H0015_Audio_1 |
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Object Description
Interview no. | H-0015 |
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 13, 1979 |
Interviewee | Cates, Bertha. |
Interviewee occupation | Miners |
Interviewee DOB | Unknown |
Interviewee ethnicity | Whites |
Interviewer | Murphy, Mary, 1953- |
Abstract | Ms. Bertha Cates is a coal merchant from Burlington, N.C. Her father was the prominent businessman John Wesley Cates, who was involved with the Erwin Mill and helped build the Erwin Mill Village. A good portion of the interview is spent discussing her father’s various business dealings and outlining his history in the area. Bertha took over the coal business from her father after he was injured in a car wreck in 1918 and has been in charge if it ever since. She attended college in Greensboro and at Elon at the same time, studying voice. She states that female education was important to her father and he saw to it that she and her sisters were all educated. He also donated money to Meredith College, stating that more women should go to college and get into business. That is why she is against the Equal Rights Amendment; she herself has never had a problem with men and she’s been in a male-dominated world her whole life. Finally, the interview touches upon how the coal strikes and the Depression affected the coal business, with Cates taking heavy losses because she herself lost some of her money and people just couldn’t afford to pay back the credit she extended them. |
Subject Topical |
Burlington (N.C.)--Social life and customs. Women coal miners--North Carolina. |
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. | H0015_Audio_1 |