Other community members looked down on textile workers
The only time Mary Thompson worked somewhere other than a cotton mill, she discovered that the townspeople around her looked down on the textile workers. She reflects on how that attitude affected her.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Carl and Mary Thompson, July 19, 1979. Interview H-0182. 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
One time when they laid me off at Poe Mill, me and another girl, a
friend of mine, went down there at Kress's. Never had worked
in a store. We got us a job at Kress's right at
Christmastime. I never will forget it; it was the hardest work I ever
done in my life. You didn't make nothing, though. Now them
girls acted a little snooty. They said, "Well, I certainly
wouldn't work in a cotton mill for nothing." I said,
"I'd rather work in a cotton mill for what money I
make than slave like y'all working for what y'all
are making." And they didn't make no money, hardly,
in the stores then, but it was the prestige, I guess, that they liked.
But that's the only time that I ever heard anybody say
anything about …
- JIM LELOUDIS:
-
Were you ever called a "linthead" as a child or when
you got older?
- MARY THOMPSON:
-
No, because we lived on the mill village, and everybody else was the same
thing we was. [Laughter] And we went to
the church right there on the village, so everybody was the same as we
was, so nobody couldn't call the other one names.
That's the only time, the time I went to Kress's,
and they said they certainly wouldn't work in an old cotton
mill. That's the first time I'd ever heard anybody
say anything about a cotton mill.
- JIM LELOUDIS:
-
Did it make you mad?
- MARY THOMPSON:
-
Yes, it made me mad.
- JIM LELOUDIS:
-
Did it hurt your feelings?
- MARY THOMPSON:
-
No, it didn't hurt my feelings. It made me mad. I always had a
little temper, and I got about it. I said, "I sure
wouldn't want to slave here all the
time for what little y'all are making. I'd rather
work in a cotton mill anytime." I went back to the cotton mill,
too, after Christmas, when they laid us off. They just had us hired till
Christmas. After Christmas there was some drawing in picked up. I
didn't even try to go to another store. I thought,
"Lord, don't give me no store work." But,
of course, store work got better after that. That was back during the
Depression.
- JIM LELOUDIS:
-
How widespread was the negative town attitude toward cotton mill
people?
- MARY THOMPSON:
-
I don't know. In Greenville, South Carolina, the cotton mill
people run the place, nearly. The real city is very small.
It's a little bigger now, but back then the city of
Greenville wasn't anything, hardly. I had a friend who moved
up in the city part and had to go to Greenville High, and they said they
were snooty up there at the school about them coming from cotton mill
people.