03709_0007: Soil Pipe Worker

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William Smith, circa 1870, Ohio, white soil pipe worker, Anniston, 31 January 1939

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William Smith (White) Anniston, Alabama

Victoria Coleman Calhoun County

Too short Part of two [stories?] more details needed W.C.

SOIL PIPE WORKER

On a bleak winter afternoon, I approached an attractive modern brick house with a well kept yard, and the lights from the windows shone out invitingly. I was met at the door "by an elderly little woman with snowy hair who was "becomingly clad in a house-dress and apron.

"Come In," she said, "I am just starting to fix supper." The house was as attractive within as without. "Is it warm enough for you?" she inquired, adjusting the already warmly glowing gas heater. Presently an elderly man of medium height and with regular features and keen gray eyes appeared. He was clean aad shaven and neatly dressed.

"This is my husband, Mr. Smith." the little woman said. Then a handsome young man entered the house, and was introduced as Mr. Williams, Mr. Smith's son-in-law.

Mr. Smith spoke with his son-in-law frequently adding comments, while hie wife came and went preparing the evening meal.

"My wife and I used to live here by ourselves, but we now have my daughter, her husband and two small children with us. My daughter is right now upstairs sick with a cold, and I have just been up there sittin' with her.

"This here doesn't look to be such a large house, just seen' it from the street, but it is. We have a nice apartment on the other side that we rent. It pays for our taxes, gas, and a few other expenses. The apartment has a bath, living room, bedroom and kitchenn. We have two baths on our side, one upstairs and one downstairs.

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"This is a ten-room house. Yes, I own it , but I don't own no car; they cost too much."

From where I sat on the comfortable living room sofa, I could see into the kitchen. There, everything was clean, and modern. "My father and mother left Ohio with me when I was seven years old" he continued. "They were poor. They stopped in Missouri and my mother died there. When I was eight years old my father came to Anniston and died here that year. I was left alone from that time on, to take care of myself and to make a living for myself. I lived with first one person and then the other.

"I worked hard and earned my own way. I can remember wearing old clothes the folks would give me, and painfully recall one pair of shoes that were too little for me and that rubbed bad blisters on my feet. But I always got along, and I will tell you one thing; no one ever took advantage of me; folks always treated me nice. "I never went to school a day in my life."

"Do you think an education pays?" I asked.

"Yes, I know it does," he replied. "A man can't hardly get along without one these days. If I should get without a job now without an education, and at my age, I couldn't get one nowhere. It takes an education to get on these days. In fact, I wouldn't have no job, old as I am anyway, if it weren't for 'Tobe' Hamilton, my boss, and he is the best boss to work for in the world. I am now sixty-nine years old, and been workin' in the Pipe shops for forty-six years. I guess I am the oldest pipe shop worker in Anniston; maybe in the world. Well, Tobe says I am the oldest pipe shop worker in the world, and he ought to know."

"What do you think is the average number of years a man works in the pipe shops" I interrogated.

"About thirty-six years, I would say." he answered.

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"That is about right," remarked the son-in-law, Mr. Williams. "Papa, you might explain to her about the wages and the nature of your work." Then he remarked to me, "Papa is a moulder."

"That is right," said Mr. Smith. "Every moulder has a helper, and the helper doesn't make as much as the moulder. They pay six, seven, eight, nine, and ten dollars a day, and we get from three to four days a week. The shop has not run regular in about nine years. We used to get six days a week. In them days they urged you to work every day, six days a week, but now they don't care if you don't work. They got more men than they can work anyway. We made about five dollars a day in them days. I have made as high as four hundred dollars a month in my lifetime, but I have had to work hard for it. I have got up at two o'clock many a time and gone to work for my family. But they was worth it.

"I met this lady here, " he proudly indicated his wife, "in Cherokee County. We been married close onto fifty years. Will be fifty years in a few months now. That's a long time to live with one bad woman," he laughed. "But I'll tell you what, if she was ever to die, I wouldn't marry any more. I don't believe in no second marriages. The Lord didn't intend you to marry but once."

"Oh go on, Bill, " said his wife, slightly embarrassed.

"Well, I mean it, " he said. "We had eleven children and five of them died. We had a hard time with all those children. But they have all turned out well.

"I now have four girls and two boys, and your girls sure will do more for you than your boys. One of my boys works here at Wikle's Drug Company, and the other one is a mechanic at the CCC Camp near here. I have a daughter who is in Austin, Texas. Her husband is manager of a big creamery there"

"He is going to get a new job; did you know Papa?" Mrs. Smith said.

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"They wrote about it. He will get two hundred and fifty dollars a month."

"Well, that's fine. He wasn't making but a hundred seventy-five at his present one," rejoined the father. "One of my daughters works for the Coca-Cola people in Virginia. She is a stenographer. My other daughter Pearl's husband, who was general manager of the Coca-Cola Bottling Company in Anniston, got her the job."

Mr. Williams said, "He had a split-up here, but he is now general manager of a Coca-Cola Bottling Company in Birmingham. You see there is only one general Coca-Cola syrup company, but there are any number of Coca-Cola bottling companies. Before my brother-in-law lost out with the Coca-Cola people here I worked as salesman for them for five years. The Coca-Cola company is a mighty fine company to work for. However, coca-colas are not as easy to sell as some people think, because the company sells on a strictly business-like basis, and some of the merchants object to the fifty cents a carton they have to 'put up' on each crate.

"Selling is my line though, and even though I lost out when my brother-in-law did, on account of the politics of the thing, yet one of the men in the organization, who was his political enemy, said that I was one of the best salesmen in the organization. Selling is meeting the public, and that is what I like. It is like baseball. I played professional baseball for eight years before I sold for the Coca-Cola people. I played in several states and was at Anniston for a while. I am temporarily out of a job, but I don't think there is much doubt that I will get back my Coca-Cola selling job soon. There is no life like 'the road'."

He left the room and came back carrying a child. "This is my ten months old daughter," he said. "How do you like her red hair? "

"I will tell you something else, " said Mr. Smith. "When I was a young man I worked side by side with Mr. A. C. Hamilton, 'Tobe,' we

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called him. He is my "boss now. We was a pipe rammer then. If you are going to write anything, say something about what a fine man and a fine boss he is. He is the finest boss in the world to work for, and he sure has made money, too. I don't get no easy work, I have had to work hard for everything I have gotten, but the pipe shop is a mighty fine place to work at. When I worked by Tobe Hamilton we both were starting out, and we worked at the Central Foundry Company. I worked for twenty-six years there without stopping. Well, first thing I knowed Tobe Hamilton come to me and said, 'Bill, I'm gettin' a job at Mr. Rudisill's Foundry. He is making me a foreman.'

"I said, 'Be careful now, Tobe, be sure you are gettin' a better job.' ' I will try to be,' he replied. Soon Tobe had started a pipe shop of his own."

"I hear that Mr. Hamilton's business has prospered quite a bit, " I said.

"Yes, indeed it has ," he replied.

"Well, you know the price of iron went up," his wife said.

"The whole white way of New York City was made at the shops right here in Anniston; also, the white way in many another large city was made here, " he said. "Anniston makes more cast iron soil pipes than any other place in the world, they say.

"Once I had a chance to be made a foreman, but I figured that a man like me without no education had better not take it. I was afraid I couldn't handle it right, and that the men might cheat me on their time. All I wanted to be was a good honest workman.

"I wanted to live right too. I am a Methodist, and I think that and the Presbyterian Church is the finest churches there are. But it is really how good you are that counts. I don't take much part in politics, I vote and that is all.

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