You Have to Figure Every Penny - 1938

First in a series of three installments. CHRONOS student historians interview Connecticut residents during the Great Depression. Interested in submitting your own student post?  See the information for students in the menu on the right. 

November 3, 1938

G. Morrell

Interview with Elizabeth Newsome

Thomaston, Connecticut

Like most rural areas, the city of Thomaston was hit hard by the Great Depression.  This small Connecticut town was once booming, but now it has widespread unemployment and industrial decline. One of the biggest employers, the Thomaston Knife Company, burned down and the city’s main industry, clock making was declining at the same time.  Many people lost their jobs.  The goal on this trip is to dig a bit deeper and see what impact this had on the lives of people living in Thomaston -- not just the factory employees, most of whom were male, but also the women in the town.  

You can see the old factory from where Mrs. Elizabeth Newsome lives. Her "double" house is on a hill just above the Waterbury highway.  She’s about 75 now, but she worked for many years at the factory.  She seems a little suspicious of me at first, but when I explain that I’m interviewing people to learn about the knife making industry, she welcomes me..  

“Why, I'll be glad to 'elp you if I can. Lord, I 'aven't thought much about the knife business lately. Seems as if it's died out completely the last few years. And look what it's done to this 'ere village. Half the people are gettin' 'elp from the town, if they ain't on the WPA. This chap next door, 'e ain't workin'.

"Now what's the cause of it all, young man? Suppose you give me some information. Here was a good, thrivin' trade, employin' a good many people down here in the village, payin' 'em pretty good money and all of a suddenty like it just come to a stop. The business failed here, and some of them that were workin' here went up to Walden, N.Y., and other towns and worked for a while, but it was startin' to get slack in those other places, too, and now it's about finished, so they say.

"Some say one thing and some say another. Some say it was those twenty cent foreign knives that done it. Lord, they couldn't buy the material that cheap here. Whatever it was it's fair discouragin' to see people's livelihood taken away from 'em.”

“What was it like, working in the knife making business?” I ask.

"I worked more than twenty eight years at the business. First in the American Knife Company and then over here across the road. And that ain't countin' the time I spent at it in the Old Country. I s'pose you could tell I was born and raised over there, couldn't you? My stepfather was a blade forger. I done the etching. Used to do it at home, before I went to work in the factory.

"I did quite a bit of work for the Northfield Knife Company, when the Catlins owned it. Time they had the strike up there, I had some of their work here at home. My husband--he was a grinder--he says to me 'Liz,' he says, 'I wouldn't lay a hand to that work till the bloody thing is settled, one way or the other. If they want it, let 'em come and get it.' But they never came after it. I had them knives in the house all durin' the strike, and when the factory started runnin' again, I finished 'em up.

"They stuck together, the knifemakers did, until the last few years. Then they began to get a lot of younger help, and put in some machines and like that. My son worked there, and my two grandsons, over across the road, and I was forelady, in charge of the women help. Mostly cleanin' and packin', was what the women did, you understand. But over in the old country, years ago, there used to be women could do a good many of the operations same as men. Except the blade forgin'. I never heard of a woman blade forger. But it was the custom, one time, when there was a good bit of work, for the men to bring some of it home and have their wives and daughters help ‘em with it. I've seen a good bit of that myself. Fine knives, they made, too, none better. Learned the trade right, and could make a knife from the first operation to the last, a good many of them.

"Now when this little shop was a goin' strong, there was easy seventy-five or eighty people workin'. Look what that meant to the village. All them people bringin' in good pay every week. Reynolds Bridge was a pretty prosperous place, young man, and look at it now. Can't even support a store. Look at this factory over there where the knife shop used to be. That ain't any help to the village.” Mrs. Newsome referred to the Bakelite factory that had been built in the place of the burned-down Thomaston Knife Company. ”The man that owns it does most of the work 'imself. 'E as one or two men 'elpin' 'im sometimes, but I don't think 'e gives 'em steady work. 'E just about keeps goin', that's all. What good is that kind of a place to people? I know it ain't doin' me any good. One of my sons 'as been out of work for two years.

A man walks up, carrying a big basket of baked goods.
"Here comes my baker, if you'll excuse me. I'll take some of them cinnamon buns, " says Mrs. Newsome, "But no bread today. Don't leave me any bread until Wednesday." She counts out the pennies from a china bowl that holds a few coins. The baker goes on his way, and she sits back down in her chair.

"You 'ave to figure every penny. It ain't like it was when there was two or three in the family workin' in the shop.”