Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2022/Fall/Section093/Lily Wade

Overview:

Lily Wade, a widowed textile worker from Pomona, North Carolina who was interviewed for the Federal Writers’ Project.

Biography:

Adult Life:

Lily Wade was born in Bonlee, North Carolina but moved to Pomona after her husband passed away. Lily lives and works at the Mill in Pomona. Lily is a strong and dedicated Christian whose idea of fun is church work and visiting the old and sick. In this small, village-esce, town, most of the time is spent helping others. Lily Wade has two sets of twins who go to school in Pomona. Politics in Pomona aren’t very important. Lily seems to think her vote doesn't mean much. Times at the mill and steady work thoroughly declined as time progressed. When things at the mill are steady, she works 40 hours a week. Lily works in the weaving room where they thread, sort colors and dye cotton. The women of the mill are all kind and loyal women who believe that God will take care of them if they work hard enough. Even though they are busy in the mill, Wade still finds time to garden which she throughly enjoyed.

Social Contents:

Gendered Roles of Textile Workers:

In the 1930's many people who worked in the mills consisted of textile workers. In 1934 workers went on strike to protest the worsening conditions that the workers are enduring, especially the women. There was widespread cheating of workers on wages . Women earned less than men even when working the same textile and apparel production jobs, due to gendered assumptions about naturally imbued skills and womens positions within family economics . When the power loom was finally fully utilized, weavers (who had been mostly male) were replaced by women and children.

Employers exploit societal preconceptions that portray women as weak and flexible, which women are frequently required to abide by, to make women desirable in the garment industry. While the transitions from agriculture to industry and from household to factory production signaled a changing era, the unpaid and undervalued work of women who run the household remained the same. Cleaning, cooking, and childcare duties, as well as other productive, reproductive, and household obligations, limit women's ability to pursue other career opportunities. They just do not have the time or opportunity to speak up about the mistreatment they endure on a daily basis, which makes them the ideal employees in management's view.

Girls at Weaving Machines, Evansville, IN October 1908 National Archives and Records Administration Records of the Department of Commerce and Labor, Children's Bureau Record Group 102

Mill Houses in the 1930s:

In order to provide housing for their workers, mill owners first built villages. Most of the first mills in the countryside were constructed by individual families and groups of local investors. Small industries with waterwheels were clinging to the streams that were rushing quickly from the North Carolina Mountains toward the shore. The mills house about seventy percent of their workers; the mill owners' annual subsidy is from fifty dollars to two hundred and fifty dollars per house; the owners therefore expect to get about two-thirds of a worker per-room to offset their losses on their house. Family connections were the foundation of village life in the countryside. First-generation workers' offspring married immigrants, forming extensive networks of sharing and care across different homes. If there are any economical, social, political, or community problems in the mill village system in North Carolina and the South- and it is to be suspected that there are- they will hardly be solved by propaganda or denunciation. Like farmers, mill workers put in a lot of effort to grow a lot of their own food. A good garden frequently meant the difference between a nutritious diet and going without food for a family whose pay from the mill barely covered expenses. The soundness of the textile industry's economy remained a key factor in determining the success of mill communities. When problems arose in management, they swiftly spread to the workforce.

Christianity in the Mills:

During the first decade of the mill's operation, villagers worshiped together, irrespective of denominational preference. There was not s[ecific denominations within the mills, but the workers in the mill didn’t specify and just worshiped freely. Tithing was strongly encouraged by the Baptist officials under the dominance of the mills superintendent. This is significant because they expected them to tithe, yet made little to no money working in the mill. Village churches that serve as a powerful religious hub where young men and women are led to Christ have brought the message of a new life and experience into the mills and workshops to infuse the environment with a great moral tone. Additionally, Mills supported local schools through the churches, by occasionally giving facilities and funding teacher salaries. When the mill needed more workers, supervisors frequently sent for students in the school.

Political Foundations:

World War 1 and The Great Depression marked a turning point in the development of the southern textile industry. This important historical event shaped peoples ideologies in the 1930s. Unions frequently end during depressions. In the early 1930s, as unemployment rose, the labor movement appeared powerless to safeguard either jobs or wage rates. However, there were indications of the upsurge in militant union building before there were any early signs of economic recovery. In the end, the Great Depression would be seen as labor's heyday, a period marked by prodigious organizing drives, prosperous strikes, soaring social ideals, and political battles that altered labor law for future generations. By the 1930s' end, the majority of Americans had come to the conclusion that unions were essential to real democracy.

As for personal politics within the mill, neighborliness could shade into policing; it could repress as well as sustain. Divorced women and children born out of wedlock would be ostracized, and kinship ties could give mill supervisors an intelligence network that reached into every corner of the village. There were certain policies that were frowned upon. Divorce was taboo, women must attend to their husbands, and clothes must be modest. All of these became political within the individuals who live in the mill. The community all abide by these policies.

References

English, Beth. “GLOBAL WOMEN’S WORK: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE TEXTILE AND GARMENT INDUSTRIES.” Journal of International Affairs 67, no. 1 (2013): 67–82. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24461672.

Goldfield, Michael, 'Textile—Where the Fabric Meets the Road: The Perils of Cultural Analysis', The Southern Key: Class, Race, and Radicalism in the 1930s and 1940s (New York, 2020; online edn, Oxford Academic, 19 Mar. 2020), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190079321.003.0007

Hall, Jacquelyn Dowd, Robert Korstad, and James Leloudis. “Cotton Mill People: Work, Community, and Protest in the Textile South, 1880-1940.” The American Historical Review 91, no. 2 (1986): 245–86. https://doi.org/10.2307/1858134.

Newman, Dale. “Culture, Class and Christianity in a Cotton Mill Village.” Oral History 8, no. 2 (1980): 36–47. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40178651.

Polk, William. The North Carolina Historical Review 7, no. 1 (1930): 164–66. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23514874.