Negative impression of the entrance of female buyers and sellers in the tobacco industry
Here, Henderson describes the entrance of women into the tobacco industry as buyers and sellers as a negative transformation. According to Henderson women tobacco buyers and sellers were a distraction. His comments reveal one way in which the entrance of women into a male-dominated industry was perceived by male workers.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Thomas Henderson, October 28, 1999. Interview K-0228. 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
- THOMAS HENDERSON:
-
Back where I came from the allotments were so small a man that had ten
acres up there he had a bigger lot. Here ten acres is nothing. There's
plenty of people that has forty, fifty, sixty, seventy as much as two
hundred acres of tobacco. And it was-down here was where it
was grown most. My little town
[unclear]
sold three or four million pounds that was it. Down here in
Greenville when I came they were selling seventy million. And
they-come on down there now-. This year I heard
someone sell a million. I don't even go down there. It's so
different.
- CHARLES THOMPSON:
-
How is it different?
- THOMAS HENDERSON:
-
Well, in the first place, you've got women in it. [Laughter] They've got
women graders, women buyers and I don't like it. I remember
[unclear]
Davis warehouse in Fairmont and this woman-I knew
her-got in the sale right ahead of me. But she was just
spectating, you know. And I just-I didn't-I said,
"Sarah, go up there in front of
[unclear]
he'll buy more of your tobacco than I am." She made
me-I couldn't think. And I was working making a living. She
was a doll. She looked good but I didn't want her messing up my work.
And-but now they have women graders, women buyers, women
everywhere.
