H0016_Audio_1 |
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Object Description
Interview no. | H-0016 |
Restrictions | No restrictions. Open to research. |
Project | H.2. Piedmont Industrialization, 1974-1980: Burlington, N.C. |
Project description | Interviews, 1977-1984, about industrialization in Burlington, N.C., an early textile industry site and home to Burlington Industries, at one time the largest textile corporation in the world. Interviews focus on former workers of the E.M. Holt Plaid Mill, owned by the Holt family, and on the Pioneer plant, owned by Burlington Industries. Work, family, and living conditions are covered extensively. Other topics include geographic and job mobility; the transition from family ownership (the Holt mills) to corporate management (Burlington Industries); technology; work organization; the impact of the Depression and World War II; occupational sex roles; and child labor. Interviews were chiefly conducted as part of the "Perspectives on Industrialization: The Piedmont Crescent of Industry, 1900-1940" project. |
Date | June 4, 1979 |
Interviewee | Chapman, Ernest, 1904- |
Interviewee occupation | Factory supervisors |
Interviewee DOB | 1904 |
Interviewee ethnicity | Whites |
Interviewer | Murphy, Mary, 1953- |
Abstract | Mr. Ernest Chapman is the former superintendent of the Tower Mills Hosiery Mill in Burlington, N.C., retiring in 1973. Chapman is originally from Kentucky and has also worked in hosiery plants in Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, before finally moving to North Carolina. This seems to be a pattern with mill workers, moving from one mill to the other always on the hunt for something better. Much of the interview is spent discussing the different jobs and machines that are part of hosiery work, with considerable time spent on seamless vs. full-fashioned machines. Also discussed is how the German machines were hard to fix because there was no set standard to build them. Chapman discusses the mill in the Depression and how they never closed down but did have to cut wages. Wages were also cut again in the 1940s, which brought about a hosiery strike and led to attempted unionization. When Burlington Mills decided to open a hosiery mill, Tower realized that they would not be able to keep up production, and indeed production did slow down among the smaller mills. Finally, there is discussion of how hosiery mills differ from cotton and other textile mills, including less attempts at unionization, more skilled labor, and in general better wages for hosiery workers. |
Subject Topical |
Textile workers--Southern States. Labor unions--Southern States. |
Citation | Interview with [interviewee name] by [interviewer name], [interview date] [interview number], in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
Description
Interview no. | H0016_Audio_1 |