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1923 Pettigrew St.
West Durham, N. C.
July 19, 1938
I. L. M.
THE REfiNS
Wesley Renn lives in the mill village in one of
the better houses which has a comfortable stretch of
lawn shaded by two or three trees. He likes to sit in
his swing on the porch in the springtime and watch day
by day as the tree buds grow into leaves and the grass
shoots up into a newer, pleasanter green. His first
twenty—one years were spent in the country and the sight
of growing things still awakens in him an urge to live
again on the farm. He says that he will probably die
in a mill village but at heart he'll always be a farmer.
The farm was sparing in the things which it gave
to Wesley Henri. His father was a renter with nine
children and he was never able to do the things he
wanted to do for his children. To Wesley he gave four
sessions of school: the first, one and one—half months
for which the teacher was paid a dollar a month; the
second, two months at the seme price; the third and
fourth, two months each year in a free school.
The elder Henri was not without ambition for his
children. He cherished the hope that each of his five
sons might one day own some of the acres which they
had helped him cultivate. Long years of labor had taught
him that if they did fulfill this hope the money with
which they bought the lana would not be made on the
other man's lend. When in 1899 cotton went to four
cents after what had been en extremely unfavorable
growing season in his vicinity, Mr. Renn, the elder,
decided definitely that he would take his family from
the farm into town where they might get work in a cotton
mill.
At that time Wesley Renn was the oldest cnila at
home. The three older boys had married and one was
still a tenant farmer and two had found work in cotton
mills. Wesley loved the country and was unwilling to
leave it. In a few months after fell harvest he would
be twenty—one, end, as he expresses it, his own free
man. Thereafter, he would be no longer answerable to
his father for his wage, and he could work where he
chose. In an effort to keep his father on the farm
Wesley offered to give him another year's work but the
elder Renn was firmly convinced that farming for the
other fellow had more drawbacks than advantages.
The Renns were living on one of the many farms
belonging to Dev4-d Ritchie. The auantity of cotton
produced for Ritchie by his tenants WES such that he
needed a gin to take care of his own crops. In the
fall of 1899 he was without a gin operator and he
offered the job to Wesley who had proven himself a good
steady worker and a man who got along with Negroes.
Wesley says, "That offer come like a shining light
because I'd never before had such a chance to make so
much cash money in so short a time." His father's
elation at his success almost matched his own. When
Mr. Ritchie came to the field where the Renns were
picking cotton and made his offer,. the elder Renn
turned to his son and said, "You don't have to stop
and think fer a minute, Wesley. Me and the children111
double up on the hours and get the cotton out without
your help and you can have as your own all you make."
So for three months before taking a job in the cotton
mill Wesley Renn operated his landlord's cotton gin
at eleven dollars a month.
The Renns moved into Henderson but they did not
go into a mill house. The elder Renn, who had lived
in poor and unattractive houses all his life, still
had a kind of pride which made him strive to keep his
family from being classified as "cotton mill people."
He found a small house on an out-of-the-way street
and from there his children went into the mill. Mr.
Renn had some ability as a carpenter and secured a
job with a contractor at seventy-five cents a day.
With money from his job as gin operator still in
his pockets, Wesley Henn was enabled to make a choice
of the kind of mill work he wished to do. Instead of
immediately taking a low wage job, he entered the weave
room and worked there for four weeks learning his trade
without receiving any pay. During the next four weeks
he ran two looms at sixty cents a day. He increased
his capacity to four looms for which he received one
dollar and twenty cents a day. He continued in the
weave room until 1902 when it closed down. Wesley
was then transferred to another department of the mill,
but his work -load there was so heavy he found it
impossible to keep up.
He left Henderson and went to a small rural cotton
mill at Falls. There he stayed for seven years and
there at the age of twenty-five he married Sadie Jones.
Sadie was inclined toward frailness. Her father, a
tenant farmer, died when Sadie was twelve years old,
leaving his wife with four small girls of whom Sadie
was the oldest. Unable to eke out a living on the farm
Mrs. Jones moved with her children to the mill.
Wesley now freouently refers to the insanitary
conditions of the mills in the period when Sadie first
entered them. "It's hard to believe," he says, "but
in them days along about Christmas time the yard men
would come in the mill with their shovels and actually
scrape up piles of filth where the help had spit all
the year long and no attention at all being paid to it.
Yessir, plenty of cotton mill folks had T B's in them
days and no wonder." He may then look at Sadie who
sometimes sits on the porch with him while he is waiting
for the mill whistle to summon him to work. He wants
her to join him in support of the statement he has
just made, and in a tired sort of way she nods her head
in agreement.
Sadie has never worked in the mill since her
marriage but she has borne eight children. After the
birth of her second child her health became worse, and
since then there have been very few months when she
has not received medical treatment.
At Falls kills Wesley became a loom fixer and such
a proficient one that the Rosemary mills offered him a
little higher wage an offer which he immediately
took. While he was at Falls, his mother-in-law had
died and her three unmarried daughters had moved in with
him and his family. Wesley did well with his new job
but his three sisters-in-law were unable to do the
Jack Hart weaving, the system then being used at Rosemary.
Conseauently the family had to move after a short stay
of seven weeks and this time they went to East Durham.
6
Wesley moved several more times during the next few
years, each time with the expectation of higher wages.
He knows now that many of the moves were not wise, but
in those days he was grabbing at any chance that promised
a little more money. He still had visions of buying a
little farm, but at no place had he found an opportunity
for laying aside a penny.
Wesley was ambitious also that his younger brother
Joe should find an occupation more respectable than
mill work. In 1912 he persuaded Joe to go to Atlanta
for an eight weeks' barber's course. Joe's life in the
mill had started so early that he had even less school-
ing than Wesley. When he returned from Atlanta he made
arrangements with a retired school teacher for lessons
in reading, writing, and simple arithmetic. In time he
bought a shop of his own and had sufficient knowledge
of arithmetic to keep his accounts.
In 1917, without the money he had hoped to have
but with a determination to try farming again, Wesley
returned to his father's old landlord, and arranged
for farming on halves. He broke even in 1917, but the
year 1918 brought him more success than he had ever
known. The price of tobacco had soared far beyond
anything he had ever dreamed of and his crop had given
him a greater yield than he would ordinarily expect in
two average years. That year his landlord marketed
five thousand dollars worth of tobacco and half of that
money was Wesley's. When he got through paying the
merchant who had furnished him on the basis of sales
price plus twenty percent carrying charge, he still
had a neat sum left. As another step toward land
ownership he bought mules and farm equipment and made
new arrangements with his landlord. This time he would
receive three -fourths of what he produced.
That year Mr. Ritchie joined the Tobacco Cooperative
and when the tobacco was marketed Wesley was given a
check for one-third of the amount coming to him. He
says he is still waiting for the balance. The whole
amount would have been small because of a great drop
in tobacco prices. Wesley sold his stock, paid up his
debts, and had enough left to move his family back to
the mill. Since then he has accepted what seems to
him to be his inevitable lot, that the remainder of his
life will be spent at the mill.
Of the eight children three are now married and
two are working in the mill. The other three are in
school and the Renns hope to see them finish high
school. The five oldest children received on the average
a sixth grade education.
The children are proud of their home, and the two
who are working spend a good part of their wages in buying
new furniture on the installment plan. They are particular-
ly proud of their living room with its big -flowered rug,
its over -staffed furniture, its many gaudy dolls, and
its numerous arrangements of artificial flowers. It is
just within the past three years that they have had a
living room at all. Across the narrow hall is Sadie's
bedroom which is Quiet and restful. Her husband and
her children have bought for her a good bedroom suite
and they have added small comforts which made it a
satisfying place for Sadie. She is unable to sit up
for more than a few hours at a time and her children
gather around in the room as she lies on the bed, each
trying in some small way to encourage her into believing
that she will soon be well. On such occasions various
members of the family sit around reeding books from the
village library. The fifteen -year -old boy prefers
murder stories with such titles as "The Skull Murder
Case's and the eleven year old daughter is still
intrigued with the adventures of the Hobbsey Twins.
Wesley is obviously well pleased when he sees his
children with books in their hands, because to him a
love of reading, selective or not, is a mark of
respectability. Sadie, too, is likely to add a tired
smile when one of her children becomes so absorbed in
a book that he pays no attention to some auestion address-
ed to him.
Wesley wants Sadie to go to Duke Hospital and stay
there for treatment but she has a fear of hospitals
which she is unable to overcome. Out of his good wage
of twenty-six dollars a week he is saving a sum from
each pay day so that he may be able to provide the care
which any adverse change in his wife's health might
require.