[TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
- MR. SHOCKLEY:
. . .without a reason.
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
Yes, if they come, they stayed, unless it was somebody that was boarding.
We'd call them drifters. They'd come in and get them a boarding place
and work a while and then. . . . But that was mostly young people. But
most of the families, when they moved in a house, they stayed several
years. But if work would give out, then they'd have to lay them off, and
then they would move to another place.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Was that the same for people of your generation stayed in the same area
of town? Or did people in your children's generation move around?
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
We just stayed in the same area of town up there in that section.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Do you still live over there?
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
No they moved out here from West Burlington. [Interruption in tape][Lives with parents.] But two of my sisters still lives up in
West Burlington.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Were there stores at that time up there, or did you have to go downtown
to do shopping?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
There were stores up there. They had a meat market up there, and they had
three or four grocery stores. I thought they had about two meat markets,
too. Mr. had one, and then they had one over where Paul Greene lives;
that place used to be a meat market and store.
- CLIFF KUHN:
So you would do your shopping in the neighborhood?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
Yes, we could do our shopping right around there.
- CLIFF KUHN:
What kinds of things did you leave the neighborhood for? Did you ever
leave that community in West Burlington?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
The only thing we'd leave to come to town for would be to go to the show
or something like that.
- CLIFF KUHN:
What did people in West Burlington do for recreation or
entertainment?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
We had a ball park up there, and people watched that. And then they'd
come to the town to go to the show. You could go to the show for about a
dime.
- MR. SHOCKLEY:
They had a fair? once a year in the ballpark.
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
Once a year they had a fire in the ballpark.
- MR. SHOCKLEY:
That's the show that.
- CLIFF KUHN:
What were the medicine shows like?
- MR. SHOCKLEY:
Just like you see on TV. Big. They was always selling soap and
liniment.
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
They'd have somebody with them to make music.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
What about churches? Were there several churches up there in West
Burlington?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
That Hocutt Memorial is an old church.
- MR. SHOCKLEY:
And West Burlington. We had the tent meetings.
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
Yes, we had tent meetings back then.
- CLIFF KUHN:
On the ballfield, or where were they held?
- MR. SHOCKLEY:
That ballpark was the only. They had big tent meetings up there.
- CLIFF KUHN:
But there were a number of churches in the one neighborhood.
- MR. SHOCKLEY:
Well, that and the Methodist Church. Then they had one or two
tabernacles.
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
Yes. One was down here on Atwater Street, and one was up on what they
called the Greensboro Highway then; it's Webb Avenue now.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Was the school in the neighborhood?
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
No, you walked to Plaid Street Hillcrest. You had the Hillcrest, the a,
and the Fisher Street. If one school was crowded in one grade, then they
transferred you to one of the other ones.
- CLIFF KUHN:
So you went to Hillcrest rather than to a?
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
We went to Hillcrest; that was our district. But if
it was overcrowded in your grade, then they would transfer you either to
a or Fisher for that year. Then the next year, you'd go back to.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Were the schools all kids of people who worked in the mill, or were there
other kids around?
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
It was other kids, because when you got out of the mill village, you had
the and Gants who went to school with you.
- CLIFF KUHN:
You did go to school with the Gants.
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
[UNCLEAR]all those. See, that was the district.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Down to Fountain Place.
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
Fountain Place and all around there, that was Hillcrest District.
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
But they just had one high school, on Broad Street.
- CLIFF KUHN:
The Broad Street High School.
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
You went either to Hillcrest or or Fisher till you got as far a eighth
grade. Then you went to Broad to get your last four years. It was three
years back then.
- CLIFF KUHN:
How much schooling did most people have?
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
Most of us got on through. The parents pushing.
- CLIFF KUHN:
[Laughter] Were the children in the mills when you first came into town,
and when did that change?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
They would let them go to work then, I think, at sixteen. Or
fourteen.
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
When was that sixteen law passed?
- CLIFF KUHN:
I think that's also during the New Deal, but I'm not sure about that.
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
I think before then, though, they worked them. Mr. Brooks said he went to
work at eight, Wes Brooks' brother. Then there was some more men, a Mr.
Preston; he passed away. He said he went to work at eight.
- CLIFF KUHN:
When you came down here to Glen Raven or to the Plaid Mill, were there
children in the mill either working or with their mothers or daddies in
the mill?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
They could work then, but I think they had to be fourteen to work in the
mills then. And then they passed a law that they had to be sixteen, and
then they had to work first shift, I believe, so many hours or
something. Had to obey it.
- CLIFF KUHN:
How about the health conditions or the working conditions within the
mills? How have those changed over time?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
Oh, my, it's changed. Used to they had no spit things; people spit on the
floor. [Laughter] We used to get so mad. You don't have that no more. And they
smoked; they'd smoke and throw it down on the floor and step on it. And
they have places now for them to smoke. You had a dipper, and everybody
drank out of the same dipper. Brought the water in. At the Plaid Mill
they finally got a fountain that had a spigot on it that you could turn
and drink your water without drinking after somebody. And we have
fountains now; have air conditioners. Back then, you'd have to open a
window.
If a parent looked out the window and saw one of their kids doing something
they shouldn't be doing, they'd stop come out the back
door of the mill, went home and hit the child and went back to work. [Laughter]
- CLIFF KUHN:
Where did most of the younger kids stay?
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
We played. We always had somebody that stayed there and looked after
us.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Who was that?
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
Usually bring in a colored woman Sarah Nelson.
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
They had a colored woman when I first went to work. She stayed with me
ten years.
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
But if a child got sick back then, the parent come home, too. Used to
they'd come home and feed the baby, if they had a baby, and then go on
back to work.
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
Come home for lunch. One time I came home for lunch and the children was
all right when I left. And I went back to work, and in a little bit one
of them came up there and wanted me to come home; one of them was sick.
And I went home, and she'd got a big old dip of snuff [Laughter] in her .C.K.: When did that start to change, when people
couldn't get out?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
That changed after Mr. Copeland came over there.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Why do you think that changed, that people couldn't leave to go home?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
He was real strict. He thought if you went home or anything, you was
losing a few minutes' work.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Was that the reputation that he had up at Burlington Industries, too,
before he came to the Plaid Mill?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
Yes. They called him "Slave Driver." [Laughter] We had a good time till he came up there. We had stools that Mr.
Williams made when we had so many ends to run. And whenever we got them
ends a-running, we had a stool at each end of our frame. We'd sit on it
till one run empty. When Mr. Copeland come up there, he had them all
moved out. And you didn't sit down; he'd give you enough work, you'd
stay busy. You didn't get caught up after he came up there. If he come
through and saw you with all your ends run, the next day you'd get some
more ends. But he was good. He believed in keeping your frames so you
could make production and make good work and all, but he didn't want you
to stop off.
I enjoyed my work, but I don't want to do it any more. [Laughter]
- CLIFF KUHN:
Do you still see any of the people whom you worked with?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
Oh, yes.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Who are some of the people?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
Emma Whitesell and Sally Wheeler. Her husband was overseer up there. His
picture might be in some of them papers. I can't think of the [other]
names that I know.
- CLIFF KUHN:
What kind of work did you like the most, and what kind of work did. .
.
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
Skein winding. It's my type I like to do, so I liked that better than
anything. And what I hated the most was quilling. Your frame sits just
about like this, and you have rolls of bobbins, so many ends to make a
warp. And every time it would come my day to quill, they'd say, "Get in
the corner," because I was tall and skinny. And I hated that mess; I
didn't like quilling. But that's the only job I
didn't like.
- CLIFF KUHN:
What kind of work did your husband do?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
He worked in the dye house. He was a dyer. He worked in the dye house all
the time, the second man down there.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Were there more men than women, or more women than men?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
In some parts, they was most all men, like the dye house. And then when
they put in silk and rayon, they'd be tinted. They brought some women in
then. But mostly all the dye house was men. And the biggest part of the
weaving room was men. They had some women to thread the shuttles. In our
part it was mostly all women, in the preparation. Most of the men was
service, put up our yarn and take it down, things like that.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
Did you say that your husband was disabled?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
Yes, in '45 he got disabled, but he worked from '21 on up till then.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Was that as a result of something that happened at the mill?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
Yes.
- CLIFF KUHN:
What was that?
Shockley!
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
Did they give him any kind of compensation when he was disabled?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
No, back then they didn't have anything like that.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Do they have a pension now?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
Yes, they have one now.
- CLIFF KUHN:
When did they start to bring in a pension?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
I hadn't been in it too long when I quit work. It must have been in about
'60.
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
I don't know. all they do is give you a lump sum what you got in the
pension plan.
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
What I had, I brought it out, because it was just a lump sum.
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
All they gave Daddy was insurance or something.
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
Yes, they gave him insurance. But back then they didn't have no
compensation.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
So they just gave him one lump sum, not money.
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
No, it was just insurance. They carried his insurance on.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
Oh, I see.
- CLIFF KUHN:
So they just brought it in in '60?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
It could have been in the fifties. But I retired in '64, and I had $500
in pension plan. So it had to be around about '50-some.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Why did it come in right then, in the fifties?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
I don't remember just why, but it was supposed to, I guess, help in
retirement. Then was when they were beginning to talk retire at a
certain age. And when I retired it was women sixty-two and men
sixty-five.
- CLIFF KUHN:
So you retired at the age of sixty-two.
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
Yes. And then they found out they couldn't make it like that, and then
they let the women come on to sixty-five. But I was glad to get out at
sixty-two. They came down several times for me to go back to work. I
told them I was too old, that I still was firmly
retired and I wasn't going back then.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Did they try to keep good workers?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
Yes, they'd try to keep good workers.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
Has the work force changed a lot in the mills? Do a lot of the sons and
daughters of mill workers work in mills, or have a lot of new people
come in from outside the county?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
I don't know. I've been out since '64. What do you think, Hazel? She's
still working.
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
It's a family thing, one generation after the other one. Some of them
might leave town, but it would be a small percentage.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
Have many new families come in to work in the mills? Are there any first
generation people?
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
It would be a small percentage there, too, because most of them, even the
colored, at some time their daddy had worked there.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Really? So even there, their father had worked as janitor or in some kind
of capacity?
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
Are there many black workers in the mills,?
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
You see right many now. work. They're nice Once started, eventually. As
far as the colored, they've been just as nice as they can be about it.
And it's never been a problem to me.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Was that a problem right in the beginning?
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
No, I think they came in in such few numbers when they started, and we
knew we had to accept them.
- CLIFF KUHN:
When was that?
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
That was back when Mama was still there, when we first started hiring
them. We've always had the colored to clean up, janitor work, tending
machines. But I don't remember when the women started coming in.
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
They started hiring them at the Plaid Mill when they desegregated. You
had to qualify for a job. You went to the office, and you was
interviewed, and you had to be up to the standard of what they would
want to get a job. They just didn't say, "Well, come on and go to work."
They picked the ones, and that way we had nice colored people work with
us.
- CLIFF KUHN:
How did they do that interview?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
I don't know. I was back before that started, and I never was
interviewed.
- CLIFF KUHN:
How did you get your job, then?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
I told my husband one morning, "The children's getting up to some age,
and we need some more money, and I want to go to work." That's when
they'd just said they was going to bring winding in. So he went up there
and told Mr. Williams, and he said for me to come up there and go to
work.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Did your husband mind your working at all?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
No, he didn't mind it. So then we got a colored woman to come and keep
house for us.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Was that usual, for people to have a woman come and keep house?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
Oh, yes, if you worked.
- CLIFF KUHN:
In how many families did both the mother and the father work in the
mills?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
The biggest part of them worked in the mill, because they had to.
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
The only one I can think of that she didn't work was Mrs. Williams.
Everybody else worked.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
Did women usually just stay out for a few years while their children were
real small?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
Back then, they said some of them had their babies one week and went back
to work the next, but I didn't see it like that. But they didn't stay
out too long. Now they've got a period, I think, you've got to be out
before you go back to work. But back then, you went back when you felt
like it, I guess.
- CLIFF KUHN:
So when you had your last baby in '37, you stayed out for how long?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
I think it was three months before she was born and three months
afterwards; I believe was the way that the insurance people had it
then.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Could you automatically get your job back?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
Oh, yes. You got a relief for so many months, and then you went back on
your old job.
And that was the only time, because she was next to her, and she was
about two years old when I decided I wanted to go to work. She was born
in '25, and I went to work in '27, that's how old she was.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Thank you very much. Got a lot of information.
[Interruption in tape]
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
. . . at the Plaid Mill. Then I have been in hosiery mills. Then I worked
with Jim Copeland over at Copeland's. I've stayed pretty much in the
mills, though. I've been back at Burlington Mills about five years.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Which division are you in now?
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
Division.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Why did you choose to move around from one place to another?
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
The first was my second baby was born I left there. And then I married a
man that wasn't from Burlington. He was from the eastern part of the
state, down at Elen. And so we moved back and forth down there. And
that's one reason I moved so much. And then when I'd come back to
Burlington, I'd go back to the mill.
- CLIFF KUHN:
So it's not a question of your generation wanting to move around more
than your mother's generation, or do you think there is . . .
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
About World War II when I got married, a lot of the girls then married
men from out of town. I guess if it hadn't been for the War, we never
would have met men from out of town. We'd still be marrying town. That's
the reason look like.
- CLIFF KUHN:
So a lot of guys came into town during the War years?
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
Oh, yes. Back in the middle of the War, if this buddy's bringing two or
three War buddies in, he'd come in on a weekend.
- CLIFF KUHN:
So they came in from . . .
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
Fort Bragg.
- CLIFF KUHN:
How about in the industry, when the young men from Burlington went off to war, what happened? Did they bring in other men
from outside, or did the women fill the jobs?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
Women did the jobs.
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
The women filled the jobs. That was the first time a woman had worked in
the spinning room, in World War II. That was when they had to put the
women in the spinning room.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Did they stay in the spinning room after?
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
Yes. stayed till they closed it down. But when we first started in the
spinning room—that's where I started, during World War II—we had our own
trucks to. Anyway, it was quite a bit of weight. But we had to load and
unload our trucks. But then a couple years after the War, the women
continued to do it. The men, I think, were waiting they come into the
insurance or something. But a woman wasn't allowed to lift over so many
pounds.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Did you want to continue lifting or?
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
That was after I had left the spinning room. And then that's when they
brought men in to load the trucks again. Back at the end of the War, we
was loading our own trucks.
- CLIFF KUHN:
What differences do you see between working in your generation and work
for your mother's generation?
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
It's different; I don't work so hard. Back then, spinning was not on
production when I first went in the spinning room. But still, we had a
certain number of ends that we had to keep up.
- CLIFF KUHN:
When did they change that to production?
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
That was a long time after I left. I think when the men started loading
the trucks, then spinning was on production, wasn't it, Mama?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
I don't know. I never did work in spinning too much.
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
I think it was when they brought the service men in to load and unload
the trucks that they went on production.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
Do you think it's harder work now than it was when you first started?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
You've got easier work.
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
I've got the easiest job now I've ever had.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
What do you do now?
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
I'm in the department now. We make up that go to the sales.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Was that a promotion?
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
No, it wasn't exactly a promotion. I was in one of the knitting that warp
mill. And so there came an opening in the department, and they wanted to
know if I'd take it, and I told them yes, I'd be glad to. So that's one
way, you know, you'll get switched all around from department to
department.
- CLIFF KUHN:
When they have vacancies.
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
If the work gets short in this department, they'll ask you if you want to
go to another one.
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
And that's why you get to stay so long. If you do just one thing, when
it's done, you're done; that's the end. Do other things, you stand a
chance.
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
That's the way with these department to department, mill to mill,
wherever they were needed.
- CLIFF KUHN:
That's how they made it a little bit more interesting or. . . .
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
You don't get bored, because you change.
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
Then they know that if something happens that they can ask you to take
another job,.
- MARY FREDERICKSON:
It seems that a lot of the people we've been talking to have gone from
mill to mill.
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
Mama was here at the Plaid, and if they needed any help at Belmont, she'd
go to Belmont. They'd give her transportation over there and back.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Belmont was the Holts'?
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
It was a division of Burlington Mills at one time.
- CLIFF KUHN:
So they'd shift you to another division if they needed you.
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
Like if my job now, they'd give me offers of jobs in other B.I. plants,
so's you can have the right then to say, "I'll go" or "I won't go." But
if you say, "I won't go," job is vacant. . . . They try to place all
their help, just like. Now if you're close to retirement age, I don't
think they'll try to place you. But now if you try to place you in
another B.I. Or you're willing to learn a new job.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Not only your job, but you say on the whole the work is easier now than
it was?
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
In my job, it is. But the last five years, I have not been on production
work, and so that's one thing that's made it easier.
- CLIFF KUHN:
The majority are still on production, though.
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
No, I don't think they are. In the department, the winding and redrawing
and things like that, they're still on production. But as far as warp
mills and knitting and frames and things like that, they're not on
production. I think the department is still on production.
- CLIFF KUHN:
When you went to the Broad Street High School, did people from different
parts of town look down or have hostilities towards people from other
parts of town? Was there rivalry between different parts of the
town?
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
No, because we grew up together. My district was Hillcrest. If your grade
was overcrowded at Hillcrest, then they'd transfer you to Fisher or
Belmar. By the time you got to Broad Street in high school, and you had
been transferred from school to school, you knew pretty much everybody
from around there. That's all the school we had.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Including people from East Burlington you had known.
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
Oh, yes. Broad Street was the only high school in Burlington, so
everybody eventually ended up at Broad Street.
- CLIFF KUHN:
But there wasn't any antagonism or anything between people from East
Burlington and West Burlington.
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
No, back then you walked all over town if you wanted to. You wasn't
afraid of anything, but there wasn't anything out there to be afraid of.
- ETHEL BOWMAN SHOCKLEY:
But now you're afraid to get out the front door.
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
You're afraid to go sit on your front porch. But back when I was growing
up, you weren't afraid of. . . . Now we was afraid of hoboes. People
were always talking. If a train come through and hoboes got off. . . . I
think the parents told the kids this to keep them out of the woods. down
there in the woods.
- CLIFF KUHN:
A group of gypsies. Is that right?
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
But we never saw any of them. I think the parents just told us that to
keep us out of the woods.
- CLIFF KUHN:
Now what does the parent say? [Laughter]
- HAZEL SHOCKLEY CANNON:
We played in the woods woods; they were woods . . .
END OF INTERVIEW