Thomas's Childhood: A True Story

With Father's Day only a few days away, my thoughts have turned to my Daddy.  This morning finds me thinking about the few things he told me of his childhood.

First of all, let me emphasize that Daddy's name was Thomas.  He was never called anything else, not Tom or Tommy.  He was always Thomas.  There has always been discussion about whether he was Thomas Robert or Robert Thomas on paper, and his permanent records indicate either/or is true, but he always answered to Thomas.

Daddy was the firstborn child of ten siblings.  He was born in 1900.  Daddy used to tell me that when he was little all the roads in our hometown were made of dirt.  People still used horses instead of cars back then in the hill country of South Carolina, and Daddy said when the cars came along, about the time he was a young teenager, they scared the horses.  

Daddy said when he was little Blacksburg, SC was a boom town.  Someone had discovered gold, silver, and iron ore there and the railroad brought folks from everywhere to mine it.  The town's nickname became Iron City and it stuck.  You can still see businesses in Blacksburg today with Iron City in their names. 

Call it Iron City or call it Blacksburg, the name doesn't really matter. What did matter to my Daddy was he was not allowed to visit anyone in town after dark when he was little, because of all the rough miners who were there.  Daddy said there was a saloon on just about every corner and a church on all the rest.  

The iron ore, gold, and silver were all eventually mined out though, and the townspeople spent more time in the churches than in the saloons.  Most of the saloons  had actually closed by the time Prohibition arrived in 1920, and the town of Blacksburg was a much safer place to live. 

This is what the town looked like in 1916 when Daddy was 16 years old:

This is a view up Shelby Street facing the railroad. The store my father eventually owned and ran is seen at the end of the street on the left.  Daddy said he always wanted to be in business for himself, even as a small child.

You see, my Daddy's family lived in nearby Cherokee Falls, SC on the "Mill Hill." Blacksburg was the closest big town and Daddy always considered Blacksburg his hometown. He did not have good memories of his childhood on that mill hill in Cherokee Falls.

Cherokee Falls Mill was a cotton mill that employed families, as in father, mother, and children.  The family would live in mill housing up on the Mill Hill and work in the cotton mill. 

Daddy went to work in the Cherokee Falls Mill when he was six years old.  He said if you made a mistake or if you weren't working fast enough the mill foremen would whip you with a leather strap or hit you with their fists. 

The money the children made was given to the parents.  The rent for the mill housing was taken out of the pay before the pay was issued.  

It was easy to get trapped in a mill town.  The children did not have the benefit of an education, as they were forced to work from sunup to sundown from a very young age.  Many ended up spending their lives working in that same cotton mill and living in relative poverty while their labors made the mill owners rich.

Little Boys Working in a Cotton Mill

My Daddy, however, was very intelligent.  He taught himself to read and figure (His word for math.).  He said he had the equivalent of a third grade education because he was able to get his hands on third grade books to teach himself.  I'm not sure how he learned so much, but I do know Daddy ended up a successful business owner in the end.  I will say I seldom saw him without a book in his hands during my own childhood...unless he was working, of course.  Daddy loved to read.

In 1916 my Daddy's life changed.  Not long before Daddy's 16th birthday, the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act of 1916 was drafted by Congress to regulate child labor. 

The Act prohibited interstate or foreign sale of any goods or services that were produced by laborers under the age of 14 in a factory, shop or cannery and under the age of 16 in a mine.  Also, child laborers under 16 years old could only work from 6am to 7pm and not for more than eight hours a day and not more than six days a week.

Here is a copy of the Cherokee Falls Mill response to that bill.  The signatures are real and very disturbing to me, as I see more than one of my sons' father's ancestors' signatures among the rest.

Those wealthy men did NOT want to lose their gravy train.  Without the child labor they would lose major profits. 

Not long after the above letter was written my Daddy walked out of that mill, and he never looked back.  Daddy said to anyone who would listen, "I will NEVER work for another man as long as I live," and, you know what?  He never did.

Daddy spent his adult life self-employed.  He once owned a restaurant.  Then he owned a furniture store, but when I was little in the mid-50s, Daddy owned and operated Batchelor's Radio and TV.  

Daddy sold and repaired televisions, radios, and small electrical appliances.  He did a correspondence course to learn how to do that, as there were no schools around Blacksburg to teach him such new technology.  

If Daddy had lived past 1962, we would have been rich beyond our wildest dreams!  Daddy died, however, and we lost everything to the medical bills, but that is a story for another day.