Then and Now: The Women of Englewood's Textile Mills (review) (1993)

speare Hays, composer of "Molly Darling," "The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane," and hundreds of other tunes. He also has written cogent sub-essays on such topics as the influence of religion, dancing, the fiddle, banjo, and British ballads. It is best to close with Malone's own words in summarizing part ofhis thesis of this book: Country musicians and songwriters of course no longer speak exclusively for themselves or for the limited constituency of transplanted rural Southerners. County music has moved well beyond its original regional parameters as it has become a major voice of lower- and middle-class people throughout America .... [T]he music sometimes strikes a responsive chord in the hearts of people who have neither southern nor working-class origins. The western myth would have died long ago had it not found resonance in the hearts and minds of a large segment of American people elsewhere. The cowboy [and mountaineer] will retain his appeal as long as Americans identify with the kind of freedom that he supposedly represents, or as long as they cling to the illusion of their country's preindustrial innocence, (p. 115) —Loyal Jones Then and Now: The Women of Englewood's Textile Mills, edited by Carol Io Evans and Helen Brown of the Community Action Group of Englewood, Tennessee. Athens, Tennesee: Quality Printing Service, 1993. $17.50. This community history and the women of the textile mills of the town is produced largely by a group of local women. It is part of a project funded by the Tennessee Humanities Council. The Englewood group has also developed a museum in an old cafe building in which the cotton mill workers used to eat. Englewood is part of a larger Tennessee Overhill development project which is promoting historic tourism in the Etowah Valley. Several communities are telling their stories of regional industrialization and decline by developing guide books, exhibits, and museums, and promoting a tour which takes the tourist through backroads from Ducktown, Tennessee, through Etowah to Englewood, stopping to visit the community museums and talk to local historians and former industrial workers. Englewood was one of several industrial towns which developed in the mid-nineteenth century in the Overhill region of East Tennessee, but it was unique in being built on textiles which employed large numbers of women in 63 "public work" outside of their homes. Englewood women tell the story and describe the roles women played in the industry and in the creation of this small textile mill town. The book includes photographs and stories relating the history from the 1850s opening of the first cotton mill to the 1990s, when there were two remaining sewing factories. There are stories of hard work, of changes in the women's lives as they moved from agriculture to industry. There are stories of creative survival techniques during the Depression and hard times when the cotton mills closed. Drawing on oral histories and local research, the book also includes an introductory essay, The Regional Context: Textile Manufacturing in the South, by Benita J. Howell, anthropologist from the University of Tennessee, who was an adviser for the project, which gives a good historical context for Englewood 's story. Several other humanities advisers helped the community teaching research, interviewing, and book production skills. Members of the community learned these skills as they developed the book. The book is well researched, documented , and written by several women in the community with Helen Brown as project director and co-editor. Many former industrial centers are seeking revitalization through historical tourism. It is a way in which communities keep control of the development and use it to remember their history and educate the visiting tourists to the contributions they have made to the industrial history of this country. Englewood may never be another boom town, but it has collected the memories in an excellent book, a creative memorial to the "strong willed women" who worked in the textile industry Then and Now. This book can be purchased from the Community Action Group, PO Box 253, Englewood, Tennessee 37329. —Helen M. Lewis Jo Carson. The Last Of the 'Waltz Across Texas' and Other Stories. Frankfort, Kentucky: Gnomon Press...