H0112_Audio |
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Object Description
Interview no. | H-0012 |
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 | July 20, 1977 |
Interviewee | Brooks, Jesse L. |
Interviewee occupation | Textile workers |
Interviewee DOB | Unknown |
Interviewee ethnicity | Whites |
Interviewer | Kuhn, Cliff. |
Abstract | Mr. Jesse L. Brooks is from Alamance County, N.C. and works at the Cannon Mill. Born in 1899, his parents were farmers who moved to Alamance County in 1915. Brooks wanted to work in the textile mills to get away from farming and has worked at numerous mills in the area, including Glencoe, Glen Raven, Haw River, and for the longest duration at Burlington Mills in the Plaid Mill. Most of his family, including his wife, both children, and most of his grandchildren also work at a mill in one capacity or another. He states that during the Depression the mills were mainly open but that the orders and pay would vary. A good portion of the interview is spent discussing management practices and changes in technology. Brooks states that good bosses are not afraid to get their hands dirty and to try to understand the job from their employee’s point of view. The bad bosses he has had were the ones who timed everyone on the job and would fire you if you weren’t up to their preconceived standards, which happened to him at Burlington Mills. Some time is spent discussing the labor movement in the 1930s and the mill strike in 1934 that ended with the mill being dynamited and the National Guard being called in. The strike was over higher wages, better benefits, and the illegality of stretch-out techniques. Brooks states that he was interested in a union until he thought the people running it were taking things too far. Finally, he states that he has thought about going back to farming but it’s too expensive because of all the machinery required anymore. Also, Brooks believes that as time has gone on, people have become less and less social and that Christianity is losing its foothold in the country, with people not being as neighborly as they used to be. |
Subject Topical |
Textile workers--North Carolina. Labor unions--North Carolina. |
Citation | Interview with Jessie L. Brooks by Cliff Kuhn, 20 July 1977 H-0012, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
Description
Interview no. | H0112_Audio |