Supposed to have been fifty five hours, but we were working sixty hours.
�5
Q:
Did you get paid for the extra five hours?
A:
No.
Q:
The company said, "You want the job, you've got to work.
A:
That's right.
11
If you didn't want it., there were a lot of people waiting
for it .
Q:
There were a lot of people that wanted to work in the mills?
A:
Yes .
Q:
But then generally you went to the mills because it was possible to make
a little bit more money than in the furniture factory.
A:
Yes , that's right.
Q:
Other than the cotton mills and the furniture industry, was there any other
kind of work available in the Marion or Mc Dowel 1 County area?
A:
No, the only thing was the railr oad.
They had section crews on the rail-
road, but you couldn't ever get a job on the railroad.
Q:
There just weren't any jobs there?
A:
None.
Q:
Did they pay well, the railroads?
A:
No , not too well.
I've forgotten that.
I knew my father worked for South-
ern Railroad Company for a while for a dollar and tea cents a day, but I guess
that was before I was old enough to go to work.
Q:
Were you still going to school then when you started working at Clinch-
field the first time ?
Ai
Yes.
Q:
And you just stayed on?
�6
A:
Yes, I just stayed on.
Q:
You said when you went to work for them, you went to .work in weaving.
A:
Yes.
Q:
Clirichfield, as I understand it from Mr. Hicks, was just turning out woven
cloth.
A:
It wasn't doing any printing or dying.
Just what they call "printll cloth.
64, 64--64, 60 and 80
64, 50 a filling.
Q:
Is that coarse cloth?
A:
No, it's pretty fine.
Q:
What did you do in weaving?
A:
I started in the loom plant, just cleaning looms with a brush and that was
It's thin cloth.
What was your job?
before they used air jets, or compressors.
I cleaned looms with a brush un-
til I learned a little bit about weaving and I started weaving on sixteen looms.
We had to learn on our own.
Tpey didn 't pay for no learning.
Q:
You mean they wouldn't t r ain you?
A:
No.
There was no training program at all.
And if you tried hard you could,
after a year or so, you could start weaving on the looms.
more and a good weaver made right much more.
They even paid a little
I started work in 1923.
started fixing looms in 1925 for nineteen dollars and sixty cents a week.
friends easy and the fellows helped me out a whole lot.
1925, and I fixed looms until about 1945, I guess.
Q:
Fixing what does that involve?
A:
Just keeping a loom running making good cloth.
I
I made
I started fixing in
�7
Q:
Just repairing it and keeping it going?
A:
Yes.
Q:
Is it as good a job as weaving or better?
When you were weaving were
you on piece work or was it possible to be on piece work in weaving?
A:
They figured by cut. what they called a cut.
hundred and ten yards.
TB.ere was a cut mark on every
They put a blue mark on it with a slash around it .
Q:
Yes.
A:
A blue mark at the cut for a cut mark and the weaver had to keep the
looms running, fill the batteries. and take off the cloth.
on 'til 1936.
That probably went
Then they went on what we called a "stretch-out system" and
they give the weaver more looms. where we were running twenty-four looms.
They gave them fortyeight.
doff the cloth.
They had battery fillers on them and somebody to
They took the battery filling and cloth doffing off the weaver and
gave them more looms.
It was called the "stretch-out system. "
Q:
More production ... in the same period of time.
A:
Finally they went on and kept adding help and they got up to seventy two
looms in the weaving.
Q:
You had to really work fast on that didn't you?
fixer . . . and you stayed a fixer until sometime in the
A:
But by 1925, you were a
1
40' s?
Around sometime in the !40's. I went over in supervision.
I stayed a
supervisor until I retired.
Q:
All the time with Clinchfield?
A:
No. I worked at Clinchfield until 1940.
Q:
And you were a supervisor at East Marion?
A:
Yes.
April of 1942 I went to East Marion.
East Marion was installing new machinery and I was interested in
�8
learning more about it.
I went over there for that purpose, to learn something about
the machinery.
A: Yeah.
I was married Ln 1924 and I went to house keeping in the mill village .
Q: Was it a company policy that you had to live in the village to work for Clinch-
field?
A: No . there was no living requirement .
If you wanted to live in a three room house
that was forty fi ve cents a week and if you rented four rooms, about as much a s they
had, they had a few six room houses.
then that included your lights.
Four room house was sixty cents a week and
Sometimes I guess back in the '20's they wired the
village .
Q: Would that have been cheaper rent than renting somewhere else in the town?
A: Yes, it would.
Q: During that early period did the mills operate a company store for the workers?
A: Yes.
Q:
Was it just a general store? Did it have grocer ces in it and clothing and just
about anything you need?
A: General store, yes, hardware, clothing. groceries.
Q:
Were the prices cheaper in the company store than anywhere else in town?
A : No, they were not.
�9
Q: They were the s : me or higher?
A: They were about the same.
What you could do was if you bought from the com-
pany store, they had a checking list system .
You could go to the office and get a
check on your tlme and pay for your groceries or whatever you bought.
It came out
on a ticket on Saturday at the end.
Q: They gave you credit in other words.
A: Yes , they just wrote you what we c a lled a (speaking to someone else) a ticket
wasn't it?
(othe r person answering) : Some kind of ticket you got and you go down to the office
window and you tell them how much you w a nted and they wrote it.
You gave it to
the store manager for what you bought and then at the end of the week it would come
out of your check.
Lots of people ne ver did draw a dime in pay.
They never did draw
any money.
(other person-NOTE: other person was Mr. Helms' wiie)
They had some kind of old books too, that people would ...
A: Yeah, they had coupon books from a dollar to five dollars and you could get a
dollar coupon book if you wanted to buy a small amount at a time sometimes ten or
fifteen cents worth of something.
dollars.
They'd tear out a coupon and that went up to five
Five dollars would just about pay for a week's groceries.
Mrs. Helms: Some of the men made money with books.
You could get them for a
dollar cheaper than you could go to the office and get them yourself too, couldn't
you?
�10
A: Yeah.
A lot of people sold their books.
They'd get a five dolar coupon book
and sell it for three dollars and se venty-five cents.
You could, if you had the money
to buy the books, you were lucky and you could get flve dollars worth of groceries
for three seventy.five.
Q: Well, waht about the ones that were selling them?
A: They were losing , yeah.
They were losing.
Thet were really cutting their wages.
Q: Wonder why they wanted to do that?
A: Well, money was scarce and if you had to go the the doctor you had to pay them
a dollar.
So they sold their two dollar book to get a dollar and a half for it .
Then
they could pay their doctor bill and hospital or drug store bill with a dollar and a half.
Q: So, they did it just to get. some ready cash.
A: Yeah, just in an occassional emergency.
Q: During
~he
'20's , you said there were a bt of people trying to get work in the
mills and there weren't enough jobs for everybody.
the mills during the '20's?
Was it possible to move up in
That is, you became a fixer ...
A: Yes •.. depending altogether on how hard you tried.
Q: But could it be done.?
A: Yes .
Q:
You could improve your situation.
During the '2 0 ' s, did wages increase or sta y
�11
the same or for the same job?
A: They ne ver increased.
We might have gotten a few small raised. but they would
decrease too, in the '20's and on up into the '30's.
In the summertive usually from
probably June until September they ran three or four days a week, curtailed, and
that happened for several years in succession.
The market was bad.
They couldn 't
sell the cloth so they curtailed and it was awfully hard to make a living.
Q: That was during the Depressian?
A: Yeah.
Q: Wa ges might have stayed the same, but there just wasn't enough work during the
week, enough hours.
A: Wages didn't vary much from 1920 'til I guess it was 1936 when we went on eight hour :
Q: Yes.
Mrs. Helms: That's when Social Security started wasn't it?
A: Yeah
when President Roosevelt came in.
Q: Compared to other jobs a man might have had
~n
the area during the '20' s and
say '30 's too, was the work in the mills generally hard? Was it say as hard as farming or working in furniture or something liRe that?
A: Well, it was steady work.
did.
You had to keep busy and especially in the weave room YOl
The lunch period, I belie ve, and that's the only time you ever got and slack.
�12
Of course, the weavers did all they could to keep their production up and make as much
money as they could and the supervisors saw that our hands st,5lyed busy.
The first
two years that I worked, I worked for them by the hour.
Q: That's when you were cleaning?
A: Yeah, cleaning, taking our quills , and sweeping and I had enough spare time to
learn a little bit about weaving.
They had two 16 loom sets in the mill and the rest
of them were 20-24 and 26 . and I got to where I could run a sixteen mill set.
didn't pay much more than cleaning, about the same.
I felt like I was getting somewhere.
during that time.
It
Anyway, I was progressing.
Then I went on the smash job, I learned smash
Do you know anything about the mills? What the smash job is?
Q: I know what weaving and fixing, but I don't know what a smash job is.
A: Well, sometimes a loom would make a break, break all the warp our for a space
maybe six or eight inches wide and that was the smash hand's job to draw all of the
threads in and get the looms ready for the fixer to start up
Q: Yes.
A: I learned to do that and then I learned to fix a '.little.
Then finally I became a reg-
ul2.r fixer sometime in 1925 probably in the later part of 1925.
Q: How did that work?
You were working in a smash job or cleaaing or something
and you watched a fixer do his job and you figured out what it was he did .
Could
you go to the supervisor when a fixer job came open and say, "Well, · I know how
to do that, could you consider me for that?" Is that how you got that job?
�13
A: Yeah.
Q:
You just had to teach yourself and then ...
A: Yes, what they'd do, some of the fixers would help you out for a while,
explain things to you and tell you how .it worked.
job, you went and asked for it, applied for it.
When you felt like you could run a
Sometimes they'd laugh at you
(laughter) 2.nd sometimes they'd consider you.
Q: Yeah.
Who were the supervisors?
Were they people from around here or ...
A: My first supervisor was originally from Madison County, but he l ived in the
village at that time.
Q:
Yes.
A: George Reynolds.
Now he's been a minister of the Gospel for several years.
He's eighty-two or three years old and he's still preaching.
Q: Yes.
A: And lives in Black Mountain.
Q: Were the majority of the supervisors, when you first went to work, from
outside the county?
You said he was from Madison County.
A: He was raised in Madison County.
Most of the people that worked in the mill
that I knew came from Madison, Heywood, Yancey, and Mitchell Counties.
Q: Yeah, that's what Mr. Hicks said.
That was in the early and middle '20's.
�14
In the
1
30 1 s. were the people still coming from Madison and Yancey and Mitchell
Counties?
A: They certainly we r e , yes s ir.
Q: But were there some from McDowell County that were working in the mills?
A: Yes, a lot of people from McDowell County were working.
whole families.
They would hire
Suppose a man came along and had flve ar six or seven childres
were old enough to work .
They would hire the whole family and give him a house
to live in and I think that they figured they would keep that family.
I mean, they'd
be satisfied if they hired that family and stayed there, make permanent bands .
Q : They wouldn't be moving on.
They woul dn ' t be as ready to move on as say a
single man?
A: Yeah, right.
But there wasn 't much place to go.
and people were continually changing.
There just wasn't any work
I don't know why, but the p eople were
continually coming from Spartanburg, Gaffney, and e ven Greenville, a nd Rutherford County coming here for jobs , loom fixing and all that and it didn't pay any more .
I don't know if they were discharged or why they moved ..•
END OF SIDE 1
TAPE #1 SIDE #2
Q : Was it your impression that the mills in Mari on pa ..d as much and had as good
working hou r s and conditions as say in Greenville or Spartanburg .. .
A: Yeah, about the same .
About the same .
Q: So people we r en't coming here for any real reason then .
They were just sort
�15
of drifting .
A : Yeah.
Q: Perry Hicks said that a lot of the supervisors and he went to work in 1919 .
He
said a laot of his supervisors in the early '2 's were from South Carolina, because
the y had more mills down there and peopl
could pick up skills and know more ab':out
it than they could up here.
A: Those men weat on to make overseers.
visors out of them.
If a man qualified they'd make supe r -
I think it depended a whole lot on whether the overseer liked
you or not more than it d i d on your ability.
Nov. that was always the way it looked
to me .
Q: That was in the '20's.
A: Yeah.
Q: Did it seem to you that there were a lot of people who would switch from one
mill to the other? Start at East Marion and come to tone of the Clinchfield mills
then go to Cross mills .
A: Yes, they di d 'Switch alot.
I never did understand why, whether or not they were
discharged from their jobs or whether they decided to move , just got mad about
something and decided t o move.
I don't know what .
Q : Was there that much difference between wbrking at one and working at the othe r ?
A: C r oss mill was a spinning mill , they didn 't do any weaving.
Clinchfield and
�16
East Ma r ion both were weaving mills.
C r oss mill.
For some reason people liked to wor k at
They we r e treated a little better, I think.
Q: Yes.
A: It was indi vidually owned and they just treated t heir help a little better and they
paid a little, a few cents more at that time.
Howe ver, the other mills finally got
to paying more than Cross Mill.
Q: Yes.
D id C r os s have a village, a mill village?
A: Yes, they had one.
They st ill own thei r village.
Cross mill still owns and
rents its houses.
Q: But East Marion and Clinchfield sold their houses to the
workers~
A: Yes.
Q: Who owns C r oss now?
A: Eugene Cross, the Cross family.
Q: Yeah.
A: I imagine they have a lot of stock holders, but ..•...
Q: Other than those three, Cross, Clinchfield, and E a st M a rion, there wasn't
any othe r mill in McDowell County in say 1925, or later that you recall?
A: No, the r e were no other mills in McDowell County.
Thread was the next one.
I believe, American
�11 ..
Mrs~
Helms: No , it came years later.
A: I imagine it was 1950 when American Thread came.
Q: Do you recall who the owners of Clinchfield and East Marion were in the '20 's?
Do you recall their names, who they were or ... mainly where they were from?
Were they from around here?
A: Now , I think that the same people built both mills.
and later on it was mostly locally owned.
East Marion started up
They buily Clinchfield up and I did
know the history pretty well, but I'm pretty sure ....
Mrs . Helms:
A: "Baldwins, Carol Baldwin from Baltimore.
He owned the controlling interest
in East Marion and ...
Q: Does the
name Ha.rt ring a bell with Clinchfield?
A: Sir?
Q: Hart.
Do you recall a man named Hart in connection with Clinchfield?
A: Yeah.
Anyway, there was some disagreement somehow and one faction tooK.
over East Marion and the other one, Clinchfield.
Q: Yes .
A:
But, I've forgotten just how it was.
�18
Q: But the same people were invoLred when both mills first started up.
You don't
recall what it is they had a dispute o ver do you? I don't know of ....
A: No, sir, I don't.
I, it hasn't been too long.
Not too many years since I read the
history of that , but I've forgotten.
Q: Where did you read that?
Was it printed up somewhere?
A: It was printed material, but I've forgotten what it .....
Q: Wasn't in the newspaper was it?
O r was it?
A: I don't remember, I'm not sure.
It might not have been any special edition of
the newspaper.
I don't know.
Q: Was it your feeling that Clinchfield and East Mari n were fairly profltable for
the owners?
A: Yes.
I think they were fairly profitable.
They made some money, because when
they finally decided to remodel, install the new machinery they had the money t o do
it with.
I know that, because I was more or less on the inside when thet started to
remodel and install new machinery.
it.
Why, I know t hat they had the money to pay for
The mills in the early '20's and 1 30's were dirty and hot.
The weaver's room
was awful hot and they didn't have any ventilation, except what they called a skylight.
They had a little window over the window that they pulled in and
le~
a little air in,
but they didn't allow you much ventilation and your work wouldn't run good.
running around a hundred degrees, ninety five.
unbearable.
It was
In the summertive it was almost
�19
I think that the weave r ooms were the hottest place there was.
In the latter years
I found out that it was more just an idea than anything else, because we finally went
to running the we ave room down t o seventy degrees during summer.
Q:
You mean there wasn't any point in keeping them hot?
A: No.
We got air con ditioning to keep it down I believe that was the supervisor
or the plant m a nager, I don't know.
humidifying system.
But they were dirty
The floors stayed wet in places.
a rm or leg, th t wa s your experience at work .
ensation, workman ' s compensation.
Q:
If
Wfl.
nd we had a old model
If you fell and broke your
They didn't have any kind of comp-
got hurt, we just got hurt.
Lost your pay?
A: Lost pay, yes .
Paid our doctor bills.
Q: Was th ere a c ompany doctor or company nurse?
A: No, there wasn't any company doctor.
Q: Any kind of first aid on hand?
A: No, none.
I fixed looms for years and had a little bottle of iodine in my tool box
and we didn't have first - aid.
W.e.' d u s e something to tie our finger up with, if we
got cut or hurt or something.
Q:
Just go on and work?
A: But we did it ourselves.
There wasn't any use to go to nobody and say anything
�20
about it.
Q: Why did they feel they needed to keep it wet or humi§l?
A: It takes a certain amount of humidity to keep that yarn running.
through the slicers and the side.
It's run
Start to put on the yarn and it's brittle.
of course ,
You have
to have a certain amount of humidity to make the work run, but the humidifiers were
bad to get out of order and when they did , they just wet the floor, you know.
Some
of the warps got too wet to run, but all that was changed ofter the remodeling and
got air conditiaming and a diffe r ent: }
1umdiifying system.
Q : You were saying earlier it was your impres s ion that most of the people who c ame
to work in the mills during the early '20 1 s , middle '20' s . were not from this c ounty.
They were from farther west like Yancey, Mitchell, or Madison County.
A : You see, I lived in the village and I was acquainted with almost everybody.
Most
of them came from Madison and Heywood.
Q: They were farm families?
A : Yes.
Q: Were they giPen, because they were fam ilies, were they given hiring preference
over individuals, single people .
You said the mills would more readily hire a family
than they would an indiv idual or they felt that he would make a better employee or
worker.
Or were the people that came in from s a y Madison, were they goven prefer-
ence over local people?
A : No, they were not .
�21
Q: Not really?
A: Sometimes a whole family m.ight have been giving a little preference to the
houses , I cb n 't know .
Q : Because they wouldn't have any house at all?
A: But, all you got, all anybody g(j)j; then, they worked fo r it .
promoted to a better job, p u had to work for it.
Of course, you got
You had to convince the man
that you were capable of doing it .
Q: Do you have any idea why f>eople came in such numbers from farther west to
work in the mills? We r e they just tired of farming or couldn't make a living on
farming or what was it?
A: I just have an idea that it was harder to make a living.
Q: Yeah .
Did any of them tell you that, say that , was why they came to the mills?
A: Not tha t I recall.
But you take a man , say he had six children.
He and six children
went to work and if they m ake twelve dollars a week that made eighty fou r dollars a
week .
Well, he'd have probably kept ten dollars out of each child's pay.
There was
a lot that went back and bought farms depending on how large the family was.
Q : You mean they would work a couple of years and save up and go back to say
Heywood County and buy a farm?
A: Yeah .
They'd work several years like that .
took most of the money that the children made.
I'm pretty sure that the parents
�22
As long as they stayed at home, the parents just about got all t hat they made.
(cough) So, a man with a large family pretty well mopped up.
Q: Yeah.
How old did a child have to be before they would let it work in the mill
then?
A: I believe fourteen.
Q:
Yes.
A: TQ.ey did work just small children, but I believe they made the General Assembly
pass a bill.
They had to be fourteen years old .
Q: Yes.
A: They had to go get a work card then (c ough) from the
ing before the company would hire them.
~hool
that they were attend-
I think it was fourteen.
Q : That would mean tmt couldn't go to school if they were hired?
There was no
night work, was there?
A: No.
Q: So, that meant if they went to work at fourteen , they weren't in school?
A: They didn't go to school.
But they had to get a permit of some kind before they
could work .
Q: Were there about as many women working at Clinchfield as men?
A: Yeah , I think there were .
�23
A: See, most of the spinning rooms, most of the spinners or all the spinners were
women.
A lot of the women worked in the card room .
Probably more men worked
in the card room than women but in the weave room, I'd say it was pretty well divid ed About as many women as there were men.
Q: Did they pay them different?
A: No .
Q : There was no difference in pay?
A: A woman can actually be as good a weaver as a amn can.
I've worked with
women that was awfully good weavers .
Q: What did they have the children doing, say those fourteen to eighteen?
A: Learning, mostly to weave .
My wife said she went to work at Clinchfield for
twenty five cents a week for a size and she, I think, got to where she could run
two sizes and made fifty cents a week .
I'm no , I'm not certain .
Q : Who did just general clean-up work azround the mill?
A : Do you mean inside?
Q : Yes .
A : \Vell,, they had room cleaners and sweepers and they l=lad probably two c olored
people that did the mopping
that mopped the floors once a week .
They didn't get
around to it often, because it was a big plac e and I know there was some colored women
�24
that used to mop at Clinchfield.
Later on, it was only men that did the mopping .
After they got an air compressor and what we called blow pipes, they blew all this
lint and cotton off the looms and the sweeper swept it up and it was sold for somekind of waste.
I don't know what they did ...
Q: The lint was?
A: Yes .
Q: Perry Hicks said when he first came to the mills around 1920, that there was a
lot of feeling in this county among people that they d idn't want to go to the mills to
work.
They'd rather farm or do something else.
A: Yes , I was.
Were you aware of any of that?
People that worked in the mill were actually looked down on.
(laugh) were called cotton mill trash.
They
Now that's a fact , I'm just telling you t he facts.
They were actually looked down on by people.
Q: In the town?
A: Yeah , father was offered a job at Clinchfield and it was a good job , if he'd move
into the village.
He wouldn't do it.
That was before any of us ever went to work.
They felt like the people that lived in the village was nothing.
Now that's a fact.
Q: Why did people feel that way? Was it because they were from outside, they'd
come in from other counties or ...
A: I really don't know, I must admit.
I' ve had friends down through life that was
the best people you could ever come by.
the mills.
They lived in mill villages and worked in
�25
Q: When a mill worker went into the town to the store to buy something, they wouldn't
refuse to take his mmey?
A : No, they wouldn't.
(laugh)
But you had to have some kind of somebody to recommend
you before you got any c redit and if nobody didn 't know you, nobody would give you
credit.
So, I think it was one reason that so many people c r edited at the company
store, because the few grocery stores that were around refused them credit from
one week to the next .
Q: Yes.
What else did the companies do for the workers?
with a village, housing, and the company store .
at all?
They provided them
Did they do anything else for them
Like . were there mill schools for the children?
A: Yeah , they built a school house over there in the village and the company did
that on their own I'm su r e .
Now, when this building come through the mill I was
going to school in a little two-room school house about two mlles over there and it
was a ctually closer to Clinchfield mill than it was to our home .
These kids that
came from the mill village just over-crowded the school for a year or three years
until they got a school of their own funds .
Q: Did they also hire the teachers or were they...
A: No, I guess, they were hired by the state .
was put up by the c ompany and they owned it.
I'm almost c ertain that the building
After they built modern schools at
both villages, the company made rooming houses, apartment houses, out of the old
ones.
Q: Did the company e er build churches ?
�26
A: No.
Q: Did the mill workers tend to go to one chuch?
A: The first church that was built was Clinchfield Methodist Church.
Marion Methodist Church was the first one built.
Church.
Probably East
Then they built Clinchfield Methodist
Of course , these people did it, and then later on they built the Baptist
Church over there and one at East Marion and then several years later they had a
Presbyterian Church.
owned.
N o w it's in the village over there, but it was ne ver company
They probably donated the lot to build it on and they would donate the lot or
the property for the church to build on.
Not that was both places because those
churches are on company owned property or what was company owned property.
Now
I'm sure they donated it.
Q: Do you recall any other services, or whate ver, that the company did for the
workers?
You said there weren't doctors to provide midical ser vice.
A: No , we didn't have any doctors or nu r ses.
a house and we did't pay any powe r bills.
The only thing that they provided was
They didn't ha ve anything, but lights and
they didn't allow hot plates or no kind of electric appliances, but the power didn't
cost you anything.
You paid fifteen cents a room for a house a week.
Q: F or a week?
A: Yeah.
They dept the streets up to where you could drive a wagon over them.
There were very few cars back then, you know
furnaces down at the mill to put on the roads .
and they used the cinders from the
T hey had a well with a pump for about
every four houses, I belie"e, something like that.
Probably two on each side of the
�27
street used the same pump.
Q: Yes .
A: Hand pump.
Q: So there wasn't running water in the house?
A: No.
,
Q: You pumped it and brought it in .
Would they allow you to set you a garden out?
A: Yes.
Q: In the village?
A: Uh. There was a garden spot for about every house.
Q: How big were the lost for each house?
Was it maybe about a half acre, as much as
they ...
A: No , they were not.
In some of the houses, you know, on the back streets where the
houses were built, they were built in a line down and on that ground you could go back
as far as you wanted to normally.
They owned the land, but people that l ived say fac-
ing you on the other side of the street, between two streets had a very small lot .
Q: Most people did try to garden though didn't they?
A: Yes
they did.
END OF TAPE #1
SIDE #2
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
In 1973, representatives from Appalachian State University (ASU) began the process of collecting interviews from Watauga, Avery, Ashe, and Caldwell county citizens to learn about their respective lives and gather stories. From the outset of the project, the interviewers knew that they were reaching out to the “last generation of Appalachian residents to reach maturity before the advent of radio, the last generation to maintain an oral tradition.” The goal was to create a wealth of data for historians, folklorists, musicians, sociologists, and anthropologists interested in the Appalachian Region.
The project was known as the “Appalachian Oral History Project” (AOHP), and developed in a consortium with Alice Lloyd College and Lees Junior College (now Hazard County Community College) both in Kentucky, Emory and Henry College in Virginia, and ASU. Predominately funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities, the four schools by 1977 had amassed approximately 3,000 interviews. Each institution had its own director and staff. Most of the interviewers were students.
Outgrowths of the project included the Mountain Memories newsletter that shared the stories collected, an advisory council, a Union Catalog, photographs collected, transcripts on microfilm, and the book Our Appalachia. Out of the 3,000 interviews between the three schools, only 663 transcripts were selected to be microfilmed. In 1978, two reels of microfilm were made available with 96 transcripts contributed by ASU.
An annotated index referred to as The Appalachian Oral History Project Union Catalog was created to accompany the microfilm. The catalog is broken down into five sections starting with a subject topic index such as Civilian Conservation Corps, Coal Camps, Churches, etc. The next four sections introduced the interviewees by respective school. There was an attempt to include basic biographic information such as date of birth, location, interviewer name, length of interview, and subjects discussed. However, this information was not always consistent per school.
This online project features clips from the interviews, complete transcripts, and photographs. The quality and consistency of the interviews vary due to the fact that they were done largely by students. Most of the photos are missing dates and identifying information.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1965-1989
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview.
Howie, Sam
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed.
Helms, Dewey E.
Interview Date
1/10/1976
Location
The location of the interview.
Marion, NC
Number of pages
27 pages
Date digitized
9/18/2014
File size
12.6MB
Checksum
alphanumeric code
a27303eca732de128997d62c1ba80121
Scanned by
Tony Grady
Equipment
Epson Expression 10000 XL
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Copyright for the interviews on the Appalachian State University Oral History Collection site is held by Appalachian State University. The interviews are available for free personal; non-commercial; and educational use; provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Appalachian State Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records; 1965-1989; W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection; Special Collections; Appalachian State University; Boone; NC). Any commercial use of the materials; without the written permission of the Appalachian State University; is strictly prohibited.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
AC.111 Appalachian Oral History Project Records; 1965 - 1989
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
111_tape336_DeweyEHelms_transcript_M
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Dewey E. Helms [January 10, 1976]
Language
A language of the resource
English
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Howie, Sam
Helms, Dewey E.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a title="Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/195" target="_blank">Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
McDowell County (N.C.)--Social life and customs--20th century
Farm life--North Carolina--McDowell County--20th century
Mountain life--North Carolina--McDowell County--History--20th century--Anecdotes
Helms, Dewey
Description
An account of the resource
Dewey Helms, born in 1903, talks about working in McDowell County, North Carolina, in the early twentieth century. He came from a family of farmers and carpenters, and when he was old enough he began working in the furniture factory for eleven cents an hour between school terms. In 1923 he began working at the mill because the pay was better. He said the only other job you could get besides furniture and mill was the railroad, which didn't pay very well either. He eventually began weaving and repairing looms as a career.
American Thread
Clinchfield
Clinchfield Methodist Church
Clinchfield mills
Cross mills
Dewey E Helms
Dewey Helms
Drexel Furniture Factory
East Marion Methodist Church
East Marion Mill
general stores
Greenwod
loom plant
Marion
McDowell County N.C.
mill community
mill village
North Carolina
railroad
South Carolina
Southern Railroad Company
weaving
weaving mills