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Excerpt from Oral History Interview with Letha Ann Sloan Osteen, June 8, 1979. Interview H-0254. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) See Entire Interview >>

Mill work did not seem to cause illnesses or injuries

Osteen does not remember anyone getting sick or injured as a result of working in the mill.

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:
It could've been real dusty and you just didn't realize it.
LETHA ANN SLOAN OSTEEN:
I didn't realize what dusty was. Take children nowadays, unless they're out where a car runs and fill you full of dust or dirt, they wouldn't realize just the dust that accumulated in the house or around.
ALLEN TULLOS:
Well do you think that that had any effects on your health. You know some people talk about different kind of breathing-the brown lung and the breathing problems that people had.
LETHA ANN SLOAN OSTEEN:
Well I don't know, there never was none of us sick, to my remembering. You know my little brother that died, that I told you about, he was nine years old. Well he had dropsy. That was all the disease I ever knowed any of us to ever have, was him having that dropsy. And outside of that I don't remember any sickness except the measles. We had the measles. And outside of that I can't remember any of us being sick.
ALLEN TULLOS:
Do you remember any of the children that worked in the . . .
LETHA ANN SLOAN OSTEEN:
Mill, they wasn't sick.
ALLEN TULLOS:
Did they ever have any accidents, anybody ever . . .
LETHA ANN SLOAN OSTEEN:
No, no, nobody. We never had any trouble at all.