‘Brother, can you spare a dime?’
Very few people had a dime in their pockets in Wake Forest or anywhere in the country in the early part of the 1930s. Between four and five million people in the United States were without jobs. In Wake Forest, Royall Cotton Mill President Don P. Johnston could either run the mill and lose money or not run the mill and lose the workers, if they could find a place to go. In 1931, a spinner worked 55 hours a week and made $7.94 while a ply spooler could work the same hours and take home $15.51. Johnston had to reduce the pay scales later. “If the figure of 95 families you give me is proper,” Johnston wrote to the mill superintendent, G.H. Greason on Jan. 19, 1933, “this means $5.00 per family per week during this period.” Over on Faculty Avenue, the pickings were just as slim. When Dr.