Mary Thompson talks about the lack of competition among coworkers.

Audio Transcript

Jim Leloudis

Did the other people in the mill look up to you or treat you any better?

Mary Thompson

No. We was all cotton mill people, so it didn’t make any difference. I don’t guess they did. I never did think of myself as any better than anybody else.

Carl Thomspon

We was all just about alike.

Mary Thompson

Loom fixers made about the same as we did. Everybody was just about the same. There wasn’t no one no better than the others because they had a different job. We was all workers, and cotton mill workers. One time when they laid me off at Poe Mill, me and another girl, a friend of mine, went down there at Kress’s. Never had worked in a store. We got us a job at Kress’s right at Christmastime. I never will forget it; it was the hardest work I ever done in my life. You didn’t make nothing, though. Now them girls acted a little snooty. They said, “Well, I certainly wouldn’t work in a cotton mill for nothing.” I said, “I’d rather work in a cotton mill for what money I make than slave like y’all working for what y’all are making.” And they didn’t make no money, hardly, in the stores then, but it was the prestige, I guess, that they liked. But that’s the only time that I ever heard anybody say anything about …

Jim Leloudis

Were you ever called a “linthead” as a child or when you got older?

Mary Thompson

No, because we lived on the mill village, and everybody else was the same thing we was. [Laughter] And we went to the church right there on the village, so everybody was the same as we was, so nobody couldn’t call the other one names. That’s the only time, the time I went to Kress’s, and they said they certainly wouldn’t work in an old cotton mill. That’s the first time I’d ever heard anybody say anything about a cotton mill.

Jim Leloudis

Did it make you mad?

Mary Thompson

Yes, it made me mad.

Jim Leloudis

Did it hurt your feelings?

Mary Thompson

No, it didn’t hurt my feelings. It made me mad. I always had a little temper, and I got about it. I said, “I sure wouldn’t want to slave here all the time for what little y’all are making. I’d rather work in a cotton mill anytime.” I went back to the cotton mill, too, after Christmas, when they laid us off. They just had us hired till Christmas. After Christmas there was some drawing in picked up. I didn’t even try to go to another store. I thought, “Lord, don’t give me no store work.” But, of course, store work got better after that. That was back during the Depression.