Federal Writer's Project - Stories of Home and Work

About these stories:

These life histories were written by the staff of the Folklore Project of the Federal Writers' Project for the U.S. Works Progress (later Work Projects) Administration (WPA) from 1936-1940. The Library of Congress collection includes 2,900 documents representing the work of over 300 writers from 24 states. Typically 2,000-15,000 words in length, the documents consist of drafts and revisions, varying in form from narrative to dialogue to report to case history. The histories describe the informant's family education, income, occupation, political views, religion and mores, medical needs, diet and miscellaneous observations.

Jim Lewis, Turpentine Worker

While driving on Highway 90 and nearing Padgett's Switch, which is located just sixteen miles south of Mobile, and called so, for in the past Padgett's Switch was a flag station on the Railroad. I suddenly discerned in the distance across the fields a negro man pouring turpentine into a barrel. Leaving the par on the Highway, I proceeded to cross the fields, but found it a hard matter because the ground was thickly covered with underbrush, and together with briers and the dampness (for it had just rained a few minutes before) made walking rather unpleasant.

When I had finally gotten close to the darkey he had finished the pine tree he was working on and was slowly moving a small barrel to another tree. He greeted me with a rather surprised expression upon his face and with "Goodmorning, Mum," waited for me to speak. He was a tall man, slightly stooped, although he is only thirty-eight years of age. He spoke quickly in the true Negro dialect and often showed a good set of teeth in a friendly smile. When asked what his name was his reply came quickly:

"Jim Lewis, Mum," and then he stated that he lived back in the woods, and at the same time pointed toward the south.

He continued:

"I got de bestest wife an' fou' chilluns, an' de three of dese are all young 'uns an' have tuh go tuh school an' de older one gits work on de farms here 'bout, but makes powerful little money, as de white folks 'round here are all po' and can't pay nobody nothin' no mo'."

Answering my question as to his health and the health of his family, Lewis said:

"Thank God, I got mah health. 'Fore God health is de bestest thing in dis world, I jest wouldn't take anythin' for mah health. No Mum mah family dey ain't sick neither."

Lewis also said, "Where I'se came f'm jest north of Mobile, I used to git a dollar and a quarter a day workin' as a yard man in de stills, but as I'm livin' 'round here now ah hires out to what eber job I can git, sometimes hits chippin', dippin' or haulin', I tries tuh make 'bout a dollar and a half a day, but some days I sure do hafter hurry tuh git that much, but I sure enough needs all de money I'se can git a-hold of tuh git along on."

When asked if he was a church going man, his answer came quickly:

"I was raised up a God fearin' man, but don't git me wrong lady, 'cause I don't 'zackly goes 'round praying like my old woman an' makin' a show of myself by getting down on my knees, but I sure tries tuh do right by de Lawd, 'cause hit sure looks like de debil got the whip hand over the world."

As Lewis was talking, he hesitated and slowly looked around, then suddenly he exclaimed:

"My God, I do declare, look at dat" and without moving I looked on the ground and saw as large a moccasin as I have ever seen, slowly crawling along just a little to the south of where I was standing. Lewis picking up a good size limb, which was lying on the ground he began to strike at the snake. His hair becoming damp clung to his head from perspiration, the sparkling of his eyes and the force of his breath  was like whistling through his teeth, showed the exertion he was under while killing the moccasin. When the snake was killed, Lewis straightened up, and said:

"Well, dat ain't right, here us is, two grown-up people quiet-like talkin' an' that thing comes along. You know I was downright skeered for a minute 'cause he was sure close tuh you, lady."

When Lewis quieted down I asked him about the turpentine business, he told me that rosin was a gum that is obtained from the pine tree, by chipping at the base of the tree and if "a fellow's a old hand at turpentin'," he knows the cut should not exceed one-third the diameter of the tree at any point, and additional "streaks" are chipped higher and higher and the sap then drains into the "cup" which is at the base of the tree. The "cup" is made of galvanized iron, zinc, or aluminum. I noticed that all the trees in the immediate section we were standing in had only one "cup", but Lewis said that trees up to fourteen inches in diameter generally has two cups, while on larger trees three cups are frequently used. The gum or resin in these cups are "dipped" or collected at regular intervals and hauled to the stills, and Louis' job at the present time is dipping.

Lewis would not tell me where the still was situated, for when asked he just answered:

"When I'se through fillin' this-one I jest leaves hit along de road a piece and the other fellow gits hit."

Seeing that my visit was interrupting the negroes work, I left him with the question unanswered.

Written by Helen S. Hartley

Home Medical Practices

My mother had all kinds of home remedies she used to use on the children. I don't remember what particular ailment it was for, but we took catnip tea, and sassafras tea. Turpentine and sugar was given for worms, and sometimes people were dosed with straight turpentine, as in the case of my brother who died of diphtheria. It was the doctor who doped him, and he gave him too much.

Turpentine and lard rubbed on the chest was wonderful for colds, and if we had no turpentine we could use coal oil or kerosene.

Among the teas were anis seed tea and Oregon Grape root tea which was used for a tonic. Tansy tea was for women's ailments - for delayed period.

Green Mountain Salve was my mother's own manufacture. She Compounded the formula and made the salve. It was verdigris in it that made it green. My sister probably has the formula now, and I will write to her for it in case you want it.

We also had several kinds of poultices, flax seed poultice, bread and milk poultice, and beefsteak poultice which my mother put on me whenever I came home with a black eye. But the very best poultice for sores was the angle worm poultice. It would draw all the smart out of even a bad felon. The worms were taken alive, placed upon the sore, and wrapped around with a bandage.

For earache sometimes mother used laudanum dropped into the ear with a dropper. There were pain killer pills to be got at the store, but the usual remedy for headaches was hot or cold packs applied to the head.

For burns, she made a paste of bicarbonate of soda and water and spread it over the burned area. Too, as soon as one was burned it was always best for him to hold the burn as close to the heat as possible and quickly as possible. This would hurt something dreadful but it would draw all the fire out almost at once.

Then for colds we had onion syrup. Onions were boiled to a concentrated solution and sugar was added to sweeten it. Among the foremost of remedies "handed down" in the family is the tea made of dung. In the case of my grandmother the most efficaciously medicinal dung is that of the swine, the common sty-pig, which, when dried and baked in an oven and made into a tea is said to cure evils of all sorts, from the slightest indisposition to measles and smallpox. I recall several years ago when I was in Baker, Oregon that a child took sick with the measles. The grandmother procured the dung of a sheep, gave it the same treatment in the oven and made it into tea. This the child drank, being too young to know what the decoction was.

Tea of tansy is another favorite remedy, as well as teas made from various roots, barks, herbs, etc. Chittum tea, from the bark of the chittum tree (Frangula purshiana - cascara sagrada), is particularly good, and if the first syllable is pronounced soft, an idea of the sort of action produced may be gained. There is still a good market for chittum bark on the drug market.

If I recall rightly, there is also a decoction of rhubarb, of licorice root, of which I made the acquaintance as a small boy when visiting my aunt near Newport, Oregon.

Sulphur was always the standard for sore throat. The powdered variety is obtained, a small amount placed in a paper funnel, and the small end inserted into the sufferer's oral cavity. The administrator then blows and forces the fine powder dawn the victim's throat. If the patient blows or coughs first, the cure becomes a two-edged sword which strikes back at the person administering the remedy.

My grandmother used to make in large quantities a potent unguent which passed under the name of Green Mountain Salve. This stuff was green in color and it seems to me the principal ingredient was carbolic acid. It comes to mind that she sold this preparation and made a good deal from the sale.

Goose grease and turpentine, rubbed into the chest and back and covered with warm flannel, was a standard remedy for colds and chills. I recall hearing it said that my father's two brothers, who died when very young, were given turpentine straight, just before they died, by the family doctor.

Sulphur and honey was the prevailing spring tonic. This was equivalent to the sulphur and molasses of the East and South, only honey was more easily procured in this western region. The idea of the sweet was simply to make the concoction taste better.

Plain table salt was another good remedy for toothache, sore throat, etc. This was mixed with water, one teaspoonful to a glass of water. Vinegar or blue vitriol served to defeat the ravages of rashes, poison oak, etc.

Various oils were largely in use. Castor oil is almost too familiar to bear mention. Then there was sweet oil for earaches. An earfull of warm sweet oil was well calculated to ease the pain.

Poultices too were common. Chewed tobacco poultice would remove the heat from a bee sting in remarkably short order. Also a mud of spittle and dust was used on occasions of this sort. Then there was the mustard poultice, the tea-leaf poultice, and a poultice of gunpowder and milk which was used to combat ringworm. In this latter case it was sometimes customary to paint the offending "ring" with ink.

Then there was the still popular remedy of whisky, hot water, and sugar for colds; hot lemonade for the same purpose - to make the patient sweat. The idea was and largely still is, if the patient has a sickness, let him "sweat it out."

Boiled grapefruit has its curative powers for deranged stomachs, and burns were treated with unsalted lard. Baking soda was also used for stomach disorders, and still is today, when mixed with water and drunk warm.

A so-called cure for warts was to place the head of one match upon the wart and touch it off with another, and so "burn it out." Another less painful but longer treatment consisted of rubbing the affected part with castor oil. This has been known to clean up warts slick as a whistle.

I recall one old man who made hair tonic out of catnip, cooking down the leaves in a dark, sullen-looking mash, then straining off the liquid. He put the stuff up in pint whisky bottles, and my brother happened to catch sight of it one day and thought it was whisky. As he was only a boy and had never tasted whisky, he took one of the bottles and drank about half the contents. "Pretty good stuff," he said with the wise air of an older boy, and wouldn't let me have any. A short time later the old gentleman came tearing out of his room, wanting to know "who in hell has been drinking my hair-tonic?"

But the favorite physic of all was good old Epsom salts. Old timers always keep Epsom salts in the medicine cabinet and toss off a dose on the least provocation. The general idea was to keep the bowels clean even if it were necessary to take off half the intestinal walls.

Manly M. Banister, Charles E. Banister, May 25, 1939

All Our Folks Was Farmers

At the top of a ragged hill grown over with scrubby oaks stands a dingy, four room cabin. The two rooms of which it consisted originally had been painted green, but except for a few streaks here and there the paint has long since rubbed off. A lean-to of rough boards has been added.

Freight and passenger trains chug along the tracks beyond the country road leading from the village, and cough up smoke from their toiling engines. The smoke caught by the wind swirls over the hill and still further blackens the cabin and outhouses. Although pleasant green fields rimmed by distant mountains partially encircle the hill, this house near the railroad tracks is as unprepossessing as the shacks in the meanest mill village. It has no modern conveniences. Stoves heat it, and it is lighted by kerosene lamps. Water is secured from a well adjacent to the pig sty in the middle of the barnyard.

No attempt has been made to grade the yard, and the only evidence of care is a gravel walk outlined by bricks set edgewise, which leads from the front porch to the brink of the hill, where it stops short. At the back of the house is an irregular clearing, muddy in wet weather, dusty in dry, and cluttered with small stones. Here stand the barn, stables, and corncrib, patched loosely with rough boards. They have never been painted.

"My husband patched 'em up loose on purpose," said Mrs. Riddle, "so if we move he can pull down his boards and take 'em with us."

"Don't the owners keep up the property?" I asked.

"Nought but the big house," she replied.

At first view from the rocky, deeply rutted road the place seemed abandoned, except that a brood of baby chicks, on hearing footsteps, rushed out from under the house, climbed all over the porch, and narrowly escaped being stepped on. The rough cornfield to one side of the cabin still has last year's stalks standing at the end of March.

On the opposite side of the hill, overlooking wide grain fields and distant mountains, is the red-roofed, many-gabled summer home of the Middletons, aristocratic coast dwellers, who rent part of their mountain estate to native farmers. The Middleton homestead is approached by a neatly graveled road, outlined by trim shrubs. An intervening grove conceals from the summer occupants the tenant houses along the railroad track.

Jane Riddle, the tenant's wife, is a brawny, masculine type, about 45 years old, with deeply tanned skin and roughhewn features. Her hair was entirely hidden by a cheap, red and green wool cap; her cotton dress was faded and shapeless; and, although there had been no rain for a week, she strode along in galoshes.

She was getting dinner. "My husband will be comin' any time, now," she said.

"What are you giving him for dinner?" I asked.

"Potatoes," she grinned. "Every day it's potatoes: boiled potatoes, mashed potatoes, fried potatoes, potato soup."

Peeled Irish potatoes in a yellow bowl and the long, zinc-covered table confirmed her statement. A range occupied one end of the kitchen. Rough shelves in the corners bore coarse earthenware dishes; a few pots and pans hung on the walls. The adjoining room, barely furnished, was evidently the living room. It had faded, large-flowered curtains at the windows, a coal heater, and a few cheap chairs. The walls were cluttered with a miscellaneous collection of fly-specked calendars.

"That's a picture of my youngest son," said Jane, pointing to a large photograph on a dresser in one corner. "He graduates from high school this year." Later in the day when the boy came home from school, it appeared that the photograph flattered him. He was dark and thin, and stooped badly. He had a sullen, hangdog expression. Like his mother he was very closemouthed.

The older son, already graduated from high school, works in the weaving room of a rayon factory at $22 a week. He lives with his parents. The older daughter works in a hosiery mill and also lives at home.

"She inspects the work of 100 girls," said her mother proudly, as she drew from a dresser drawer a cheap light-blue, rayon stocking. "This is one of the stockings they make at the mill," she said. "My daughter inspects the feet, another worker inspects the legs, and another inspects the finished stockings when they are ready to be packed."

"How does your daughter like the work?" I asked.

"She likes it; but it's hard on her eyes; she complains of them hurting her, when she comes home in the evening."

The girl makes $12.60 a week. She is pale and anemic looking, and puffy about the eyes. Her expression is sullen, and she answers questions in a curt, monosyllabic style. Neither she nor her younger brother seem to have shared their mother's vigorous health. Although she has trouble with her eyes, she does not wear glasses.

A younger girl, still in grammar school shares the family reticence, but is more attractive, with dark, curling hair and serious eyes. A member of a 4-H club, she works on her project conscientiously. Last year she planted and tended a plot of beans. The vines bore abundantly, but although the crop was good the market was already glutted, so that she could sell none. This year she is raising a Hereford steer, a calf whose horns are still mere nubs. On her return from school she went directly to its stall, slipped a halter over its head, and led it out.

Her mother, who was haggling with a salesman over some insect powder, stopped to say, "Better water that calf, I forgot all about him. He ain't had nothin' to eat, or no water, neither." It was then late afternoon.

The girl led the steer to the three stocks of fodder standing out in the clearing, tethered him, and let him munch from one of the stocks. Nearby was a harrow left in the open to take the weather.

Jane Riddle and the salesman continued their argument. The salesman, middle-aged, sandy-haired, and bland, was saying that Jane's hens needed delousing.*

"Give the powder a trial, ma'am," he said. Jane went to the corncrib - it must have been a chicken coop, originally. It was built of slats and quite open enough to be soaked through by rain - and took out an ear of corn, and began scattering the grains. At her call, some 80 hens came tumbling over each other. There seemed to be no henhouse, so they must roost in the trees, or in the stables, perhaps. They were a mixed brood: Plymouth Rocks, Rhode Island Reds, games, white Leghorns, and less easily recognizable species.

She ducked quickly and seized a big, squawking Plymouth Rock. The salesman rubbed the yellow insect powder into the hen's feathers, shook it out into a box lid, and pointed to the lice that squirmed and then lay still. An argument followed.

"That there one," said Jane Riddle, pointing a long, thick finger, "ain't dead."

The salesman smiled patiently and shook the box lid. Heads together, they watched intently.

"It ain't dead yet," said Jane again.

"Now look," said the salesman triumphantly. "It's dead, all right. It's the fumes that kills 'em."

The task of delousing 80 hens seemed to stagger Mrs. Riddle, particularly when the salesman declared the process should be repeated several times at intervals of three weeks.

"You could do it this way," he argued, "just put the powder in the dust hole where the hens are accustomed to wallow. That will do as well."

Then there began a haggling over the price. "A dollar and a half's too much," said the farm woman.

The salesman maintained his bland air. Finally, he agreed to take as payment two living hens totaling 11 pounds.

"I can sell them," he said, "at the curb market in town."

Mrs. Riddle brought out bathroom scales, which she balanced precariously on the uneven ground. Hen after hen was caught and deposited thereon, but refused to perch, until at last the salesman solved the problem. He placed the hen's head under its wing, rotated it vigorously, then placed the bewildered fowl on its side on the scales, while Mrs. Riddle and the younger girl squatted beside him to read the dial.

"Five pounds," announced the salesman, as for a split second the hen lay still.

"No, 'twas five and a half," said Jane.

Hens were then fed and caught and rotated, until at last two hens were found whose combined weight totaled 11 pounds. A debate broke out afresh about the price per pound: Jane demanding 16, and the salesman contending for 12 1/2.

Finally the salesman won, and tucked a hen under each arm. He handed the container of insect powder to Jane.

"I ain't a-goin' to take that there box," she declared. "You done used some of it."

The salesman waddled down the hill with his hens. He returned from his parked car with an unopened box of the powder for her.

Besides the chickens, Mrs. Riddle raises and sells vegetables, and keeps bees, but the real business of the family is raising beef cattle. Jim rents 120 acres from the Middletons and pays them a flat sum of $300 a year for the house and lot and the farm land. Jane seems to think this a profitable bargain and, while noncommital about gains, intimates they are prospering. They have 25 full-blooded Herefords, several full-blooded Jerseys, and other cattle of mixed breed. Those lying in the shade of the trees adjoining the lot looked rather gaunt. There were no stalls for them. Evidently they sleep in the grove.

Part of the land is wooded, part is pasturage, and about half of it is arable bottom land, already green with springing grain. They also raise corn, peas, beans, and hay, and although Jim, 55 years old, is small and thin, and does not appear to have much strength, he can plow all day without excessive fatigue.

"All our folks was farmers," said Mrs. Riddle, "back up in the mountains. No, I don't know when they settled there, or where they come from. Jim's people and my people lived in the same cove. I've known him all my life. His brothers and my brothers all farm. Most of 'em are back up there where we come from. I've got one married sister living in Fielding."

"Did you and Jim go to school?"

"Yes, and I finished the school - went through the seventh grade - but Jim dropped out. They was only one teacher - it was a little log school - and we didn't have grades like they got now, but they told me I went through the seventh grade. I don't know how far Jim got - he's older'n me, and dropped out before I started."

Jim owns 102 acres of land back in the mountains, but, "It's so steep," he said, "it ain't fit for farmin'." He raises apples on this land, and pastures cattle on the hillsides. He tried renting the place, "But the tenants," Jane put in, "let the cows get into the orchard and break limbs offen the apple trees. They run down the property, so we just locked up the house and let it stand."

"We've lived here about three year," Jim added, "but we ain't brought our best things here. We sort of feel like we're camping out."

Anne Winn Stevens, writer.

* Chicken lice?

From - A Rose Grew In Brooklyn: Stories from a Jewish Girlhood, by Rose Esther Fox

There she sat, her head covered in several layers of scarves, her long sleeves tied at the wrist with string, the collar of her dress pinned under her chin; all this in a futile attempt to keep the chicken lice from attacking her as they were evicted from the chickens.

She was surrounded by the loud, demanding housewives, each clutching a dead, limp, warm chicken that at times was aimed at anyone who tried to get in her way. Ignoring the angry voices, the chicken flicker sat hunched over her task in a cloud of flying feathers, furiously plucking away as if her life depended on it. She only stopped long enough to take useless swipes at the lice that were everywhere.

No sooner was she through with one chicken, returning its naked body to its owner in exchange for the well-earned five cents, than an argument would break out among the impatient women, each one gesticulating with her dead chicken, wanting to be next, in order to escape this infested environment.

The Dunnes

Sally Dunne is the mother of thirteen children, three of whom are dead and three married. Seven of the children ranging from two and a half to eighteen live with their mother and father in an old, four-room, loosely-built house located a short distance from the houses belonging to the company which owns the mill where John Dunne works. Some of the people in the mill village will tell you that the Dunnes were asked to move off the hill because the near-by neighbors discovered that their coal was disappearing at night; others will tell you that they did not take proper care of the company's house. At any rate the Dunnes cannot rent a company house and they pay $13 a month for the dilapidated one in which they live. It is becoming increasingly difficult for them to find a house of any kind because there have been months when the rent was not paid. John Dunne makes fourteen dollars a week and on that the family of nine must live.

As you come to the intersection of Broad and C Sts. you will more than likely see Sally's smaller children playing in the little patch of front yard and when you ask them where she is they will answer readily, "Mama is settin' out on the back porch." One of them runs ahead of you into the house and you walk uneasily through the confusion which is their home. The first two rooms are crowded with dirty beds and a few shabby chairs. The bedroom on the right contains a dusty table and a dustier radio. You look at the dirty floor and your mind is brought back to the fact that the woman who keeps this house is "settin' out on the back porch."

You find Sally out there on the small porch surrounded by three of her children who are helping her tag tobacco sacks. Her unwieldy body bulges over the sides of her chair and an enormous tumor gives her the appearance of permanent pregnancy. She tells one of the children to get up and give you his chair. She waits for you to speak and when you have made some introductory remark she says "I keep alookin' toward you but I can't hardly see you. They ain't no sight a'tall in one eye and the sight in the other is gettin' dimmer fast."

She speaks of her blindness in a tone of such complete acceptance that you do not know what to say. You look into the dining room at the crude, home-made table with its ugly oilcloth and then at the icebox which is the other piece of furniture in the room. You decide to ask Sally about her work and soon she is telling you that she and the children tag 20,000 of the sacks a week and for it they receive $1.53. "It seems like that money goes further than John's wages," she continues. "Sometimes we use it for clothes and now and again we buy somethin' foolish which I reckin we ought to get along without. I buy the "Durham Sun" for the children and it costs 15 a week, but they do love to read the funnies."

As Sally goes on to tell you of her early life you decide that even if her eyes were strong the paper she takes for the children would interest her very little as reading matter. She had time to go no further than the third grade, for her public work-life started at ten.

Sally was born in Arkansas on a 160 acre farm belonging to her grandfather, Josiah White. As a young man Josiah was a tenant farmer in Durham County and after he was married he moved to Mississippi, hoping to find there such conditions as would give him a chance to become in time a land-owner. Believing, after two years of hard labor, that possibilities of his becoming a land-owner in that State were remote he moved with his wife and one child into Arkansas. No other children were born to him and by the time his daughter, Molly, mother of Sally, was eighteen he had paid for his 160 acre farm and furnished it with livestock. Molly married a neighboring tenant who then came to live with her on her father's place. When he died eight years later he left Molly with Sally and three younger children. It was not long until Josiah died and his widow, after selling the farm and stock for $1,300, returned to North Carolina.

Near a bag factory in East Durham, Molly's mother bought a four-room house for herself and Molly's family. While the grandmother looked after the three smaller children Molly went into the mill. She took Sally, then an energetic child of ten, along and found work for her at twenty-five cents a day. Molly made around fifty cents daily and on the combined wages of mother and child the family subsisted.

Sally had worked a long time before she was sixteen. When she reached that age she felt that life must indeed be half over. Work without any sort of recreation always had been her lot and marriage appeared to offer at least one advantage - change. Child bearing began immediately and with it even more responsibility and less time for thoughts of recreation. It seems foolish to her today that grown people should want to go to ball games and picture shows. Her dislike of billiard parlors is pronounced but not nearly so much as her fear of liquor stores.

Before she has finished with her remarks about liquor stores it is obvious that John goes to the one just down the street a little too often. "If John was to get drunk and get himself arrested the company would fire him," Sally tells you in affirmation of what you are already thinking. She says that she has not forgotten the two months not more than six years ago when John was out of work and there was not so much as a dollar to buy the children food.

The mill at which John Dunne then worked was closed suddenly but it took the workmen some time to realize that the shut-down could be permanent. After two weeks John started on a trek through North and South Carolina to look for a job. Sally had gotten up early and made bread from the last dust of flour, and fried the last egg. John looked at the table and turned away. "I ain't hungry" he said. "I'll leave what's there for the younguns." Sally sat there alone in the kitchen long after he had gone. She knew John was hungry. She knew, too, that his mind was miserable with doubt. He didn't know whether there was any job ahead of him and he didn't know how his family would get food.

Suddenly Sally stops speaking and a smile lights up her ugly face. With an abrupt jesture of her right hand she pushes her hair further up under the bonnet-like cap shading her eyes. Then she says, "We had neighbors close by who was workin' at another mill but my mind wasn't on neighbors that morning John left. I just kept settin' there while the little bit of breakfast got colder and colder. Then all of a sudden I heard a knockin' on the kitchen door. When I opened the door and seen about a dozen folks standin' there with their arms full of groceries I couldn't help but cry. Well, John stayed gone a month and they wasn't a day we didn't have at least one meal. He come back without a job and it was a good month before he got one at another mill in Durham. Them was hard, hard times. I was needin' cover that winter but they wasn't a chance to save ahead for it."

You know that any comment you might make would sound trivial. The silence gets deep and is broken only when a young woman you did not know lived here comes out of the house leading her two-year old baby. The child, dressed in a sunsuit, laughs gleefully as her mother puts him out in the yard to play. The woman sits down on a box in the corner of the porch and begins to smoke a cigarette. "That's my daughter Stella," Sally tells you and then adds "Her and her man both is out of work and they're stayin' with us a while."

Stella is drawn into the conversation and it is not long before she has told you of the furniture she tried to buy. When she and Bill were first married they selected a bedroom suite, a cedar chest, an upholstered chair, two linoleums, and a big fine oil stove. When she first saw the bedroom suite marked at $39.50, she thought it must really be the greatest bargain in town. When, after the sale was made, the proprietor began adding carrying charges which brought the price up to $61 she was a little baffled, but he explained to her just how easy the payments could be made. The bill for the furniture came to $200 and she and Bill had paid all of it but $80 at the time they lost their jobs. She doesn't see yet why they couldn't let her keep at least the bedroom suite. The subject of furniture is soon passed over and Stella tells you why she lost her job.

Stella lost her job when new spinning machinery was installed. The spinners retained were given eight sides instead of seven with a pay increase of two dollars a week. That sum was the regular wage paid heretofore for the operation of one of the old frames. The new Long Draft Machinery has around 200 spindles and the old spinning frame contained 112 spindles. Stella has a friend still working who says she had never dreamed that eight hours of work could be so hard. Once she was able to catch up with her work and enjoy ten or fifteen-minute rest periods throughout the day, but since the installation of the Long Draft Machinery she stays continuously behind as much as fifteen or twenty minutes.

Stella's husband lost out when the doffers were asked to sign a paper stating that they were willing to do more work. Out of the sixteen then employed eight signed and they immediately began doing the work of all.

Stella and her husband have been living for the past six weeks on the unemployment insurance which they drew and will continue to draw for ten more weeks if their unemployment continues. They have spent a considerable part of it travelling from mill to mill in hope of finding a job.

Stella looks out into the yard where her baby is playing with her young sisters and brothers. "I hope I don't never have another one," she says. "I had a miscarriage from lifting a heavy tub of water when he wasn't more than a year old. I went to the doctor and asked him what a woman could do to keep from havin' babies. I'm tryin' to do what he told me."

A child runs through the house and says that he sees his sister Sue coming down the street. He leaves the screen door ajar and Stella reprimands him for it though there are plenty of holes through which any fly might find his way inside.

Sue with her two children arrive and you are told that she is another of Sally's married daughters. She lives with her husband in the near-by mill village. Her hair-style, voice, and mannerisms show a marked resemblance to Betty Boop. You begin to feel that Sally's prejudice against movies is not shared by her children.

Sue's two children, dressed in sunsuits, go out into the yard to play with Stella's baby. The two sisters discuss the amount of milk the doctor has prescribed for their children and indicate by their conversation that they try to meet the requirements. In the meantime you knock at flies. "I declare, I bathe that youngun every night before I put him to bed," Stella is saying "but he does get awful dirty."

Sally joins in to say that she dreads Wednesday and Saturday nights because on those two nights all of the smaller children take their bathe and they make a great commotion dragging the tin tub back and forth from the porch to the kitchen where the bathing is done. You look out into the yard at Sally's children and decide that they do appear cleaner than the house to which they belong.

Sue mentions her grandmother, Molly, and when you manifest an interest in her Sally tells you that Molly still lives in the small house which she inherited when her mother died. With her are her unmarried son and her divorced daughter, who is the mother of two children. The son is a loom fixer with a weekly wage of $22.00. He not only supports his mother but also contributes toward the support of his youngest sister's family when her wage as part-time worker in a silk mill cannot meet their needs. Molly's fourth child married a tenant farmer and they have no children.

After a while you leave the over-crowded house of the Dunnes and as you go along you recall other things that Sally has told you. Into your mind there come certain conclusions as to how she feels toward her own problems.

With full awareness that her husband's wage can never cover the needs and can hardly touch the wants of her family, she is on the alert for any donations from the outside. She'd like for some of the older children at home to start working in the mill but since the mill cannot use them and the outside world does not need them she has been brought to the attitude that various organizations will have to help her with her
problems. Her children had been attending the Methodist Church for a number of years but the kindness of the Baptist preacher at Christmas time last year converted them to the Baptist way of thinking. Sally says "There wouldner been any Christmas at this house if that man hadn't took a interest in providin' for my younguns. He brought a big goods box of things to us and I ain't never been much happier than when I was unpacking it. They was apples, oranges, candy, nuts, tops, dolls, trains, and little wagons - plenty to divide amongst them still believing in Santa Claus."

The teacher which she likes best is the one who last winter bought her twelve-year old son a pair of shoes after he had been absent from school for three weeks on account of the cold weather. She hopes that by next year the school will furnish free lunches for the children and eliminate her problem of providing three meals a day. If you should manifest any interest in how she manages to provide food for her crowd, her characteristic answer is, "Every head I've got would go hungry if I didn't keep peas a'boilin' in the pot all the time."

With continual acceptance of unsolved problems Sally has reached a state of lethargy which she does not or cannot disturb. There seems to be no appreciable effort to train her children in the tasks about the house. After the Dunnes have eaten, some of the children will wash the dishes in a hasty and slip-shod manner and then join the rest of the family in one of the two dirty bedrooms where the $12 radio is turned on at full-blast. Some of the children are good looking and as a group appear of average intelligence. With no direction of their energies they play a little, scrap a little, and live from meal to meal while Sally sits among them, usually holding a tobacco sack which she is tagging without being able to see it very well.

I. L. M. July 12, 1938

The Hollifields

"What a beautiful thought I am thinking concerning the great speckled bird. The great speckled bird in the Bible representing the great Church of God."

The doleful monotony of Grace Hollifield's voice spreads itself over the words of "The Great Speckled Bird" and hits discordantly against the plunkety notes of her mandolin and her father's banjo. Over line after line Grace's voice drags its way to tell the story of worldly opposition to "The Great Speckled Bird," and of the bird's ultimate victory.

     They hate her because she is chosen
     They watch every move that she makes.
     They want to find fault in her teaching
     She is spreading her wings for a journey
     She will meet her dear Lord in the sky."

Sometimes six year old Edith joins her sister in her hymn singing, and her child-voice will rise in weird, strange tense to tell that there is room for all at the foot of the Cross.

Sometimes the Hollifields will gather on their small front porch and at other times in the dingy living room of their home on Factory Hill to play and sing hymns. Singing and playing are daily activities in the Hollifield home. On the porches of houses nearby neighbors sit and listen, some with great liking and others with growing resentlment Disapproval is of little consequence to the Hollifields because they consider it their duty as well as their pleasure to sing religious songs that others may hear and become converts. Only a few people on Factory Hill attend church, except during revival season, and for that reason the Hollifields sing with double zeal.

Nine years ago when Jed and Evelyn moved to Factory Hill they joined the Salvation Army of Asheville and they have encouraged their children to accept the teachings of the organization. Last year they dedicated little Edith to its services and now on Saturday nights she joins her family and other members of the organization on the streets of Asheville to sing and to play on her tambourine. Tom, the oldest son who is now married, plays the violin and often comes from his house across the hill to join his family in their playing. "It ain't often you see 4 members of a family talented in music, is it?" Jed asks with pride.

Jed, born in Madison County, North Carolina, was five years old when his mother died. He was sent then to live with his aunt who owned a small farm near Pickens, South Carolina. There he worked until he was nineteen years old with never any hope of making more than a bare living. His aunt had six children and what few advantages she could provide were given to them.

During these years when he was growing up Jed thought often of his brother, Charley, two years older than he, who had been sent to live with an aunt in Gaffney, South Carolina. Word reached Jed a few years after he went to his new home that Charley had run away and his relatives had not heard from him since. There were nights when he lay awake wondering what had become of his brother. He tried to hold fast to the belief that some kind person had given him a good home and that he and his brother would eventually be brought together again. But there were times when he was haunted with the harassing thought that Charley had died of hunger as he struggled on mile after mile on a journey that had no destination.

Jed found very little affection in his aunt's household. He did not learn to like the farm and when he was nineteen he determined to make a new life for himself. He went to Greenville and there secured a job in the weave room of a cotton mill. Two years later he married Evelyn whose father had moved out of Madison County to Asheville Mill and later to Greenville. The mills needed hands in those days and Jed with his young wife moved from mill to mill, sometimes with the hope of betterment and sometimes because an overbearing superintendent made demands which his pride would not stand. "I don't mind doin' my work but I've always wanted to be treated like a man." he says.

One move took the Hollifields to Gastonia, North Carolina. On a Saturday afternoon not long after moving to Gastonia Jed was in the barber shop up-town looking through a newspaper, when he saw the name of Charley Hollifield signed to an advertisement of livestock for sale. He rushed home to tell his wife that at last he had discovered the whereabouts of his brother. Not wanting Jed to build too great a hope on his discovery Evelyn suggested that someone else might have the same name. Jed knew there was only one way to satisfy his mind. After a number of inquires he found out that Charley Hollifield lived on a farm about seven miles from town. Jed tells his story as follows:

"Hit was a strange feelin' ridin' out there to see the man who had the name that had stayed in my mind all them years. I knew it would be a awful disappointment if it turned out to be somebody else. When I got there Charley was settin' on the porch, and it never took a minute for me to make up my mind. Lookin' at him comin' forward to meet me it was just like lookin' in a mirror at myself. I think he must have knowed just as quick as I did that we were brothers.

I set there for two or three hours talking with him while he told me how he crawled in the back of a apple wagon that had come down out of the mountains, and how the driver, not knowing that he was there until he was a good ways out of town, took him on home with him. He wasn't but nine then, but ever since he'd been at Aunt Mattie's he'd felt that she didn't want him and that she thought of him as nothin' but a burden since she had eight younguns of her own anyway.

The driver kept him in his home for about a year. After that he worked out here and there, living with first one and then another until he was fifteen years old. Restlessness and dissatisfaction came on him again and he bummed his way to Texas. He worked there at odd jobs until he was seventeen, and then come back to North Carolina and stopped near Gastonia.

He got work on old man Thad Stone's place and when he was twenty-two he married the old man's daughter, Bonnie. When Mr. Stone died he left Bonnie a good piece of farmin' land and there her and Charley have been ever since. Charley has took advantage of his chance and he's made a fair livin' for his family. I shorely feel like God guided me in findin' my brother."

Jed moved to the Asheville Cotton Mill because the doctors advised a mountain climate for Evelyn. She has not been able to work for many years and the entire burden of his family's support rests with Jed, who now gets three days' work a week. Jed's two oldest sons are married but there are three children still at home. Grace is frequently ill and requires medical treatment.

Jed bears his responsibilities with a sereneness which makes him at forty-six look not more than forty years of age. He discusses with perfectly controlled feeling his opinion of the mill at which he works. He thinks that the stretch-out system has put on him more work than is just but he realizes his own helplessness.

"This is a ugly place to live." he says. "No roads, dirty unscreened houses and no yard for plantin' a few flowers. But a man that's got dependents would take a lot today before he'd quit his job because he knows as like as not he won't find another. It seems to us that work that all folks could have plenty of food and reasonable good clothes and a decent place to stay," he continues, lookin steadily at his listener. "They could, I know, if they wasn't so much selfishness in the world."

Jed sits quietly for awhile, seeming to reflect on his own words. Presently he looks at the visitor and says, "Me and the girls will be glad to play you a piece if you like."

"Edith, get your tambourine and help me and Grace with "Kneel at the Cross." They get their instruments and begin to play and sing. Jed's mind now seems free. His eyes are clear and bright as he sings:

Jesus will meet you there,
There is room for all at the foot of the Cross."

           I. L. M.  August 19, 1938

Life In A Small Mountain Town

Tucony, with a present day population of about 2,000, was incorporated in 1867 an the county seat of a newly formed mountain county. The incorporators were a handful of intelligent farmers living in the neighborhood. They gave the land.

A peaceful beginning was assured by giving every man jack a public office. Infractions of the law do not seem to have been serious. It is recorded that farmers were sometimes fined for riding their horses on the sidewalks. The town fathers showed vision by laying out the streets wide. At first it was objected that these streets would grow up in grass and weeds. The answer was that cows could keep the grass and weeds down until traffic grew heavier. Many fine forest trees were left standing and maples were planted along the sidewalks.

A visitor of forty years ago generally remembered the beautifully shaded streets, but if his visit occurred in summer, he was more likely to remember the clouds of red dust blowing up and down the streets. In winter these streets became red mud in which wagons were sometimes stalled. To cross one on foot, stepping from stone to stone, was an adventure. In performing this stunt, women with long skirts were even compelled to display their ankles to the vulgar gaze.

The town grew slowly but steadily. Here and there a poorly constructed wooden business structure gave place to a modern brick building. An Episcopal church built of stone was erected under the patronage of a family from Charleston, S. C. Other families from the coastal region filtered through the gaps of the Blue Ridge and built summer cottages in the neighborhood, and a few of these became permanent residents.

Probably the strongest racial strain in the early years of the community was Scotch-Irish, and it was this element that built the Presbyterian church. Somewhat later Baptist and Methodist churches followed. These four comfortable and well organized churches are now well attended. One often gets the impression that people here are more interested in churches than in anything else. The churches not only minister to the spiritual needs of the community but also help to satisfy the gregarious instinct. The doleful prophecy made thirty years ago that the automobile and the Sunday newspaper would empty the places of worship has not come true in Tucony.

A good private school was established early by a man who was a real teacher. This school was later expanded into what was known as the Institute and housed in a commodious brick building built by a woman of means and public spirit. It passed into the hands of the Women's Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, which gave it financial support. After the opening of the high school with its free tuition, the Institute languished, and finally it was turned over as a gift to the Methodist Conference, who developed it into a junior college for both sexes. This college today, with its 400 students, is expanding in several directions. Fifty years ago few people in North Carolina ever dreamed there would be coeducational colleges in the state. Perhaps this coeducation was brought about partly by the successful training of boys and girls together in the high school.

The public schools of Tucony have land been well housed and well manned. And the National Youth Administration(NYA)boys have recently built a large log hut as an addition to the school buildings, to be used for dances, theatricals, and all sorts of social activities. This log house was so attractively designed and skilfully built that other towns have asked for the plans. It is common talk that the NYA has been of great value to the community as a civilizing influence. And the same may be said of the more indirect influence of the CCC camp near the edge of town.

What do the people of Tucony read?

Perhaps half a dozen people have good private libraries. They buy sparingly the new books that come out. Having read them, they pass them on to their friends. The United Daughters of the Confederacy has a small library, open to the public, housed in a vineclad cottage with wide porches and rocking chairs, and they add a few volumes each year; but their resources are slender.

The junior college has a fairly good working library, but it is not financially able to buy many new books. A group of women in the town have a book club and they spend their money for books of current interest. They buy such books as the ODYSSEY OF AN AMERICAN DOCTOR, but their taste runs mostly to fiction. They bought GONE WITH THE WIND, of course, and they read it because everybody also was reading it, but some of them thought it "unrefined" and were chary of discussing it.

The two newstands in town carry a full line of newspapers and magazines as well as reprints of novels popular in the recent past. The N.Y. HERALD TRIBUNE and the N.Y. TIMES are always on hand, but no Hearst papers. Half a dozen of the leading daily papers in the state are for sale, as well as two or three dailies from S. C., GA., and Ala. People who come here for the summer from the deep South like to see their home papers on the stands. Nearly every magazine published in the U. S. is to be found, but no foreign periodicals.

The best seller among the magazines is the READER'S DIGEST. Sixty copies are sold each month. This large sale is partly due to the fact that the high school uses several copies in its class room work. The pulps, of course, are popular. They are cheap and filling. You may have your pick from three long shelves.

What becomes of the graduates of the high school? Some of the boys go to the junior college and from there to larger colleges. A few enter professional schools. Some who never go to college become clerks in stores, work at gas stands, drive trucks, while most of the boys from the country go back to the farm. After the crop season, some of these get odd jobs at lumbering, saw milling, or road making.

Girls of the first layer of intelligence go through the junior college study to be teachers, professional nurses, or enter Welfare or NYA work. Many of them fall by the wayside into marriage and a few of these become leaders in church, civic, or social life. Girls in the second layer of intelligence become waitresses, helpers in beauty shops, cooks, or workers in the hosiery mill. Girls in the third layer work in small shops, become mothers' helpers, or go to the cotton mill.

One is surprised to find the high school graduates, whether they live in town or up on Sassafras Fork or in Squirrel Hollow, so much alike in dress, manners, and outlook on life. The transforming influences are the church, the public schools, magazines and newspapers, and the movies. Forty years ago the only place a girl could see a new hat or a new dress was at church; and there sartorial standards were not high.

The finances of the town have not escaped the ups and downs of panics and depressions. In the horse and buggy days the business of running the town was simple, but the town awoke from its sleep when the railroad came, and, later, when paved highways and motor cars arrived. If the town was to get its share of summer visitors, it must have more to offer than good air and cool nights.

It must have a good supply of pure water, electric lights, telephone, and paved streets and sidewalks. So the fine old maples along the sidewalks were supplanted by electric light poles. Such progress was not entirely pleasing but it had its advantages. When the street paving was finished, the citizens slapped one another on the back and cracked jokes about how John Smith's wagon and mules once got stuck in the mud on Main Street and bid fair to remain there until the resurrection.

But all of this improvement had to be paid for. Street assessments broke the backs of many property holders, and it is doubtful if all of these assessments have been paid yet, after a lapse of twenty years. The town was able to carry its bonded debt until 1929. After that people got out of the habit of paying taxes and the bonds were in default. Rather recently there has been an adjustment of this debt and it now looks as if it might be liquidated sooner or later. When a town suffers financially, it is, of course, because its citizens are suffering financially. Much distressed property changed hands during the long depression, but the stream of this liquidation has now nearly dried up. People are beginning to build houses again and others are able to make improvements. Perhaps most of this progress is due to the generosity of the Federal Government.

The architecture of the town is mostly nondescript. There may be half a dozen commodious houses of Southern colonial type, with wide porches and white pillars, but the great majority are rather flimsily built, with feeble attempts at adornment and utter disregard of type. A few of the newer houses show some improvement in taste. Most of the older ones sadly need paint. The business structures are of brick, and they look as commonplace here as they do in the older parts of New York City.

Merchants report that business in better here now than it has been in the last six years. The coming of a new industry into the neighborhood, employing 500 workers, has brought increased trade to the stores, and has also added a fillip to the real estate market. The only bank in the town collapsed during the depression and was liquidated with considerable distress to depositors, stockholders, and debtors. But a new bank was promptly organized, and this one seems to bear the marks of permanence. Four industrial plants in or near the town take up the slack of unemployment The aesthetic side of life receives more attention as time goes on. There is a flourishing musical club and the garden club puts on a show every year. The community is distinctly flower conscious.

For men the centres of contact are the drugstores, the newstands, the barber shops, the cafes, the Masonic Lodge, the Kiwanis Club, and the Chamber of Commerce. Two restaurants provide excellent cups of coffee as well as wine and beer. One large hotel caters to summer trade only, but a smaller hotel, better than fair, is open the year around and in a rendezvous for hunters and fishermen. Excellent guest houses are numerous. Bridge parties and dances bring men and women together and so do church suppers and moving pictures. A dancing school provides training for children. And beauty parlors seem to be doing a good business.

The town has two or three excellent physicians, men of modern training, and there is an alert board of health. A few of the older physicians are known as "good country doctors." They do not always keep abreast of the changes in medical theory and practice, but they are often skilfull in such diseases as recur frequently, having acquired skill through trial and error. The one hospital, well managed and well manned, reflects credit on the town and is good enough to receive a slice of the Duke endowment fund. It needs more space, however, and more equipment. One of the most marked gains in the matter of public health is in the care of maternity cases and in the feeding of babies, brought about by modern physicians and by the spread of medical knowledge through magazines and newspapers. Changes have come also in the art of cooking, but fairly intelligent people still fry their vegetables in hog grease.

In spite of the spread of modern ideas, a few pioneer ways of life still persist. The pioneers, of course, had no rubber boots or overshoes or raincoats or umbrellas. They took the snows and the rains as they came. And it was not uncommon to see men crippled with rheumatism sitting in the corner by the fire, old at 60. Even today men and women past middle life may be seen slopping along in the rain unprotected. They think it is sissified to take care of themselves.

The institution of afternoon tea has never reached the town.

Tea is regarded as a drink for old grannies and sick people. People associate it with grandma's sassafras tea for the ailing or for her catnip tea for infants. They do not know that the English polo players drank tea instead of cocktails when they were in this country a few years ago. If they did know, it wouldn't make any difference. Old ideas die hard. It is doubtful if there is a house in Tucony where afternoon tea is served to callers.

Prejudice of any kind - racial, political, or religious - is not strong in Tucony. Churches work together in friendliness. Negroes are not numerous enough to breed friction. The town is Democratic, but Republicans are not ostracised socially or otherwise. The only two Jews in the community are married to Gentile wives and attend the churches of their wives. One is a member of his wife's church. Prejudice against Yankees survives, but it is only a faint echo of the Civil War. This prejudice spends itself largely in words - it is more like a formula of speech - and is rarely translated into action. A man from the North may surely reckon on being treated according to his worth. A leading barber in town is the son of a man who belonged to a band of Union soldiers who captured the writer's father and took him to a Federal prison in 1864, but this barber today cuts the hair of the writer in peace and serenity. Razors are not flourished.

Altogether, life has changed much in the last fifty years. Cows no longer graze in the streets and pigs do not root in front of stores. People no longer cross muddy streets in the dark. Typhoid fever no longer takes its toll. Men have other things to think about besides merchandising and hunting and fishing, and the thoughts of women are no longer confined to brides, babies, and bonnets. The spirit of the town is optimistic, but it is sobered by recollections of deflated real estate booms. As time goes on the town bids fair to enjoy a healthy growth, and more and more it will be brushed by the tide of travel to and from the Great Smokies.

Five industrial plants, in or near it, add much to the vital life of Tucony. They are the Bluehill Tannery, the Highmont Hosiery Mill, the Toxicany Cotton Mill, the Montvale Lumber Company, and the Happy Valley Paper Company.

They not only give employment to workers, but the life of the town is enriched by the presence of the higher executives and their families. They help to fatten the lean finances of the churches, they sing in choirs, they join the numerous clubs, and they soon become civic conscious and lend a hand in all matters of public welfare.

Each of these five plants has an individuality of its own. Life in most factory towns is apt to conform to a fixed pattern. It will be interesting to note the variations from pattern in these five industries.

The Bluehill Tannery is perhaps the oldest. It is housed in an unpainted ramshackle building which may have been a barn originally or a large livery stable. It has never known the smell of paint, but it has smells of its own which the people living in its vicinity do not relish.

For a long time work in the Tannery has been fitful. Perhaps it is safe to say it runs about half the time. Sometimes there is a delay in getting a supply of hides, and sometimes a scarcity of orders for the finished product causes temporary shut-downs. The workers are therefore a shifting class. They come mostly from the town and from surrounding farms. There is no colony of dwellings and no community life. When work is suspended, the worker goes back to his farm or gets an odd job around town. If he is ambitious, he goes to work in a larger plant somewhere else.

During the depression, the Tannery was run at a loss part of the time. The manager did this to help fill empty stomachs. And the worker, even at reduced wages, was glad to have a dinner pail half full rather than no dinner pail at all. Most of the workers in the Tannery are white, but a few Negroes are employed to do wheelbarrow work.

The Highmont Hosiery mill, a branch of a larger mill in another town, came to Tucony in 1938. It is houses in a three-story brick building--an old house modernized--on the main business street and in the heart of town. Some seventy-five workers are employed in making full-fashioned rayon silk hosiery for women. A night shift, ending at 11 p.m., gives employment to women who are busy at the cookstove during the day. The workers, drawn from the town and the surrounding country, are of a more intelligent class than those working in the cotton mill and they get better wages. Some of the women are high school graduates. They live in their scattered homes.

The output of the mill is sold to distributors in New York. If a merchant in Tucony wishes to handle these hose, he must order from the distributors. The writer was unable to buy a pair of these stockings in Tucony. The merchants handle goods made faraway.

The Toxicany Cotton Mill, established several years ago, on the outskirts of Tucony, employs about a hundred workers. The management has always tried to avoid long shut-downs. In dull times the mill may run two or three days a week; sometimes it will run a month and then shut down for a month.

The pattern of life is much like that in other cotton mills in the South. The workers are drawn partly from the native population and partly from those who have floated in from other cotton mill centers. These floaters are often people who have got in debt, or into other trouble, and they move on to make another start. The matter of health also plays its part; people move from malarial or hot weather districts to the uplands. The most stable among the workers are natives who have always owned their own homes, but who need more money for their growing families, especially when they have promising children who are ambitious to extend their education beyond high school. The more unstable workers live in a group or cottages belonging to the mill. These cottages are generally of four rooms and are kept painted; all painted the same color, a slate gray. The surroundings are clean but not artistic. The workers have their own church, bearing the name of the Holiness Church, some form of Methodism. The minister beats the tom-toms of early evangelism. The community seems to be reasonably free of vice. As a group they are commonplace, colorless, and somewhat irresponsible. They keep much to themselves, but are socially inclined within their own circle. Thus they tend to form a class with their own standards of life, just as any other group of people might who cut themselves off from a larger community.

What do they spend their money for? Not much for vegetables, except potatoes and cabbages; perhaps half of them have vegetable gardens. They have the reputation of lunching on cake and coca cola. If one family buys a good radio, it is said that all the other families want to buy the same radio. And the same thing happens when one woman buys a pretty dress. Keeping up with the Joneses seems to be a primitive instict. When they buy furniture it is apt to be the kind that makes a show. They send their children to the public schools, but truancy is common among them. When father and mother are working at the looms; it is easy for children to play ball in the streets. How do mill people live when wages stop? Nobody knows. They rarely save money for a rainy day. Wages are spent before next pay day. Sometimes women go out to do house-cleaning by the day, but they sometimes ask for wages in advance "to buy medicine for the baby" and then don't come back for work. Men will borrow fifty cents from anybody on the street who will lend it. But it is mysterious still how they live through the lean periods. Perhaps they don't; maybe they merely exist, with consequent impairment of health and efficiency.

The Montvale Lumber Co., two miles from Tucony, has been running for several years. It has bought timber rights at several spots and it buys logs from farmers. Its finished products go far and wide. Its workers come from the neighborhood. Come of its foremen have held their jobs for years and have bought their own houses and own good motor cars. Those who live on the spot are housed in unpainted cottages along a paved road shaded by maples. Some of these cottages have two rooms and others have three or four. Flowers and vegetables grow in every garden and fruit trees and beehives are not uncommon. Sewing machines and radios are in almost every house. The women of this community as one sees them on the road and at the general store are not of the slatternly ill-fed type. One notices in the store that beef liver is sold plentifully; fat-back is no longer the leading item of diet. The manager and part owner of the mill in an intelligent and energetic man in middle life. He also runs a general store and spends most of his time there. He has a private office in one corner of the store, but he spends at least half of his time behind his counter, often in his shirt sleeves. In this way he comes to know his people and their problems. The humblest may approach him without hesitation. He is the superintendent of a Sunday school and a member of the County Welfare Board. He radiates energy and good will. His people like him and trust him.

The Happy Valley Paper Co. is about three miles from Tucony and near the Montvale Lumber Co. It was organized in 1938 and the main buildings are now (1939) completed. When the mill starts to run, it will employ from 500 to 700 workers. It will manufacture a special and peculiar kind of paper, such as has never been made in the U.S. The company is bringing over a number of French men and women to teach the technique to the new workers. Most of these new workers will be drawn from this county. When they are properly trained, they will probably earn higher wages then they could in any other mill in the vicinity. Applications for jobs have piled high. Most of these workers will probably live in their own houses, in town or on farms. They will thus be able to attend their own churches, patronize their accustomed stores, send their children to school with the children of their neighbors, and otherwise live their normal lives. The company is already running a bus line into Tucony for the benefit of its workers. People living on the countryside will come to the mill in their own automobiles, for almost every family in the county, no matter how poor, owns some sort of motor car. It is often bought by some enterprising boy in the family, just as his grandfather acquired a horse and buggy - by saving a few dollars here and there. In some cases four or five people will bunch up in one car, each paying his share of the gasoline. This general plan of living has its advantages over the regimentation of families in barracks.

A few workers have already gone to board and room in nearby farmhouses, or rented the second floors as apartments. This, of course, works to the advantage of the farmer. He not only gets rent money, but he has a market for his produce right at his door. The executives of the mill have rented houses in Tucony, or taken apartments, and some expect to build their own houses later. Little available housing has been left in Tucony. Many of the executives and most of the capital of the mill come from outside the state. The President, from New York, expects to build a house and live in Tucony. Arrangements have already been made for the temporary accommodation of a group of French women who are to serve the mill an instructors. They will take their meals and have rooms in a nearby country house. As each French woman requires a room to herself, there will be an overflow of roomers into a neighboring country house.

It is thought that in time recreational features will be added to the plant, such as reading and assembly rooms, shower baths, and so on. The plant will be air conditioned. Altogether, this industrial experiment is extremely interesting as the decentralization of industry is now occupying the close attention of economists.

The tiny cottage is well worn and in a tidy state of repair. Although the paint is all but gone from the stout wooden planks, the path is swept clean and no weeds are growing up along the edges. A young boy of perhaps four sits on the front steps watching a caterpillar slowly make its way across the red dirt path. My shadow falls across the bug, and the boy looks up with a gasp, running around to the back of the house. Moments later, he reappears, with a youngish man in tow.  

Joseph T. Bennett is twenty-nine years old and just got a job working at the new Happy Valley Paper Company, just three miles outside of Tucony, North Carolina. He settles himself on the steps where his son sat just moments ago, and as I look down at my feet, I see that the caterpillar has made it to the relative safety of the pathetic, dying grass.  

"So whaddya want? You want to know about my life? Hmmmm. Don't get that too often. Well, I guess I got the time. What else do I have to do, right? Not that there's much to tell you. . .  

"Mama was a registered teacher before she married, and she always tried to make sure that we were dressed well, and that our grammar was decent. Pa made sure hat we had good manners, and if one of us was rude, we could expect to have a brief and rough meeting with a willow branch. Between the seven of us, I guess that was a pretty big job. There's me, an' Jimmy, Paul, an' Aaron, an' then Katie and Sue-Ellen. On my fifteenth birthday, Pa gave me fifteen shares of Montvale Lumber Company stock. Two weeks later, the market crashed.
 
"Pa had invested almost everythin' he had in stock, and we lost almost all of our savings. If Mama hadn't kept some money in the mattress, we'd have had to move. About a month later, Pa lost his job. For a long time, we lived touch-and-go, hand-and-mouth.

"Every day Pa went back to the lumber mill to see if he could get his job back, and every day he would come back with no job. I quit school and worked wherever there as an opening. Once, in early December, Pa and I went up into the mountains to cut fir trees. There wasn't really any people to buy them, but it was nice to have a Christmas tree. We got one puny one for working, in addition to pay. There weren't any decorations to go on it or presents to go under it. In the fall and summer my brothers and I tried to get jobs working in the tobacco fields or at the dairy farm. It was hard, and out of five of us, only one or two usually got the job. My younger sisters usually ran about the woods picking wild berries and nuts or gleaning from a neighbor's fields.  

"When I turned 18, on my first voting year, I wanted to change our country. My life had been on the up and up, and then, all of the sudden, BAM! (Claps hands together) everything was gone. Roosevelt promised to turn around the country, and he won my vote. When I was 21, I saw a poster about the CCC camp that Roosevelt set up outside of town. I went to the applications office, and I had the exam, but I didn't pass. I can't really remember the numbers; more than 5 feet and less than 6 ½ feet tall; I think that's right. That was easy to pass. None of the boys in my family are small.  

"The problem came when I had to step on the scales. The rules said you had to be at least 107 pounds, but I had been eating so little, I weighed 'bout 105. I asked the clerk to let me through, but he said that there were so many boys that wanted in, he couldn't bend the rules for me. When I told Pa, he was madder than a headless chicken. Pa still didn't have a job, and we needed the money from the CCC. Katie was wearing a dress that was too small, because the Red Cross didn't have many clothes and she was growing fast. Mama was sick most of the time because she wasn't eating or looking after herself. She kept saying that her boys were growing, and they needed the food more than her. For the next week, my family tried to give me lots 'a extra food, and I drank lots of water. I reapplied, and luckily, I made it in. You don't have any idea what it's like to listen to your little sister cry in her sleep from hunger. No idea." 

At this point, the young boy has come back around and is sitting on the ground next to his father. Joseph reaches out, and with a tired smile, roughly musses his son's hair. The boy squirms away with a giggle of laughter, only to fall back to the ground.

"I went to the camp for nine weeks, the most amount of time that anybody was allowed to work there the camp. I sent home all of my pay, $30, unlike the other boys from town, who kept $5 for themselves and for their cigarettes. While I was at camp, I helped build a big log hut addition to the school. It could be used for classes, dances, school board meetings, and get-togethers. The hut was designed by one of the boys from our town, Anthony. The design was so popular that the supervisor from another camp asked for the plans. Another thing we did in camp was to build a park for the Tucony area. It's something that I am still proud of today. We cleared paths for nature hikes, moved fallen trees, cleared streams, and built ranger huts and picnic tables.

"After my nine months was up, Jimmy went to the camp. I saw him build lots of houses in the town, because most people couldn't afford to keep their houses during the hard times. In fact, this house right here is one of those houses built by the CCC boys. After Lenora and I were married, we needed a place to stay. We went to the mayor, who also happened to be Lenora's cousin's ..uh..husband's uncle. It's funny what 'family' can do for you sometimes isn't it?"

"He let us have our pick of one of the houses right off. It's worn down, yeah, but it's sturdy and well built, and maybe soon, if we can pull out of this slump - what do they call it - depression? We'll get it fixed up. As a matter of fact, things are really looking up now. Yesterday, I got this job with the Happy Valley Paper Company. They are goin' to use some new French way of making paper, I think. I start tomorrow, boxing up the paper for shipping. But there's a lot of room for promotion. Boss said after two months of hard work anybody could be a supervisor.

"Lenora is a substitute mail clerk in the Tucony Federal Post Office. She just got the job and after a little while, she's gonna get the full-time job. Now she gets paid about 65¢ an hour and she sometimes gets in almost 6 hours a day. She's real tired at the end of the day, but most of the people are real nice, too. Once she completes the required number of hours, Lenora can become a full-time clerk. Then Jacob will be in school, so that will all work out. She'll make twenty one hundred dollars per year! At the Happy Valley Paper Company, I'll make roughly twenty one hundred and fifty dollars per year, an' before too long we'll be able to move into a bigger house. The foreman's job is worth two thousand five hundred dollars. Pa got his job back at the Montvale Lumber Mill, and most of my brothers have jobs, too. My oldest sister is married, and little Sue-Ellen is gonna be married in June. Momma got a job at the Highmont Hoisery Mill for $12 a week. All together, I think when we are get out of this, we are  going to end up better off than we were to start with. Jacob's gonna get a future after all."
 
The sun is setting in the west and the mosquitoes are starting to come out. Joseph stands up and brushes the dirt off his pants, indicating the end of the interview. But his last words hang in the still, humid air. "Jacob's gonna get a future after all."
 

Claudia Williams, Megan Liddle

Schoolmaster

"My family was probably Huguenot," said Randolph Roget, the quiet, elderly Tucony school teacher who once explored the Pygay country of Africa and later edited a newspaper in Panama. "They drifted up-country from the coastal region, probably to get away from mosquitoes and malaria, but also perhaps to be free of too many neighbors. As a family we are not very gregarious, and when I spoke of drifting, I meant just that. Some of us have always had a talent for it.

"Now, at sixty, I am pretty comfortably anchored here in Tucony. I like the place and the people. I've been the head of a country school near here for several years. I drive out and back every day. I like to see these mountain youngsters develop. The outside world has very erroneous ideas about these mountain people. We give the children a good lunch every day and they are about as healthy as any other children.

"My wife is a teacher in the public schools of Tucony and a member of the County Welfare Board, as well as of several clubs in town. I don't see how she does it. If I did as much as she does, I'd fade away under it. But she is not one of the nervous fluttery kind.

She is capable and turns off work with comparative ease. I must tell you a joke on myself about my wife. I once went into a badly lighted library. I noticed a woman sitting and reading at the other end of the room. She looked serene and intelligent. I liked the tilt of the nose and chin. I thought to myself that if I were a bachelor or a widower I'd like to marry that woman. As I drew nearer, lo and behold it was my own wife. I had been admiring her from a distance. So you can now make a guess whether or not I am happily married.

"You'd like to know about my early life, would you? Well, I needn't tell you I robbed birds' nests and trapped rabbits and shot bows and arrows and hunted Indian arrow heads, as every country boy does. But I'll tell you the most dramatic episode of my young days.

"You know General Wade Hampton made his campaign for the governorship in 1876. The state had been ruled by carpetbaggers, scalawags, and negroes since 1865.

"The people of South Carolina knew when they had had enough. Hampton's followers adopted the red shirt as their uniform. A long cavalcade of Red Shirts escorted the candidate from one speaking point to another. Women banked with flowers the platforms from which Hampton spoke. The state was aflame from mountain to seashore.

"Well, my mother made me a little red shirt and they perched me up on the horse behind my father. And thus we rode in the cavalcade, my arms clasped around my father's middle. I was offended when they called me little Red Ridinghood, but when we galloped away I knew I was a Little Red Shirt. No boy that ever straddled a horse ever felt so proud as I did. It makes me young again to think about it.

"As I grew up, I thought of studying law, but my father was a practicing lawyer in one of the larger towns of the state and he said one lawyer in the family was enough. I meant to tell you that my father was elected to the legislature in the Democratic landslide which swept Hampton into office.

"When the day came for the new legislature to take its seat, the old legislature refused to adjourn and locked the doors. Big negro bucks, some of them cornfield hands, lolled in seats once occupied by such men as John C. Calhoun and Robert Y. Hayne. When the new legislature came to the locked door, they hesitated a moment. Then my father kicked the door in. The new members swarmed in and put the old legislature to rout.

"There seems to be an unruly streak in our family. I am a quiet man - a schoolmaster, an elder in the church, and I pray for peace along with the rest of 'em - but if I had been in my father's shoes, I am sure I too would have kicked the door down. And I have a son who would have done the same thing. We really are distantly related to the family or Jesse James. No fooling, I mean it. Even today, I'm afraid I myself haven't any too much love for the Federal Government.

"When I left college the chances for a young fellow to do anything were not very bright. I floundered, as many did. One day I saw in the newspaper that an anthropological society was going to send to Africa to get some Pygmies. They were to be used as an exhibit at the St. Louis Exposition. This appealed to my imagination. Through the influence of friends in Washington, I was assigned to this job. I had seen pictures of Pygmies in books and magazines and I thought it would be good fun to see them in their native habitat. And the novelty of the thing, with its touch of danger and adventure, put me on my toes. The Little Red Shirt was riding again. To cut this story short, I got the Pygmies and landed them safe in St. Louis. Pretty soon the poor little things became so homesick that the authorities were obliged to ship them back to the African bush.

"It would never do to let them little people die on their hands, so I took them back and landed every one of them safe and sound. One poor little chap developed pneumonia on the way back and I put him in a hospital in Havana until be had entirely recovered. The most famous specialist in Cuba became interested in his case and gave it his personal attention.

"I recall in particular one little incident of my trip. It was important, of course, to gain the friendship of the chief and get his permission. Through missionaries and traders I obtained an audience and found him alone in his shack sitting gloomily beside a table. He received me with a grunt and with great gravity. After a desultory conversation which seemed to get nowhere, although I spoke his language, I finally pulled out of my pocket a large plug of black American tobacco, the kind that cornfield hands like to chew. The chief's eyes brightened when I presented it to him in mg best improvised diplomatic manner. He turned the plug over several times and smelled it with satisfaction. When I drew out a large pocket knife, he became alert and suspicious, but when he saw me shave off tobacco and fill my pipe, his face relaxed into the first smile I had seen on his countenance. I then filled his pipe with the shavings, lighted it, and presented it to him with my best bow. The skies now cleared rapidly. We smoked and talked for hours and when we parted we knew we were brothers for life.

Who will rise up now and say that I was not an ambassador of good will to Hottentottia?

"Altogether I made three trips to Africa. I collected valuable stuff for museums; traded in ivory; made a small fortune on a load of salt I took down with me on one of my trips; bought slaves for a song who were on the point of being sold to cannibals and allowed them to gather rubber and work out their own freedom; contracted the fever several times; met many interesting traders and explorers, made many friends with both whites and blacks; and had a general hilarious time. To look at me now you'd never suspect that I once owned over a thousand slaves.

"Why didn't I go back again? I can answer that in three words: I got married.

"But I did go to Panama, and I was there while the canal was being dug. My first cousin was a prominent physician there during the health cleanup. I edited a newspaper and I knew everybody - Gorgas, Varilla, and all the rest. It was an interesting experience, but I did not accumulate a fortune. My wife taught in a school. We had young children, but fortunately domestic help was cheap. How my wife managed to teach school and at the same time take care of children in a tropical climate is a puzzle to me. She was born in Alabama and her father was one of Forrest's cavalrymen. She herself was not at all of the grenadier type, but she had a serene courage which any trooper might envy.

"As time went on, it seemed the part of wisdom for us to remove to a more bracing climate an account of the children. How did we happen to come to Tucony? Well, my father had bought a small farm two or three miles from town, a simple house on a mountainside with a fine view of the valley. He used it as a summer place. Our thoughts went back naturally to the place where we had slept under blankets in summer and breathed the best air in the world and drunk water that spurted out of the hillside; and where flies and mosquitoes never broke our slumbers. Mosquitoes! Good heavens, we would give anything and do anything never to see a mosquito again!

"It was not easy to get a foothold in a new community. My wife and I finally secured positions in a country school a few miles south of Tucony and we rented a farmhouse and turned our children loose to play. A few years later we applied for positions in the public schools of Tucony. My wife was chosen and she still holds the job. She's a better man than I am. I failed to be appointed, but I secured the principalship of another country school a few miles from town.

"You've heard of my one excursion into politics. I offered myself as a candidate for County Superintendent of Public Instruction. Never again!

"Before the campaign was over not a shred of my character was left.

"I think even my own family suspected I was a shady person. I myself realized I had flaws of character which I had never suspected. If you want to get yourself mentally and morally overhauled, just get into politics. Perhaps if I had been called Jim or Alf I might have been elected, but Randolph was more than voters could swallow. It has always been a mystery to me as to what it takes to be a successful politician. I have known men to be elected who paraded their worst clothes and manners before the voters, and I have known successful politicians also who were dandified. Who knows?

"Then the depression came, and I suppose we made out pretty much as other people did. We had to draw in our horns. Our teaching salaries were cut, but we still had salaries. Not every one was so fortunate. I made a garden and kept a cow. Our old clothes seemed to develop a quality of everlastingness. We dismissed the cook. Our only son, who couldn't get a job, rolled up his sleeves and went into the kitchen. He now has a good job doing landscape work in one of the national forests. So things have begun to look better for us.

The last legislature raised our salaries and perhaps the next one may give us retiring pensions. So we can look forward with reasonable hope to a serene and untroubled old age.

"Unless Hitler erupts, you say? To Hell with him! If I were only a fundamentalist I'd take great pleasure in the belief that hell is hot."

A.W. Long, writer.

Joseph Stewart, 81 Years Old, White

Joseph Stewart is an old bachelor living alone in a four-room frame house on the south side of highway #34, seven miles east of the town of Ridgeway, S. C. He is five feet ten inches tall and weighs two hundred pounds.

"I was born near Mitford, not far from Great Falls, January 17, 1857. I was a boy seven years old when the great War Between the States ended in the triumph of the Union army, the abolition of slavery, and the raiding of our section of the county by Sherman's soldiers.

"My father was Thomas Stewart; my mother, Sallie Stewart. I had two brothers and two sisters. Jane, who never married, is dead. Tom was a bachelor all his life; he was drowned at the age of seventy. Brother William married and had a large family, but died several years ago. Mattie Lavinia married John Haynes. She is still living at Ridgeway, S. C., with her daughter, Mary, who married Bob Ameen, a prosperous merchant and land owner of Ridgeway and Winnsboro, S. C. She is seventy-seven years old. She lost her only son, Harry, last April.

"My father and mother were not rich people before the abolition of slavery; they owned only a few slaves and a small tract of land near Mitford. The destruction of the small cotton mill, the distilleries, and tanyards meant more to my family than the abolition of the slaves.

"My two brothers, William and Tom, and I were not ashamed to work at whatever we could get to do around the cotton mill and gristmill, distilleries and tanyards. Our labor was intelligent and skilled and was preferred to Negro labor after freedom. So the result of the war bore not so hard on our family.

"Sherman's troops burned the schoolhouse near us. It was a private school of the neighborhood. I had gone to it one year and had gotten to the "baker" column in the old Blue Back Speller, and had learned to read and write. That is about all the schooling I ever got. What I know has come from the school of experience and in reading the newspapers.

"The Yankees burned Mt. Dearborn Cotton Mill, which was owned by Captain Sam McAlilley at the time of the invasion by the Federal army. They also burned and destroyed Gayden's, Montgomery's, Lewis's, and Gaither's tanneries. These were never reestablished, but the two distilleries in the community that were likewise destroyed were afterward restored, and every store sold whiskey. A gallon jug could be bought for a silver dollar, and a barrel, thirty-one and one-half gallons, sold for a ten dollar bill. Now the same quality and amount of liquor would cost six dollars a gallon and not less than fifty dollars a barrel.

"What was the pastime and amusement of men in those days? Well, society had a distinct cleavage. There was a religious crowd who took things seriously and went to church every time the church had anything going on. They got up and established a temperance society, and attended revivals in the summertime. They, led on by the preachers, believed in hell fire and brimstone, and talked against card playing, dancing, gambling, and many innocent amusements that is considered all right nowadays.

"Then there was the other crowd; they raised game chickens and race horses; kept fox hounds; and played cards in barrooms and hotels at Winnsboro and Chester.

"The race course ran parallel with the Rocky Mount road. Colonel Whittaker, Major Berry of York, the Hamptons of Richland, the McCarleys of Winnsboro, the Thompsons of Union and the Harrisons of Longtown raced thoroughbred race horses on this track, or course, and much money was won and lost at these races. The chicken fights were sometimes fought in Chester and sometimes in Winnsboro. I have known as much as $500 to be bet on the "Main." That is to say, the side winning the most fights would get the $500. But I have seen $300 bet on an individual cock fight that didn't last a minute; a blue-breasted red game cock of Mr. Pagan's ran his gaff clean through both eyes of an Allan Round Head game rooster. Who did the Allan Round Head belong to? I'm not sure about that, but the money was put up by three Chester people.

"As to gambling at cards, most of that took place in a back room adjoining the barroom. In the daytime, the game was seven up and turn trump. If you turned a jack, that counted "one". The points to be made were "high", "low", "jack", and the "game". No great sums of money were lost or won on this game.

"At night in the fall and winter the card game was "draw poker" in the town hotels. Generally a bar with liquors was fixed up in the hotel. One day a fine old gentleman stopped his wagon, which was loaded with four bales of cotton, in front of the Nickolson Hotel, in Chester. He came in just to get a drink, he said. Looking around, he saw a card game going on; he joined it, played a while, and had the game changed to draw poker. He soon lost what money he had, and then bale by bale the cotton was lost. In the midst of a conversation about putting up a mule, his son came in and led him out of the hotel. The grandson of that old gentleman is a lawyer at Barnwell, S. C. You know him well, as he has been president of the State Bar Association.

"Dr. Ira S. Scott, a graduate of the Charleston Medical College, was the physician of the surrounding country. His practice extended from old Beckhamsville to Kershaw. In typhoid fever cases, people believed him more able to cure it than any other doctor. They say he never was known to lose a typhoid case, if called into consultation the first week. He died in 1888. He had been a cripple since childhood, and, because of this misfortune, he always rode horseback on a lady's sidesaddle. You must remember that, until the year 1900, it was regarded as immodest and shameful for ladies to ride astride as men do.

"The first Saturday in May found everybody in wagons and buggies on their way to the picnic at Catawba Falls, as it was commonly called in those old days. Now the place is a large town, a manufacturing centre, and is called Great Falls. I have heard old people say that this picnic began as an annual social gathering in 1784.

"Some of the Confederate soldiers who went out from our section were J. F. Arledge, Robert Ford, E. T. Gayden, Sam Kilgo, R. M. Ford, H. J. Gavden, Mansel Hollis, James G. Johnstone, J. F. Nichols, Dr. William Dye, John Cartledge, and L. M. Ford.

"Dr. William Hall was the richest man in the neighborhood. He built, at his own expense, Bethesda Church and gave it to the Methodist Episcopal denomination. Some of the preachers who went out from Bethesda were John R. Pickett, Phillip Pickett, and James Kilgo. Mr. Kilgo had three sons to enter the Methodist ministry. John Kilgo, one of the sons, became president of Trinity College, now Duke University, Durham, N. C.

"Our family moved here to the Longtown section of Fairfield County about 1884, and bought this farm upon which I have lived ever since.

"I think Fairfield was one of the nine counties declared to be in rebellion against the U. S. Government in the days of Ku Klux, but no great disturbances took place here so far as I recall. I took part in the Red Shirt Brigades that did so much to elect Wade Hampton governor in 1876. I wore a red shirt in the parades and did what I was commanded to do by General Bratton, Major Woodward, and the leaders.

"A canvass of the State took place before the election in 1876. It commenced at Anderson and ended at Columbia. Fairfield County organized clubs.

The club members, on the day of a speaking in Winnsboro, dressed in red shirts, mounted on horseback, and rode to Winnsboro in military formation. I have heard that they did this in every county.

"On the day of the speaking here, I suppose there were at least three thousand Red Shirts on the speaking ground. It was a grand sight; it put heart in the whites and dread in the blacks.

"At other elections, before this, Negro women would dress up in men's clothing and vote. How many, I don't know, but we did catch one at Ridgeway, in 1876, trying to vote for Chamberlain for governor. We were on the lookout for them, and they must have gotten scared and made no attempts, except this particular one.

"Women of the Negro race were more violent in the abuse of the Democratic Party than were the Negro men. It was common for the Negro women to threaten their husbands with separation if they voted the democratic ticket under persuasion of the whites. These women were advised, encouraged, and urged by the Negro preachers and white scalawag politicians to assume this manner and take this drastic action toward their husbands in order to hold them in line for the radical party at the election box."

W. W. Dixon

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