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Interview with Roland Osborne and Phillip Paxton

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Interview with Roland Osborne and Phillip Paxton

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Interview with Roland Osborne and Phillip Paxton

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  • Osborne and Paxton 1 Transcript: Roland Osborne and Phillip Paxton Interviewee: Roland Osborne and Phillip Paxton Interviewer: James Taylor Interview Date: 18 November, 2016 Location: Canton, North Carolina Length of interview: 54:03 START OF INTERVIEW James Taylor: Okay, we are recording. This is November 18, 2016 at the Canton Historical Museum. I am James Taylor and interviewing Phillip Paxton and, can you tell me your name? Roland Osborne: Roland Osborne. JT: Roland Osborne. And first off, my question is, as somebody that is not from Canton, or knows anything about the paper mill, what should I know as an outsider about Champion Paper Mill and Canton, North Carolina? Phillip Paxton: Well it has been here since 1906 and it’s been the main employer in Canton the whole time. RO: Well I think that’s the main thing that people don't understand. Just how important the part Champion played in this town for so many years. This building for instance was built by the Champion Foundation and donated to the town of Canton… JT: The museum? RO: As a library. And that was a rather common occurrence back in those days. That sort of thing. JT: Second question. How do you all deal with the smell of the paper mill? PP: We don’t notice it. RO: Smell? [laughter] The best thing I can say about this is, a car full of tourists came through Canton one day and rolled down the window and said, "Shew! What’s that terrible smell?" and he said "Well I didn't smell anything till you rolled the window down." So that's about the way Canton people look at it. And by the way, compared to the old days, there is no smell here now. I mean here now. I mean you might smell a little something, but nothing compared to what it used to be. JT: I smell it from the interstate sometimes. Osborne and Paxton 2 PP. You don't notice it if you live here. When I moved off from here, asked me where I was from, they said," That's the place that stinks isn't it?" I would say no that is Enka. RO: The second stink west of Asheville is. Bill: We used to say it smelled like bread and butter. JT: Bread and butter. I asked Roland before y’all got here, but does the paper mill in Sylva have any connection to the Champion paper mill in Canton? No? not at all? PP: They made newspaper. RO: [inaudible] Physically different company. JT: Concerning the actual paper mill, has it, can you go into depth how it has changed over time from when it was built to now, the management, the workers, just the industry and how it’s been affected over the years? PP: When it was originally built, it was just a pulp operation. They cut the trees, cooked them in digesters, then put them in tanker cars and hauled it off. In the 1920's they started to put in the machines. Then it became a pulp and paper. It pretty much dominated the area until the sixties. There were big layoffs. Since then it has had less of an impact on the community. Although still large. It has changed hands twice, well uh,.,.. three times. International paper bought them out and then the employees, the union ran it for awhile, and then Evergreen took it over. Pretty much somewhere along the line it became, it wasn’t near as paternalistic as it was when we were growing up here. RQ: Well basically, as long as, up to the sixties when the Robertson family was in control, and they did maintain the stock control, that's one period that you could see a distinct difference in that in the second period of champion which lasted up till ‘98. Then it became more like industry anywhere else in the country, and the holding company and the employees bought it. And then this is a packaging company now. Evergreen primarily packaging, rather than, they own two paper mills, but that’s incidental I think. JT: Is Evergreen now, is that still the major employer of Canton? RO: Probably the county. PR Yes. The only thing that might compete with it probably is the hospital. JT: Did you work there, at the paper mill? PP: One summer. Osborne and Paxton 3 JT: Can you tell me about some of that. What did you do around the paper mill? PP: I was a college replacement, when people went on vacation I filled in for them. Just for three months, I worked most of the time in the digester room. JT: What’s the digester room? PP: That’s where they cook the pulp. RO: Chips. PP: Chips and turn it into pulp. Then it goes the rest of the way up the mill. The wood is chipped up, then it’s hauled on a conveyor belt up to these large pressure cookers. Then it’s cooked in these cookers. Then "blown out" as they say. So it was pretty hot in there. JT: Sounds like it. Did you work at the paper mill Roland? RO: Worked over there twice. 31 years was the last time I left early on when they announced that the company was selling it. JT: What years? RO: That was ‘98 from '66 to' 98 the second time. JT: What was your job? RO: Most of that time I was an instrument repairman and for the last 5 or 6 years I was, believe it or not, a computer repairman which was simply hardware, we weren’t involved with any at all the software. JT: Was that at the paper mill? RO: Mhmm JT: So instrument repair, what does that necessarily mean for a paper mill? RO: Well process instrumentation, the paper mill is full of processes that have to be controlled. Temperature, pressure, any number of things. PH. The controls that do that are repaired by instrument people. And calibrated. JT: Is it a very specific job? Were there many of you instrument repairmen? RO: It varied. I think at one time we were from [inaudible] there were 30 people in there. But that was not usual. Probably around 20 maybe. Osborne and Paxton 4 JT: When you were in the computers, was that just dealing with the software to run the machines and processes? RO: No, just strictly hardware, we would more or less, if a printer was bad, we would replace it. If we had to have something else done we would call the girls in systems engineering and they were sitting in their terminal and they would take care of that end of it. Wasn’t a whole lot worse than anything else, just changing. JT: You all mentioned the paper mill being the biggest employer of the surrounding area, not in terms of employment, but in terms of community outreach, or volunteer, or just functions in the community, can you all tell me if Champion or the paper mill since throughout its history has been involved in that how it has been? PP: It was involved in quite a bit up until the mid-60s. They built and ran a YMCA. JT: In Canton? PP: In Canton. Pictures where. Caroline Ponton: The old Y we’ve got it over here on this side, I’ll see if I can find it. PP: I can't think of all the things they were involved in. RO: You never knew. I mean to me as far as I was concerned, when the Town of Canton and the mill they were just like this. One was doing one thing and the other was doing another. Everybody that had a handout and went to the company and got something. All the years that they were in existence. PP: They really took care of their employees too. I mean if they had a drinking problem, they got treatment for them. RO: The founder, according to what they say, Mr. Thompson paid for that building out of his pocket rather than even out of the company. About 19, 20 thousand dollars in 1919. JT: Was Thompson from Canton? RO: No, he was from Hamilton, Ohio. He was the founder of the company. JT: So he moved down from Ohio? RO: No, he never did move down here. PP: It was his son-in-law Ruben Robertson that lived down here quite a bit, but. Osborne and Paxton 5 RO: He eventually was president of the company. PP: They had a camp up the head of the Pigeon River, Camp Hope It had quite a few activities for the young people of Canton. Just about all the activities for the young people in Canton revolved around the Y here. RO: Well that was a YMCA Camp. Camp Hope belonged to the YMCA. JT: Any stories I should know? [Laughter] JT: I know you all do. Something that I should I should just know, or something that you all need to be documenting that happened? PP: Well there are hundreds of em, it’s just bringing one to mind. RO: Champion, as far as I know, never fired anybody over drinking. If they let them go, eventually they fired themselves. They went way, way out of the way to keep these employees, and others too. That was just an example. They didn't run people off. JT: It sounds like how involved they were with the community they really needed the people around here to work in the mill. PP: Everything that … when they went to Champion, the high school seniors for their annual, everybody. JT: So would you say the city of Canton was built up around the paper mill? RO: It was hard to tell the difference at times. PP: You can look, at the old pictures there was a town here in 1906, a few houses and stores I think. But then the town really… most of the buildings were built after 1906. RO: And another thing, Canton was an industrial town. Waynesville was a tourist town. Canton had the modern technology long before Waynesville did because everything that the plant required, just short order like telephones. The Canton Telephone and Telegraph Company was here in 1909. Whether anything like that happened in Waynesville, I don't know. As time went on. it was always the same way. Whatever the mill could use in that respect, the town got it. JT: Could you give me some more examples of that? RO: Can you? Osborne and Paxton 6 PP: I can’t think of anything right now. RO: The Champion's waste treatment plant, or the mill waste treatment plant still treats Canton's waste. JT: Do you think the roads and buildings are more modern or are up to date because of paper mill? RO: There was more money here, so it stands to reason. More merchants. JT: When I was coming into town I seen the, I guess that is the Pigeon River running up there. Did the paper mill every use the river for anything? PP: They use it for everything. The river, every drop coming down the river was used for something. RO: And their treatment of it was always state-of-the-art, but the state-of-the-art when they started this Company, they said the day they started it it killed every fish for miles. But like I say, at that time, that was the way it was done. And when they had technology to build a waste treatment plant, they built it. PP: Can you give me some examples of how they use the water inside the paper mill? JT: He’ll have to tell you that. RO: First off steam. Everything in the paper mill requires steam. They’ve always had big boilers over here. Requires… to dry paper you’ve got to have rollers full of steam. All of the washing of the, when the pulp comes out of this digester he’s talking about it’s as black as that. You eventually have it like this, [tapping sounds] so it takes a lot of water to do that. PP: You can look at it, there are some pictures that show what the river before it reaches the Champion, then what little is left of it coming out of Champion. JT: It looked awfully dark to me. PP: You don't know what dark is. But they say, it’s really none in there a lot. Now at the state there to now, a lot of streams that run through heavily wooded areas that are about the same color. So I don't know about that. JT: You mentioned how you all used the river for everything, I guess there was some environmental inspection at the EPA, or anybody ever… Did Champion Paper ever get into any type of trouble for anything? Osborne and Paxton 7 PP: Yes. What happened, there wasn't much said about it until the fifties. R.O. It was the 50s when they built their first waste treatment plant. PP: They built it in the late 50's and early 60's they started cleaning up, I guess that was because the EPA was putting pressure on them. Later there were oven more problems. There were some people that moved in here that didn't like the river. There were threats to even close it down. JT: The whole paper mill? PP: Yeah. JT: How did the community perceive that? The notion to shut the paper mill down? RO: They spent a hell of a lot of money. [laugh] JT: What do you mean? RO: They had all kind of meetings. They even bussed a bunch to Knoxville to one of the hearings over there. That was all Canton people that went over there to be part of that. PP: It was mostly environmentalist that were causing trouble then trouble then. They had the EPA on their side, I suppose. JT. I guess they didn’t win because it’s still over there and still going. What was the final outcome? PP: Yes, and there was also a big modernization effort, that was in the 90s wasn’t it? RO: That’s the only reason that the mill is still here. PP: They spent an awful lot of money. RO: There was a class-action suit from the people down in Tennessee which ended like all class action suits. The lawyers made a bunch of money. PP. Due to the modernization I think they spent about 330 billion dollars, the company did. JT: What type of changes did that consist of? PP: Unfortunately, Carol Jones is not here. [laughter] Osborne and Paxton 8 RO: Mostly in their final bleaching process. The bleach process. PP: Up until about 1960, the river was pretty much black most of the time. RO: Bill grew up down Fibreville which is down the river. Now there were a few good things gained out of this. Right? Bill: Oh yeah. RO: You could throw your dog in the river, and cure the mange. It was a pretty good poison wasn’t it Bill? PP: Nobody has ever seen the bottom of the river, below the Champion. JT: Do you want to tell me some more of these, what else could the river cure? Bill: Well whatever ailed you. Talk to these guys, I don’t get into this. RO: We didn’t grow up down there during that time though. JT: Where did you grow up at Rol? RO: Most years, I was east of here out on Newfound. JT: How about you Phillip? PP: I grew up right in the town. RO: South PP: South I guess. RO: I lived out of town, he lived right on the outskirts of town. JT: The paper mill has been a part of all of your lives for all of it? RO: Sure I rode the work bus to Canton for years for all kind of activities. Cost 15 cents I think. They ran them three times a day, so I mean you went for a shift, so they were handy. And then if people wanted to go to town and come back home at that time you’d just get on a work bus and it would be 15 cents, or at least that’s what mine was. JT: Did your folks work at the mill? Osborne and Paxton 9 RO: My father did. JT: What did he do? RO: He was a pipe fitter. JT: How much do you think the mill changed from him working there to you in the 60s? RO: From the time he started til the time I started, there wasn’t a great deal of difference in that period. Since then of course, like everything, technology and they doing everything as cheap as they can of course. That’s changed a lot of things, and they do with a third of the people, they don't make as much paper, but there was over 3000 people in here back in the heyday. Now what do they claim? A thousand or less? PP: I think so. JT: Now your father worked at the mill too, what did he do? PP: He worked on the paper machines. JT: Can you tell me what he thought of the mill and stuff? How did it affect him? PP: It was pretty much his life. He was pretty much dedicated to it. RO: Well he started at the bottom and ended up at the top. JT: Tell me about that? PP: He started in just at the bottom working the paper machines, and they worked his way up the different grades. By the time he retired he was the supervisor of the No. 20 machine which was one of the modem machines they put in in the fifties. JT: Inside of the paper mill, how does the production work? How many of these machines do they have, I don’t understand the process in the mill I guess. PP: There are six? RO: Now? PP: Yeah, there were six weren’t there. RO: 11,12,13,14,19, and 20. The 19 machine is a board machine, which makes milk carton stock and things like that. The others make paper. Well now 13 and 14 are gone. So, 11 and 12 Osborne and Paxton 10 and 20 are the three paper machines running and then the board machine They all do the same thing. Whatever we were talking about. They put stock on the wire, and they take it off as paper on the other end. PP: How did you guys come here? Which route did you take to come in here? Unknown Speaker: We came down the river. Down 110. PP: If you go back towards the interstate, you'll notice at the end of Champion, there is a large brick buildings, I mean they are many stories high. Those house the 19, 20 machines. They were the Iast ones built. In fact, number 19 was built, this [The YMCA] had to go when that was built. JT: oh okay, it was in the way. PP: And then Champion paid quite a bit to have another YMCA built across the river. You’re familiar with it? JT: Yep. PP: They had to tear down that YMCA. RO: And it was the Robertson memorial museum, which was the president of the company. JT: How big are these machines? RO: They are about 20 feet wide. The length varies as the newer ones are longer than the old ones, because they run faster, but they dry more paper. The 19 machine is one hundred yards long, maybe not quite that long. PP One hundred yards is a pretty good estimate I'd say. JT: That’s a big piece of machinery. RO: You have these dryers in there, that the diameter is that big. Thirty or forty or fifty of those things, like I say, full of steam, but paper goes around every one of them and by the time it gets to the end. it is paper. Dried paper. PP: And it’s usually very humid in with the machines. RO: And always hot. PP: Very noisy too. Osborne and Paxton 11 JT: How long does going into the [mill] to having a piece of paper, how long does that take? Is that a quick process or does that take awhile? PP: They have to chip it, they bring the logs in and then chip them up. JT: I’ve seen the train cars of all those wood chips. RO: They used to chip it here, but they don't chip any, I reckon it all comes in here now in chips. PP: At the time that it was built, it was built here because of the trees. RO: And they had to take the bark off before chipping it back then. They still do, but the mill doesn’t do that. PP: Then it is hauled up in, it’s run up into the digester room, and they cook about half an hour. JT: What do you mean cook? RO: The digester is a big, he mentioned awhile ago, pressure cooker. Big. 15 feet in diameter, or something like that. PP: You can see the building if you look out the window here. RO: Fifty, sixty feet tall. They filled it full of chips, takes a heck of a lot of them, and they put liquor in it, as they call it, which is mostly caustic. And then they put steam in it, and under pressure they cook it, for I don’t know ½ hour, 45 minutes something like that. That’s what a digester does. nowadays, they have continuous digesters where they feed em in one end and it comes out the other. These are [weir backs] digesters and everyone of them has to be filled and then emptied. JT: What does a digester do to the chips? RO: Well it breaks them down into a fiber essentially. JT: From that fiber where does it….? RO: It’s washed and washed and washed, and then it is bleached and bleached and bleached. PP: They have a whole section called the bleachery. RO: And then eventually it is pumped to the paper machine, mostly water, 90% some percent water. Comes out on that wire, and when it comes off it is paper. Osborne and Paxton 12 JT: Do we have pictures here, I guess we could find them of the machine. RO: Oh we’ve got plenty, but now finding them at a moment’s notice. Putting me on the spot. Caroline Ponton: I can pull some of the older ones that are. RO: They are all alike, just paper, you’ve seen one paper machine you’ve seen them all. PP: They eventually come off in big, how wide are those rolls? RO: It’s about 20 feet long. 200 and some inches. All these are the same width by the way. Even the oldest, which was on purpose so they can use the same rolls and they can wind paper off of one machine on to another. JT: Is that a pretty effective process the way they make the paper? RO: It comes off in a big huge roll and it gets so big and they take a big air hose and blow it up into the air, and put on another roll and then they take that one off and then they’ve got what they call winders there, which are… they trim it into different size rolls They don't use many 200 inch rolls of paper, so they can trim it into… CP: I’m going to pull some more up to date ones, that’s what I just grabbed a hold of, but I’ll see what I’ve got back here. RO: Now this is the bleach plant, this is making bleach. And they don’t have it anymore. JT: Making bleach? What does the bleach do? RO: Changes that dark color pulp into white. PP: This white is what. JT: Okay. RO: There is probably a big difference in the whiteness. JT: This one is glossier. I guess you guys know good paper when you feel it don’t you? Unknown Speaker: Roland you said a couple times about going on the wire. What’s that wire like, is it like a screen wire kind of thing? RO: It used to be a wire. A bronze, or whatever, wire. And very expensive and they didn’t last very long. And now they use a nylon or synthetic, but it’s still essentially the same thing, like a screen door wire, a little much more fine of course. Osborne and Paxton 13 Unknown Speaker: Wound around the felt? RO: No, a roll. There’s big rolls, there’s a couch roll on the end which is a vacuum. It’s got thousands of holes in it and that’s the last thing. Then you got what’s called table rolls up there. Each one of those swings, catches along that wire and slings it off. And then after a little while you've got vacuum trays that were in there they've got a vacuum but then also a real sharp edge here and it shears that off. So the whole thing is to dry that paper where it will support itself by the end of that wire, which is not 50 feet I guess. But when it comes gets to the end they can take it off and it will support itself for the first felt. Then it goes through the dryers, which are 125, 135 pounds of steam. PP You can hear the steam blowing off when they release it. A lot of what you see and you think it's smoke coming it's really steam. Unknown Speaker: Coming off the dryer? PP It's not pollution it is steam. RO: Now that's another interesting thing these electrostatic precipitators on the coal boilers. A boiler permits allows and they have to about two or three hours of what they call slow firing. When you have a boiler down you can't just maybe bring it up slow for about four hours and during that time you don't worry about the smoke and you see black smoke occasionally coming out and that's what's going on. If you’re standing right over here looking and that smoke by boiling out of there black as your hat, when they throw that switch, I mean it's practically instant. There's no gradual to it that's how well they work. JT: Interesting. RO: And they haul off I think as I understand it about 100,000 pounds of it. It's coming out of these precipitators every day to the landfill. And they've never found to this day anything to use that for. Unknown Speaker: Is this a bunker here? RO: It's getting ready to go to the chipper. It's on up in there it's been barked because they just dump it in the barking drum. JT: This process sounds like a messy process with all the water dealing with all the water and the bleach and stuff it just sounds like a messy process. PP: Well I guess it is. [Laughter] JT: Is it? Did you all ever get dirty when you were working? Osborne and Paxton 14 RO: I never stayed clean. But I have known people that amazingly and they did their job to they didn't back down from the job just stayed nice and clean doing it for the most part. But most of us were not able to do that. PP: The upper end is cleaner than the lower end. RO: The upper end is the finished product. Now there is a Trostle which is a byproduct is a soap they use it in soap manufacturing. It's the nastiest stuff you've ever seen in your life you get in there working in there and your clothes will be you can't stand it. Throw them in the washing machine, they'll come clean. JT: What is it? RO: I don't really know what it is it's a byproduct off of paper manufacturing. They make soap out of it. It’s called Trostle, I guess George Trostle I suppose. And turpentine is a big. They sell a lot of turpentine. JT: Does it come from the process too? RO: Pine doesn't come out of the hardwood. JT: I didn't know turpentine was a part of that. PP: Well sure you have turpentine coming from pine trees. RO: Here is the digester room. It's a long building so you notice it's pretty hot. JT Where we at now in the in the museum where is the museum located compared to this? RO: It's along the roof like that on it’s a tall, big building. And that turpentine if you go up on the digester floor I worked up there one morning went back there when I was done by the time I was done I was about sick. Went over and I told my daddy about that and he said well that turpentine makes me sick. So it does in a lot of people. It got him and it would get me if I spent a lot of time in that. Now when you work on the hardwood end and all day long. Unknown Speaker: So it's just the vapor that gets to you? RO: And of course it's very dangerous they've been very lucky. They had one bad fire that just about got ‘em, but luckily it didn’t. Bill Roland: They used to go tap those trees down the highway to get the sap and get the turpentine. if you tear those trees up over here you don’t have to drain the sap, you just get it out of the process. Osborne and Paxton 15 RO: I will say this about the paper mill, and I’ve always said, and I don’t have any reason to doubt it. If you cannot recover the chemicals that you use to make paper with, the liquors as I said, then you can’t afford to run a paper mill. And these two, the tallest buildings down here are what they call recovery boilers. All of this stuff that comes out off of these bleaching it goes to the evaporators and enough water is taken out of that to where it will burn. And then that’s the fuel for those two boilers, normally. I mean that’s what they use oil to supplement it at times and this that and the other. But basically they are burning black liquor that’s been evaporated to where it will burn. And then the fallout from all of that then, in the bottom, they take that out and they put it back in their liquor making process, start all over again, breaking the fibers down. JT: So they are very resourceful. RO: Well they have to be, they can’t, like I say, the paper manufacturing wouldn’t be economically feasible if you didn’t do that. JT: What do you got there Phillip? PP: This is the digester, looking at it from the other side of town. JT: So we’re over on this side I guess. PP: We’re over here. And this is the lower end of the mill. This is where the woods cut up, and this is a chute that they bring, it has a conveyor belt in it and it brings the chips up to the digester room and then they dump it down into the pressure cookers from up here and then they cook it and you can see how high they are. RO: It’s just like a big coal bin up there. The shape of that building you can tell, all of them, they just conveyed up there like you said, and they just feed it down, like you would a coal or anything else. JT: How much of the chips do the pressure cookers hold? What is the proper name? RO: Digesters. JT: Digesters. PP: They cook it and then release the steam. When they used to release the steam you’d think the world had come to an end. RO: Up at North Canton school, you heard it every time they did it. It would be about every 20 minutes they’d let one of them off. [laughter] It was a hell of a noise. They’ve got mufflers on them now that help. Osborne and Paxton 16 PP: Well you can see it’s several stories high. JT: Well I heard you talking about them. Can you all tell me what you all remember when you all were younger, before you all worked there and stuff. Do you remember your school years and growing up about the paper mill? PP: I just noticed something here if I can find it again. There’s George Price, they sponsored a softball team that won a number of championships. Softball and other sports were very big here. RO: I played on a basketball team at the Y, that won the North, South Carolina state championship. A pretty big thing you know, and like I say everything about it was paid for. They’d put us on the bus or in a car or whatever and we’d get off and they'd give us a couple dollars to eat on. Mom and Dad didn't worry about you, they knew that you were well-cared for. We went all over, just to play a ball game. JT: The paper mill was a big part of that? RO: The Y was the paper mill at that time. Anybody disagree with that? [everybody shook their heads] The Y was the paper mill. They furnished the steam, they finished them water, they furnished them electricity, and they furnished the people to worked on it. JT: And then they furnished the people to use it pretty much. RO: They Y paid the employees, but that was kind of minor compared to all the rest of that. PP: It’s hard to know just everything that the Champion was doing in the town. BR: I was in the high school band. Before the high school had a band, Champion had a band. And we used to have, the fellow who played the tuba, in the Champion band, who worked at Champion, who got time off to come and practice with us in the high school and play with us. So it was that kind of thing between us. RO: These ball players he’s talking about, if they missed a shift, they didn’t miss the pay. PP: And most of them worked either for the Champion or for the YMCA. JT: Did they recruit people to come be on their team? RO: Yeaah, a little bit. BR: They were what you call semi pro. Osborne and Paxton 17 RO: They would give a man a good job if he wanted it. JT: Did you have to be good at baseball. RO: If he’s pretty good they expect him to play I guess. PP: They brought in a couple of pitchers like Bill Bearden. RO: Wade Garrett. It was a wonderful place, I’ve said this, it was a wonderful place to grow up. There wasn’t a better place in the world to grow up than Canton, North Carolina during the 40’s and 50’s I don't think. JT: Why do you say that? RO: Well, it was perfectly safe, there was no…. I was ten years old and walked down here to the movie at night. No one worried about it. It was a safe place, the Y took care of everything from swimming to whatever. Your parents didn't have a worry in the world, they knew where you were. PP: Yeah, the Y offered swimming classes. RO: I bet there are thousands of people that learned to swim in the old Y over the years. PP: And in the summer they hauled us off to Camp Hope. RO: That was just a minimal charge. JT: Did World War Two, did it change how the mill operated? RO: During the war, certainly, JT: What did it do during the war? RO: The man power shortage, they had to replace a lot of men with women like everybody else in the country. JT: Did they keep on producing paper during the war? RO: Even during the Depression. They had to be innovative about. Their delivery trucks and all like that running on solid tires, but they just. JT: To what extent did the Depression effect Canton? PP: Canton was probably better off than a lot places during the Depression. Osborne and Paxton 18 JT: Was that in part because of the paper mill? PP: Yes, a lot of places that had mills they weren’t running them anymore. JT: They didn’t stop them once during the Depression? PP: I don’t know, did they slow down some? RO: They may have had to at times. PP: I think my father said that didn't work a full forty-hour week or whatever it was sometimes. Whatever they did, they got their 50 cents an hour. RO: Another little interesting thing back in those days, starting at five years, when you’d been there five years they added 5% or nickel one, 5% I think, to your base pay. Ten years you got 10%, after you’d been there 25 years, you had 25% added no matter what your job was. So they valued the time that people. JT: They took care of you too. RO: And the company store was unlike most company stores in that day. You’ve heard you owe your soul to the company. This one, if you got more than two weeks behind they would cut you off until you caught it up. I mean they didn’t throw you out and kick you out or anything like that, they just didn’t give you any more credit. They wouldn't let you get into debt to them. In as much as some people tried. People would had a problem of one kind or another, needed a little money, they would buy something that somebody else would buy from them, they’d go over here and get credit and sell it for less than they paid for it, not much you can do about that. JT: So that YMCA is not there anymore? RO: No. Unknown Speaker: He says this is the company store over here, right beside the old Y. RO: Started there in ’63 or something like that. JT: Sounds like that was a big part of the community. RO: it was the center of the community. Wouldn’t you say Bill? Back then. BR: The Y and the company store together they were the community. Osborne and Paxton 19 [Laughter] JT: Did Champion build a lot of mill houses around here, or is there… BR: I grew up in one. JT: Is there a lot? PP: There were about a hundred or so. RO: Down there? PP: Yeah. RO: And well you know they had houses all over town you remember. They weren’t as well known. But they had houses all over town and when they decided to sell, if you had lived there for some time, they calculated the rent that you had paid and they deducted that from the price of the house. I had an aunt and an uncle that lived in one forever and they bought it for practically nothing because of that. PP: They tore down the lower houses, in Fibreville after the flood in 1940. RO: But there were what, 50 or more houses down there. BR: Seems like I counted 60 some down in that whole area one time. RO: Even on the river side of the road down there, there were houses in there then. PP: There was a hill behind it, if you go up the hill, and the housing got better and at the top. RO: Well they said the middle management lived down on Thompson Street, and on in the PP: And the top management lived on the top. RO: Just like any other mill town. You would be hard pressed to find anybody where people stayed for one company as long as they used to be here. Once they got a job, they just stayed. If they did it halfway right they had a job, and. JT: Sounds to me like the paper mill is very good for this community. RO: Certainly worked well for them too. BR: Practically no turnover in their labor force. So you can imagine, if you have no turnover in a labor force the labor just gets better. Osborne and Paxton 20 PP: And they had an old timers, wouldn’t call it a club, but every year at Camp Hope they’d have a big meal for them. RO: They had a house near here that they could go to anytime they wanted to right. PP: Not only did they look after them while they were working, they looked after them after they retired. RO: Way back in the old days, how people did put up with this and stay on, you start, the line of progression on a paper machine, you worked on every machine. You was seventh hand on 14 and you moved to seventh hand on 13 and got a little raise and you went to 12 and you went to 11. Then you go back here as a sixth hand. Well now after the union came out here they changed that around and you just stayed on one machine so you moved up on it a lot quicker. But it took forever for his daddy to go from wherever he started. All his life. But he knew what he was doing when he got there. JT: These hands you are talking about, there is a third hand, fourth hand, fifth hand. RO: Yeah, there was, and still are over there. Nowadays they have 7 on each. JT: So is seventh hand the lowest. PP: Mhmm. He’s the beginner. BR: And the top is machine tender. RO: He’s got a nice air conditioned office. For the most part he just sits there and watches. Until something goes to hell. It’s like one real smart man said I can run any job in this mill, as long as it’s run good. PP: My father spent over 20 years doing that and he finally made it to machine tender and I think he’s only got about a year and they started number 20 machine and so he was disappointed because he couldn’t stay longer as a machine tender because it was an easy job. JT: Well, we can talk afterwards, but for the interview sake I’ll cut it a little bit short and not let it get awfully long. Is there anything else that for the university or for me, what information should be the final takeaway? RO: They paid a hell of a lot of people’s tuition down at Western Carolina College over the years I can tell you that. And other colleges too. JT: Will they want to help me out? Osborne and Paxton 21 RO: Over the years it’s been a lot of them paid for by Champion employees, their children. JT: Any last things? PP: I can’t think of anything right now except what he said, a lot of people went to college because of Champion, like me. JT: Where did you go? PP: Wake Forest. JT: What did you get a degree in? PP: Mathematics. JT: Where did you go? BR: King college, physics. JT: And they paid for both of you all. Did you go? You just stayed down here and worked? RO: I was too dumb to go to college. PP: I didn’t have to worry about money when I was in college. END OF INTERVIEW
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Oral Histories of Western North Carolina

These interviews document the communities and culture of Western North Carolina. Topics include the building of the Fontana Dam, the history of WCU, stories from local veterans, integration of the...

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