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JACQUELYN HALL:

What do you remember about how this strike got started?

ROBERT COLE:

Well, they just organized a union, lady.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When did you first hear about this union being organized?

ROBERT COLE:

Well, I had heard of it a few days before, and they's talking and they're all looking at it. I knew what was going on but I didn't have nothing to say either way. The reeling department was the department that done the striking to start with, and I had worked in the reeling department. I got transferred over to this other job, you see. So I had two brothers and a sister working in there at that time. I pretty well knowed what was going on.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And it was the reeling department that first went out on strike?

ROBERT COLE:

They went over in the final inspection and got a lot of them out. They had it pretty rough that day.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What happened?

ROBERT COLE:

A pretty rough time that day. There was a little bit of fighting done. I had a table and a chair that I sat in, and I was advised to stay there. To see what went on, you see, that was through the company. And I did; I sat right there in that chair, watched what was going on. I seen a whole lot of it, too.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What all happened that day?

ROBERT COLE:

They worked one another a little bit with pipes, lead pipes, you see. Little bit of fighting. And the () were having it pretty tough. They were in there, the guards was. I didn't have anything to do with it any way that first day. I just stayed on my job.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why did the people in the reeling department go out on strike?

ROBERT COLE:

They wasn't making no money. Eleven dollars a week and I'd say the biggest part of 'em paid car fare, taxi fare. Up on Stoney Creek where I live it was costing them two-and-a-half or three dollars a week to get back and forth to work.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was there actually a local union already set up?

ROBERT COLE:

They had a union set up.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Who organized the union?

ROBERT COLE:

I don't remember their names.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were they people who worked here in the plant?

ROBERT COLE:

They didn't work in the plant. Course, I did a lot of talking, you know. Passed back and forth through the plant. The started of it didn't work in the plant at all.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Have you heard of a man named John Penix?

ROBERT COLE:

Yes, I knowed him.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Some of the articles I've read say he was one of the organizers?

ROBERT COLE:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Is he still alive?

ROBERT COLE:

No, he's dead.

JACQUELYN HALL:

He was a carpenter here in town, or something, wasn't he?

ROBERT COLE:

Well, I never seen him work a lick in my life. I don't know what he done. And then they got a big fleshy fellow come in from North Carolina.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Alfred Hoffman?

ROBERT COLE:

That's right. So he took over. I was with him some backwards and forwards, and they kidnapped him at the Lynnwood Hotel and took him to North Carolina and told him not to come back. And I went after him, me and some more people, and we got him and brought him back to Elizabethton.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did you know he'd been kidnapped or where he was?

ROBERT COLE:

Well, he called us and let us know they rook him to the North Carolina line, and let him out and told him not to come back. I don't know what they said to him, I wasn't there and I couldn't say. But he come back and we met him at the North Carolina line. We brought him on in and I stayed with him pretty regular.

JACQUELYN HALL:

To protect him?

ROBERT COLE:

Yes, I was what they called a bodyguard.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did you get that job?

ROBERT COLE:

how did I get it?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Uh-huh. why were you doing that?

ROBERT COLE:

To protect him.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What was he like?

ROBERT COLE:

He was a great big fleshy fellow, weighed about 300 pounds or more.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Really?

ROBERT COLE:

Yeah, he was a big man. He didn't go back to his hotel, he went to another place over there. I don't know the man's name now. Anyhow, he run a restaurant and had good rooms upstairs. He got him a room and I got one alongside of it. They paid for the room.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did people like him?

ROBERT COLE:

Oh, yes. They liked him fine. Then he left from here and went to Marion, North Carolina, and had a strike up there at Marion. And I was in on that.