Naomi Trammel discusses the work hours and pay in the spinning room.

Audio 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 you.

Naomi 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.