Hedy West
West wrote in 1963: “When my father was a child, a pack-peddler from Atlanta came through Gilmer County, Georgia, each summer selling wares strapped to his back in black oil-cloth. He often stayed overnight and told of cotton mills farther south and out of the mountains, where you could earn $5 and $6 a week in wages. In search of this better living, my great-grandfather, Nathaniel Benjamin West, moved his family down to Bartow County, Georgia; in 1915 my grandfather, Oliver West, and his family followed. Nathaniel West became a janitor at Atco Mills. His daughters became mill hands. Even before the depression came, they had a tough time making a living in the mills. My great aunt, Mae, learned a two-verse song at Atco, which I have expanded to the present form of Cotton Mill Girls.”
Sally Rogers: https://youtu.be/xaQKcHvXXUo?si=ndwLqbjzKbN59Zz_&t=123
https://youtu.be/xaQKcHvXXUo?si=ndwLqbjzKbN59Zz_&t=123
Worked in the cotton mill all my life Ain’t got nothing but a Barlow knife And it’s hard times, cotton mill girls It’s hard times everywhere Chorus: Hard times, cotton mill girls (x3) Hard times everywhere In 1915 we heard it said Move to cotton country and get ahead And it’s hard times, cotton mill girls Hard times everywhere Us kids worked twelve hours a day For fourteen cents of measly pay And it’s hard times, cotton mill girls Hard times everywhere Rumor to Barlow’s a long long way Down Elijay from Corticay And it’s hard times, cotton mill girls Hard times everywhere When I die don’t bury me at all Just hang me up on the spinning room wall Pickle my bones in alcohol It’s hard times everywhere