Ideas about gender-based employment and job loyalty
With a little prodding, Faucette reveals that job tasks differed according to gender. Additionally, she explains that the mills trained children for future mill work. Faucette criticizes the loss of job loyalty and job longevity among current workers.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Ethel Marshall Faucette, November 16, 1978, and January 4, 1979. Interview H-0020. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- ALLEN TULLOS:
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Did women do jobs that they wouldn't have done before?
- ETHEL MARSHALL FAUCETTE:
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Yeah. And Bob Holt always claimed that he raised his help. (laughter) Well he did. (George: Well he was about right.) He was about right. You went to the mill and you learned to work. When you got old enough you went down there and you went to work. And so it wasn't like it is now, you put a young person in the mill, he'll maybe'll work and draw one pay check and then he's done.
- ALLEN TULLOS:
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Well were there different jobs for men and women, did they do different things?
- ETHEL MARSHALL FAUCETTE:
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Yeah.
- ALLEN TULLOS:
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Which were the ones that the women would do that the men wouldn't do.
- ETHEL MARSHALL FAUCETTE:
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Well now, there wasn't many. Now both women and men worked in the weaving room-weaver s you know-weaver s, loom fixers, and all. Well in the spinning room it was all women that worked up there except the fixer and the overseer. And in the carding room the men worked up there, didn't they?
- GEORGE:
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Huh?
- ETHEL MARSHALL FAUCETTE:
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All men worked in the carding room.
- GEORGE:
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Just about.
