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Billone, Carmella Messina (audio interview #2 of 2)
INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - This is the second interview with Carmella Billone, conducted in her apartment in North Hollywood. As in the previous interview, she was very engaged and cooperative. My knowledge of Italian seemed to make her more comfortable and less self conscious about her accent. During the interview, she took me into the bedroom to show me her wedding dress, which she lovingly unfolded from its tissue wrapping. Unfortunately, I did not take the tape recorded with me to the bedroom and missed some of the wonderful details she provided about her wedding. TOPICS - religion; menstruation, reproduction, and childbirth; family history; family life; gender expectations; marriage expectations; husband; 1915 (?) strike for better wages; and work and job skills;Local 39; Local 270; family life; wages and economic status; husband and marital relationship; gender roles in the household; retirement; citizenship; and attitudes towards women's suffrage, the women's liberation movement, and gender equality; 3/12/1974
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- 2020-03-27
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- File: lhgwcbillone3.mp3 Audio Segments and Topics: (0:00-2:16)... Brief introduction. When Billone was a small girl, she went to church with her father every Sunday. The cemetery was located inside the church and she remembers her father praying for their dead relatives. After she came to the US, she very rarely went to church but did not lose her faith. (2:16-4:39)... Billone learned about menstruation on her own. People respected each other in the Italian town where she grew up and called each other by titles, not by their first names. They did not talk about "dirty" things like menstruation and sex. Even though she slept in the same room with her parents, she never saw them have sex. When Billone married her husband, she did not know anything about reproduction because this was not discussed in her family. (4:40-16:35)... Billone wanted to marry so that she could have her own home. She did not date before she married because her brothers were very strict and didn't allow her to go out alone with other men. Whenever she went anywhere she was accompanied by her brothers or women friends. Billone describes how she became acquainted with her husband and his marriage proposal. (16:35-20:16)... Billone talks about her decision to marry. She married without her brothers' blessings and this affected her relationship with them. (20:16-28:50)... Note: there are interruptions in this segment when Billone's daughter-in-law enters the room. Billone raised her husband's children as her own and did not intend on having any children. Although she was embarrassed to discuss sexual matters and birth control during the interview, she describes the first time she menstruated when her seventeen-year-old sister gave her castor oil for cramps. She notes that menstruation and sexual matters were not discussed among her family and friends. Her daughter-in-law comments that these topics were considered "dirty" in the culture in which Billone grew up. By the time she married her husband, she understood childbirth because of her sister-in-law's pregnancies. Billone gave birth to her children at home with the assistance of a midwife. (28:50-31:13)... When Billone married, she assumed that she would quit working. However, her husband's work was sporadic and she had to go to work to help support her family. She left Hart, Schaffner & Marx in 1913 when she was seven months pregnant and did not return to work until after the birth of her third child in 1917. [Editor's note: She did work sporadically or briefly during this four year period.] During this time, her husband did his best to support the family. She made all of their clothing by hand and they never went out to eat at restaurants. She was not working in 1915 and does not recall the 1915 strike. She clarifies that she attended the funeral for the young Italian boy who died during the strike in 1910 or 1911. [Editor's note: the Italian worker was killed in the 1915 strike.] (31:13-41:45)... Billone returned to work in 1917 at Scotch, Woolen Mills making men's coats. Although she doesn't have very vivid memories of their strike for better wages, she recalls confrontations with scabs. She worked in a ladies garment shop for higher wages and eventually went to another shop (Anborn?) , where she worked for twenty-two years. Her main skill was hand stitching and edge basting. For a short period during WWI, she worked as an armhole baster. People in the shop did not want to teach her armhole-basting skills because they did not want to share their work. End of tape. File: lhgwcbillone4.mp3 (0:00-2:43)... Billone believes that she was a member of Local 39 prior to WWI. She joined Local 270 some time around 1920. This was an Italian Local that included both men and women and she attended union meetings occasionally. She does not recall the Women's Local, Local 275. (2:43-5:18)... The workers in the shops where Billone worked were an ethnically mixed group. She communicated with her family and friends mainly in Italian, but did learn how to speak English from a woman at a church located in her neighborhood. Italian was usually spoken at meetings for Local 270. (5:18-7:41)... Billone does not remember whether or not the members of Local 270 were particularly radical in their political views. However, Local 270 and the entire union protested the arrest and conviction of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. For the most part, she was busy with work and family obligations and only participated in union activities during labor strikes. (7:41-10:55)... Billone describes a typical day working and raising a family. Her work hours were from 7:30 a.m. until 6:00 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and occasionally Sundays. When she worked in non-union shops, she was not paid time and a half for overtime. It was not until after 1910 that shops like Hart, Schaffner & Marx and Scotch Woolen Mills signed union contracts. (10:55-20:46)... Billone was paid piecework Scotch Woolen Mills, earning approximately $15-20 per week. In 1925, her husband was injured on the job and never returned to work, which meant that Billone was the new head of household. Her highest wage during this period was .50 cents an hour. Even though she worked during the Depression, she lost her home. In 1947, she moved to California and went to work as an armhole baster at several shops. When she was hired at 20th Century, her wages increased to $1.50 per hour. (20:46-24:30)... Billone feels that the union was sometimes too "strict." During her years in the garment industry, she never had a difficult time finding work. During strikes she did not work and refused to go into a shop as a scab. When she retired, she received a pension from the union. She remembers the Union Bank in Chicago, but she did not bank there because it was far from her home. She believes that someone once stole $25 from the bank. (24:30-26:13)... Billone and her husband were not involved in social activities with Local 270; their life revolved around family. (26:13-30:53)... Billone retired in 1959 at the age of sixty-five. It took her awhile to get adjusted to retirement and she felt unsettled about staying at home. She did work a little after retirement, but her husband did not want her to work full-time again. To keep herself busy during retirement, she walked a lot. She and her husband went to the park, attended retiree events at the union, and were involved in senior citizen activities. (30:53-33:34)... When Billone's husband stopped working in 1925, he became the main caretaker for the home and the family. In addition to taking care of the children, he did all of the cooking and cleaning, which made it possible for Billone to continue working. (33:34-39:51)... Billone was the only one among her family and friends who worked until the age of sixty-five. Billone notes that she became a citizen in 1922 through her husband's citizenship. It was not until the late 1930s that she obtained her own citizenship papers. End of tape. (39:51-43:49)... Billone began voting in 1922. She talks about her attitudes towards women's suffrage, the women's liberation movement, and gender equality.
- SUBJECT BIO - Carmella Messina Billone was the last of five children born to a peasant Sicilian family. The family's farm land was two hours from Nicosia, the town in which they lived. Although they were better off than others in the area, her brother had to hire out as a farm hand to supplement the family income until he left for the US. Eventually, in 1910, she left for the US, traveling with three girlfriends from Nicosia. She joined her brothers in Chicago and went to work immediately at Hart, Schaffner & Marx, where her sister-in-law and neighbors were all working. Within two weeks, when the workers walked out in the 1910 strike, she became an ardent union activist, joining Local 30. After WWI, she joined the Italian Local. Two years later, when she was eighteen, Billone married a neighbor who lived in the same building. He was a twenty-seven year old widower with two children. From 1913-1917, when she gave birth to her own children, she worked outside the home only sporadically. When her husband was injured on the job in 1925, she became the sole support of the family. In 1947, the family moved to California and she went to work as an armhole baster. After she retired in 1959, she and her husband became active in the ACWA Retirees Local. INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - This is the second interview with Carmella Billone, conducted in her apartment in North Hollywood. As in the previous interview, she was very engaged and cooperative. My knowledge of Italian seemed to make her more comfortable and less self conscious about her accent. During the interview, she took me into the bedroom to show me her wedding dress, which she lovingly unfolded from its tissue wrapping. Unfortunately, I did not take the tape recorded with me to the bedroom and missed some of the wonderful details she provided about her wedding. TOPICS - religion; menstruation, reproduction, and childbirth; family history; family life; gender expectations; marriage expectations; husband; 1915 (?) strike for better wages; and work and job skills;Local 39; Local 270; family life; wages and economic status; husband and marital relationship; gender roles in the household; retirement; citizenship; and attitudes towards women's suffrage, the women's liberation movement, and gender equality;
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