Farm to Factory: “I Got Sunday Off”

In the summer of 1914, young Josie Coleman left her family's double­log home in Spring Hill, Tennessee, to work in Nashville. Her father, a farmer supporting 10 children younger than Josephine, drove the girl and her shawl­wrapped belongings the 35 miles to the state capital in a mule-drawn wagon.

''I got my first job when I was 13 years old," she recalled, "working from six in the morning 'til six at night ... six days a week, making 50 cents a day."

The youngster's decision to emigrate to Nashville was made with the full ap­proval and encouragement of her parents, Jessie and Mattie Graves Coleman. The family farm had come to a literal stand­still since the previous few years had been disastrous ones for Southern farmers. Texas fever had invaded the region and the disease, caused by microorganisms transmitted by tick bites, had killed or quarantined most livestock. The long drought that summer of 1914 and Maury County's epidemic of hog cholera had ef­fectively put an end to the Colemans' crops and hogs.

When Josie's uncle, preacher Joshua Nellums, reported in glowing terms on the ready market for labor in industrial­ized Nashville, first-born Josie decided that Nashville was the place to be. She could lodge with her aunt and uncle Nellums who lived near the downtown after she secured a job at one of the many factories and mills in the city.

"I paid 50 cents board to my Uncle Josh, kept a precious 50 cents for street­car fare during the week, carried a tin pail with my lunch each day, and sent $2 to my folks in Spring Hill," she remembered, adding with a wry chuckle, "I felt I was making big money in 1914 ! "

At that time, Nashville was an established and thriving commercial center. The first world war had erupted in Europe, but it had not yet had great im­pact on America or caused shortages in this country. Nashville's population then stood near 115,000. Many residents, like Josie, had come to the city to work in the industrial jobs burgeoning there as elsewhere in the bustling New South. Flour had been the city's chief product since the tum of the century. There were three flour mills - including Royal Flour which became Martha White - five cot­ton mills, several bag and hosiery mills, and a spring and mattress factory. The area's brisk lumber trade made Nashville the leading hardwood center of the coun­try. These vigorous enterprises offered steady employment to anyone willing to work.

Josie Coleman was more than willing to work; she was eager. She landed her first job at the Hartsford Hosiery Mill on Twelfth Avenue North. She and "lots of other young girls" and women worked for 50 cents a day, six days a week, feeding yam to the machinery which turned out above-the-knee ribbed stock­ings for boys and girls. She threaded loops of cotton and wool on the large needles of a pre-set pattern or form; the needles created "everything ... the toe, ribbing, and ends." Then she had to transfer the stocking to a footer for finishing. The stockings were made from white yam and later dyed black, a hue ob­tained with sulphuric dyes. This procedure took place away from the knitting factory, as the dye was extremely toxic.

The employment of 13-year-old boys and girls "really wasn't accepted then," Coleman later said. "I lied when I ap­plied for the job and told the man at Hartsford I was 16. But I wanted and needed that job!"

The thousands of other young farm women and children entering the fac­tories in the early 1900s were willing to work for low wages. This fact encouraged Tennessee - like other states - to wink at the existing labor laws. Manufactur­ing had brought sweeping changes to the agrarian South since the rise of in­dustrialism in the late 1800s, and bosses placed primary importance on "cheap, docile, unskilled labor" and did not always adhere to legal guidelines.

Thirteen-year-old Josie Coleman's work schedule of 72 hours a week broke state laws restricting the age and hours a young person could be employed. Ten­nessee differed from neighboring states because trade unions had grasped a toehold there, and organized labor suc­ceeded in passing a child labor law a decade before other Southern states. In

1893 Tennessee politicians responded to this nascent Southern movement pushing child labor reform legislation. That year the General Assembly passed an act for­bidding an employer from hiring a child younger than age 12 "in any workshop, mill, or mine in this state." This first labor law was amended in 1901 to raise the employable age of a minor to age 14. By 1910 the legislature had limited the factory working hours of women and children under 16 to no more than '60 a week. Opposition to these reforms re­mained so slim that when the Tennessee Supreme Court nullified the law in 1911, the General Assembly quickly re­enacted child labor laws and_ even stiffen­ed the provisions. Child labor reformers continued to press for change, and in 1913 the legal working hours for children ages 14 to 16 were reduced to 57.

Although young Josie toiled more than the legal maximum hours, her memories of beginning full-time work in 1914 are pleasant. The working conditions - the long hours, the dimly lit factory, few breaks, and only 15 minutes for lunch - seemed no worse to her than the sunrise­to-bedtime hours she had worked on the family farm in Spring Hill.

"There were never any 'hours off on the farm," she recalled. "I was out in the fields all day, took care of my younger brothers and sisters, and helped my mother with chores. It was hard work. So when I was paid money to work and got Sunday off, I liked it. I liked it a lot."

She liked her work so much that she remained at Hartsford for four years. During that time her father sold the farm and brought the rest of the family to Nashville to share the prosperity. After he obtained a job with a flour mill and bought a home close to the industrial sec­tion of the city, Josie moved in with the family.

At the seasoned age of 16, Josie ac­quired a better-paying job - at 75 cents a day - with the J.B. Morgan Company on the city's public square. She began by sewing sacks of starched calico cotton used for packaging flour meal.

"Ladies really loved those sacks," she laughed. "When they were empty, the sacks were washed and the stitches cut out so curtains and clothes could be made from them. I've wondered if the 'free' fabric they got when they bought flour wasn't more important than the product!"

During the 10 years Josie Coleman worked for the Morgan bag company, she married and bore her first child. Motherhood prompted her to leave the paid work force for good in 1928.

Looking back on her youthful employment, she considers it positively. "You know, 50 cents a day was good money in 1914. And money I sent to my folks at home kept the family alive until my father came to Nashville to work."

Josie Cornwell Redden married twice, was the wife of a sharecropper, and raised two of her grandchildren. Now she's 84 and lives in a Nashville nursing home.