Yes, they'd have one. Mr. Moore was the superintendent. He was over the
whole mill. But they'd have one section head or superintendent, they'd
call it, upstairs over the carding, and have one downstairs. Mr. Manley
Durham, Mrs. Flossie's husband, he was over the spinning for years down
there. He was over it when I worked.
[Laughter]
I went to him one time. I'd got so [unknown] with
the man that was over the. . . . He would take up the yarn at the winder
and weigh it and mark it up to us. They packed it in boxes, wrapped
the
Page 47 cones and packed them. We had a measuring
stick to measure our cones, the big end of them, and we were not
supposed to run them any bigger than that stick. And every once in a
while he'd get onto some of them, the one that weighed it up, that they
couldn't pack it. I understood that mighty well. They couldn't pack them
if they were too big, many of them. They wouldn't fit in the boxes that
they had made for them. But I was working down there one day. And some
of the spinning frames would run the bobbins bigger than others. We'd
tie up a whole set as we'd go on down, and I had some big bobbins at one
end of my winder and little ones at the other. If I tied little ones up
here and big ones down there, the big ones would fill up, and we always
wanted them to fill up together so we could doff them off at one time
and start them all up together. And I was working down there one day
right after dinner, and I would pick up a handful and carry them to the
other end, and pick up a handful and carry them to the other end, trying
to divide them out. And I got so tired of it. And, too, the one that was
weighing it up, he didn't like. . . . We worked all day then; we worked
eleven hours a day. And we quit at six at night. And he didn't like for
us to take off a doff, we called it, and lay it up on top of the winder
for him to take off to weigh right at stopping time. He'd have to stay
there, even if it was after six, and weigh that up and mark it to us
before he could leave. I knew that day that something was going to be
about ready for me to doff at six o'clock that night, to have one on top
of the winder. Part of my cones were bigger at one end than the other,
and I got so tired of carrying bobbins back and forth, I decided, "Well,
I'm going to
Page 48 put [unknown] and not
carry any more." Well, some of them were a little too big. He was a
peculiar person. Of course, I didn't have any trouble with him. His wife
worked, too; she was a winder. And when he came to get my doff, he went
to his wife and got her measuring stick. He didn't ask me for my
measuring stick. He went and got her measuring stick and measured my
cones with it and said something to me about them being too big. I
didn't say a thing to him, but Mr. Manley was in the spinning room. He
was over us, too. As I went on up there, I saw him. I said, "Mr. Manley,
does my work suit you down here? If you don't, you tell me and I'll go
home." He looked at me and he said, "Louise, I've never found any fault
in your work since you've been down here." And I told him how Rob Hearn
acted. I said, "He didn't ask me for my measuring stick. He went and got
his wife's measuring stick." And I told him exactly why I did it, the
bobbins being like they were. And And I said, "I was trying not to get
off another doff to have one lying up there at six o'clock. He didn't
like for you to do that. I knew that if I didn't do something that I was
going to have one lying up there when I quit work that night." He said,
"You go on back to your work. I'm not finding any fault with your work."
My uncle was superintendent then, but he was gone off. I'd have gone to
him if he'd been, not have bothered Mr. Manley. But I think, after he'd
come back and found it out, he said something to the other one. And he
never did say another word to me about my work as long as I worked down
there, and he never did measure my cones. But my cousin, Uncle Charlie's
son, and his wife lived down there with them, and she wasn't
Page 49 at work. And she came down there. You could go in then and
stay in there a while if you wanted to. She came down there where I was.
And I was working so hard. I was determined that I was going to put him
a doff up there to be there at six o'clock, after he treated me like he
did.