Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Summer II/Section 07/Julia Rhodes

Overview
In 1938, Maude Caine interviewed Julia Rhodes for the Federal Writers’ Project. Rhodes was a textile mill worker, wife, and mother from the Avondale Mills Village in Alexander City, Alabama. At the time of the interview, she was 35 years old and lived with her husband and 8 children in a 4-room cottage.

Early Life
In 1903 on a farm in Tallapoosa County, Alabama, Julia Rhodes was born. When she was young, her dad moved the family to Alexander City for the economic opportunities the Avondale Mills offered. While her older sisters worked in the mills, she went to school. She quit school because of the teachers. When Rhodes a child, she was introduced to snuff-dipping which carried on into her adulthood. In 1918 when Rhodes was 15 years old, she married John who was 20 years old. She gave birth to her first son, Herbert, the next year.

Later Life
By 1938, Rhodes had given birth to 8 children. Her family lived in a small 4-room cottage in the Avondale Mills Village. Rhodes loved the location of their home because her kids could play outside in the backyard. The Avondale Mills was the family’s main source of income. John worked as a weaver and Herbert worked part-time in the mornings. Rhodes used to worked there, but temporarily stopped working to take care of her 8th child. Rhodes’s eldest daughter, Myrtle, had to quit school to help take care of her younger siblings so Rhodes could work. However, Myrtle was able to receive private lessons from a teacher through the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Rhodes had three other sons who were old enough to attended school, while the other two were too young. She wanted her children to get educated, even though the family struggled financially. Despite the hardships, she was satisfied with her life and optimistic for the future.

Avondale Mills
The textile manufacturing industry shifted to the South after the Civil War because of three major factors: cheap labor, tax incentives offered by the state, and no labor unions. Many mills were established in the late 1800s, attracting a lot of willingly workers. Around 78% of spindles in the South were located in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina in 1880. By 1923, an estimate of 36,260,000 spindles were owned by the southern textile industry. The mill owners adopted a new business model called “welfare capitalism, which used incentives to recruit, cultivate, and retain the best workers.” They created mill villages for their employees which were called “workingman’s paradise” by historian Margaret Crawford.

The Avondale Mills was founded in 1897 by Braxton Bragg Comer. The Comer family also built housing, schools, churches, and even vacation spots for the workers and their families. In exchange, the workers and their families followed rules established by the mills, including no organized labor unions. The mills not only provided employment opportunities, but also was home to a vibrant community. Comer’s son, Donald, carried on the family business and was well respected by the workers. However, the Great Depression forced Avondale Mills to cut workers’ salaries in order to reduce production costs. In response, the workers started to form unions and walked out of their jobs. Comer closed down the mills for a while in 1834. President D. Roosevelt called for the workers to return to work and Avondale Mills were reopened. The Avondale Mills remained open until it permanently closed in 2006 due to foreign competition and a major accident.

Married Women At Work
While men were still known as the “breadwinners” in the late 1800s and early 1900s, married women in the working class made important economic contributions in several ways. For example, the number of married women who took an employment outside their homes started to increase at the end of the 19th century. According to the research conducted by DeVault, “married women whose husbands live with them experienced just over a doubling of their participation [in the labor force], from 4.6% in 1880 to 9.9% in 1930.” Other married women, who stayed home to take care of their families, made products such as garment, hats, paper flowers, boxes, lace, and a variety of other items to sell in order to make additional money. Some others took in paying boarders and lodgers and became boarding housekeepers, doing chores such as cooking and cleaning for non-family members. Devault estimated that married women of the working class contributed up to a third of the family’s income.