Tom Malloy

Born in 1912 to sharecroppers in South Carolina, Tom remembers when his father came to Trenton, found work in a factory and brought his family here in 1923. Tom studied mechanical drafting and worked for Roebling in 1943-44. From his youth he was fascinated with the forms of life around him and he later became an artist.

On the neighborhood surrounding the Roebling factories: It was ethnic, it was mixed. I shall never forget, there was a predominant number of Italians that were in that area. Unlike today where you see myriads of cars, rows upon rows of cars, cars were very scarce. So the way to get to work was either to walk or to go out and catch the trolley car or the street car. There was no other way. Walk. So, that's one of the reasons why you find Chambersburg as it is today. Because the people were close to their work place and they did not have to worry about going out and catching a trolley. They could walk from home right to the working place.

On working in the strand mill: When I came to Roebling's I was put in the strand mill and that strand machine [a machine which twists wires together to form wire rope], I think it had thirty-five spools of wire. I shall never forget it; that's where I stayed.

My wife used to say to me, she said, "Why do you talk so loud?" Well, my goodness, if I'd stayed in that situation any length of time I suppose I would have been stone deaf today. Because actually once you got into that situation you could not hear; you could only see the movements of the mouths. I can hear the ringing now in my ears. I can hear it yet. If you needed to communicate, they had little pads, you would write it down.

So, when our shift was through, we got out of that noisy place. We were anxious to get out of there. We would go to our lockers and get our belongings and hit the street and go home.

On working at Roebling: Having never been in Roebling's before, I had all kinds of fancy notions as to what it was like. But then when I came into Roebling's I found out it was a noisy place. It was a place where you were expected certainly to do your work. When the whistle blew in the morning, you were supposed to be at your work place and you only got a break when you asked your superior or the foreman, whoever was in charge, if you could be relieved for a while to leave your place. You could not afford to leave those stranding machines. If one of those spools ran out of wire and you were not there, you would not see it. The rope would be then be missing one strand of wire and that section of rope would be ruined.

I have already said there was no great amount of fraternization. This was a place to work. This was not a place to come together as a people and get to know each other better. I already alluded to the fact that we did not visit each other's homes. You outght to recognize that we are talking about a time of discrimination. You did not want to stay around too close to work. You got back to a safer haven where your own kind of people were. And so you did not get to know these people well. You did not get to know these people well. You did not visit them, except for those Italians that were close to you.

On the plant closing: When Roebling shut down, Trenton began its demise. Everything else around the city began to start phasing out.