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#869	#872 Helen Price Aldrich, ?, ?	#870

Working Women

Until sometime in the 1940s, mill women wore a uniform of sorts, a dress of light blue (some say green, perhaps it was both) trimmed in white. Where did they buy these dresses? Did the company sell them? At cost? Ask your mama, then let us know.

Danny Wortman did ask his mama, Maude, and she said women had to buy, at their own expense, the blue chambray material from the cloth store (beside the drugstore). Using a common pattern, they either had to make their own dresses, or hire someone else to make them. It's still not clear if only the women in the finishing plant had to wear the uniforms, or whether the rule was standard throughout the mill. If anyone can straighten us out on that, please do

From 1937 and 1940 Cliffside movies, courtesy Phillip White
Frame captures by Ginny Anne Reid

Copyright © 2008 The Cliffside Historical Society