ALEX.: I'm working on a research project over here. I'm writing a business
history of Pocahontas County and I figured you worked; my name is Alexander as
you can see by that card. I figured if you've worked around here very long, you
ought to know something about the tannery, tell me a little bit about it, and I
got from Mr. Whitney yesterday a pretty good rundown, but the kind of things I'd
be interested in is, uh, your work experience there and who you've sold to, if
you know what companies you've sold to, or some of the people who work there or
some of the experience, that kind of thing. What you made when you first started
working per day and how your wages. You know the kind of business connections
that are interesting. Any old payroll records or anything like that have some
sort of a scholarly value in terms of pursuing research. Those are all very
valuable to me, and I would like just to chat with you, quit talking and let you
talk a little bit about when you went to work, and . . .
EYE: Talking about the payroll records, I was just going through some old
papers up there yesterday and I found some checks that written back in 1908.
ALEX.: Is that right?
EYE: And one was written on a piece of pasteboard and it was signed by J. W. Goodsell who was the original first superintendent or general manager of the
plant.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: And it was quite interesting to look at. He just wrote this check said,
pay to the order of, uh, some Freeman. Two-hundred twenty-five dollars. Just on
a piece of pasteboard. Now it was really a real piece of pasteboard too. But it
showed on it where it had gone through the bank and had been stamped paid. Very
interesting. I took it and gave to Harry and told him just to look at it.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah.
EYE: But I was surprised how that old check like that could go through the
bank of Durbin. But it was back there at that time.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah.
EYE: But, uh, very interesting. It went through the bank and was paid.
ALEX.: Cleared.
EYE: Cleared, right. But just written on a piece of pasteboard. Just as
though taken out of the end of an old shoebox or something.
ALEX.: Uh huh. When did that tannery start? I think I got that though
probably.
EYE: The tannery started in 1904.
ALEX.: Nineteen four. Well, you used bark pretty much. You know any of the
people who bought bark in those days?
EYE: That bought the bark, let's see. No, I don't.
ALEX.: You, uh, when did you work there? Start working?
EYE: I started in 1923, I guess.
ALEX.: Nineteen twenty-three. So it had been in operation, what, fifteen years
or so?
EYE: Nineteen years, just about.
ALEX.: Nineteen years, yeah.
EYE: But at that time they were using bark. now they're not using it.
ALEX.: There'd probably be some of those old records in there, wouldn't
there? About who bought what and so forth.
EYE: If Harry doesn't have them, they wouldn't be there.
ALEX.: Did he not have them?
EYE: I didn't ask Harry. You know, he was . . .
ALEX.: He was probably busy.
EYE: Very busy. He was out and he said I don't want to go back to the
office. I'm busy and I'm in the shop.
ALEX.: Yeah, uh huh. But those kind of things are kind of interesting to use
as we write this business history. The records would be very, very helpful to me
as I write chronological kind of events and if you've got something like that in
terms of record, lends more antiquity to what we're talking about, you see.
EYE: Sure. I see.
ALEX.: It helps a great deal. But, uh, as I poke around and look for the
kinds of things that establish the business history of a given company and/or
region, it helps. You don't have any of them, do you? You don't have any of the
records?
EYE: No. Probably the books. Well, you know, the firm's been owned by out of
state really most of the, probably most of the records are in the home office.
Some of them . . . Our office at that time was in Wheeling.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: And it was owned by, uh, Huffman and Sons.
ALEX.: Are any of those people still around?
EYE: To my knowledge, they're not. I don't know if they're living or not,
but I don't believe they are.
ALEX.: Yeah.
EYE: But the first one of them that I remember was ____ Company.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah.
EYE: He was a great big fellow and he'd come in the plant with one of those
long, tailed coats on, you remember?
ALEX.: Yes.
EYE: With, the way you remember it was probably.
ALEX.: I've seen the pictures.
EYE: A long, tailed coat, cane. He was quite a fellow. Big man, great big man.
ALEX.: Did he have a mustache like me?
EYE: Yeah. He wore a big brown hat, you know, well, I don't know what you
call it now, we used to call them plug hats.
ALEX.: Plug hats.
EYE: Yeah, something like that.
ALEX.: Then who bought--who was that young fellow that was dressed in
older--who bought the tannery from him then?
EYE: Well, the tannery was owned by Huffman and Sons first in Wheeling and
it was the Pocahontas Tanning Company at that time. And they had a plant in, oh,
where was that we used to go?
**: Oakland or Cumberland?
**: Luke?
**: Right on this . . .
**: Oh, I know. Close to Red House.
**: Gormania or Gorman.
EYE: It set on, almost on the Maryland line.
ALEX.: Do you know how to spell that?
EYE: Pardon?
ALEX.: Do you remember how to spell that?
EYE: G-O-R-M-A-N-I-A.
ALEX.: Gormania. And that's Maryland?
EYE: And that was Gorman. G-O-R-M-A-N or G-O-R-M-A-N-I-A. I don't know which
one. It may have been on two states that caused that.
ALEX.: Yeah.
EYE: But I know they had a plant there. Had this one here, and I believe
they had one in Wheeling, too. I don't know, I'm not too familiar with that. And
they got the Howe Brothers in Boston had some connections with them. And they
were leather salesmen at that time. And they got connected, buyin' stock in the
company and finally they bought the company.
ALEX.: Yeah.
EYE: Did Harry not know the history?
ALEX.: Yeah, Harry gave me a good bit of this. Yeah. Harry gave me a good
bit of this. I like to hear it too from someone else who's worked there and
because you're a part and of that history yourself.
EYE: Yeah, that's true.
ALEX.: You've worked there for a good many years. What is your age? When
were you born?
EYE: I was born in 1905.
ALEX.: You were born just the, years Cass was beginning to open up a little
bit, too. Cass opened up about that time, didn't it?
EYE: Well, I'll tell you, see I didn't live here. My home is in Virginia.
ALEX.: I see.
EYE: I was born and raised in, 'til I was seventeen years old in Palm
County, Virginia.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: And then I came here and went to work for 479.
ALEX.: That's right.
EYE: But I worked for the company, the old Pocahontas Tanning Company and
Howe Leather Company for fifty-one years.
ALEX.: Just getting started, weren't you?
EYE: Huh?
ALEX.: Just getting started.
EYE: Yeah.
ALEX.: Fifty-one years. That's a wonderful record.
EYE: I retired, officially retired in 1973. January of 1973. As long as I
kept my eyes up there ____ the assistant superintendent was gone, so I spent two
weeks pitching in for him.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: I go back up there . . .
ALEX.: They tell me you know your leather?
EYE: Well . . .
ALEX.: He should know something about it. You know, I've read the history of
that tannery someplace but do we not have . . .
EYE: No. No. You learn a little something in fifty-one years.
ALEX.: Yeah. Well, one of the men was telling me, he said you watch him, if
you see him, he'll take his knife, he'll cut that leather, he'll look at it and
so on. And he knows what he's looking for.
EYE: Well, like I say, you learn a lot, some things in that much time. Of
course, it's changed so much since I started that.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: When I started that we were using all bark.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: This country was full of saw mills and they cut timber and peeled bark.
And this old book on the tanning company owned a lot of land. They bought a lot
of land in this area just for the bark.
ALEX.: Who bought that land for them, you know?
EYE: A fellow by the name of McGuire, I believe, was the first one I
remember of.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: Who really bought the land.
ALEX.: Yes.
EYE: But that bought thousands of acres of this Pocahontas County for, to
get the bark. And, of course, they got the bark that's all they wanted so they
sold it. But, uh, at that time, they were tanning with hemlock and oak bark.
That's what tanning was made up of. Of course, in the later years, after the
bark begins to get scarce, they went to extract which we're now using. The
Chester comes from France, the Chabacho* comes from Mexico, South America, and
the Wallabark same place down there. But the rest* no bark being used at all.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: But in the meantime, you know, we had a lot of chestnut. You probably
don't remember, but we had a lot of chestnut in this country.
ALEX.: I see.
EYE: Before the blight. Blight hit the chestnut timber. There was just a lot
of chestnut. They'd take this wood, this chestnut wood and grind it up and mix
it with what they called chestnut extract and the last plant that I know of that
type was over just south of Monterey down there near toward Hot Springs.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: On that road. And it was started by Gardener from Waynesboro and, uh,
he sold out at last to Howe's Leather. They bought the plant and operated it for
three years and then they began to see that they couldn't get the chestnut wood
because it wasn't available. I don't know much about it except the extract
completely.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: But at that time it took about, well, it was about 120, it must have
been about 150 days to get a piece of leather, from rawhide to the shipping car,
finished. Now it takes, let's see, it takes about seven, it takes about 32 days
to complete the whole tanning to a piece of leather. That's how much it's
changed.
ALEX.: It's a good bit.
EYE: A whole lot. Of course, if you were tanning through the old bark, you
didn't have the strength. Now we use a barcometer* about seventy-five or eighty
to tan in. That was about the strongest you'd get out of this bark. About twenty
or twenty-nine is about what we used on the barcometer*.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: Oh, we grind color, to color the bark. Took a couple of colors a day.
And if you grind it up into real, just like chips and put it in great big tubs,
put water on it and heat it, and soak that tanning oil out of it, after you did
that for about. . . Let' see, we had about twelve, I believe, twelve mixes. Then you would put the broiler on and burn it, and it made a pretty
good fuel.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah.
EYE: It was quite interesting to see an old bark mill just through the bark
in the mill and just grind it up. And it had a big blower on it and it blew it
to these big tubs. And it started, up here you put your stallinger* on this one
and it went right on through. Tomorrow you take this one out and dump it and go
on to the next one. It would be a * of leases* what we called leased were big
tubs.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: There's a chain of them ____. Sugar, we used a lot of sugar and that
day and time cake sugar. They came in great big carloads of great big white
cakes of refined sugar. But today it's what they call syrup. Something like
syrup that you eat on hotcakes.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: There's been a lot of changes down through the years.
ALEX.: Yeah. What did you make a day when you first started compared to how
your wages.
EYE: I remember the first day I started I made $3.33.
ALEX.: In twenty . . .
EYE: I worked ten hours for thirty three and a third cents an hour.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: Well, it's interesting to tell you how that bark is processed. It's
very interesting. On this bark now, these big tubs, they had an opening in the
bottom like what we call manholes on the bottom, you know. Well, after you get
through that, you got all the strength bleached out of this bark, then they had
to fix, what they call a pitcher. The pink stuff running around . . .
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: The bark would all drop out of this big hole in the bottom of this tank.
This thing would keep pulling around 'til it dropped right out of the hole into
a conveyor which took it over to the furnaces and burn it. And it would blow off
the coal and we'd burn this bark.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah. What about, I guess you saw a good bit of this logging
operation, too.
EYE: Not too much. I didn't have too much, too much credit for that.
ALEX.: But you saw the trains come and go.
EYE: Oh yes, oh yes. Those log trains, as a matter of fact, I rode one. When
I came to West Virginia, there was three of us boys, four of us boys. We decided
we were going to go out, you know, and make a fortune. The farm was getting old;
we didn't care about the farm, so we decided we were going to go out. So we came
into, uh, what they call Long Fork over here, a big camp, logging operation in
there. So, I never will forget it. I remember this incident yet. We came in one
night and got into this camp and there was a great big camp you know with tables
about as long as this room. I never will forget that we drank coffee out of what
we call Pike Tent cups. That's what you had to drink coffee out of. I never will
forget that.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: But we decided we wanted to make money fast, you know how young fellows
are. So, uh, we told them we wanted a job cutting logs by the thousands. Neither
one of us could cut logs. We cut wood for the home stoves, but that was about
all the experience we had. But anyway they gave us a job cutting logs. So they
put my buddy and I on what they called a roads. You mark off a road here, a road
there and then they'd cut a road up through it and throw the logs into it. But
they put us right on top of a hill. Right straight on top of a mountain. There
wasn't a good tree in the whole place. Had some scrubs on it. We stayed a day
and a half. We saw we didn't know enough about cuttin' logs to do any good. So
we quit and got on a log train. The log train came down through that down here
and crossed up this hollow here and crossed over into the main C & O line up
Quarrier side. And, uh, we got on a passenger train and rode it up to Durbin
that night and stayed there.
ALEX.: You say some brothers came with you?
EYE: Pardon?
ALEX.: Any brothers, did you say some brothers came with you?
EYE: No, no . . . just . . .
ALEX.: Friends.
EYE: Friends. Other boys.
ALEX.: Yeah.
EYE: A few of us boys from home. We decided that farming was too slow of a
business.
ALEX.: Yeah. The hoe had too few a moving parts to fascinate you, huh?
EYE: Beg your pardon?
ALEX.: I say the hoe had too few a moving parts to fascinate you.
EYE: That's right. We had enough of farming. We wanted to get out. You know,
at that time most of these fellows worked in here at these logging camps. They'd
come in home maybe once a month. They'd tell you how much money they were
making, maybe a couple of bucks a day or something, and uh, that sounded like a
fine living to us, we thought that's it. We were going out there to do the same
thing.
ALEX.: Yeah.
EYE: But, uh, funny isn't it? But, a lot of changes in the plant. When I
started there at the plant, we knew nothing about organized labor. That was
clear out of our last thought. And uh, I know the first time I went into
management whatever you said that was it. There was no comeback. You told a man
you were through with him and that meant you was through with him. Of course,
now you can't do that.
ALEX.: No, it's hard.
EYE: Yeah, but I guess I was kind of fortunate though. After I'd been there
1932 I think it was, I don't remember now, and we got the top, I didn't get to
the top but I did get to ?*, and we got the boat.
ALEX.: Uh huh. Yeah, you're pretty far up.
EYE: Yeah. I was Assistant Superintendent.
ALEX.: Yeah.
EYE: But . . . J. W. Goodsell started the plant.
ALEX.: Yeah.
EYE: Up there just above where the plant is now where the fellow name of
Stewart lives. A little farm. He has a pretty good farm. And he had three sons
here. One started out as a bookkeeper at the plant, and the other two I don't
think even did work at the plant. That Mr. Whitney, that was Harry's father. He
came in twenty-three I believe it was, twenty-two or twenty-four.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: And he took over the plant. It's been him or his son in charge of it since.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: Harry, of course, he more or less inherited it from his dad.
ALEX.: Yeah. He's a very nice fellow. He was very nice to me yesterday. I
just, I enjoyed my visit with him.
EYE: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Harry's a nice fellow.
ALEX.: Yeah.
EYE: He lives in Lewisburg. Down here about ninety-some miles. He used to
live over there, but, I don't know why, somehow he moved over to Lewisburg. It's
quite a distance away. He drives it most everyday, but it's a long way to drive.
ALEX.: That is a long way to drive.
EYE: Ever drive to White Sulphur? It's twelve miles from White Sulphur over
to his place.
ALEX.: Yeah.
EYE: But the bark was the reason the plant was located in this section.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: It would have been located at Durbin because it would have been too far
off the main railroad had it not been for the bark. But the bark came in. We
used to have rigs of bark there. You seen the old big bark shed down below?
ALEX.: No, I didn't see those. No.
EYE: We used to have rigs of bark there that, oh they were I 'spect were one
thousand feet long. This big rig, you now, built up to keep for storage.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: It took a lot of bark though. There was a lot of bark here. But it all
came from around this local part of the country. Yeah. I'd stand at the . . .
that was before my time, I'd stand at the timber at the Finland plant. Was cut
right over across from the dam. A fellow by the name of Walter Young owned the
land.
ALEX.: Uh huh. And it's ?
EYE: Yes, it is. Yes, it is. Well, the first job I ever had was stampin'
hides. What I mean by stampin' hides, the hides has where the tail comes back
around and comes off. You was that yesterday.
ALEX.: Yes.
EYE: My first job was to--we had a thing to raise up, we raise a little
trigger over, and then we put the hide down under this piece of metal, I think
it was lead, but it wasn't lead, but it might have been lead, too. Anyway, you
tripped this thing and this big thing would all down and you did that to put a
stamp on his leg.
ALEX.: Is that right?
EYE: But I never wore a pair of boots before in my life. I don't know if I
ever saw a pair . . .
ALEX.: You say that was your first job then.
EYE: That was my first job. That was the first job I had, yeah. Yeah.
Stamping the leather. Built a house. Built a row of cottages along the over the
highway over there.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: I helped build those. And then, I rolled leather a while. In 1932, I
started in at the plant and I stayed there until I left.
ALEX.: Well, that's wonderful.
EYE: Nineteen-thirty two until seventy-three.
ALEX.: You saw a lot of management change.
EYE: Oh, yeah. Yes, a lot of changes. I started out in what they call a
yard. That's where the tanning's done. I spent about twenty years in there. I
moved from there to the beef house, that's where the hides are processed, hair
taken off, spliced, and all I operated that. I was in charge of that for about
two years.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: And then I moved into the finishing department. I was in charge of that
for, I don't know, just a couple of years. And then from there I went to
Superintendent and stayed there until I left.
ALEX.: I noticed that just about everybody is wearing boots. Do they furnish
those boots for the workers?
EYE: Right.
ALEX.: Probably aprons, too. Gloves.
EYE: The company furnishes all the, all the necessary equipment for
protection. Gloves, rubber gloves, canvas gloves, boots aprons, rubber pants,
hats, whatever they need. They furnish it all.
ALEX.: Yeah.
EYE: A fairly costly item, too. It used to be a fellow had to buy his boots,
he'd wear them if they had a little hole in them. They'd still wear them. But
they don't anymore. When one gets a little bit bad they want new a pair of
boots, they get 'em.
ALEX.: What do they do with the old ones? Have to turn them in?
EYE: They try to mend them, but they just throw them in the junk. All in the
junk pile.
ALEX.: Yeah. Huh.
EYE: There's a lot of things that go in a piece of leather. We used to just
sit down and go over some of them. We used Epsom Salts and you wouldn't think
you put Epsom Salts in leather.
ALEX.: Never thought about it.
EYE: But there's carload after carload of Epsom Salts that go in them.
ALEX.: What else?
EYE: And sugar.
ALEX.: Sugar. Yeah, you've said sugar.
EYE: A lot of sugar. Oils. We used to use a lot of cod oil. They're not use*
very much cod oil. They use the sulfinated kind today but very little of that.
ALEX.: Yeah.
EYE: They use a lot of mineral oil, but there have been quite a lot of
changes. Like I've said, we've reduced the time from a hundred and forty days
down to, I think, the whole thing's about thirty-two days.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: So that's quite a reduction. But the last time we though, uh, 1,060
hides. When we got to that far we had top production. Today they're running 18,
1900 and they're still on the run.
ALEX.: Yeah. Got a good market for them.
EYE: They can't make enough.
ALEX.: Yeah.
EYE: That's the problem today, they've over sold. They can't ship it. They
can't . . .
ALEX.: Fill the order.
EYE: Oh, it's a pretty big business.
ALEX.: Well, that's a long period of time. Fifty-one years. And you still
are there often, you say you fill in for vacations.
EYE: That's right. And I go up sometimes a day a week. Harry wants me to
come up just to observe what's going on. Just . . .
ALEX.: Yeah.
EYE: To walk through the plant if nothing else.
ALEX.: Yeah.
EYE: So I do that.
ALEX.: Yeah.
EYE: Of course it takes a while.
ALEX.: Yeah.
EYE: But, uh, I kind of enjoy it. Some of the fellows are still there what
were there when I was, but there's a lot of new fellows are coming in. The older
fellows, some have retired, but it's still, it's still interesting.
ALEX.: Yeah.
EYE: A lot of changes though that have come about in the last few years. Now
we didn't used to make a few years back we didn't make anything but sole
leather. Today they're making lots of belt leather. We call it curried leather.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: But I suppose it's waist belts, things like that. Soft, flexible
leather.
ALEX.: Yeah.
EYE: But, uh, when I first got there, there was a lot of foreigners that
worked there. Foreign fellows, people you couldn't hardly understand at all.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: And we had quite a number of colored people. Today, believe it or not,
there's not any colored people.
ALEX.: Huh. There's not many in the county.
EYE: Oh, no. Hardly any in the county but there's not a one at the plant.
ALEX.: Huh.
EYE: We've hired several and we always make it a point. When you hire
people, we want to show we aren't discriminating. A colored man came in and made
an application for a job. He usually got it.
ALEX.: Yeah.
EYE: But they don't seem to want to stay. They . . . maybe that's why. It's
easy to work for.
ALEX.: Yeah. Most of the foreign names are gone.
EYE: Yes. We used to have a mess of Keyers, Bruno, and those kind of names,
you know. They're all gone.
ALEX.: All gone.
EYE: But when I first went there, transportation was something different
than what it is today. They had a big boarding house. And, uh, the people didn't
live in the local vicinity. That's where I boarded. And, you didn't have a car
where you could jump in and you could run for forty, fifty miles an hour. So, it
was quite different.
ALEX.: Yeah. A little more closer living.
EYE: That's right.
ALEX.: Yeah.
EYE: At that time, when I first started managing, we kept time, the foreman
kept all the time. We just had a card that ran for two weeks. And you just
marked down when a man worked nine hours and that's so much money, and that's
what he earned. Today, uh, we've got time clocks. A fellow works an hour and
25/100 or whatever it might be, you know, he's on standard. He might in that
hour and a half, he may make twice the hour and a half. A lot of them do.
ALEX.: Yes.
EYE: But when I started you just got so many hours, it didn't make any
difference what you did. You got so many hours, that was it. And you pushed a
little bit to do the work, though, and you usually did.
ALEX.: Oh, yes. Jobs were hard to come by so you put out and you worked
hard.
EYE: That's right. Oh, we, seems to me like there's a difference in people.
Now, at that day and time people seemed like they were always trying to get
ahead. But now, they make near as much money in general labor as they do in
management.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: Because they've got the unions now. They've got the wages up and the
benefits so there's not too much difference.
ALEX.: What union represents you?
EYE: U. M. W.
ALEX.: U. M. W.
EYE: Now wait a minute, wait a minute. Excuse me, no. U. M. W. was, now it's
AFL-CIO. It's a division of the fur and leather workers.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah.
EYE: That's what it is now.
ALEX.: Yeah.
EYE: But when they started, it was the U. M. W.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: And this fur and leather came along and upset them and we got
representation.
ALEX.: Uh huh. Yeah. Well, it's been nice talking to you. I've come in here
and interrupted you unannounced.
EYE: That's all right. I wasn't doing anything.
ALEX.: What was like, in some businesses there's like a while lot of a
nationality, like a lot of Italians or something. What do you say was the
biggest nationality? I mean, were there a lot of foreigners?
EYE: A lot of foreigners, but I'd say the most were still regular Americans.
But there was still a lot of foreigners. They couldn't talk much, you couldn't
understand them.
ALEX.: Yeah.
EYE: I know we had one who was called Keyer. Had one they called Bruno, and
we had one that, oh, I don't remember the name, but there was a lot of them.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: And we had a fellow called Phoney Faleto. I never will forget him.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: I believe he was an Austrian, if I'm not mistaken. Had a fellow named
Leader. He was an Austrian. We had ____Collins. He was an Austrian. Oh, there
was just a lot them, you know. But at that time, you know, they'd bring them in,
they'd bring in train loads of those people to put into these big lumber mills
to work.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
EYE: And they'd find their way into the town and other industries, too.
ALEX.: Yes. Okay. Well, we are going to . . . (End of tape).