Families as Consumers

Archaeology along Front Street aimed at a better understanding of the living conditions of mill families during the early twentieth century. The unexpected discovery of several privies and related features give us a unique chance to study these millworkers' “material culture” (or objects they used). In examining the thousands of artifacts that made up part of their material culture (many times more did not make their way to the features we excavated), we focused on a few major questions. Given the time period of the archaeological deposits, we were especially interested in finding out how millworkers and their families participated in the expanding consumerism of the early twentieth century. This extended to mill families' consumer choices and whether they were influenced by the constant company presence even after work hours.

Rural Roots and Tradition

Many of the families that lived at Sites 44PY178 and 44PY181 had agricultural roots. By the late nineteenth century, they were increasingly exposed to a rapidly changing industrial society (Guilland 1971:66–67, 70, 73). Their experiences may not have been too different from those of some families living in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Studies of ceramics from nineteenth-century house sites in that community suggest that residents responded to increasingly available mass-produced goods. They purchases also seem to have been influenced by changes in community values and certain social "rituals" (or fashions) involving ceramic forms (Lucas and Shackel 1994:29, 32). Families responded to socioeconomic change differently; some maintained traditional dining customs, while others adopted new dining rituals and fashionable wares. The presence of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century ceramic types like creamware and pearlware at Site 44PY181 suggests possible differences in consumer behavior between the earliest occupants and those who followed. This may reflect economic differences between early and later mill households, or a desire to maintain traditional customs by some families despite changing fashions (Lucas and Shackel 1994).

Ceramic types and general refuse disposal patterns at Site 44PY181 reflect possible differences in consumer behavior between early and late residents. The earliest artifacts (creamware, pearlware, whiteware) came from Site 44PY181, which is consistent with documentary evidence that the first houses were built on the north side of Front Street. Artifact scatters found at the back of the property and along the east side of the of the property may be associated with the Hill and Poplin households who occupied the site beginning in the early 1890s. Some of the recovered ceramics, such as edged, painted, and printed whiteware, were produced into the 1860s and 1870s, whereas the creamware and pearlware examples probably date to the late eighteenth and/or early nineteenth centuries. During the early nineteenth century, decorated wares (hand-painted, printed) were more expensive than undecorated examples (Miller 1980). The 44PY181 assemblage may represent items purchased toward the close of the nineteenth century, or perhaps heirloom pieces from earlier generations. Some families seem to have brought earlier traditions with them to the mill community. During this early period, maintaining tradition may have been possible with longer-term stability on Front Street than for occupants during the 1920s and 1930s. These later residents probably had a quite different consumer experience, as innovations in manufacturing and distribution made goods cheaper and more accessible. Their attraction to new and fashionable products, however, was still a seed planted by previous generations and grew despite periods of economic uncertainty.

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Mass Production, Marketing, and Consumers

Consumerism in America had its beginnings as early as the mid-eighteenth century if not earlier. “From the 1750s Chesapeake colonists were inundated with an unprecedented flow of nonessential consumer goods, including a wide variety of textiles, ceramic dining wares, cutlery, mirrors, and time pieces, some of which free families, middling and poor as well as rich, eagerly embraced, for reasons of both practicality and social utility” (Walsh 1997:149).

The decades following the Civil War were generally a period of economic struggle for many small farms in Virginia's southern Piedmont. The mill offered debt relief that the farm could not. Railroads undoubtedly factored into the region's gradual rebirth after the Civil War and were instrumental in Riverside Mill's success. The Danville and Richmond Railroad and its successors transported both people and goods into and out of Danville and the rest of the southern Piedmont. The increased shipment of goods, fostered by industrial growth in the eastern United States, only intensified consumer appetite. Consumerism began in the region during the previous century, but its dramatic expansion after the Civil War was made possible by the rail system.

In late nineteenth-century America there was "a dramatic output of goods ... [and] a steady decline in prices...; the period 1865–1897 remains the longest unbroken era of deflation in American history” (Klein 1994:15). A vast array of new, affordable products were shipped by rail and offered by store merchants and mail order catalogs. It was in this economic setting that the Danville and Richmond Railroad connected the inhabitants of Danville and its outlying communities with important commercial centers in North Carolina, and northward with Richmond and beyond. Acquiring new and improved goods may have been a gradual process for many of the earliest families. Most may have been more excited by the prospects of steady employment and better living conditions. This sentiment is expressed in a letter written in 1913 by an operative to a relative back home:

Hit's true about the mills having jobs, jist like the man said. Your family of 9 would really be welcome 'cause they have plenty of openings here at Schoolfield. I wish I had 'acome a long time before. After they opened in 1902 they even built houses for the workers. At first they had jist 10 houses but now there is lots more'n at.....If you ever decide to bring your family, come on. We will give you lodging and help you git settled. It ain't bad a 'tall. We have 3 rooms in our house in walking distance to work and there's a' out house no more'n 50 feet from the back door. We even git free toilet paper and light bulbs (quoted from Thompson 1984:8).

After the Civil War, consumer mind set was increasingly shaped by the availability of mass-produced goods brought about through technological improvements and improved transportation via roads and rail. The number, diversity, and origin of household and personal goods increased dramatically due to these developments and whetted consumer appetites for more diverse, mass-produced items from national and international sources (Adams 1991; Bedell et al. 1994; Stewart-Abernathy 1986). Family aspirations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries mirrored those of earlier times, but were fueled by a vast array of available inexpensive, mass-produced goods brought about by industrialization. The recovery of once expensive porcelain dolls and teawares, for example, attests to “....the falling price of manufactured consumer goods in the later nineteenth century [and] obscured the class differences...” among those within the consumer ranks. In some ways, assemblages reflect the residents choices to participate in the market economy rather than status differences. "Industrialization redefined the experience of all Americans, and even the ordinary citizens of Teddy Roosevelt's generation saw and did things the richest of George Washington's compatriots could scarcely have imagined” (Bedell et al. 1994:54).

The Great Depression has traditionally—almost nostalgically—been portrayed as a period of utmost scarcity of goods; precipitating the household phrase “making the best with what we have” (Barnard 1995:9). Historian Rita Barnard and others suggest, however, that even the devastating economic effects of the Great Depression did not significantly dampen consumer aspirations or appetite to the extent that one might think. During this period modern consumerism as we know it today emerged, the beginning of a "‘culture of abundance,’ ... in which the strategic element is no longer production, but consumption” (Barnard 1995:9). Barnard also notes: “... it was in the twenties and thirties that the characteristic institutions and habits of consumer culture—the motion picture, the radio, the automobile, the weekly photo-news magazine, installment buying, the five-day work week, suburban living, ...the self-service supermarket—assumed the central position they still occupy in American life”. The standardization of marketing strategies through supermarkets and regional and national chain stores as well as commercial broadcasts through mass media outlets like magazines, radio, and movie theaters helped to fuel consumer desires (Barnard 1995:16). To varying degrees, this new face on consumerism touched the lives of Danville's mill community through newspapers, radio, and later, television. Family shopping trips were usually to retailers in Schoolfield but sometimes included excursions “down town” to large department stores such as Thalheimers and Belk-Leggett.

The benefits of industrialization for the consumer, even those of very modest means, is reflected at Sites 44PY178 and 44PY181 by the diversity of recovered items, especially in glass containers. Glass bottles and jars represent the most prolific artifact class on the site. The full automation of glass container manufacturing beginning in 1903 increased production efficiency and output. This advancement led to greater standardization of bottles in weight and capacity and “assured both retailers and consumers that they were not being cheated in the sale of bottled products” (Busch 1991:119).

Lower prices combined with changes in American life to expand the bottle market. Urbanization and a rising standard of living expanded the markets for products that were formerly produced at home, such as liquor and canned food, and for products that were previously consumed in small quantities, such as patent medicine and carbonated beverages. Glass container use grew along with the increased demand for packaging of all kinds. With the development of roads, canals, steamboats, and railroads, more packaging was needed to protect and preserve goods during shipment. Sealed glass containers helped to assure consumers that the contents were pure and sanitary. Brand names on bottles reinforced consumer confidence. Packaging was also adopted to make it easier for customers to bring home and store their purchases (Busch 1991:114).

The general abundance of bottles led most people to dispose of them with little thought; however, thrifty individuals encouraged reuse for home and business. A housewife observed in 1916: “There is a vast array of bottles and jars accumulated in the course of a few months in the average home, in which pickles, cream cheese, dried beef, and various other kinds of edibles are sold, and there is a vast array of uses to which they can be put instead of being thrown away” (Farmer 1916:89–90, quoted from Busch 1991:119). Empty beer and soda bottles were filled with homemade sauces, fruit wine, corn beer, root beer, and other “exhilarating drinks” (Anonymous 1902:84, quoted from Busch 1991:117).

At Sites 44PY178 and 44PY181, the numerous recovered beer, wine, and liquor bottles and shot glasses suggest frequent use of alcoholic beverages. Such containers were also suitable to reuse for storing homemade beverages and condiments. The business of illegally refilling branded bottles of legitimate retailers was a problem of serious economic proportion recognized by the federal government. This practice, particularly acute during and soon after Prohibition, prompted the federal government in 1935 to require all liquor bottles to be embossed “Federal Law Forbids Sale or Re-Use Of This Bottle.” (Busch 1991:121). During the early twentieth century, bottles (i.e., milk , soda, beer) embossed with the name of the retailer were considered to be property of the retailer and consumers were “obligated” to return them to help lower costs. Speciality bottles such as these had not benefited from the level of automation in manufacture as other types, and were more expensive to produce (Busch 1991:119–120; Miller and Sullivan 1981:10). Still, most were either discarded, or sold to second hand bottle dealers. Eventually, the more widespread practice of deposits on returnable bottles provided more incentive for individuals and families to retain bottles with value, especially as economic times tightened.

The occupants of Sites 44PY178 and 44PY181 may have benefited from the deposit system. However, the quantity of returnable and/or reusable bottles and other saleable items (i.e., pots) suggests either simply a lack of need or desire to redeem them for cash, or a lack of access to scavengers to whom they could sell (Busch 1991:124). However, discard patterns suggest large-scale dumping of empty bottles and other refuse into Site 44PY178 and 44PY181 privies during the period 1920–1950, especially during the years leading up to and during the Depression. This activity corresponds to the generally high turnover rate that characterized tenements and is consistent with the period of high turnover on the Front Street properties. “Left-over trash requires disposal, and the privy serves as an opportunistic midden for the wholesale discard of one group's trash by the newcomers to the site” (Wheeler 2000:12).

The long reach of the railroad, and eventually the interstate road system, was crucial in making accessible a world of affordable goods to families living along Front Street and elsewhere in Danville. Many nonlocal products likely came via the Danville and Western Railroad, which later became the Southern Railroad. These were long a part of the community's economic lifeline and brought forth many a new worker to the mills (Thompson 1984:9). Improved roads and highways facilitated truck transportation of commercial goods, and “slowly but surely the age of steam was yielding to the gasoline age” (Latham 1972:70). Danville's merchants advertised for truckers' business (see Figure 77). The products brought forth by the trucking industry and the railroad that made their way to the occupants of Sites 44PY178 and 44PY181 originated in Norfolk, Virginia; Winston-Salem, Charlotte, Raleigh, and Rocky Mount, North Carolina; Boston, Massachusetts; Florida; New York; and undoubtedly numerous other places. The purchase of non–locally made fruit juices, tonics, and other “imported” products such as these provided a high degree of choice that did not exist in other aspects of the mill workers' lives. Income and job stability, however, likely influenced the extent to which families could participate as consumers.

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Mill Company Influence on Consumer Behavior

The degree of influence the mill company had over the material aspects of workers lives, especially workers living outside the village, has yet to be thoroughly explored through archaeology. The Front Street residents, who lived in mill-owned houses, probably made some, if not most, of their household purchases from company-affiliated merchants (Thompson 1984:30). According to recollections of former Schoolfield residents, the Company Store and other businesses sold “just about everything,” including clothing, fabric, shoes, furniture, toys, groceries, medications, and other items. The overall range of goods suggests a high degree of choice, but the true degree of choice compared to outside retailers warrants further study. The transient nature of mill work may have made transporting larger household belongings difficult. The potential for job loss and eviction may have limited the desire of some families to invest too heavily in household furnishings. Clearly, some Front Street residents held onto their jobs in the mill but still moved to other mill houses with frequency. Moves do not seem to be necessarily tied to promotions but nonetheless were probably initiated and/or approved by the company. As mentioned earlier, some families may have swapped house to meet the needs of a growing family, or because of economic considerations. For some families, conditions seemed to have improved once they became homeowners in the years following World War II. Further research may shed light on this aspect of life in the community and the implications it had on the material life of workers.

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Comparison with Other Mill Towns

Domestic life at Sites 44PY178 and 44PY181 appears to have been similar to that at the contemporary Sampson textile mill village house site (38GR190) in Greenville, South Carolina. This includes similar household goods and other items as well. Dietary aspects of the Sampson mill village community and the Front Street residents included fresh meat and vegetables, though canned food was a particularly important aspect of their diet. “Many of the [mill] informants mentioned that people had gardens in the rear yard. This was a source of spring and summer vegetables. Garden vegetables were also canned for use in the winter months. The sparsity of animal bone at the mill village has also been noted....Informants remembered that very few people raised poultry or cows, although a pasture and a cow barn was provided by the mill” (Adams et al. 1993:64). Overall, botanical and faunal evidence from Sites 44PY178 and 44PY181 indicates that the diet of the Front Street tenants may have been quite varied.

The relative sparsity of architectural items recovered from Sites 44PY178, 44PY181, and 38GR190 provide insight into mill housing. Researchers at the Sampson Village site suggest that the low percentage may be due to the substantialness of mill housing compared to other tenant houses. However, the low percentage of architectural items recovered from Sites 44PY178 and 44PY181 may be the result of the structures having stood for a long time, during which there was little alteration or significant improvement even though the structures were generally maintained.

The occupants of the three sites shared similar leisure activities, activities that were familiar to others in the community. The recovery of marbles, doll parts, pieces from toy tea sets, a toy gun, phonograph record fragments, and other items reflect the play of children and household diversions that were an important part of domestic life in the mill community (Adams et al. 1993:64, 65; Higgins et al. 1999:50). Marbles was played “in the bare spots in the yard where the grass had been totally worn out”; other games, some of which extended into the evenings, included hide-and-seek and kick-the-can. “We spent hours on each other's porch,” recalls Mrs. Newman, “swinging and singing, playing jack rocks or pick up sticks. They [neighbors] looked after each other's children. In the late afternoon, parents would sit on the porch and visit with each other.... On Sundays during the summer, we would go up the street to my grandparents or they would come to our house and we would make homemade ice-cream in our wooden freezer....”

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Aspirations for a Better Life

The breadth of the Front Street artifact assemblages and their links to retailers in Danville and beyond indicate that the occupants aspired to improve the quality and conditions of life for themselves and their families. This included a varied diet and perhaps a conscious effort to improve their health through the consumption of nutritional foods. Traditional Southern fare—sausage, bacon, biscuits and gravy, cornbread—was probably not absent from the kitchen tables of these families. It was supplemented, however, with plenty of vitamin-rich vegetables and fruit that helped to stave off the devastating nutritionally based diseases which ravaged earlier generations (Beardsley 1987). Botanical evidence from Sites 44PY178 and 44PY181 suggests that fresh fruits and vegetables (i.e., strawberry, raspberry, black walnut, bean) were part of their diets. These may have been grown in small kitchen gardens or were purchased from local grocery stores such as Jones Market or Riley's Market in Schoolfield. Local markets and dairies probably supplied most of the milk, butter, and eggs consumed by the families, but some may have been purchased from members of the community who raised cows and chickens (Thompson 1984:27). The abundance of container glass indicates that they ate home-canned produced as well as commercially prepared food. Recovered faunal remains indicate their diets included fresh meats such as beef, chicken, pork, and perhaps rabbit and duck.

I arranged credit with the company furniture store the first day. Four of my folks already had jobs waiting when we got here and they went to work the very next day. Nancy and Ella weren't quite old enough but they are large and wear long dresses so they looked old enough to me and so I told the man they were old enough. We need the money. I told them that our house had burned and the Bible with the family records burned, too. Anyway, after a few days we had beds, a table, a wood stove, a cabinet, a dresser, and some iron pots, vessels and a few dishes (soup plates mostly). Before we got it all together we just had boxes and barrels in the kitchen (quoted from Thompson 1984:10).

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Indicators of Health and Hygiene

The recovery of toothbrush and comb fragments at Sites 44PY178 and 44PY181 reflect some efforts to improve individual and family health through better hygiene. However, regular hand washing and proper disposal of waste likely proved difficult because of the lack of improvement in sanitation during company ownership of the property (Thompson 1984:25–27). The enduring privy tradition in the midst of sewer improvements was perhaps due to objections of tenants concerned with higher rents, or the abandonment of a long-held custom, but it more likely rested with the business strategy of the company which would incur the initial costs of sewer connections. Resistance to improved sanitation over so long a period may have contributed to illnesses in some households on Front Street, even though no evidence of parasitic infections was found in the archaeological samples.

Early efforts to eradicate parasitic diseases within mill communities through education and medicine may have led to better health among the Front Street residents, despite their long reliance on privies (Beardsley 1987:51–54). Efforts to provide relief from stomach ailments and other conditions must have occurred, however, based upon the use of self-help patent medicines and prescription drugs obtained from community physicians and pharmacists (Veit 1996:33). The occupants may have visited the Schoolfield clinic but probably only after over-the-counter remedies failed to alleviate their discomfort. Mothers and adolescent daughters may have struggled to improve their own health and comfort beyond that of the rest of the family. Gynecological care was poorly developed in the late nineteenth century and had advanced little by the early decades of the following century. “Many afflicted women lived lives of pain and seclusion because of the ignorance and prudery of the male medical profession” (Veit 1996:40). These aspects of health, along with the long-term, unsanitary conditions of backyard landscapes, provide a dismal image of life along Front Street consistent with Edward Beardsley's “...history of neglect...” characterization of the treatment of the early twentieth-century Southern textile mill population.

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Conclusions

The archaeology of life on Front Street, however, has revealed much more about the conditions of mill life than one might imagine. The early twentieth-century notion that “mill workers came only with what they could carry and left behind little” is perhaps too simplistic a view of their lives, especially as the early twentieth century progressed and consumer possibilities broadened. As consumers, their aspirations grew, even against the backdrop of the Great Depression, to obtain products of innovation that made life easier and more comfortable. For some families such as the Kirbys of Schoolfield, this may not have been fully realized until the years following World War II. It can be argued that the textile industry's goal to “heighten materialistic consumer interests...” for its workers was achieved, and this helped to make life more tolerable, as did the strong bonds of family and community which extended well beyond material things (Zingraff 1991:202).