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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview H-0132, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Milk delivery boy Arthur Little hated getting up early to deliver milk and dreamed of owning a glove factory instead. In this interview he describes realizing that dream and details the glove making industry in Newton, North Carolina. Most of this interview focuses on Little's life as a factory owner and his observations about work in his mill. He describes a relatively unchanging industry, where work methods and the young, mostly female workforce have evolved little over the course of decades. Little disapproves of unions and government spending, which may reflect his struggles during the Great Depression and his hard-earned financial success. He sees the role of the Ku Klux Klan in the aftermath of the Civil War positively, however—a view that perhaps reflects the beliefs of many of his generation in the rural South. This interview will offer researchers a useful top-down look at the glove making industry in North Carolina.
Arthur Little describes glove making from his perspective as the owner of a glove mill in Newton, North Carolina.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
… spreading the material out on… Is there …
Spread it up one way and come back the next. That makes a right and a left.
And then it moves on a conveyor belt SIDE and it's cut. And those men are cutters. Is that what they're called?
They're glove cutters.
And how many layers is it?
Forty-eight single layers.
And then it's put in the boxes.
Put in boxes, and the boxes then are put in buggies, you might say. And they're rolled out close to where the operators, the glove sewers, can get a-hold of them, and they take them to their machines and lay them out and sew them, and they put them back in the same box. And they shove it on down the line a little further, and then that wrist is put on. And then it goes one little step further, and they turn it, reverse it, and put the right side out. Most anything sewn is made wrong side out, as you call it, and then it has to be reversed, packed, and they inspect it all they can. Of course, there's some will get by. But then it's put on the conveyor and rolls down to the inspection table where they take them apart and go through them again. And then they're packed. There are twelve pairs to the… Which is called a dozen gloves. And then they're tied in bundles or either packed in cartons. It all depends on how they order it.
And you told me that this machine that does the bundling was invented by Cyrus McCormick?
The knotter is the same thing that Cyrus McCormick put on the oldtime reaper. And it's not been changed, not one bit. It's got the same features and everything. It's the same knotter; it's the same thing.
And the sewing machines that those gloves are made on are called…
We have different types of machines. We have flatbed machines, where the needle goes straight up and down. Then we have machines that the needle is on a slight slant, those little black machines.
Are they called angle machines?
They're just angle needle machines, and they're faster, but they can't sew as heavy a goods as the flatbed machines.
Those heavier gloves you're making, were you calling them "hot …
They go mostly into steel mills or people where they handle hot metal.
So you call them "hot mill gloves"?
We call them "hot mill gloves", is what they've always been called. And they go mostly into heavy industries where there's a lot of heat.
And they're made somewhat differently, aren't they?
The palm part of it is quilted together, two, sometimes three layers quilted together. And it's got a band on so you can sling it off if your hand gets caught in heat, you see.
And it's made in more separate pieces, isn't it?
It's made practically the same way, except the hot mill operators here don't make but parts of it, and then they're brought together, and the main operator puts the fingers on all at once and closes the glove, sews it together, and then puts on the band. If they don't put on the band, it goes to the gauntlet outfit, and they put on those gauntlets.
And then those gloves are turned one at a time.
They're turned before that gauntlet's put on there. That machine is a cylinder machine; it goes around. Now if it's just the band, they put it on, and it's turned with the rest of the gloves.
But they have to be turned by hand.
We turn all the hot mill gloves here by hand. Some glove factories turn them on those automatics, but they tear up a lot of them. Then they're inspected and packed. They're usually shipped six dozen to the case or twelve dozen to the case; it depends on the order.
And then you make a few gloves that have knit wristbands.
Yes, they're called knit wrist gloves. And there the glove operator makes the whole glove, except the operator that puts the knit wrist on. And then it's turned. It's not turned until they put the knit wrist on.
Did you make more leather gloves at one time than you do now?
Yes, we made more leather gloves at one time than we do now. Now I'll tell you—of course, this is not for publishing—we've got a leather plant over at Banner Elk. The Banner Elk Glove Company.
Yes, I've seen it, I think.
That's my plant over there, too. As a matter of fact, we've got six plants. You ever been through Mountain City, Tennessee?
I've heard of it.
It's on beyond Boone about twenty miles. We've got a plant there bigger than this one. It don't make a thing but single gloves, and they make about 7,000 dozen a day.
What kind of glove?
Singles, where they just put the knit wrist on it. The others are double, so what is quilted together are double gloves.
Did you say that it's hard to get people to work on the leather gloves?
Oh, we can't hardly get anybody to work here on gloves. It's
Is it harder work to do leather gloves?
Oh, yes, it's a lot harder to do leather gloves.
Is it harder to find …
Yes, it's harder to get anybody to stay with leather operation than it is the cotton operation. We find it that way. And since we have another operation leather, we're not pressing it too hard.
Let me go back a little bit and talk about you. When were you born, and where did you grow up?
I was born August 14, 1908, and I was raised just about two miles, as the crow flies, right in this direction here. I was raised on a cotton, grain, and dairy farm. I used to deliver milk through the city of Newton when I went to high school. And when I graduated from high school in 1927, I was sent to State College to school, and there I went to school and was educated to be a CPA. But I got cold feet. I got out of college in 1931 at the bottom of the Depression, and instead of taking up the accounting later, why, I got into the glove industry.
How big was your father's farm?
It was about 250 acres.
That's a pretty good-sized farm.
Oh, we still own it. Me and my brother got part of it, and then I bought another one besides that. We're still farmers.
Do you know anything about your grandparents, where they came from or anything about your history?
Oh, yes. My grandfather, my great-grandfather, my
great-great-grandfather, my great-great-great-grandfather, and my
great-great-great-great-grandfather came from Pennsylvania to Salisbury
about the year 1750. And he
How was that story passed on to you?
Different members of the family just kept handing it down to us. It goes back to Captain Daniel Little, he was called. He's buried right in the middle of the graveyard in Salisbury, which turned out to be the Cemetery. He died December 10, 1775. That was before the American Revolution. He was captain of the colonial militia there; that's where he got his name. So he died before the American Revolution, which one year. Of course, all of my folks have traced back to get DAR papers. They go straight on to him, too. Even Peter, the same year his son.
What about your mother's family?
My mother's family I don't know quite that far back. She was Dalsey
Hufmann, and my great-grandfather was Alfred Hufmann. He was in the War
Between the States, and he had a son that was in the Army, too. His son
was killed at Frazier's Farm, which was a small skirmish out southeast
of Richmond. And the enemy was so close on them, they didn't have a
chance to bury him. They took his belongings off of him and wrapped him
with a blanket and covered him with leaves. Now some side of the family
says he went back the next day and buried him. My mother never did tell
me that, though. That's the length of that. I've not had time to check
it out. But there's Hufmanns all through this country, and it goes in
with the
Were they all farmers?
They were all farmers. They were all laborers. Now Hufmann was a machinist or a mechanic, too. He could do blacksmith work. He could even make darning needles and put a hole in it, back over a hundred years ago.
Any storekeepers or lawyers or …
No. We are all of German descent and people that worked for a living on the farm or things connected with the farm. Of course, in later years some of us turned out to be… They've got the inheritance from my great-grandfather Hufmann, and they've turned out to be carpenters and architects and tinners and what-have-you.
Did you work on the farm when you were coming up?
Oh, gosh, yes, I worked on the farm. As a matter of fact, me and my wife lived on the farm until 1950, and then I moved to Newton to put my twin daughters in school at Newton, where they had me to go to school when I was a kid.
When you went to school, did you go in and board with somebody?
Oh, no, I walked and rode a bicycle. It was just two miles across there.
I drove an automobile when I was fifteen years old, delivering milk
through the city of Newton. Of course, they wasn't so tight on a
driver's license then. As a matter of fact, you didn't have a driver's
license. But I used to deliver milk all through the city of Newton when
I was from fifteen on up till nineteen. I graduated, and then I didn't
deliver milk much after that. My father retired in 1929 and left the
farm. As a matter of fact, I lived with him and Mother for eighteen
months after we left the farm, and I walked back to the farm every day
and helped my brother with the farm. And then about 1930 we divided the
farm between my
Were there any slaveowners in your family?
Oh, yes. My great-grandfather owned eighteen slaves. My grandfather owned one one time, but he got killed. A tree fell on him. He had so many boys of his own, I guess he figured he didn't need any. But my great-grandfather was a slaveowner. All through our family, we've never found where they ever had any trouble with their slaves, that they always liked each other, and they worked in the fields with the slaves. They didn't have many.
Were they all Democrats, mostly?
I think up to my great-grandfather, but after that, why, it went the other way.
Republicans?
Yes. They tell on my grandfather that he wrote a write-in vote for Abraham Lincoln. Me and my brother consider ourselves to be the oldest Republicans in the country, just about.
When the Civil War came, then, were they against secession?
Yes. My grandfather hid out. George Washington was taken to the army, but he escaped from them and hid out, and then he hid out with a number of his cousins. One of them was killed by the home guard. They lived over in Alexander County where they didn't have but a few slaves, and they just didn't believe in slavery in the first place. Now my great-grandfather, who had slaves, he was looking the other way. But there was a division there.
There was a division in the family.
Well, it was at that time, but it never did amount to anything. They
didn't like my grandfather because he hid out. Well, he wasn't the only
one that hid out. The neighborhood was full of boys that hid out.
That's right.
We've lost more people in that war than we have in all other wars put
together. Disgrace. What was it over? Nothing. Turned out to be nothing.
Are you saying that the boys that were hiding out to keep out of the army would come in and help with the cornshucking and then change back to hiding?
Yes. See, here is the way it worked. Some of the boys could volunteer for
home guard service, that is, getting around to keep the boys in the service. They had a job to keep their boys in
the service. To round them up and take them back, they escaped so
much.
This county, though, voted for secession, didn't it?
Oh, yes, the State of North Carolina went to… Well, it's just in the
paper here. They cut off the men. I'm reading about the Charlotte men.
Did it cause hard feelings between your family and the southern Democrats in the area?
Well, yes, there was to some extent, but over in Alexander County most everybody felt that way except the older ones that had had some slaves. It wasn't as bitter in the neighborhoods as it was in the American Revolution. That was so bitter. Oh, that was bitter. You know, a lot of families had to leave here on account of it. Some of them, I read not too long ago, went to Nova Scotia and all up into Canada. But it wasn't that bitter.
After the Civil War, in the 1880's and '90's, did you have any relatives that joined the Populist Party?
Oh, yes, my folks were in the Populist Party.
Oh, really?
Yes. You see, that Populist Party came in here before, really, the Republican Party got very much in the… Yes, when the Populist Party went out, it joined the Republican Party. Oh, we had Congressmen elected in the Populist Party. Shuford was one, I remember. Of course, I don't
Which Shuford was that?
That was the Shufords over here on South Fork River. Some of these Shufords, it seems, probably would know. He was elected on the Populist ticket.1
Do you remember any stories about the Populist Party that you could tell me?
Not particularly, except I've heard rumors and things that there was a
lot of gunfire between each other. I remember this one nigger when I was
a young boy. He was a driver for one of these fellows runing on the
Populist Party, and they started shooting at him, and he said, "I got
down in the buggy as low as I could to keep the middle horse a-going as
fast as I could, and the old boss was sticking his head up over the back
What did the Populist Party stand for around here?
More or less what the Republican Party stands for now, conservative. They were the conservative part of the party. And of course they stood more or less for equal rights for the Negro, too. They were probably against the Ku Klux Klan, but they had to have theKu Klux Klan back in those days, of course. If you read history, you couldn't have never done what …
Back during the Reconstruction period?
Oh, yes, they had to have that. No question about it.
Why is that?
Well, because you never would control the nigger at all. You just wouldn't have no… You just couldn't control him at all. He wouldn't work; he wouldn't do nothing. And the carpetbagger would think you owed him a living and all that stuff, you know. Go down to the old State Capitol. You see where the stones are all broke off the steps? Well, they say that it come about by rolling whiskey barrels down the steps, and break them off. It was under carpetbagger government. We couldn't have existed under such as that.
Was the Klan strong in this area during Reconstruction?
Oh, yes, it was strong all from here on through the South. Sure it was, and they did a lot of good. Of course, there was a lot of… It's just like everything, you know. It's the way with anything the human element's got anything to do with. It'll swing from one extreme to the other. And then other people got to taking it up. If they had a spite at somebody, they'd give him a good whipping and they'd pin it on the Ku Klux Klan when it wasn't. See.
Did you have people that were in the Klan in those days?
Well, yes, all my folks were in the Klan.
What kind of people would have been in the Klan at that time?
The people that wanted to try to set up a government that we could live under, and wanted their laws obeyed some way or another, and keep the nigger in his place. He had to be kept in his place. If you didn't, why… Carpetbagger government through here was terrible, and further south it was worse.
Were the same people in the Klan that later on joined the Populist Party?
Yes, they was sent
But isn't that a contradiction?
Well, it evoluted; it didn't just change overnight. Of course, the Klan through here wasn't very active many years after the War. Things began to settle down and the Democratic Party began to get hold of the government a little better. But immediately after the War, under the carpetbagger and all that stuff that was feeding to us from the South, why, that was the only recourse to keep the black man in his place. Some people don't believe that, but, now, I do.
Were any of your relatives elected on the Populist Party ticket?
No, I've had no politicians in my family. I had a first cousin that was chairman of the board of county commissioners here a few years ago.
But they were supporters.
Oh, yes, they were supporters of the Populist Party.
About the Klan, have you been reading about this stuff that's been going on in Greensboro?2
Oh, yes, that's altogether a different… That's not even an offshot of the old Klan.
This is a completely different thing.
Yes, yes. I don't have no sympathy for them. I think it's out of place. I don't think we need it. I don't think we need the Communist Party, either. So there you go. It's the misfits on both sides. No, the Klan lived its day, and after that, why, I think it was out of place.
So you graduated from high school, and you went straight off to college after that?
I went straight to college.
Did you have other brothers and sisters that had gone to college?
No, I was the only one. I have just only one full brother, and I had a half-sister and a half-brother that were older. They went into what would be considered high school here at old Catawba College. You know, Catawba College was first located here at Newton, and they went there in what was called the prep school at that time, and they went in that pretty far.
How did it come about that you got to go off to State?
Well, they had just raised me that way. I didn't know it would be any other way, that's all.
You always knew you were going to go to college.
I was to have gone to Columbia University in the fall of '31 to get my
master's degree in business administration, but things was so tough, and
I felt like I'd been a liability long enough. And I had my credits. I
remember I took a dollar bill and sent it to State College, and they
sent them to Columbia University. All of our seminars and most all of
our textbooks were written by professors out of Columbia University.
Therefore, most all our boys went to get their master's degree in
business administration, went to Columbia University. You could get it
in a year at that time, but it'd take two years now. And it would have
taken two years at Harvard at that time, too, and Yale. I just regret it
so bad
Oh, really?
But I didn't.
That happened to a lot of people in the Depression.
I could have went anyhow. I was still a single boy, and marriage was off a few years, but I declare, things was tough. You can't imagine how blue things was in 1931. And to this day, I don't buy no stock, because I was in school to study banking, financing, and all kinds of investments when that crash come. I just can't do it. I just can't buy stock. I can buy gold. Can't buy stocks, I just can't. So many families just wiped out. There were a lot of them here at Newton, too, just completely wiped out. They had everything they had in stock. My daddy was never a stock man. He never had any stock in anything. We had it in farm land, and, of course, farm land went down low, low, low, but it came back. But you can't come back with stocks when it's wiped out, and the company is bought and taken over by somebody else, you see. You just can't do it.
What special memories do you have of your years in college?
Loafing around with nothing to do, to tell you the truth.
Oh, really?
We didn't have no classes in the afternoon. Of course, I know I studied. I done my studying in the library, too, a while. But what I got didn't come easy. I majored in accounting, and that's a lot of work, a lot of bookkeeping. But I didn't have lab but one year, from two to four, three days a week. No kidding, they paid my way all the way. My daddy just give me a checkbook with…
Those are the checks that paid your way to college?
There's the checks that put me through school.
Wow. Had he saved up enough money from farming to do this?
Oh, yes, my father was pretty well anchored. Yes. Of course, you could go to school at State College then for about six hundred dollars a year, and eat in the dining hall, good eats.
Before we move on to your career, I wanted to ask you just a little bit more about your childhood. What kind of person was your mother? What do you remember about her?
My mother was, of course, a heavy-set person, and she was a hard worker and a wonderful housekeeper and worked in the field a many a many a day, just right with us. Of course, we all worked. Me and my brother and my father and mother raised a lot of wheat and grain to feed the dairy cattle, and we had colored tenants that raised the cotton. This is not for publication, but my father at one time was the second biggest cotton farmer in this county. I remember in the hot wheat harvest, my mother would always bring up in the evening, about two-thirty or three o'clock, a little jug of wine and cake and pickles to give not only to us but any of the hands that was helping us, which she said was a custom that was handed down to her from all the Germans, Dutch. They claimed that good wine would counteract the bacteria in your stomach from drinking water when it was hot. There's a lot of things. And, of course, my mother was wonderful to bake persimmon pudding. And she could make the best sausage and liver mush that you ever eat. And, of course, we raised our own hogs and our own beef and all that stuff.
Were you closer to your father or to your mother?
Well, I don't know whether it would make any …
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
We came with a couple of my friends that I know in the neighborhood. They went to a different school, but I knew them; we were farm boys. When he caught hold of my hand, and when I got on the train he said, "Son, you do what's right." That I'll never forget. [Tears come to his eyes.]
When he was sending you off to college?
Yes. And, of course, I came back home a lot. That was in the days when they called it "bumming," you know. It started in that age. And you could bum home faster than you could on a train. But today there's been so much… You know, that's the way; a good thing gets going, why, some people ruin it, you see. So many holdups and all. You can't get out here in the road and bum anywhere now, but I used to. Of course, I never did leave to bum up here unless I had money to catch a bus or a train. I never took a car down to use while I was in school there. We had cars that I could have taken, but I didn't. And my father would have let me taken, I know, my senior year, but I didn't. I didn't have to take any examinations much during my senior year. Of course, it's not that way now. You have to take exams. You don't get good enough grades to get out of examinations, do you?
No.
Well, we could then, back in those days.
What did you do when you first came back home then in '31?
Well, I was glad I had a farm to come to then. Most all of my classmates
owed for their education and had no farm to go to nor no nothing. A lot
of them took jobs in a cotton mill, just running a loom or weaving. Some
of them took jobs with Jewel Tea Company delivering
So you came back and …
Stayed here at the farm about five or six years, and then I kept books in Hickory for a trucking line for about three years, and then I kept books at a hosiery finishing plant for about three years, and then I started this thing. I was a little too old for the service. I'm seventy-two years old. I started this thing in 1945, me and my brother and sister-in-law.
Tell me a little bit about your brother and sister-in-law and how they …
Well, we lived on the same farm. They lived on his side that he had, and I lived on the side that I had. And they had had experience in the glove business.
Where had they gotten their experience?
At Newton Glove down here. So we started in a little building uptown. It was right where Bowman Drug Company now stands. It was a big old brick building there; it had two storeys to it, and we started there.
What had they done at Newton Glove?
Oh, they were plain workers. She was a sewer, sewed gloves. And my brother turned and formed.
Was he farming and turning at …
Yes, he farmed and worked there, too. Him and his wife worked there, I think, seven or eight years while I was working in Hickory with the bookkeeping and different things.
You had gotten married meanwhile?
Both of us had. He got married before I got through college. I got out in '31, and I got married in '33.
How did you meet your wife?
We were raised in the same neighborhood. Her father's farm adjoined my father's back on the creek, on the branch. We used to meet back there and sleigh ride in the snow, all together, the whole family.
When did you start courting her?
Well
Oh, really?
Yes, we all through when I was in college and then three years after I got out of college.
What took you so long before you got married?
Well, I don't know. We just wasn't in no hurry. She was teaching school. She was luckier than I was. She went to teaching school right out of high school. Well, she got two summer sessions at Lenoir-Rhyne. Started teaching in a little country school out here, and then she'd go to school in the summertime and then go to Saturday school and all. She had it rough to get through school back then.
Where did you all get the capital to start a business of your own?
Well, it didn't take as much as we thought it did. We had collected a little money along. Cotton prices began to get better. Then we had worked off, too, you see. We lived at home and didn't have to spend money for eats, you know. And then my wife taught school.
So you had just been saving.
We were thrifty, and we saved our money. It didn't take as much money as you thought it did.
How much money did you expect it to take?
I thought it would take at least $20,000, but we started with less than fifteen. In a very small way, of course.
What made you decide to start a glove mill? How did that idea even come up?
Well, I knew that was coming.
I don't know whether I ought to tell all these things. I don't know where it's going.
Well, it's just going into a collection in the library, but is there something …
Well, when I was delivering milk in the city of Newton as a boy from fifteen to eighteen years old, we had to get up early in the morning, milk the milk, and cool it, and bottle it. And you had to get up early to do that and get to school then after you delivered it. And I'd go by Newton Glove, and it was maybe about three times as big as this complete office. And I'd think to myself, "Some day, if I could just grow up to have me a little business, a glove mill like this, and not have to deliver this damnable cold milk, I'd be a happy boy." And that never did get out of my mind; it never did. I never had a desire to get into anything else.
Wow.
Never had a desire to get into anything else. Because all during the
Depression, they would run at least two days a week when other companies
were busted and closed for years on end. In Newton, I don't know of but
two things that stood that thing, and that was the old Newton Oil and
Fertilizer Company and the two banks. That one bank there, when
Roosevelt closed the banks, they said was the strongest bank in North
America. It didn't even owe a corresponding bank any money. You know,
banks work through each other. But it didn't even owe a correspondent
So was it your idea to start the mill then, rather than your brother's? More your idea than his?
Well, yes, it was mine. I was the originator. I had to beg him awful to get him to come with me.
Were they kind of afraid to take the chance?
I think they was afraid, yes. Was afraid to take the step.
What did they think might happen? Were they afraid that you might lose your savings?
They figured that we'd probably go broke.
But we didn't.
Tell me about how you started out.
We lived out in the country, and we had at that time a Lum and Abner
telephone. Do you ever hear of them? The old-time telephones, you know,
that you pick it up and you twist a crank and ring it. In my workings at
Hickory, I had got in touch with the Cutters' Exchange in Nashville, who
catered to the needle trade. I wrote them and asked them if they had any
machines. I knew the kind of machines we'd have to get. And they
answered me back, and they said they did. Well, the man that
How did you get your first workers? Were they people that you knew?
Yes, they was people here that we knew. My brother's wife had a couple
sisters that knew how to make gloves, and we trained …
So you had a hard time getting the material?
No, I didn't have a hard time, because this all was made down here at Newton, close by, and I was in on the drag and I knew all the people, and they knew us, too. And I had priorities. I went to Charlotte and got priorities to work with cloth. Cloth was the biggest thing to get priorities. We could get thread pretty easy. And I got a good bit of my equipment from Mrs. Rankin's husband, [Adrian L.] Shuford. Oh, he was a great friend of mine. And we'd talk to each other five and six times a day on the telephone.
Oh, really?
Yes. So we got a small cutting press from him. And then we went up there with a tractor and put it on skids and just pulled it up the street and put it in the back of that building and pulled it on up to its place with the tractor. I sold him a lot of gloves, too. I sold him 10,000 dozen gloves the day the Korean War started. We had already moved down here. This is built on the back end of a small farm we own. It runs from here plumb on up to the other road. And I sold him a lot of gloves; he bought a lot of gloves from us.
You mean you would sell him finished gloves and …
Yes, and he'd resell them.
Why would you do that, rather than sell them directly yourself?
Well
Was there very much competition among the different …
Oh, yes, we was in competition with each other. Yes, all the time, but I
always tried to stay clear of them if I could. I remember I spent one
night up near Richmond to see Reynolds Metal Company. I called on them
on Monday morning, and they said, "Oh, you're from Conover. Do you know
Shuford down there at Warlong Glove?" I said, "I sure do. You buy gloves
from him?" He said, "Yes. Is he a Jew?" I said, "Oh, hell, no."
But he didn't get into any trouble?
No, no. Well, in the Depression we all was in trouble then, but he come out of it with a flash Well, that's his son that runs Jackson Buff. You've probably interviewed them.
I've talked to him on the phone, and then I interviewed his mother.
They're fine people; they're great glove people
Did Warlong Glove go out of business?
Yes, they sold out.
When was that?
Oh, it's been a number of years. The Riegal Textile Corporation bought them. That's not up to me to be a-telling. They ought to tell that to you themselves. But it was a big deal.
What were the biggest problems you had during those first ten …
Getting them made was the big problem. Getting them produced.
What was …
Well, you've just got to train help and all. It was slow. It would take from eight to twelve months to train an operator to make gloves.
Oh, really? Eight to twelve months?
Oh, yes, sir. It sure does. Sweatin' blood.
Were your first twelve operators all women?
Yes.
Were they young or old or what …
A couple of them's retired now. They were
Did you hire mostly young girls?
Oh, yes, when we'd get into training, we'd hire young people from eighteen to twenty-five years old.
So you preferred young people.
Oh, yes, because they would be with you much longer, you see. When we went up to Mountain City to put up this big plant… They say we've been over there seventeen years, and I know some of the young girls are showing a little age on them. And our people from seventeen to twenty-five years old. Then we had one girl to lie about her age. She was twenty-eight, and oh, did she make a glove. She's a-working today. She married an Eisenhower, and the Eisenhowers are in our family, too. It's the same line as General Eisenhower. General Eisenhower was supposed to have lived in North Carolina, but they went to Texas. The General was born in Denton [Denison], Texas. And when he was about two years old, they moved up to Abilene, Kansas.
But that's just the same line.
It's the same line, but it goes back to around the 1700's and the early 1800's.
How would you pay people during the time they were being trained?
Of course, we had the minimum wages, you know. All the time you had to pay them the minimum wage, and then of course we would set production. When they got to making more, to pay their own way, why, then they could get to making extra money for themselves.
How does piecework work, exactly? You pay a certain amount an hour …
All the glove factories that I know of, most of us through here work in six dozen to the pack, we call it, and then you pay them so much per pack. And by the way, this is the work glove hub of the world. More work gloves are made and controlled from this point than any other spot on earth. That's not for big publication, but that's a fact. It's been that way for years.
Do you have any idea how many people work in glove manufacturing around here?
I don't know how many works in it now, but there's a thousand
That would be Warlong Glove and Newton Glove?
Yes. Then the next year there was another one started. Then after Riegal liquidated, there was another one started. Now we've all got branch plants away from here. I don't know whether any of the other manufacturers have told you that or not, but that's literally the truth. More work gloves, and oh, the whole industry knows "the Catawba boys," they call them.
Is that right?
Oh, yes. They know us.
What about the changing technology? Has it been pretty much the same machines from the beginning that you're using now, or what kind of changes …
The machine is the same sewing machines, except they're made stouter and
run faster. The glove is made today just like the first one was made
years ago in the West whenever there was snow on the ground. They made
them in the West in their families. The men would cut them out with
scissors, and the women would sew them up. The same today. We've made
progress in how to cut them and how to do a lot of the other things to
them, but that sewing is the same old way. The machine's got to be
guided every move it makes, just like the first glove was made. I had an
uncle that spent a lot of time in the West, in Illinois, and he said
they cut them out with scissors in the wintertime when there was snow on
the ground, and the women would sew them up. They used them in working
in the fields in the summertime, and the wintertime, too. They husked
corn
In this county?
Yes. Just like, you know, the old tobacco poke things. They were put
together and made, and they'd send them in here, and women would run
thread through them, you know? You've seen people with these thread
tobacco
Yes.
These folks in here made them. And that's what got the idea here.
Are you saying that there were factories here that rolled tobacco?
There was ladies here that sewed gloves.
They'd sew gloves in their homes.
Yes. Sewed gloves in their homes and then sent them back to wherever they got them from. Now I'm not as well versed in that as some of the Hermans over here, but that's where they got the idea to make gloves first. They were among the first to make gloves here, and then, of course, Warlong came along. And when Newton Glove came along, they …
So women were sewing gloves in their homes.
Yes.
Do you know who they were selling the gloves to?
They sent them back to the people that sent them the cut goods.
Do you know who sent them the cut goods?
They might could come from Wells, Vermont, or some of those bigger factories in the Midwest. I just don't know.
And they'd send cut goods all the way down here.
Yes, sure.
Are the Hermans a family that's been in the business a long time?
Yes. I don't know if any of them are living any more or not. I don't know of any of them. They're all dead. But they run a glove factory over here on the railroad, right pretty close to Carolina Glove. Have you called on Carolina Glove yet? They could tell you a lot, too.
Not yet.
One of them worked for them a long time. I don't know whether he lost his arm in the glove industry or not, but he was sales manager for them for a good while. But he's dead now. But they was still made in this county that way before they started making them commercially here.
What about accidents? Is it dangerous, the cutting and
Well, no. We've had some boys… Now this fellow that said he'd worked for us fourteen years got his hand mangled up in a press out here.
In a cutting press?
Yes, he wasn't watching hisself and joking and going on. But that's the only bad injury we've had in the thirty-four years we've been in business.
It looked like you could easily get a needle in your finger on the sewing machine.
Well, they do run the needles into their finger, but we've got guards on
there. It's pretty hard to get them through there. We have had people to
run a needle in their finger, but that don't amount to nothing. It
scares them to death. It would me, too,
Back, not in the forties when you started this mill, but when you
Oh, no.
There wasn't any feeling among people that women shouldn't …
No. We've had people to say that a woman's place is in the home, but all the gloves that have been made in this country have been made by women. Oh, yes. Of course, they didn't have no labor laws back when I was a young boy, but I had a lot of girlfriends that I went to school with and all. They went to work at fourteen and fifteen years old. And some of them walked two and three miles to the factory, too. And they worked ten hours a day, some of them did, especially in the wintertime. No, there's never been no hard feelings.
Did your wife quit teaching school after she got married?
No. Well, she had to.
They wouldn't let married women teach?
They wouldn't let married women teach. Then they come back on their knees begging her to teach. So she went back to teach the first year we started the glove factory. And she taught a total of thirty years, and she's retired now.
Well, she was out twelve years. We raised a set of twin girls. Right there is their picture when they was about eighteen years old.
Very pretty.
One of them lives on one of the farms I bought. She built a new home
I sure haven't, but I'll …
That's where we see him. They live out from Durham off of Cole Mill Road, which is out north of Durham, in a development out there. They've been married a good while. They have a boy eighteen years old.
It looks like these sewers are sewing really fast. Are some people much faster than other people?
Oh, yes, some are just… You'll get elements in there just like everything else. Just like in classes, you've been with people that can learn right fast, and other people that have to work hard for it. We have people that drag and can't hardly make production; we have people that can make forty dollars a day.
What do you have to do to make production?
What we call "production" is when you make enough to count for the minimum wage. The minimum wage is $3.10 an hour now, I think. When your tickets all add up that you make $3.10 an hour, you're making production.
And that's so much a dozen?
Yes, he'd give you so much a pack, or six dozen. Then, of course, if you make more, then you get it, you see.
And how much do you pay per dozen?
Well, per pack, I don't know the rates. You see, I'm trying to retire. I'm getting away from all of it. I don't do no detail work at all. I come up here, and I read the magazines and the papers, and usually I go home by two or three o'clock in the evening. I don't know what the rates are. I don't even know what they're going to give them for a Christmas present. My son-in …
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
Well, we'll close down here now. At this plant we'll close the twenty-first; that's next Friday, a week from today.
You stay closed for …
Then I imagine that my son-in-law will go up to the Banner Elk plant and close it on the twenty-first, too. Now Jack'll have four to close. He'll have the Mountain City plant and three in Virginia. So he'll probably close some of them on Thursday and the others on Friday. We work about 1,000 people in all of our plants.
Do you find that certain kinds of people make better workers than others? When you used to be in charge of hiring, how would you decide who to hire and who not to hire?
Well, you just more or less have to try out. You've got some things to go
by. If you can get their grades, that's a good thing to go by, but
that's hard
How much does it cost to train somebody?
Well, you just figure the minimum wage for from eight months to a year and a half.
During that time, can people …
During that time, they're not making enough… What we call their makeup
pay will be terrible, between what the minimum wage is and what
People that have been with you a long time?
Yes. Even if they've not been with me but two years, and they're good operators. Valuable, they're valuable. And they know it, too. Oh, I tell you, they can boss you if they want to. They know it. Oh, and step out here and go to the competitor, and just go to work the next morning. Oh, yes.
Is there a labor shortage?
Oh, yes.
So they're always looking for …
Here in Catawba County, I don't know what it is now, but it has been less than one percent already, unemployed. Whenever you get that low, why, you're not finding anybody unemployed that wants to work.
How do you keep your good hands from going off and working for somebody else?
Well, we try to be as good to them as we can.
What does it take to make people happy and satisfied …
Well, it takes a lot of things. We try to give bonuses. We pay the hospitalization on all of our workers. Then we've got a good rate for them on their dependents. And we give two weeks off, one at Christmas and one at the Fourth of July, with pay. And we try to pay rates that's going, or either above the neighborhood rates. And we try to have good working conditions. It's just so many things that you can't mention, that's all.
What about just good personal relationships with people? Do you think that makes a difference?
Well, I get out among the folks, and I joke and talk with them. I try to be not exactly down on the level with them. I try to keep myself a little above them, which naturally you have to. But if I've got any enemies out there in that plant, I don't know it. I know one thing: when I'm a-travelling around, me and my wife, to these other plants, they're always concerned about me. They're concerned about me. We've got a plant that we just finished building in Springs, Virginia. I don't know whether I've got a picture of it here or not. I don't believe I ever got a picture at home of it. It's as big as this building here, 28,000 square feet. And me and my wife was over there summer, working with it. We had started over there about seven years ago in a gymnasium building and just outgrew it. It wasn't satisfactory for a glove operation, no way.
What kind of changes have you seen in the industry over the years you've been involved in it?
We have different ways to make a lot of the things that goes into the
glove, but as far as the glove making itself, it's the same thing. And
they're sold more or less the same way. Now we sell through jobbers,
mostly. We have salesmen in different parts of the country. They may
sell different lines. We don't have any that sell just gloves for us and
nothing else, but they sell other lines. And most of our gloves
eventually wind up in industry. We have some competitors that's close by
that sell direct to industry and don't go through jobbers. In other
words, the two main ways to sell gloves is through salesmen, and then
another, of course, is to sell direct to industry. They'll hunt you up.
The industry, they know about you, they'll hunt you up. But it's been
our policy to have a good, strong sales force that sells to jobbers that
looks after the industry. In other words, we don't sell to both; we just
sell to jobbers. Unless it's
Are the jobbers usually in the North?
They're all over the country, from Texas on through the West Coast, on around. We sell quite a few gloves in Florida. But you take, say, from the Mississippi delta on around west, then on around here. We don't sell many gloves in Virginia. There's not too much industry in Virginia. And we sell quite a few gloves in Florida, but no big amount. It's in the Southwest, Northwest, and the central North and across the East. A lot of gloves are sold in New York, Boston, and through there. New Jersey. A lot in Chicago. Chicago's a great market. We've got one customer that… I haven't looked at the latest figures, but we sell them probably over two million dollars' worth of gloves a year.
Just to one customer.
He's a big jobber. He makes some gloves himself, leather gloves,
What about changes in workers' attitudes or people's pride in their work, that kind of thing? Has there been much change?
It had deteriorated after a while, say seven or eight years ago, but
people are beginning to come back now. I'll tell you, the family life, I
notice. Say, twenty-eight years ago up until, say, about ten to seven
years ago, discipline in the home was not as good as it is today. And
I've known schoolteachers that say so, too. Parents are beginning to be
more concerned about how they raise their children, and trying to
compare them with the way they were raised. They just figure they
weren't raised right, and let do any way in the world. There's a
difference. And, of course, we never want our young people to smoke, but
I don't think we have so many young
I notice you have mostly pretty young boys or young men that do the turning. Has that always been the case?
That's always been the case. In other words, the glove industry is thought of as a young people's industry, really.
In comparison to …
Well, it's just something that's fast. When you get on the turning point of the glove, you've got to be fast, and the same way with sewing. Of course, these glove operators get to be old, and they say, "Well…" But they'd learned it years ago. An old person, on an average, can never learn to sew gloves and get up to fast speed.
There were quite a few older people out there sewing, though.
Yes, they've been sewing gloves for years and years.
Have they slowed down?
Some of them have, but they stay up pretty good, because they've been at it so long.
So it's always been …
It's always been considered a young people's industry. But we have people that's in it young and grow on up with it.
There are not very many men working on the floor, it didn't seem like. What percentage …
No, as a matter of fact, don't take too much male labor in a glove plant. It's mostly a female industry, sewers.
Have you had any men sewers?
Oh, no.
Never had any. Is the hosiery industry very big in Catawba County?
Well, yes, it is big. This is a hosiery …
Is it as big as gloves?
Yes, I'd say from Morganton to High Point is the hosiery industry of the world, too.
How would you compare this business with the hosiery business?
The hosiery business is bigger.
But did you ever think of going… You wanted to go into gloves. You didn't think of going into hosiery.
I was office manager in a big hosiery finishing plant back over here. But I never did think I'd like it.
Why not?
Well, it's just so damn detailed, and it's style from end to end. You take gloves, there's no style; it's the same thing year in and year out. Although you've got to make a lot of gloves to make money, but… Aw, you take socks, it's half a dozen of this kind, half a dozen of that kind, and then you've got sizes in there yet. It's detail; oh, it's detail. Then you've got all kinds of yarns that are going in to make up a sock, and you've got all kinds of socks, like cushion-soled socks and reinforced in the heels, and there are all kinds of yarn a-going in. And then, of course, you've got ladies' sizes and men's sizes, and, oh, there's no end to it.
Changing fashions.
Oh, yes, changing styles.
Do you think people prefer working as hands in a glove factory over a hosiery mill? Is there a competition for pretty much the same workers?
Well, the competition has been between us, but whenever you get a glove maker to making gloves, even if they quit and go to the hosiery, they'll.
They'll come back?
And vice versa. If you've got people from… We've lost a lot of people to the upholstering trade. They go to that, and a lot of times they don't like it, and they'll come back. It's usually what they're trained in. Of course, that don't say that they'll like it every time, but usually they stick with it.
Have you had any labor organizing problems in your plant?
We had one at the Banner Elk plant once that we whipped out
They went up there among those ignorant people in the mountains and just
made them believe they'd get everything in the world. And we had to
combat it
didn't even get to that.
No, it didn't get that far.
What union would it be that's organizing the glove industry? Would it be the Textile Workers' Union?
This was the Textile Workers' Union of the AF of L-CIO.
How did you combat it?
I got a lawyer in Charlotte; he was an anti-union lawyer.
He come up here and worked with …
There are some pretty famous Charlotte lawyers like that.
I think his name was Kennerly or… We had him to come up here and help us for a couple weeks. It was expensive, but it was worth it.
What can a lawyer do in a case like that?
He just had experience in how to persuade people and how to use
psychology on them. Just like, you know, you study psychology in school,
So he just would go in and tell …
We run some of them off, too, for faulty work, that was working with it. Oh, we had to go to court. We was in court in Boone for a week, but we won the case and got rid of them. And then it never did get to elections. No, we never heard any more from them.
What would cause the court to intervene in a situation …
Well, I wouldn't say it was court, too; it was the National Labor Relations Board. They hold hearings just like court.
So somebody would complain to the National Labor Relations Board, and then you'd have to go in …
Yes, that's right. They'd bring complaints against me, yes.
Do you think the people in the mountains are a different sort of people than the people in …
It all depends on the locality. I guess maybe it's not their fault, but a lot of people in the mountains have been pampered by the government. You know, you've heard of the Appalachia people.
Yes.
You know, you can ruin people. Been given too much by the government, in
some sections of the mountains. And a lot of it's up through West
Virginia out here. From here
What is the average length of time that your workers stay with the company?
Oh, I don't know. We have some that's been with us ever since we've been in business, and then we've got some that …
Do you have a problem with turnover?
Yes. Oh, labor turnover's tremendous. Not especially in the glovemaking
department, but it's in other, outlying parts around. Turning forms
You have more problem with labor turnover …
Yes, we have more problem with labor turnover in any of the operations other than sewing.
Huh. Why is that?
I don't know, it's just… Mostly we have to depend on young people, and they're just restless and just want to go somewhere else. Especially here. Now it's not that way in some of our other plants. But here, because you can step out the next morning and get a job anywhere you want to.
Did your brother and you and your sister-in-law all …
We started as a partnership, and we was in a partnership until 1950. We moved down here and built this building in the first part of 1950, and we incorporated then. Then about fifteen, sixteen years ago, I bought his end of it. He wanted to go back to the farm.
Oh, yes, he's farming.
Yes. He's a gentleman farmer. He's got all the money, and I've got the headaches.
Why did he want to go back to the farm?
Well, he is just a natural-born cattle raiser and farmer. And, of course, I was a cattle breeder for forty years. Hereford cattle. And he's still got a lot of cattle. I've sold mine off.
Did he go back to the farm that you had grown up on, or does he have a different farm?
No, he lives at the old place.
He lives at the old place?
Well, the old place, the road split it middle in two, just about. He got the north side of it, and I got the south side.
Is his wife still alive?
No. Unfortunately, we lost her about five or six years, I reckon, before
I bought his interest in it. He remarried. She was my right arm in the
glove industry.
Did you encourage him to remarry?
I guess I sure did by actions. I didn't say to him, "What the hell's
wrong with you?"
Are there other things that have been important to you in your life that we haven't touched on that you'd like to add?
Well, I've had some trades that I didn't go through with that I wished I would have. Of course, everybody gets that to happen, but I've had a wonderful life. My wife's been a wonderful person. She handles her own money and buys her own clothes, and I reckon I ought to be ashamed I've never bought her any clothes. She always got her bank account, and I've got mine. We live together in the same house, and you'll never see no "Mr. and Mrs. A. C. Little" on the check.
Has it been that way since you first got married?
Yes. She's had her money to herself, and I don't know within fifteen thousand dollars what she's got.
Huh.
When you first got married, did she say, "I want to do it this way," or how did you …
Well, no, I guess that's the way it turned out. Of course, she would have said that we wasn't going to have it no other way. She's an individualistic person. Hell, that just tickles me. I don't have to worry about… I have plenty of my own to worry about, without hers.
Right.
No, when I graduated, there was only one CPA in accounting, and he didn't have nothing to do. You take through the thirties and into the forties, business never got anywhere. So I just never did take it up after that. Of course, I kept books for years and filled out a few income tax statements. But you take all the laws except the basic laws that was put on the books in 1931. have been put on the books since I graduated. So I'm just as dull on the laws. All I can use is bookkeeping sense, and I know what will pass and what won't, in most cases. But I kept my own books. I set up the books that we've got here, and they've never been changed to this day except it's been expanded on till we got so big at the bank, we got to borrowing so much money, till they wouldn't take my statement any more. Said, "We've got to have it certified." I said, "Okay," so I've had a certified public accountant ever since. He saves us money.
What trades do you think you might like to have followed?
Do what?
Did you say that there were some trades that you wish you had followed or that you could have followed?
No, there's no trade that I… I've had some folks that follow kind of in
the footsteps of my great-grandfather and be mechanical, architectural.
I had an uncle that was an architect, and I've had several fellows
that's got big in the tin business. I had one cousin that lived in
Lenoir, and he was on the city board up there for about thirty years. He
run a tin shop up there, and, well, they did a lot of… They built these
big ducts that takes shavings away from the machines in these furniture
plants, collects it up and all. He built that duct system
Have you often had whole families that worked for you?
Yes. We've been close together on families here. We've had three and four out of the same family working for us.
Do you try to hire that way when you can?
Oh, yes, if we think they… If you get into a family that's good workers, boy, that's the way you want to go. And if you get a man and his wife that likes to come to work together and all, that's good, too. Now a lot of factories don't have that policy; they don't want to work anybody… But now we're not that way. I think it's an advantage to us in our business.
Why do some people think it's a disadvantage?
Well, if you fire one, you have to fire the other one. Of
What kind of things happen that you have to fire people for?
We had one man and his wife here working, and he got to rambling around and romancing about, and we had to get shut of him.
He was flirting with the other women?
We've had moral conditions to pop up in the plant that we had to separate and get straightened out.
Things that would happen right during work hours?
No, but it'd probably lead to meeting each other out some place.
How would word about that get around? How would you find out about that?
We wouldn't find out for a while, but we'd soon catch on. They'd both be gone at the same time. It's easy to catch on.
Do you have special problems with women workers that you don't have with men, or vice versa?
Well, yes and no. We have domestic problems, and hell, a lot of times they bring the domestic problems into the plant to the employer, and he's as innocent as anything can possibly be. Jealousy sometimes. "If you don't run so-and-so off, I'm going to leave," and we have those problems. Some; not much, but we have them, anyway. But we've not had anything lately to speak of.
Does that affect women more than men, domestic problems?
It comes from them, more or less. A man, you know, kind of looks over a lot of stuff.
What about problems of women with children, missing work …
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
And who loses out? The employer of the woman. With equal rights and all that stuff, I think the husband ought to do a little.
Exactly.
Yet ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it falls on the woman. Although we do have some women here in the office that "I see that my husband takes them to the dentist and to some other things, and I take them to the doctor." That she's not out just for every little thing. But usually it falls in the hands of the woman, the mother, to look after, which I guess, maybe, is more or less right. But we have that problem.
Do you have some kind of policy about things like that?
No, we have to take every individual to itself. Hell, you set policy, why, the first thing you know, somebody's going to want to break it, and you may lose the best operator you've got, and you don't want to do that. You have to give and take in the glove business, because your operators are too precious.
So you just really deal on an individual basis.
You've got to handle every case to itself.
When you were really running the business more than you are now, would operators come into your office and talk to you about these individual problems, or who would they ask?
Oh, yes, we've had women to come to talk to us about everything under the
sun.
How do you mean?
… Let me get all my damn notes down here. When Roosevelt took over this
country, our national debt was was a mere sixteen billion dollars. We
have spent money; our government has spent money and has gone in debt.
The Social Security was drained almost before it got off the ground by
giving it to people that had never put nothing in it. Lots of farmers
drew on their Social Security for years, having never put in but maybe
thirty-six dollars. That's twelve dollars a year for three years. Today
it's in debt head over heels, and it's sucking itself now to stay alive.
Who's a-paying it? The young people. Our national debt, in all, is at
least one trillion dollars. Who's going to pay it? I'm not; I'm not
going to live long enough. We have let building get so high that the
young people, scarcely few of them can own a home. They have to go in
debt for thirty years to pay, and look at the interest they pay. Now
we've run the gasoline price up so high that they have to pay a
tremendous price for gasoline. They have to pay a tremendous price for
an automobile. Isn't that doing somebody dirty? No wonder some of our
young people get off the straight and…
It is hard
Hell fire. Why, the animals don't treat each other… Our country and our leaders have made debt that it seems like they don't give a damn whether they ever pay it or not.
Have gasoline prices caused… Do the people that work here have to drive down a long way to work or …
Yes, they all drive to work. Some drive further than others.
Do they live way out in the country?
Most of our people are rural people. And a lot of our people own their homes, and are paying for them. But all of that makes much better workers, if you can get people that's trying to own something. Like I say, instead of leaving from work and going to some "ism" house somewhere and hang around. My son-in-law one time said, "What do you mean by ‘ism house’?" I said, "Well, that's a place where you collect up all kinds of damn isms about the employer and everybody else." Beer joint or something. If they'd go home and they work on their hogpen or they work in the garden, if they had a rough time at the mill, they just let it go on off, don't think any more about it. But if you get about five or six together at some beer joint, the first thing you know it would be multiplied into a big something. I visited my son-in-law in Binghamton, New York, once, and on his way home, why, they had a bar they stopped at usually, and I called it "Ism House." And he wanted to know, "What do you mean by ‘Ism House’?" He said, "Well, that's exactly what takes place there."
Is this county dry?
No, we have whiskey stores. But you have brown-bagging; you don't have bars.
But there are bars that sell beer.
They have bars in Charlotte and a few other towns. Well, you'll fill up the library down at Carolina.
Yes, that's right.
Oh, Lord God, plenty. I belong to more things than have been. I've been a Moose, and I've been an Elk and a Kiwanian. I had twenty years' perfect attendance in Kiwanis. I've served in every office in Kiwanis, even president. I'm a life member in the American Hereford Association. I've been a member of the North Carolina Hereford Breeders' Association. I belong to the Cattlemen's Association. I was an organizer and the first president of the Catawba Valley Cattlemen's Association. I was one time vice president of the Agricultural Foundation. I'm president of my family, the Captain Daniel Little family.
Your family elects a president?
Yes. It's incorporated: the Captain Daniel Little Family, Incorporated.
Oh, really? What is that?
If anybody gets out doing any work for the family or something, and they happen to run into somebody and get hurt, we've got a little protection. It didn't cost anything; it's a non-profit organization, you see.
Do you have family reunions?
Oh, yes, we've had two, and we're going to have another one in August. The first one we had was three years ago. We had five hundred people there from about thirty states.
Five hundred people in your family?
Yes, from about thirty states. And there was forty of us from this county chartered a bus and went to one branch of our little family reunion in Clovis, New Mexico, in August.
Do you ever have the reunion here?
The national reunion is held here, usually, at the Muller Motel, but this
was the Little-Odum
More people that I've talked to in this area have these big family reunions.
Yes, it's getting more so all the time.
Getting more so rather than less?
Yes, people have been getting back there. People have got more time now.
People are retired, and you've got time to get in and hunt up these
things from what they did have.
They were a very religious family. Most all of my family away from here are Baptists. That is, now, from the other branches of the family. My fourth great-grandfather had four boys that raised families, and one girl. And two of them came up here—they're mostly Lutherans—but the others are mostly Baptists. Down in South Carolina and out in Tennessee and down here in Cabarrus County and Union County. Primitive Baptists, some of them, even. Fundamental Baptists; I don't know what the difference is. They have different Baptist churches.
What church did you go to?
I go to St. Paul Lutheran Church down here. It's the oldest church in western North Carolina, established about the year 1765. Of course, we have a new church now, but the old church is a log church. It's still standing there, but it's get weather boards on it. It was built about 1812, that one, but there was one built before it.
Where is it located?
If you go right up this road and turn left …
They put me over at Newton School before this community out here
consolidated, and then after that they consolidated, and they went to
Startown. And I don't know. Percy just didn't get along too good in
school. He's smart; he could study, but he wanted to play marbles and
play ball.
Did your parents ever think of sending you …
But he's got a daughter that went through the University of Tennessee in three years and even changed schools in the meantime. She went to Guilford, I think, one year and then went from there straight, in the summertime, over to Knoxville, and she graduated over there. She's smart. She and her husband live in Hamilton, Ohio. He works in the jet plant there. He's an engineer, a graduate of the University of Tennessee. And they've got three boys. And I said, by God, that she'd try to make Einsteins out of them. Just like one of my daughters. She's got two boys, and hell, she's going to make Einsteins out of them, I believe. My daughters went to Appalachian. They graduated up there in 1959.
You just have twin girls?
Yes.
… plants here. Wonderful people. But it just all depends on who's
looking.
Do some people feel differently than that?
Some, of course, probably would. But we here in the textile
… that the first one was sent here.
It was before the First War, in maybe the 16's or 17's.
Did George and Marie go to high school?
They went to high school at the old Catawba College, yes. What grade you would call it at that time I don't know, because it wasn't defined grades like it is today. It was a prep school to prepare you for college.
Did all four of you go to Catawba College?
No, I went to State College.
Well, Catawba College was really more of a high school, wasn't it?
No, it was a four-year school. Its last session here was in the early twenties. They missed two years in their moving to Salisbury. I just don't know what the dates are.
Oh, okay, I had it mixed up. I was thinking that the Concordia College that was …
Oh, yes, Concordia College was a two-year school, and it ceased to exit in '35. The building burned in '35, and they never rebuilt.
So both of them went to Catawba College.
Yes, both of them did, that is, in the prep school. Didn't have no high schools in those… There weren't no high school at Newton, even, in those days.
Where did you go to high school?
I went to high school in Newton, but that was some twenty years
Did your parents ever think about sending you to the Christian Day School?
No. My grandsons are at Concordia Christian Day School. But I don't know. There was a good many students going to Concordia Christian Day School when I went to school. I had some friends that left Newton and went up there to school, but they always had me to school down at Newton, free school.
Let me make sure that I have your different occupations down. You came back from college and farmed from 1931 until about …
And kept books with various companies at Hickory till '44. I was out about a year organizing and getting this thing going.
So this was founded in 1945?
Yes.
You delivered milk when you were in high school. Did you consider …
They're wonderful people. Well, my brother lives down the road just a little piece. If you would have noticed, if you went down the road and looked out at a nice brick home out in a little clump of trees, that's where he lives.
He lives right up that same road that they live on?
Yes. And the church is down that same road. We all went to school together when we were kids.
When I was asking you about whether some kinds of work are looked down on and you said maybe by the rich people, what class of people do you consider yourself part of?
Well, we might have had a half a dozen families in Newton
What class do you think of yourself as belonging to?
We belong to the farming class. We're basically farmers.
So even though you run a glove mill, you still think of yourself as a farmer.
Yes, sure, yes. I travelled across Europe for six weeks, and I told everybody I was a farmer.
My wife said, "He's no farmer."
We made a trip to Europe in '58. That was the days before they put jets on. There was jets, but they were not on the passenger lines.
Do you know when your wife was born?
Yes, she's two years older. She was born in 1906.
Where was she born?
Just the same place we was, about. Just across the branch.
Oh, right. They backed up onto you. And she finished high school and got some college.
She finished high school at Startown.
And she went to some college at Lenoir-Rhyne?
She went to Lenoir-Rhyne and Appalachian. She went to Appalachian in the summertime. She never did get to go to a full year at one time. It was always summer schools or Saturday schools or things of that kind.
When did you get married?
June 3, 1933.
And your children's names?
Janice Virginia and Joyce Melinda.
When were they born?
January 15, 1937.
END OF INTERVIEW