C., Chick, February 21, 1976, tape 1, side 1

Peter Gottlieb: The following is an interview with Mr. Charner C.. C H A R N E R. Begun on February 21st, 1976, at Mr. Charner C.'s home at 1503 Mifflin Street, Homestead, Pennsylvania. The first part of the interview is missing. Uh, and uh, the information, um, Mr. Charner C. gave me, uh, is as follows. He was born in 1903, in Carlisle, uh, South Carolina, which is in Union County. His parents were also born in the same area. Um, his father, uh, rented a farm on which the cash crop was cotton. Mother did not work outside the home. He had, uh, 6 or 7, siblings. One older sister. He was the oldest boy in the family. Uh, no other relatives or, other people lived with the family. Mr. Charner C. got about four years of schooling. The school was nearby his home. He could walk to it. He remembers it being in an old small house. He remembers one teacher he had. A woman, a young woman, and he remembers going to school only during the months of approximately January to March each of those years. The sisters were able to go to school longer than he or his brothers. For a longer period of time each year that is.

Charner C.: I knew I was a small boy. I knew that.

Gottlieb: Can you tell us something about the work that was done on your family farm? Cause I'm sure that most of us today wouldn't have any idea about how cotton was grown back when you were growing up.

Charner C.: So what do you want to know about it? Gottlieb: Just exactly, you know, what you had to do to get the land ready and how you'd raise it. Charner C.: Well, you see, you first break the land up. You go around and break it up with a mule and plow, and break it up. And then you break it up maybe once or twice. And then you take a harrow, they call it a harrow like, you pick the leaves with a harrow or something, the horse or whatever it is. And they go across and tear all them crosses and make the ground smooth. Then you go and lay off-- lay off your own bed of mud. Then you're ready to plant seeds.

Charner C.: [unintelligible]. Then you put your fertilizer in then. You bust the, the bed up-- bust the bed up then and put that fertilizer down in there. [unintelligible] and then you plant the seeds behind that. Gottlieb: Did you have to plant the seeds by hand? Charner C.: No, no. You had a planter. They called that a planter. You can use your planter. Pull the planter. It dropped the seeds down and cover, cover it up behind it. It ain't like it is now they have a big old board behind it. Something drags behind it so you come around, level it off like that. Then when the cotton come up or the corn, whatever it may be, same thing. You just take a mule and it just about so high and you go beside it, you go right beside it. Then you tie it off, you chop it. What do you call it. You thin it out and then chop it. Yeah you thin it out. Sometimes you cut out big plants that don't grow. You know. You cut out plants like that. Corn is the same way, potato the same way, peanuts the same way. All the same thing, same thing. You plant them, so according to what kind of land it is, it makes a difference. Now a real rich land. You can have them pretty close together and they'll be the same thing. But if the land is not so rich, then you have to kind of have awful [??], awful things like that.

Gottlieb: What happened when the cotton got a little bit bigger? How can you thin it out?

Charner C.: Well, yeah, that's right. When you when you thin it out, then you you come back and they call it--

Charner C.: Flendling [ph], flendling they call it. You run it. You have a mule applied. You shook it. and you set your plow right in the middle. And you throw dirt [??] right in between. Right in between and leave a place right in between. Like a, like a stick. Right in there. That-- that'll hold both sides of it so it'll grow. That's what they call. That's what they call it. And-- right. And then, you know, after a little while, maybe a week or two weeks or three weeks, something like that, no less than a month. You go back again and then you, you dirt it, they call it dirt it. You get a small plow-- a plane plow but a small wing, the plow had little short wings on it and hit on the side of it and hit the little dirt. So they get [unintelligible] And then next time you go back, they called that laid, laid aside. You have a big bull here with a plow on it. You screwed on the plow behind and then you go over there and sweep it over that way. And the dirt and the moss would go to the side and you leave a big hole in there and then going and done. And then you're ready the pick. Next time. Next time you're ready to pick.

Gottlieb: How much time was it between the time that it had been laid by and the time you went back to pick it.

Charner C.: Well, you lay by about the first or last of July. Yeah. And then you go back around the first of fall around September, October and start picking.

Gottlieb: You could go the whole month of August and you didn't have to--

Charner C.: No, no. No no. You don't do nothing.

Gottlieb: Uh, did your father own all of his own plows and animals and stuff like that.

Gottlieb: He owned the planter? And everything. Charner C.: Right. All that. Gottlieb: He only had to rent the land? Charner C.: Right.

Gottlieb: Did he get these things by saving his money and buying them, like, over a period of the time? Or did he get them from his father or?

Charner C.: Well, I don't know. As far as I can remember, when I was old enough to remember he had them. That's what he was doing. When I could remember. Yeah. That's all he ever did.

Gottlieb: I can't remember if you told me how many acres your father had there.

Charner C.: Well, to make a big, rough guess at it, I couldn't hardly tell you now, but somewhere, uh, it would be around 25 or 30 acres.

Gottlieb: Do you remember how many bales of cotton you used to get.

Charner C.: Well, I've had-- different years. Now, one year we didn't, never saw a thing. Picked 17 bales and never saw a thing.

Gottlieb: Don't you usually get-- now, this is what I've read in books. You can tell me if this is wrong. Don't you usually get about a half a bale to an acre or something like that?

Charner C.: Yeah. And sometimes you get a bale to the acre. It depends on the land. The old land-- some land is rich and some is poor. Not. Not too good. Yeah.

Gottlieb: Did you have a good piece of land there?

Charner C.: Good piece. Good piece of land. Yeah.

Gottlieb: Did farming work suit you?

Charner C.: Yes. Yes, sir. Yes. See I didn't know nothing else? Yes. Butif you called now I wouldn't choose it. You know what I'm saying?

Gottlieb: Do you remember how old you were when you first had a job away from your parents farm?

Charner C.: I must have been around 15 or 16, 18, something like that. Yeah-- no, I was 18, I think, when I came here. I was. 18 when I'd come here. Must have been 16 or 17 after-- after laying by, I went to the man that run the sawmill. You know like a sawmill? I went to him and worked with him till Saturday to go back to the farm. That's the first work I could remember doing.

Gottlieb: So. So you would have worked at the sawmill just until the cotton need to be picked.

Charner C.: Right, Right.

Gottlieb: Do you remember very much about the sawmill or what kind of work you had to do there? Charner C.: I was turning up-- I turned logs. See you cut-- the lumber, the tree, the lumber that's cut off like this. Well, they had bark on the side of it. You'd turn it over and you run a saw across that side. You turn it, turn it again and saw it on that side. Get that bark off to make lumber in the inside. Yeah. Well, that's what you call turning logs.

Charner C.: Well, I needed something. Mother needed something. And a lot of people that lived down there had boy-- had boys and that's what they did.

Gottlieb: Did your brothers do this as well? Charner C.: One of them.

Charner C.: One of the did. The others wasn't old enough.

Gottlieb: Do you remember about how much money you could earn working at this sawmill during the month of August?

Charner C.: I think it's like-- a dollar and a quarter or something like that a day.

Gottlieb: Did you work right around the weeks? Did you have any days off?

Charner C.: Well, yes, Saturday and Sunday did no work. You never worked down there on Saturday and Sunday, like no one.

Gottlieb: Was it very far from your home?

Charner C.: You could walk.

Charner C.: You could walk. Yeah. Gottlieb: And that was the first job that you had off your parents farm? Gottlieb: Right.

Charner C.: What did you do with the money that you were getting from the sawmill?

Charner C.: Well, different little things. I'd give to my mother. I was awfully good to my mother.

Gottlieb: You took the money back to your parents? Charner C.: Right. Right. Gottlieb: Can you tell me-- you said you began working at the sawmill when you were about 16? Charner C.: I guess something like that. Gottlieb: And you said you were about 18 when you left home. Can you

Charner C.: Well, my father worked on the farm. And my aunts in Detroit were writing for me to come because I could get a job and work and do more. Get more money.

Gottlieb: So your father himself gave up farming?

Charner C.: Right. Gottlieb: Why, why did he do that? Charner C.: Well.

Charner C.: Mother died. I'm just saying that, I don't know exactly-- that, that's as far as I know.

Gottlieb: What did your father do? Did he go to Detroit as well?

Charner C.: No, no. His, his home was there and he stayed with his-- he had a lot of sisters and things there.

Gottlieb: What did your brothers and sisters do when you went to Detroit.

Charner C.: They went-- one of the brothers is in Ohio now. He went to Tennessee, to my Aunt. Aunt in Tennessee. My two sisters was in-- one in Philadelphia now and one in Brooklyn. They went to Boston too with one of my aunts.

Gottlieb: Were these aunts your mothers sisters or fathers sisters?

Charner C.: Mother's sisters.

Gottlieb: And they had all come up north-- Charner C.: Right. Gottlieb: Earlier. Do you remember why they had gone up there?

Charner C.: The same thing. It was like a fleet. I know because there was writing to them all the time to come.

Gottlieb: What year would that have been if you went up to Detroit? Do you remember it?

Charner C.: It was, it was. I came here in 23 I think it was. It must have been. I was there about two years. Gottlieb: You would have been about 21 then. Charner C.: Right. Right. I think that's what you said 21 or 20 or something like that, you know.

Gottlieb: Remember what time of year it was when you went up?.

Charner C.: It was long winter. A little later, around the first of spring. Arounnd the first of spring.

Gottlieb: How did you go? Did you go-- like what kind of transportation did you take?

Charner C.: Well, they sent me a ticket. Gottlieb: A train ticket?

Charner C.: Right. Gottlieb: Did you stop anywhere in between-- did you go from Spartanburg, South Carolina. Charner C.: Right. Gottlieb: Did you stop anywhere between Spartanburg and Detroit.

Charner C.: No, no more than a change. You know, stop to get a meal or something like that.

Gottlieb: Was that the first time you've been out of South Carolina? Charner C.: Yes. The first time I've been out of South Carolina.

Gottlieb: What did you take with you when you went up to Detroit? Charner C.: What clothes I had. A suitcase of clothes is the only thing. Gottlieb: Did you have very much money?

Charner C.: No, no, no, no, no. We couldn't get all that much money in those days.

Gottlieb: What? What did you do when you got to Detroit?

Charner C.: Well, I went to work with my uncle there.

Gottlieb: He was a building contractor? Charner C.: Uh huh.

Gottlieb: Was he building houses and things?

Charner C.: He was making a mall on Hallam Bridge, I was rolling, rolling a wheelbarrow. You know what a wheelbarrow is right? Right.

Gottlieb: And where you living with your aunt and uncle. Yeah?

Charner C.: Right. Gottlieb: Do they have any children at home? In that house?

Charner C.: One.

Gottlieb: Did you try to find any other kinds of jobs? Besides working with your uncle?

Charner C.: Yeah, I had a I had another job there for a while, but I didn't. Didn't like it too because I had to [??].

Charner C.: I was working full time. But I had to get up 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning.

Gottlieb: What did-- oh sorry I didn't mean to interrupt you. Charner C.: That's all right. Go ahead. Gotlieb: Let me go back to Detroit for a minute. When I read about the history of autoworkers and things like that. They always talked about how much money Ford paid. Was the money that you could have learned at River Rouge pretty good money? Charner C.: Right.

Gottlieb: But that didn't seem-- that didn't make enough difference to you. Charner C.: No, see I could get-- I came out here. It wasn't that much, what I was getting, you see, what I was getting wasn't that much different. Maybe a dollar or $2 more than than over there was what I was getting here. And then I had more convenience because it was closer. It was closer here to my work than it was way out there.

Gottlieb: You mean the place you lived in Homestead was closer?

Charner C.: Yeah, right. See, I can walk. I walked to the mill to work down here all the time. I never had to buy a car. Nothing to drive. No. I had to walk. I worked right in this one place the whole time. It's on the other side of the river right in the mill here. When I was there you had to get up four times, maybe 5:00 sometimes. Get ready and get out in time to go to work.

Gottlieb: What kind of-- what kind of job did they put you on? Do you remember?

Charner C.: Well, it was. I call it carnival [??]. It's not a shaking out. They call it shaking out the mould. What-- you know what a mould for the mould plant? A mould thing? I would shake out. Shake out for it after them.

Gottlieb: And what exactly did you have to do? Was there sand in the mould or anything?

Charner C.: No. Well, see, when they, when they, when they make that, make the mold and put it in and when they, when they come out they turned out and take it out. You you would shake-- turn it over and shake them out for the next time you went back and make something. Clean out like.

Gottlieb: Was it hard work?

Charner C.: Mhm. Well it wasn't too hard but do it pretty fast like. But that's because piecework [??] was right there. Something like that.

Gottlieb: Did you make any-- did you meet any people on the job there that you got to know. Charner C.: Not any.

Charner C.: I couldn't remember any of them now. Nobody that I was any close to me or nothing like that. No. Gottlieb: Was anybody else from South Carolina there?

Charner C.: Well, I'm almost sure there was. I'm almost sure there were plenty.

Gottlieb: When you first came to Homestead. Uh, have you been-- have you been back home yourself between the time you came to Detroit and the time you came to Homestead? Charner C.: No.

Charner C.: When I first came, no. I went back and-- I married my wife. Come right on back. I didn't stay a long time. Just went back and we, we correspond through letters all the time. All the time. And they just come right on the way. Then went back and got my wife and then come right on back here.

Gottlieb: Um. The first time you came to Homestead, was it just for a visit or did you come here-- Charner C.: For a visit. For a visit.

Gottlieb: Can you tell me how long you stayed and what you did here?

Charner C.: Yeah I came out here and the man hired me. Come out here to the mill and the man hired me and told me to get ready for work the next morning. I went back to the house where I was staying at, and he told me that old pair of overalls. I got these overalls put on and worked til the end of the end of the week. And then I went back to Detroit and got my trunk and clothing.

Gottlieb: Had you been expecting to find a job in Homestead when you first came, or was it just by accident?

Charner C.: Yeah, that's. That's by, that's by accident. I didn't like out there. I didn't, I didn't give up my job over there. Understand what I mean? No, I didn't give up my job over there at all. I come and I like it out here. And the man hired me and I work here a week, and then I liked it better. I went back weekend and got my trunks and clothes and that's it.

Gottlieb: Why do you like to work in the steel mill better than the foundry at Forbes? I've heard that working at the steel mill isn't any picnic either.

Charner C.: No it isn't. It isn't

Charner C.: But it's not as dusty. You don't. You don't, you don't, you don't inhale as much as dust in the steel mill as you did in the foundry where I was.

Gottlieb: What mill were you working at down there?

Charner C.: Well, I finished up down here at the Union [??] department, they called it. The call it the 160 now. The [??]. Yeah. You worked-- levers and things, you pull levers and things like that. It's very convenient. But when I first started working up in the old mill, it wasn't like that. You had to-- [coughs] pardon me. You had to work pretty hard sometimes, but you had a lot of outlet, a lot of air, and you didn't-- wasn't [??] and inhaling a lot of dust and things like you was in there. Over there.

Gottlieb: So you worked in Rolling Mills?

Charner C.: Right.

Charner C.: Rolling. That's right. Rolling. I had to finish the steel.

Gottlieb: Um. What did you think of Homestead as a, as a kind of a neighborhood compared to the place you were living in in Detroit?

Charner C.: Well, it's much, much better in a way of speaking more Christianized and things like that. And at the time I was in Detroit, it was-- it was terrible those two years. It was terrible. You just see people run out and they get killed in the street. And the-- police are just, just awful.

Gottlieb: Why? Why were things so rough there?

Charner C.: Railroad. You see, anybody would tell you that. Long back then. It's different now. But I was back over there and all my wife's people were there. Some of them is there now. Most of them dead now, but in 65 I was over there. Visiting in 65.

Gottlieb: Why were things so rough in Detroit? Do you think?

Charner C.: Well, I don't know. Well I-- just their way of thinking. As I said, it wasn't Christianized enough, I don't think. It wasn't-- people didn't care about no church and if they had a church, people just like-- there's no-- [??] it look like was the biggest-- was that day. It was, on a Sunday like. They never sang. Never call down. No, nothing like that. Just work all the time and--

Gottlieb: Did your aunt and uncle belong to the church in Detroit?

Charner C.: Well, I don't know. He might have been. They might have belonged to the church, but they didn't go too regularly. See I was there from about the time I told you I went there until 23 when I came here. It wasn't too long a time. I wasn't there too long before I came over here. Most of my life has like been in here. Yeah. Been here 23-- Yeah. Been right here.

Gottlieb: I heard that homestead was a pretty rough place itself back there in the 1920s.

Charner C.: It was. It was, but it wasn't as-- couldn't, couldn't compare to Detroit.

Gottlieb: Did anybody help you find a job in the mill? Did anybody tell you any particular person to talk to? Or which office to go to or anything like that? Or did you just go down there by yourself?

Charner C.: No I got information from a fella. I don't know who he is now. I can't tell you who he is now. Over the years-- he worked out here.

Gottlieb: And he-- what did this person tell you? Do you remember?

Charner C.: Yeah. He told me about how they work out here, and there was hiring men. And they needed men. How they shipping in men here from [??]. And I find that he did like he said, because the time I got to go into the office. Got down there that week. Come, they told me to come. Gottlieb: Really, they beckoned you to come?

Gottlieb: They don't do that aymore.

Charner C.: Oh no, no, no. You have to beg for them now. Right.

Gottlieb: Do you remember what place you were talking to these fellows? Who told you about that?

Charner C.: It was at Pittsburgh. Yeah, yeah.

Gottlieb: Do you remember the person who actually hired you on?

Charner C.: I couldn't recall his name. Gottlieb: Did you ever have anything to do with him again after he hired you. Charner C.: I'd seen him but I never had no more. Gottlieb: Did they ask you any questions when they were talking to you?

Gottlieb: What kind of things did they want to know?

Charner C.: Where I was from. Where was I born. Everything. How old I was and all that stuff.

Gottlieb: Did they ask you if you would ever work in the mill before? Charner C.: Mhm. I told them I was. Told them I was up there in Detroit working in the foundry.

Gottlieb: Did they seem to be interested in any kind of qualifications in terms of, uh, how strong you were or anything like that or were they just hiring pretty much anyone who would move. Charner C.: Move. Anybody who would move up to the North.

Gottlieb: Did you ever think when you were talking to this man down at the employment office that you weren't going to get the job?

Charner C.: No, I didn't. I didn't think-- I was thinking I was going to get the job. When he, when he called me, I was thinking he was going to get the job. Right.

Gottlieb: Were there a lot of men down there?

Charner C.: A lot of men, a lot of them. It was crowded, but it's picking like-- picking them like, you know. Some of them had worked there before and quit. And some of them, you know, some of them had never been there, you know. I was told, I said yes.

Gottlieb: And so they pick you from that line.

Charner C.: Mhm. Because they had never seen me before. Gottlieb: Well why do you think that they, they, they selected you from all the--

Charner C.: Well, I just-- just because they had never seen me. They never hired me before. Gottlieb: So I guess it was just a matter of luck.