The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1929-12-07
(COntiHued.)


"Now Ma" Doris appeared in the doorway
to reprove, ''you shoulder be dom that thar
ronn,."
But it's high time it wuz done You wuz
to do it las night"
''Yesm. But after ten hours on my feet
in the spinnin' room this weather, looks like !
jes' put it off,
Doris was a strongly-built, rawboned girl
with sandy hair and pale blue eyes--a typical
Anglo-Saxon Poor White Trash" Now she
looked almost pretty in her pink organdy, her
one dress-up dress which she worked overtime
to buy and sat up nights to finish. ct would
have been a sin to it on Sunday) She
was only nineteen but looked thirty, How
ever, her enthusiasm for perfume and colored
handkerchiefs purchased from the five and ten
cent store on Saturday afternoon, for movies
and good times" and the way she tossed off
her new-learned slang, all makes Doris one of
the new generation. She could make good
union fighter.
"Well, it's alright, honey" Mrs. Crenshaw
concluded, Il only got one more"
AS Doris disappeared again to the porch to
bid her lover goodnight, Mrs. Crenshaw shook
her head.
Doris seems so dissatisfied like. She keeps
me worried. Some days she's happy-like. Then
some days she's like dumb with sadness She
vans to make sometun of herself, not ies' be
mill hand Here's her Bob in love, and him
wantn' to marry her, and she says no, workin'
in tn mill is bad enuf without havn a string
O. younguns to look after, like the res of tn
wmmen does Once she went to tn city to
git work. She wanted to work herself up,
ia keepin' books or runnin' a typewriter or
somethin' like that. But once they knows
you is mill hand, there amt chance. She
worked while in the tin clint store but twuz
as bad as here, she sed. So she came back"
can Sara" here Mrs. Crenshaw forgot her
self to the point of sitting down, "she keeps
me bothered too. You know, she's nevah been
strong in her mind. Doctor sed she's not he'd
tn right vittals when she WIZ CROWN up, n
they brung her home.
81 tell you honey but for my faith in God
and His goodness, | coulden go on. l keep
| lookin' forward to Heaven. As the Holy Book
| says"
We were interrupted by the return of the
| boarders from the undertakes praty. Deck
out in their best, they shambled in and gather
| ed around the oil cloth table where sat
working. The men looked uncomfortable but
excited in their stiff collars and white bow
ties. The faces of the girls and women were
flushed and shining. Each one had discarded
! her Bingham for the occasion and wore her
| OF IL sic ulull nave OuS, SOilieDOuy 6loS
! Sunday best.
First came Tom, with his cole oman" They
were in the fifties. Tom used to be fiddler
! in the Carolina mountains, and earned his
living at one of those year-round resorts making
music for those Yankee tourists to dance by.
| 1t paid better than moonshining and was safer.
| People said Tom loved his fiddle better
| than his ole oman Then, Tom got 'con-
viction of SIM" only mountaineers can get
| it. He had always known dancing to be the
work of the Devil, and had turned his eyes
from the whirng figures while his fiddle sang
"Turkey'n tn Straw" And Maggie had told
him these were FORMERS anyway, and not hill
people. But the conviction of Sin was not to
be denied. He was aiding in the Devils work
So sorrowfully he gave up his job, left the
mountains and he and Maggie came to the
mills to work. They were then in the middle
! thirtes
We couldn't get Tom to play his fiddle
| When we asked, he just shook his head He
never said anything, except at table. "Thank-
| We fer tn BEANS" There fiddlers'
cert on and over a hundreds in the South Caro-
lima hills and mill villages were going to take
part. No violinists allowed, only fidders.
Everybody begged Tom to take part but he
just shut his eyes and shook his head Maggie
told us he said to her, go there n show 'em
Late at night I've heard Tom in his room,
which was just above ours, fiddling an old Eng
| lsh ballad or some hymn. Once he started
Turkey n tn Straw" but stopped abruptly,
and then played, "Yield Not to Temptation, for
Yielding Is Sim"
! Maggie, Toms old oman, somewhat diff
| ierent from Tom. She, too, was shy gray, but
not so dead-quiet. She was a travelled woman
| for these parts, coming from out the state
Kin-tucky! Her first ole man had been miner.
| One day there was another accident at the mine,
and Maggie, waiting with the other women
at the shaft, found her man had got his.
Maggie liked to tell of mining life in the Ken
| lucky mountains, but she told me she thought
mill villages nicer because here woman could
work out well as man. Often in the eve
| nings Maggie would read the Greenville News
| to Tom She read with difficulty, spelling out
word by word But then Tom could not read at
| all.
Next came Abbie and Frank, followed by
! Doris and Sara, and the mill hands, Joe, Bill
and Harry. Little Gladys" who brought up
the rear, looked wd-eyed and even whittier than
usual behind her anemic freckles. She was
| tightly clutchng paw of each parent. Little
! Gladys parents both worked in the mill, while
she, before and after school hours, set and wait
| ed on the table and helped her Grandma, Mrs.
| Crenshaw, with the dishes and sweeping. Every
| day the same movie was repeated, of eight
Vpar-0ld C1a1yS akinu IN r1ou nd bar