Charles LeRoy Lewis - Special Collections - University of Baltimore

LEWI5;099 III:I:81
they worked in the mills. But my father he worked in the
railroad. His cousins and all most of them went to work for
the railroad because it was right down here in Mt . Vernon and
used to go across the street down into there and then in
about 1906 they moved in over Orangeville in East Baltimore.
That's why most men worked in the transit - it paid more
money than the mills did, and it was outside work and it
was cleaner and in war time they needed help because a lot
of mechanics and a11 could make more in the shipyard.
You was supposed to be 21; I bought my first pair of long
pants - told the guy I'd buy the pants from him if he'd
let me put them on there. And he did, and I went up and
Dick Russell said to me,"How old are you?" And I said while
1 was lying, might as well say a good one - I said 25. And
he said where was I born and I told h im and I got the job.
And I was just 17. But they paid good money. Today you
wouldn't call it good money . . . 45 dollars a week, 7 days,
too *
Harvey: When we talked before, you told me about some
strike breakers that they brought in who were foreigners.
You said later that there were the workers came in from aown
South . . . the area of Culpepper County, Virginia.
Lewis : No, no they came up here to wbrk. A lot of the young
fellows went in the army and the shipyards here just like
World War If had thousands of people come into Baltimore
because of all this stuff. See, that's when HoSabird came
into being during World War I. So did Edgewood. And they
brought them in, No, they weren't strikebreakers.