Full Text of the Excerpt

ALLEN TULLOS:

When you worked at Woodside Mill, is that when they were claiming that it was the biggest cotton mill under one roof in . . .

ALICE GROGAN HARDIN:

Textile mill in the South. Largest.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did that make any difference in people working there, the fact that it was the biggest one? Did that have any effect on whether or not you got to know everybody that was working there or. . . .

ALICE GROGAN HARDIN:

Oh, you got to know them, everybody that worked around in the same room you did.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did they ever have any kind of strikes while you were at the Woodside Mill?

ALICE GROGAN HARDIN:

They had one, but not when I was a-working.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Was it later?

ALICE GROGAN HARDIN:

It was later. It was in the thirties, but I don't remember what year. They had a union then. They had organized, but something happened; the union fell apart.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Do you remember them ever trying to organize while you were working?

ALICE GROGAN HARDIN:

No.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Did you hear about it at all anywhere else while you were working?

ALICE GROGAN HARDIN:

No.

ALLEN TULLOS:

What do you remember about the strike that they did have later on at Woodside?

ALICE GROGAN HARDIN:

Grover went out on strike. They went out for the battery fillers, I think, in the weave shop. They all went out for them, but they went back to work before any of the rest did. They didn't stay out till they could win what they went out for.

ALICE GROGAN HARDIN:

It was illegal. If they put something else on you, you were supposed to try it out and then do your kicking. But when they put it on them, they quit then.

ALLEN TULLOS:

They were trying to make them fill more batteries?

ALICE GROGAN HARDIN:

Yes, they was trying to give them more batteries there to fill, and they thought they had their hands full, and so they just pulled a strike. They didn't shut the mill down, but they closed it down some, because some of the hands would go in and out.