|
Milstead,
Georgia, a textile town with a U. S. Post Office, had everything it
needed to make a community happy. Its residents were always ready to
lend a helping hand to schools, farmers and merchants, and those
just passing through. That's why we're happy to be honored with the
name 'Linthead.'
The
advance of science, contract with the new world, and development of
new trade with the new world, with new trade routes to the Far East,
stimulated commercial activity and the demand for manufactured
goods, thereby promoting industrialization.
In
England, during the 16th and 17th centuries, many factories were
created to produce goods in demand. Although heavy machinery,
operated by waterpower, was used in some places, the industrial
processes were generally carried on by means of hand labor. Simple
tools owned by the industries were in contrast to modern mechanized
plants were assembly lines. The factories were merely large
workshops where the workers were on the premises using company
tools. Most manufacturing was done under the domestic or putting-out
system, by which workers received raw material, worked in their
homes, returned the finished articles and were paid for their labor.
The factory system, which finally replaced the domestic system,
became the method of production.
A series
of inventions transformed the handcrafts of the textile industry.
Important inventions used until the late 1890s were the flying
shuttle, the spinning jenny, the spinning mule and the power loom.
These machines were too large to be placed in the homes, so large
buildings were made into factories.
Since
these factories were operated by waterpower, they were located far
from homes. Thus mill villages were established. Later, steam engine
factories were built near towns where labor was plentiful, and mill
villages were not necessary.
Soon, it
became necessary to install heavy machinery in mills that were close
to shipping points so that goods could be moved faster. In 1814, a
cotton mill was established by Francis Cabot Lowell in
Waltham, Massachusetts. All the steps of an industrial process, for
the first time, were combined under one roof. Here, cotton entered
the mill as a raw cotton fiber and came out a finished product ready
for sale. That was the beginning of an industry that built the
South's greatest economy for over a century.
Textiles,
mainly cotton goods, were the major factory-made goods in the early
19th century. Meanwhile, new textile machines were being invented
and developed that made it possible to extend the operations to
other operations. The invention of the cotton gin made the textile
industry an established way of life for the South.
Working
conditions in the factories had a profound effect on social
relationships and living conditions. In earlier times, the feudal
lord and the guild master both had been expected to take some
responsibility for the welfare of the employees who worked under
them. By contrast, the factory owners were considered to have
discharged their obligations to employees with payment of wages.
Thus, most owners took an impersonal attitude toward those who
worked in their factories.
Spindle
boys in Georgia textile mills were common in the early days of
southern mills. During the early 19th century the United States
Congress passed a child labor law. However, children continued to be
a significant part of the labor force well into the 20th century
because these early laws were difficult to enforce. Congress
attempted several times to modify those laws. In 1941, however, the
laws were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, and
children, such as spindle boys, continued to work despite their
tender age.
By the
early 19th century conditions of workers under the factory system
had aroused concern. One who called for reform was Robert Owen,
a British self-made capitalist and cotton mill owner, who tried to
set an example by transforming a squalid mill town called New
Lanmark into a model industrial community. Between 1815 and 1828
at New Lanmark wages were higher, hours shorter, and young children
were kept out of the mills and sent to school. Employee housing was
superior by standards of the day. Yet the mill and town operated at
a profit. Note: Fuller E. Callaway used this mill town and
employee standards when he built the Milstead plant and Village of
cottage homes.
In time,
organizers' protests forced owners to correct some of the worst
abuses. Workers agitated for and obtained the right to vote and
establish labor unions. The unions, after a considerable struggle
and frequent setbacks, won important concessions from management and
government.
'Lintheads'
have memories of their little cotton mill towns and homes. They
worked hard, but had a lot of family pride and joy. They like to
talk of the days of the silent moving pictures shows, when Tom Mix
rode his horse across screens and Fred Astaire danced around the
walls of the room. It was easy to see the 'String of Pearls' and
'Moonlight Serenade' would make a big hit at the Milstead
theatre in the 1930s. Some of the women still long for those days
when their stockings had seams and rich curtains adorned the screen
stage.
We've
always loved the little mill towns of Milstead, Covington
Mill and Scottdale Mills. They harken back to another
era. The neat mill houses give the communities a monopoly-board
look. There is history of community involvement stemming from
uniform employment. Every family has connections, past or present to
the textile mills. Fathers and sons worked in the mills; everyone
expected it.
Names like
Robert (Bob) Elliott, Charlie Mathis, Wesley Blackwell, Grady
Shaw the barber, L. W. Waters, supply room clerk,
Jodie Johnson, Hinze Mathis, Shorty Herndon, Dolph Herndon and
Ernest Britt pop up in talking of 'Linthead' days. They were
members of the Milstead Manufacturing Mill company band. They
were the first band to perform on the WSB Radio Station in the early
1920s.
Born in
that distant span of 1913 - 1918, we are of the generation of he
T-Model Ford and World War One; older than radio, younger than the
telephone, but long before Dick Tracy and Buck Rogers comics
characters. Buggies, wagons and horseback were the mode of travel.
We were born during the time when doctors made house calls and
babies were born at home.
There was
no such thing as retirement or unemployment insurance, no guarantee
of hourly wage pay. The milkman delivered milk in bottles; the
mailman delivered mail on foot and blew his whistle to make known
his presence. Women wore bonnets and long sleeves because pretty
white skin was considered beautiful and enticing to the male gender.
Women didn't smoke or curse (not in public); cigarettes were
considered sophisticated and sun bathing was considered unhealthy.
Along
about this time, at a tender age many of us were aware that World
War One was being waged across the great waters. It took weeks to
get reports from battles in France and letters to soldiers often
took months to reach and find them in the dugout trenches. As kids
we learned a little ditty: 'Kaiser Bill went up the hill to get a
peep at France. Kaiser Bill came down the hill with bullets in his
pants.' By now at the age of 87 years young, we have shared much of
our nation's history and have lived under 15 or 16 presidents. Now
we have learned enough that might be worth passing on.
How
amazing that at 87-plus years we're only great grandparents living
under a president younger than my oldest son. Yet, there is life in
these old bones and a mind eager to put on paper many of the things
we have seen and done, and fortunate enough to be able to cast an
eye on the past and mull about the future.
All the
four years of the great World War One, things were booming. 'Lintheads'
worked long, eleven-hour days producing supplies to support the war
effort. Things were booming and the people fiercely, reflexively
cheered the unquestioning patriotism of our 48-star flag. We bought
Liberty Bonds to help finance the war. We had V-Mail; gathering
scrap metal was considered helping the great cause. Hard work! Our
generation learned early on there was no free living; that precious
little came gift-wrapped. The way of love was to work from sun up to
sun down, and even at that we barely made a living.
Our
parents financed the first schools and they saw to it that we took
advantage of them. School time was allotted from home and farm
chores; leisure came after dark when all chores were finished.
After the
war was over, our fathers, sons and brothers returned, seeking work
in the cotton mills and eager to change their names from Doughboy to
'Linthead.' Cotton was selling for 40 cents a pound. Some held out
for 41 cents, but that was never to be. The little mean old boll
weevil followed the boys home, attacked the cotton fields and
totally destroyed the cotton crops.
The farm
experts did not know what to do about the little monster. All
attempts to control it failed and so did the second year crops. What
cotton survived was of poor quality and it sold for 36 cents down to
5 cents a pound. Farmers did not make enough money to pay for the
seed and fertilizer. Their tables had only enough food for survival.
People lost their homes, farms and anything of value. Banks closed
their doors and merchants refused to sell on credit.
The
greatest depression was on from early 1920 until the 1930s when
Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected President of the U. S. A. FDR
judged that half the nation's people were half-fed and ill-housed.
About 30 million workers, mostly breadwinners, were without
work. Some hawked apples and visited soup kitchens across the land.
They came begging for jobs and food for their families.
Veterans
of war rode the freight trains to Washington asking for their
pensions to begin so their families would not starve. Those who had
jobs worked 11 hours a day for 50 cents and were glad to get it. The
National Recovery Act was passed, and within a year most mills were
in production and people were working eight-hour shifts at 30 cents
per hour. The 'Lintheads' were back at work. Knowing how to handle
their money, within a few years they were proud citizens eager to
face the future.
Along
about his time the radio was the craze and radios appeared in every
home. At the tender age of eight, my brother Willie, eleven
years old and my hero, could make and invent things that I couldn't
understand.
Once a
prosperous farmer who lived nearby had a telephone line made of iron
run to his home. I remember seeing his farm workers erecting the
poles they brought form the woods. A man came out, strung the wire
to shiny glass knobs. My brother explained that they were
insulators. I didn't know what that meant, but since he knew,
everything was all right. Later, when the little brown box with a
horn sticking out of the middle of it and a tapered cylinder tied to
it with a cord, was installed he invited our family to come and see
the new gadget. He could talk into it and people miles away in town
could hear him.
We all
crowded around. As quiet as a mouse we listened to him talk and
someone talked back. I was amazed to hear voices coming out of that
box. I ran outside to see who was talking through the wall into that
box. My brother explained that other people who had brown boxes in
their homes could talk and listen to everyone on the line.
Sometime
later, Willie found an old T-Model Ford magnetic coil, took it apart
and got many feet of copper insulated fine wire. He wound quite a
bit of the wire around a broken piece of glass, fastened this to a
dry weed stick with a wire sticking out the end, and fastened this
to a large snuffbox. He called this a voice box and aerial. When he
had completed this he joined them together with several hundred feet
of wire. To my amazement we could talk and hear each other over that
long span.
Within
days he had lines strung from our hut to the barn and on to our
house. One problem he never solved was birds lighting on the wire
and breaking it. Often, on hot sunny days, when talking the snuffbox
would sting our lips and ear. He said this was static electricity
that came from the sun that powered the boxes. I guess that was a
crude way of making solar power.
My first
venture was after hearing music and voices coming from an
Atwater-Kent radio, one of the first in our town. Back in those
times a company named the Rosebud Salve Company would send
you boxes of salve to ell and you could choose a nice prize. It took
me weeks to sell enough boxes to get a crystal radio kit with parts
and material to build a tiny radio set. The kit included hundreds of
feet of fine insulated wire, a tiny crystal (a gadget the size of a
Chinese firecracker, with a tiny wire sticking out each end) and a
6x6-insulated fiberboard on which to mount the parts. The
instruction sheet told how to wind the wire around a piece of carbon
I had to furnish. The only thing I knew about carbon as the ting
cylinder in the center of a flash battery. I used a piece of coal,
and for hours scrubbed it on the sidewalk and curb until it was 1 x
2 inches. Carefully I wound the right number of feet around the
cylinder, making the right connections and hooking all the crude
mess to the earphones. I waited for WSB Radio to start broadcasting
around noon each day. I was amazed to hear Lambden Kay's
voice very faintly. 'This is WSB Radio station coming to you from
the Biltmore Hotel, The Atlanta Journal Broadcasting Station. Our
call letters are Welcome South, Brother.'
After a
15-minute program, he said, 'We now return you to the Farm and Home
Hour in Radio City, Chicago, Ill.' The band came on and played a
long time. I was outside on the Spring Street sidewalk where I could
pick up the weak signal. A man by the name of Mr. Henry (Hammer)
Rooks came along and inquired about the thing. When he heard the
music and voices coming through the earphones he threw it down and
walked away muttering his favorite saying, 'The work of The Devil'.
Some
people thought I was a genius, but my brother proved to be the
genius, becoming the first radio repairman in the county. He even
built several crude sets. He built his own testing equipment, crude
but efficient. Years later he had the best equipment on the market
but relied on his unique equipment. He never spent an hour in a
radio school. NO one knows how he ever mastered the physics of
electronics without schooling or taking correspondence courses. He
was offered contracts to instruct Philco Radio repair schools in and
around Atlanta, Georgia. After moving his family and shop to
Covington, Georgia he never saw an idle moment. His shop was always
full of sets needing repair. He spent 18 hours a day trying to keep
his customers with a top performing radio. Old timers recall him as
a man who was never grumpy or raised his voice, no matter how much
pressure he was under.
DURING THE
"DIRTY THIRTIES", WHAT WAS LIFE LIKE? ... I KNOW ... I WAS THERE ...
That
question has been asked of me many times by the news media. Many
articles have appeared in local and large daily papers. I always
tried to project life as I saw and lived it. There was an old joke
that asked, 'When is it a Depression, and is it a Recession?" My
answer was, 'It's a Depression when I'm out of work, and a Recession
when you're out of work.' I remember many people asking themselves
that question during the 1930s, and for a third of the nation, the
answer was, 'It's a Depression'.
Indeed it
was, in fact. It was the Great Depression and it meant hard times
for some 15 million people who were out of work - one-fourth of the
U. S. workforce and 30 million wives and children they were trying
to support. I was not yet a teenager then, but I remember a lot of
sad scenes; people selling apples on the streets for a penny, and
people working at jobs that paid far too little, but they felt lucky
to get them.
Schoolteachers earned $1,200 a year, dressmakers about $700 a year,
hired farmhands about $200 and sometimes board. Bus drivers earned
$1,500 and doctors sometimes collected $2,000 in a single year.
Things got bad in rural America. Farmers were among those who
experienced the worst of rough times, getting a pitiful nickel a
pound for their cotton and hogs bringing 5 cents a pound. Many lost
their land. If the Depression didn't do it, the drought of the
'Dirty Thirties' did them in. Some who could, and had the means,
tied their belongings to the old car and wandered around the
country, becoming migrant workers. A whole family worked for $50 a
month, moving from crop to crop.
Stories
and tales came drifting across the country of people living in
cardboard and tarpaper shacks called Hoovervilles. In those times,
and on every lip, President Herbert Hoover was blamed and cursed for
their plight and for the four years he was in office he did nothing
to relieve their suffering.
Times were
tough everywhere and everyone tightened their belts. Shopping for
food in the 1930s was a constant hunt for bargains to make the food
stretch through the week. Merchants made a penny profit on a can of
tomatoes, a nickel on a sack of flour. Profit on five pounds of
sugar was 3 cents. Most meats were 25 and 30 cents a pound. A pound
of homemade butter sold for 20 cents, a dozen eggs 28 cents, and a
pound of cheese 25 cents. Potatoes were 2 cents a pound. You could
buy an eight-piece dining room set for $49, a three-piece bedroom
set for $25. A wool blanket sold for a dollar. Everything sold for
low prices because people didn't have money to spend. A washing
machine sold for under $50; gas stoves for as little as $29. You
paid $2 for an electric iron. A pair of leather shoes was a bargain
for $1.89, dress shoes $3.95. Just $11 bought a man's wool suit; a
silk tie 50 cents.
Not many
people had money to buy a new car or the gas to run it. But if you
did, a Chrysler sold for about $1,000, a Studebaker $800, a T-Model
Ford Roadster $395, a tire was about $5.55. Gas slipped below 20
cents a gallon, even as low as 18 cents. Few people looking for a
home in the '30s could afford to buy a 6-room home for $3,000.
I remember
a BB air gun sold for 69 cents, a baseball mitt for 98 cents. Even
then, there was much gloom and doom. People found many ways to have
fun and laugh. Amateur directors got cash together and produced
plays at schools and churches. Groups would get together and have
fish fries after the men staged fishing trips. Barbecues were
popular. Rabbits, squirrel and small game were there for trapping.
These afforded family stews.
Singings
and children's contests furnished entertainment. People turned to
things that were free or inexpensive. Card games, jigsaw puzzles and
radio programs became popular, so did hobbies such as chain letters,
picture collections of movie stars and baseball players that came
with a 10-cent pack of cigarettes.
Because of
tight budgets people were glued to the radios throughout the day.
Housewives did their ironing and meal preparations during the time
when the 'soaps' were on. They cried and laughed with 'Myrt and
Marge', 'One Man's Family' and 'Portia Faces Life'. Shows like those
were serial dramas in the '30s; hey are TV 'soaps' today. The boys
and girls thrilled to 'Jack Armstrong' and 'Little Orphan Annie.' I
still remember some of the theme songs and the products that
sponsored them.
Girls
played with paper dolls, the ones that came in cutout books that you
punched out, and hung them on little girl figures. Boys read 'Big
Little Books'. For the adults it meant going to the movies where you
could escape problems for a few hours.
Mothers of
the '30s will never forget 'dish nights.' Theaters attracted patrons
by giving away a different dish each show night. Women would crowd
the show houses to get their free cup or saucer, dinner plate or
butter dish. They thrilled to the action of the screen, sometimes
forgot their dish on their laps and ushers had to sweep up broken
crockery.
If that
was not enough to pull one from home, 'cash night' was, when a
fortune could be made if your ticket stub number matched the number
drawn from a wire cage right in plain sight.
Sorry, but
I have to say it: You got your money's worth either way; you got to
see a big-time movie star, such as Shirley Temple, with the golden
curls, or Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing across the screen
and into your heart. They don't make films like those any more. What
woman could hold back tears when Great Garbo died in the arms of
Robert Taylor? Mickey Rooney gave us fun as the man and loves of
Andy Hardy. Then, there were Gary Cooper, Tyrone Power and Jimmy
Stewart to thrill the hearts of the women.
Coincidentally, just before the '30s, when such gangsters as John
Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde and
Pretty Boy Floyd were robbing banks across the nation, the Federal
Banking System collapsed. Dillinger was a hero to some because he
robbed banks and sometimes gave to the poor. He was a 'Robin Hood'
of sorts. I recall when President Roosevelt declared a bank holiday
right after that to stop a run on the banks. People sought to
withdraw their deposits. I had $7 on deposit and thought I had lost
it; later, I did. The banks reopened with funds provided through
emergency banking legislation.
I also
remember one of the new laws of the '30s repealed by Prohibition
that put an end to 'Speakeasy Days.' This was the start-up of the
'New Deal' which was planned to cope with the problems of the
country. Many alphabet agencies were organized. The CCC, NRA and WPA
for some. Through these programs they built campgrounds, parks,
roads, schools, federal offices, city halls, sewage disposal plants
and bridges, paying young men and adult men a few dollars a day for
their labors. Retired schoolteachers went about teaching in
churches, school halls and gyms. A good many worthwhile works got
done and are still benefiting us today.
It was not
all dreary and gloom during those difficult times. We had fun. It
was the time of memorable tunes and songs and wild dance crazes.
Some songs I recall are 'It's a Sin To Tell a Lie', 'Chapel in the
Moonlight', 'Moon Over Miami', and silly little ditties like 'Three
Little Fishes'.
~ The End ~
|
