Charles LeRoy Lewis - Special Collections - University of Baltimore

LEWIS ;099 1:1:17
snuff, and it was on account of the air being full of cotton
and so on. Today people still use it, snuff, but for some
reason or another, it seems to be an article that most of
them dongt want to admit using it.
Harvey: Well, what did that do; the tobacco and snuff -
how did that cut down on the dust?
Lewis: Well, by breathing you had that moisture in your
mouth all the time and that moisture in your mouth caught
the cotton instead of going down in your lungs and choking
you up. And they a11 had their awn little private spittoons;
someplace ta spit, you know.
Harvey: I see . . . was that a hard job, the first one?
Lewis: No, none of the jobs was what I'd call really hard.
There was none of the jobs that was too heavy to do,there was
no heavy lifting or anything like that; the wagons all had
wheels on - they were kept in shape, all equipment was kept
good. At; times when we were short of help, I would help the
creel; that would be putting the cotton up on the twisting
frames and that was about as hard a job that 1 had, hut the
bobbins only weighed . . . oh, a couple pounds, not aver five
pounds at most. You had to have awfully big bobbins to weigh
that much. It wasn't a hard job. Of course, I: got paid
extra for that; that's one thing - I'd get two paychecks;
get paid far weighing up and I'd also get paid for creeling.
Harvey: That was weighing up over at Hoaper's now . . .
~e1qj.s: ~ooper's . . . yes. I worked ovex there longer than
I did any of the other. As I say, Mt. Vernon mill - I