Naomi Trammel discusses the work hours and pay in the spinning room
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Naomi Trammel discusses the work hours and pay in the spinning room.
Transcript
ALLEN TULLOS:
Well, what time of day would you get up to start work in the morning, when you were working there in the spinning room?NAOMI SIZEMORE TRAMMEL:
Well, we’d go early, I really don’t know what time it was. But, anyway, we’d have to go early, and we worked one hour longer than people do now, in the mill. I don’t know why, but they did. And it paid off in five dollar gold pieces. I told them I wished I’d had sense enough to save some of them. [laughter]ALLEN TULLOS:
How often would you get paid?NAOMI SIZEMORE TRAMMEL:
Well, we’d have to work two weeks ‘fore we got our pay. And ’bout my highest bill was nine dollars. For two weeks! Worked in the cloth room sixty cents a day. It big money!ALLEN TULLOS:
How long did you work in the spinning room there, when you first started?NAOMI SIZEMORE TRAMMEL:
I worked on up till I got grown, and then I went to the cloth room.ALLEN TULLOS:
This was all at the Victor Mill?NAOMI SIZEMORE TRAMMEL:
Victor Mill, that’s all at Victor Mill. That’s where I went, you know, when Pa and Ma died.ALLEN TULLOS:
Well, when you were on your job in the spinning room when you were just starting out, did someone teach youNAOMI SIZEMORE TRAMMEL:
Oh, yeah, they had to show us how, ’cause I’d never been in a mill. They had to learn us. But didn’t take me long to learn.ALLEN TULLOS:
Who taught you?NAOMI SIZEMORE TRAMMEL:
Just some of them would be a spinner, you know, they’d put us with one of the spinners and they’d show us how. That’s all they had to do.ALLEN TULLOS:
Was it mostly girls or women?NAOMI SIZEMORE TRAMMEL:
Yeah, they girls, mostly. No, it mostly children. I mean, big enough to spin. It was easy to learn, all we had to do just put that bobbin in there, and put it up.
