Village life was based on family ties. Kinship networks facilitated migration to the mill and continued to play a powerful integrative role. Children of the first generation off the land married newcomers of the second and third, linking households into broad networks of obligation, responsibility, and concern. For many couples, marriage evolved out of friendships formed while growing up in the village. One married worker recalled, "We knowed each other from childhood. Just raised up together, you might say. All lived here on the hill, you see, that's how we met." …Mill folk commonly used a family metaphor to describe village life. Hoyle McCorkle remembered the Highland Park mill village in Charlotte as a single household knit together by real and fictive kin: "It was kind of one big family; it was a 200-house family."
Divorce, however, was uncommon. Most families stayed together, and their moves from mill to mill were facilitated by kinship and cushioned by community. A study completed in the late 1920s revealed that 41 percent of mill families had moved less than three times in ten years. Most settled families were headed by middle-aged men and women who had "just kept the road hot" before and immediately after marriage and had then stayed in a village they liked. …In these ways, the Piedmont became what journalist Arthur W. Page described in 1907 as "one long mill village." Individual communities were woven together-through kinship, shared occupational experiences, and popular culture-into an elaborate regional fabric. According to Lacy Wright, who worked at Greensboro's White Oak Mill, "We had a pretty fair picture, generally speaking, of what you might say was a 200-mile radius of Greensboro. News traveled by word of mouth faster than any other way in those days."
Questions
- What does the author mean by “village life was based on family ties”? Give examples.
- Why would Hoyle McCorkle feel that Highland Park mill village was a “200-house family”?
- Give examples and analyze how movement between mills as well as marriage helped to create “one long mill village.”
- How did these aspects of mill village life encourage division between mill workers and towns people?
Questions
- What does this map show?
- How does the quote, "one long mill village” relate to this image?
- Why do you think the textile mill owners choose these locations - the south as well as so close together?
- What opportunities would mill workers gain by the fact that there are many mills so geographically close to each other?
- What opportunities would mill owners gain by the fact that there are many mills so geographically close to each other?
- Identify some negative aspects of the mills being located close to each other.
The Following Interview with Eva Hopkins is from Documenting the American South
Questions
- Why did Eva's parents become mill workers? Do you think this was a common reason?
- Eva's father operated the elevator during his entire time working at the mill. What inferences can you make about advancement opportunities for employees based on her statement.
- How do you think Eva felt about moving from place to place?
- How does this interview contribute to the idea of “one long mill village”? How does it expand on that idea?
- How does this movement and mill work impact Eva’s view of her identity?
- Why do you think the mill workers, "always came back down south"? What aspects of southern mill communities may have appealed to the workers?
