Eula McGill talks about her first job as a spinner.

Eula McGill interviewed by Jacquelyn Hall, Atlanta, Georgia, February 1976. Interviews #G-39 and G-40 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Audio File:

Eula McGill Part 1 by LEARN NC

Duration:

2:42

Transcript:

Audio Transcript

Jacquelyn Hall: And what did you do, exactly?
Eula McGill: Spin the yarn. You know, it goes through carding, and then it runs in what they called warping (and it’s coming like a roll of cotton onto a spool). Then it comes through this bunch of rollers and it’s twisted into yarn. I have to say I wasn’t very good at it; I never did like it.
Jacquelyn Hall: How did you learn your job? How were you trained?
Eula McGill: They would put you with someone for a day or two, and then they’d just put you out there on your own.
Jacquelyn Hall: Just for a couple of days? That’s all the time it took to learn?
Eula McGill: To show you how. They didn’t pay you.
Jacquelyn Hall: You weren’t paid while you were learning?
Eula McGill: They paid you when they considered you sufficiently trained to go on the payroll. And in my case I worked six weeks before they started paying me, and Dorothy did too. And for the first fifty-six hours of work I got $3.16, but we had to pay for ice. They charged us ten cents a week for ice. I never had no ice water, but we had to pay ten cents a week (they took it out of our paycheck) to buy ice. Had a big thing up here with coils, and they put the ice in there, and it was supposed to run out and give us ice water. Well, you had to take glasses to drink in if you drank, or a lot of times you’d fold up paper and drink out of it. They didn’t have fountains; it came out in a spigot. But I never had no ice water, because they never had any ice in there; I never saw any ice water, but we paid a dime a week for ice. And a penny out of every dollar we made went for the company doctor; whether we used him or not we had to pay for the company doctor. I never used him, but I paid a penny. So I had $3.03 left.
Jacquelyn Hall: $3.03. A week?
Eula McGill: Yes, I made $3.16 for the first week they paid me; I paid a dime for ice and three cents.
Jacquelyn Hall: How much did you make after that first week?
Eula McGill: Well, three or four dollars.

Usage Statement:

Creative Commons BY-NC-SA

This item has a Creative Commons license for re-use. This Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license means that you may use, remix, tweak, and build upon the work for non-commerical purposes as long as you credit the original creator and as long as you license your new creation using the same license. For more information about Creative Commons licensing and a link to the license, see full details at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.