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740 9th St.
West Durham, N. C.
July 15, 1938
I. L. U.
MARY SMITH
It was about two o'clock in the afternoon and Mary
was still busy with her dinner dishes. She asked me to
come back to her kitchen, end there I met her oldest
daughter, Janie, who was with her mother for a two weeks
visit. Mary continued washing dishes wnile Janie, after
rinsing them in a pan of hot water, dried them. The
kitchen was clean and orderly and the least disturbing
of all the rooms in the house in which to sit. I was
glad that Mary after finishing with the dishes did not
suggest that we go into another room.
I had been told thst Mary was ill and I expected
to find her in bed. When I asked her about her health
she replied, "Yes, I'm sick with diabetes most of the
time but I try to stay up as much as I can. The doctors
at Duke are treatinl me and I go in twice a week when
I'm able. They tell me my body is suffering from the
brutish treatment I've give it all my life. If they
mean work I reckin I have done as much as the next
one." Then Mary told me her story.
Mary Smith was born in Orange County fifty-seven
years ago. Her fatter was a renter and he found it
difficult to support his eight children on what was
left after the landlord was paid. Not that the children
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didn't lend a helping hand. Mary cannot remember when
she did not contribute her ouota of work —hours toward
her own support. At she stood up in a chair to wash
the dishes and prepare the scanty meals for cooking
while her mother labored in the fields. There were then
three smeller children who required the time left over
from housekeeping duties. As she grew older there
seemed no way to make a little time for school. She
thinks that reading must indeed be s great pleasure.
Many times she has picked up a book and sat with it in
herhande wishing that she might know what was inside
its pages.
When she was eleven the family income was supplement—
ed oy group participation in a relatively new industry.
Smoking tobacco was gaining in popularity end the manu—
facturers of the product needed many small bags in which
to peck it for distribution. The beg factories which
grew up in answer to this need sent the bags out by the
thousands into the surrounding countryside to be strung
and tagged. During periods of slack in farm work Mary
and her young brother walked the five miles into Durham
and took back to their home two large sacks, each
containing ten thousand small bags. She can remember
sitting up all night on occasion during the rush season,
each member of the family working as hard as he could
to string these sacks for which they received thirty
cents a thousand. When sleep laid such a heavy claim
on her that she felt she could no longer stand it her
mother sent her out on the back porch to dash cold
water on her face that she might keep her eyes open yet
a little longer. The year she was twelve her skill
increased so that she raised the family income by several
dollars, and her parents out of appreciation of her
industry bought her two percale dresses instead of one.
By the time she was fifteen years old her father
had decided his family would have a better living at
a cotton mill than they could ever make for themselves
on another man's farm. They sold the mule and the cow
but they kept the twenty-six chickens for a while after
moving to town. The nice fresh eggs came in handy
because wages weren't so high that such things could
be bought in plenty.
Mary began work at twenty-five cents a day. Her
hours were from six to six but she will tell you that
she doesn't believe the twelve hours then were any harder
than eight hours now what with the speed-up system they
have. Her man Jim comes in clean wore out at the end
of a day, but of course she knows he's not a young man
any longer. In fact, his working days are almost over
because he's not so far from sixty and his body is none
too stout.
When she married at eighteen she was making four
dollars a week and Jim four dollars and a half. If it
hadn't been for the installment plan she wonders if
they ever could have bought the two beds and stove with
which they began housekeeping. Nighttimes Jim made
four chairs and a table. With so much furniture in
their house they decided to take a couple of boarders
to help with the installments still to be paid. The
furniture wasn't more than paid for when Mary had to
have an operation which cost Jim fifty dollars. That
was three months before her first baby was born and
another baby was on its way before the debt was finally
paid.
Sometimes when her health was too bad to work in
the mill Mary took up her old occupation of stringing
bags. The wage had increased to fifty cents a thousand
and with steady use of her spare time she could do a
thousand a day. In the course of time five children
were born to Mary Smith and four of them managed to live
past babyhood. Mary's last child was born in 1912. It
didn't live but three days and the Smiths had to borrow
the money to bury it. "That year was one of the hardest
in my life," Mary told me that afternoon. "The doctor
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started comin' to see me in early May and there wasn't
a day from then on until the middle of September that
he didn't come to our house. (As soon as I was out of
bed Jim took sick with the typhoid fever and for six
solid weeks he wasn't able to work. Two of the younguns
took the fever from him. If we couldner got credit we
woulder starved. It was many a year before we ever
caught up again. We was in such bed shape that the two
younguns was forced to go in the mill though I'd hoped
to keep 'em out until they'd had a little more chance
for schoolin'."
The oldest boy entered the mill at twelve and the
oldest girl at thirteen. The boy has been there since
except for sick leaves in the past few years when he
has been bothered with hemorrhages of the lung. He
was such a scrawny, pale, little fellow that many a
time when Mary went to rouse him on a cold winter morn-
ing she felt like turning away from the bed and letting
him rest through the day. But she knew he might lose
his job, and the money he made was badly needed. Some—
times now she wonders if his health wouldn't have held
out better if she could have kept him out of the mill
a few years longer until his body had been given more
chance to grow.?
This son married after thirty and he has three
children, all too young to work, and a wife whose health
is so poor she cannot work. He was brought home from
the mill with another hemorrhage the other day and Mary
is wondering how she can help him. It seems to her that
the fourteen dollars a week Jim is making cannot be
stretched over another need.
Mary paused at this point in her story and sat with
her hands folded in her lap. Janie looked first at her
mother and then at me. "If it hadn't been for Mama my
younguns wouldner had no clothes atall the past year,"
she said. "The mill where my husband works aiat give
its help but four days' work a week in over a year. Tom
makes eleven dollars and its all I can do to feed, let
along clothe, my crowd on that. (My children is pretty
good about not complaininl. They'll set down one day
right after another to dried beans and potatoes without
raisin' a row. Of course, that oldest one has got all
manner of pride and she caused me a sight of trouble
for awhile when she had to wear a old coat to school
that never fit her nowhere.) The worst hurt I ever seen
her, though, was along 'bout the last of school when
her teacher tried to collect rent for the school books
she'd been usinl all the year. I thought the State was
furnishinl 'em free but they say everybody is supposed
to pay rent on fem. Emma Lee kept after me but I never
had the money to give her. One day she broke down in
school and cried and told her teacher they wasn't a
penny at her home to pay for book rent. The teacher
told her to stop worryinl then, and she never bothered
her any more. Emma Lee says she's not goin' to stop until
she goes clear on through high school."
Janie's four -year -old child came into the kitchen
and propped herself against her grandmother's knee.
Mary put her arm about the child and seemed to forget
for a while that she was there. "Well, she'll have
plenty time to go through high school since the mill
can't take 'em until they are sixteen or eighteen,
I don't know which," she said. "Of course it's hard
to say if things keep on like they are who's got& to
furnish the money.
"It's been a funny thing about my own family,"
she continued. "Pa didn't have a single child that
wasn't willin' to work to try to get ahead and they
aint a one of us that's got anything today. They aint
never been a time when one was havine trouble that the
others was able to help him out of the bog. They's
three of us livinl now. One of my brothers whose wife
died last year is gettint just two day's work a week
and him with eight children. I don't know how on earth
he's livins. The other brother is makin' $8 a week and
he has four children at home.
"This is my pet," Mary continued, changing the
subject abruptly as she drew the child closer to her.
"She come over a week before her Ma did and I never
heard a whimper out of her."
"Is she the next to the youngest?" I asked, address-
ing Janie.
"No,m, there's two younger than her," Janie answer-
ed. "My lap baby is just three months old and the knee
baby in yonder room with her is two year old."
"Six children and her thirty-three," Mary said.
"That's more children than a working man can take
care of" I ventured.
A aueer sort of smile flitted across Janie's face
and she lowered her head. Presently she looked up at
me and said slowly, "You are right about that."
Before I left, all of Janie's children had been
in the kitchen. The oldest girl, twelve, looked pale
and undernourished. Two of the younger ones played
about with a great deal of energy. They would be
considered pretty in any average group of children and
as I looked across at Janie I wondered how it could be.
At thirty-three she is fat, sallow, and unkempt with
a look of forty-five at its worst about her face and
figure. Good-naturedly she watches her children at
play and thinks no further than the next feeding of her
snail baby. Mary, clean and not unattractive, smiles
with patient affection at her daughter and her grand-
children. She has a capacity for thinking ahead that
Janie seems not to have.
Mary looks back over her past life and can see
in it no period in which she might have saved for the
days that are ahead. She will tell you that she has
on occasion spent a little money for foolish pleasure
but she wonders if a person could stand all the ups and
downs of life without giving over now and then to
foolish things. Occupying a prominent position on her
mantel in the front room is a rose-colored goddess edged
in green, propping itself against a green scooped -out
tray which serves miscellaneous uses. She bought it
for herself at the fair about ten years ago and she's
still proud of it. In no less conspicuous places in
her front room are framed pictures of the Rock of Ages;
Jesus, the Savior; and a bordered motto of her missionary
society. A good many of her extra quarters have gone
through the channel of the church to help the heathen
in foreign lands to a better way of life.
She faces sixty with assets spent and liabilities
yet to be reckoned with. Her chief asset in life has
been her capacity for labor and from that, the one
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material asset she has saved for herself is something
like two hundred dollars worth of furniture. The mill
can no longer use her and she knows that Jim's days
of usefulness are numbered. There has been talk on
the hill in recent months about old age benefits. All
that Mary understands out of that talk is that when
Jim is sixty-five he will begin to draw a little money.
She says it isn't reasonable the amount will be enough
to keep them both. Actually Jim will draw with interest
the 1-K of his wage saved for him and matched by his
employer during his work years beginning with 1936. If
his fast -failing health will permit him to serve the
mill for two more years he will consider that nothing
but luck is carrying him on. He will be sixty-one then
with only four more years to go before he starts collect-
ing his old age benefits which with care would last him
about six months.
Just before I left Mary's house she looked out of
her kitchen window and across the hill. For awhile no
one spoke and the hum of the mill was the only sound
to be heard in the room. When Mary began to talk it
was as if she thought that Jamie and I, too, must have
been thinking with her on the growth of the mill.
"Yonder mill want one -tenth the size it is now when I
first come here forty-two year ago," she said. "It
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seems like me and Jim's got old with the mill but age
aint hurt the mill none. When it slows down it can git
new parts and we cant. What's worse we soon aint goin'
to have money to buy rations for feeding our wore -out
bodies. The mill keeps makin' money but it has to give
to them that's young and strong, I reckon, and even to
them it caint give a regular
Mary would like to have a little place of her own
on the edge of town where she might raise a garden,
and small patches, along with chickens, hogs and a cow
especially a cow. She knows the country can be hard,
bitter hard, because she hasn't forgotten when she was
six years old. But then she was working for the other
fellow and she believes it would be different if the
land and house were hers. Nobody knows better than
Mary that such thoughts are but an idle dream. She
says that all her life she has known nothing but half
living and she expects no miracle when her days of
usefulness are behind her. She does wonder sometimes
what kind of a life lies before her children and grand-
children.
=MANN.