Mill supervisors often fired married women to open jobs for men
Married women were often laid off from their jobs in the mill to make room for new male employees during the Depression. Mill owners assumed that families would find ways to survive on just the husband's income.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Letha Ann Sloan Osteen, June 8, 1979. Interview H-0254. 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 jobs get scarcer?
- GEORGIA:
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Oh yeah.
- ALLEN TULLOS:
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As you went along there.
- GEORGIA:
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See they laid off all the women. If there was one in the house
working-me and my husband both worked-and they laid
me off. And they was to call me to come if they needed a hand.
- LETHA ANN SLOAN OSTEEN:
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They done that to all of the men.
- GEORGIA:
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To everybody.
- ALLEN TULLOS:
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That was during the Depression.
- GEORGIA:
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Yeah.
- ALLEN TULLOS:
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They laid off the women first?
- GEORGIA:
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Well if they had husbands, yeah, to give other men work.
