Naomi Trammel describes her work routine.

Audio Transcript

Allen Tullos

And what would be your work routine, what would you have to do through the day? Would you have to do so many bobbins, and then did you rest a while, or—?

Naomi Sizemore Trammel

No. No, we just run the spinning frames. And of course they had to stop them and doff, you know, and take these full ones off, and put them on. All like that, but it wasn’t nothing to me, really. They’d do it—the doffers would do that. All I had to do was just—no, they put up all the threads and started it again, they had to do that. Fix it just like it was. But we had to clean our rollers, but that wasn’t hard.

Allen Tullos

So what was the main work that you had to do? What exactly?

Naomi Sizemore Trammel

Well, you see, some of these threads would break, and if you didn’t catch it before they bundled up, why you have a mess there. And all you had to do just watch ‘em. And it’d run and run sometime before they even break a thread.

Allen Tullos

And if the thread broke you’d have to tie it up.

Naomi Sizemore Trammel

You’d have to put it back up, you know.

Allen Tullos

Would you have to tie a knot in it at all?

Naomi Sizemore Trammel

No, you just had to take it in—they was rollers. Cotton, you know. And all you had to do just put it off and stick it up there, around it’d go. It’s easy.

Allen Tullos

And so most of the time you were kind of watching.

Naomi Sizemore Trammel

Oh, you had to watch it, you know, if you didn’t it’d roll around there and make a mess. And you’d have to take your roller out and clean it. So it wasn’t no … sometime I’d run six frames. And the other girls would, too.