Full Text of the Excerpt

ALLEN TULLOS:

Well did she work in the mill?

LETHA ANN SLOAN OSTEEN:

Well she did 'till she had one, or maybe two children. But she didn't work much in the mill. And back then, well, they didn't require a woman to work like they did on for years. You know they could work a day or two when they got ready and be outa day or two." They couldn't do that along when I was a working, eight or ten years before I quit. You had to be on your job.

ALLEN TULLOS:

You mean in the earlier days women could come in and out easier.

LETHA ANN SLOAN OSTEEN:

Yeah, that's right.

ALLEN TULLOS:

Would you, usually when you were about to have a child, you would leave off work and then come back and they would let you come in.

LETHA ANN SLOAN OSTEEN:

Yeah, come back when you got able to go back to work. Stay out and have your baby and then go back to work when you got able.

ALLEN TULLOS:

And it was pretty easy to get back.

LETHA ANN SLOAN OSTEEN:

Yeah, easy to go right back on your own job. Because they took care of their people.

ALLEN TULLOS:

But you say that changed.

LETHA ANN SLOAN OSTEEN:

Yeah.

ALLEN TULLOS:

And that changed about eight or ten years before you quit working.

LETHA ANN SLOAN OSTEEN:

Oh yeah. Yeah, you had to get a leave of absence.

GEORGIA:

No, you just had to quit and your job was give away.

LETHA ANN SLOAN OSTEEN:

Yeah.

GEORGIA:

That's how come me to get to go to work because that Mrs. was pregnant and I got to go to work.

ALLEN TULLOS:

When-can we figure out when that policy started, the leave of absence, or when they changed.

GEORGIA:

Oh the leaves of absence didn't start down here until about in the fifties.

ALLEN TULLOS:

But, you're talking about . . .

LETHA ANN SLOAN OSTEEN:

It was after I quit when . . .

GEORGIA:

Oh lord yes, or maybe into the sixties.