Like a family : the making of a Southern cotton mill world

Since its original publication in 1987, Like a Family has become a classic in the study of American labor history. Basing their research on a series of extraordinary interviews, letters, and articles from the trade press, the authors uncover the voices and experiences of workers in the Southern cotton mill industry during the 1920s and 1930s. Now with a new afterword, this edition stands as an invaluable contribution to American social history.



"The genius of Like a Family lies in its effortless integration of the history of the family--particularly women--into the history of the cotton-mill world.--Ira Berlin, New York Times Book Review



" Like a Family is history, folklore, and storytelling all rolled into one. It is a living, revelatory chronicle of life rarely observed by the academe. A powerhouse.--Studs Terkel



"Here is labor history in intensely human terms. Neither great impersonal forces nor deadening statistics are allowed to get in the way of people. If students of the New South want both the dimensions and the feel of life and labor in the textile industry, this book will be immensely satisfying.-- Choice

• Foreword Michael Frisch
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Sources
• Part 1 Cotton Mill People
• Chapter 1 Everything We Had
• Chapter 2 Public Work
• Chapter 3 From the Cradle to the Grave
• Part 2 Air and Promises
• Chapter 4 Hard Rules
• Chapter 5 Turn Your Radio On
• Chapter 6 A Multitude of Sins
• Epilogue
• Afterword
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index Maps
• 1 Textile Spindleage in the Southeast, 1929
• 2 Counties of the Southeast, 1929
• 3 Rivers and Railroads of the Southeast, 1930
• 4 Selected Mill Towns of the Carolinas, 1930
• Illustrations
• A North Carolina mountain farm Men gathered for wheat threshing
• Advertisement for Altamahaw Plaids Officers and superintendents of the Cone family's
• Proximity and White Oak plants
• The Gaffney Manufacturing Company Workers at the Franklinville Manufacturing
• Company Doffers at the Bibb Mill No. 1
• Learning to spin Men opening bales of cotton at the White Oak Mill
• Card room hands at the Franklinville Manufacturing Company
• Men and women weaving at the White Oak Mill Women drawing in at the White Oak Mill
• The card room at the White Oak Mill
• Swimming in the whirlpool on the Deep River Girls enjoy a break from work
• The superintendent's house at the Franklinville Manufacturing
• Company D. A. Tompkin's plan for a four-room mill house
• Children six to eight years old in the school at the Lynchburg Cotton Mills
• Welfare worker conducting a domestic science class at Proximity Mills
• The mill baseball team at Bynum, North Carolina
• Children participating in organized recreation at the Franklinville Manufacturing
• Company Raising chickens Caring for livestock Advertisement for labor-saving machinery
• Advertisement for Veeder-Root pick counters
• Advertisement for high-speed machinery Ella May Wiggins
• Flossie Cole Grindstaff Lawrence Hogan
• The Piedmont Heights mill complex and village James
• Spencer Love James Lee Love with Cornelia and Spencer
• The Hagenback and Wallace Show
• The Swingbillies Preacher George Washington
• Swinney Glen Hope Baptist Church
• The Blue Eagle Francis Gorman George Sloan
• Union memebers marching down the main street of Gastonia, North Carolina
• National Guardsmen rounding up strikers in Newman, Gerogia
• Dancing pickets outside the Clark Thread Mill
• Striking workers fresh from a confontation with police outside the Trion Cotton Mill
• Lacy Wright Icy Norman "Performing Like a Family" performance ensemble, production staff, and co-author Robert Korstad