| Summary: | (6:06) Mr. Ingram describes his cotton gin on South Seminary Street in Florence, Alabama and his experiences running the business. This interview is part of an oral history project funded by a grant from the Alabama Historical Records Board, managed by the Alabama Department of Archives and History staff, using funds provided by the National Historical Preservation and Records Commission.
Ingram building on South Seminary Street
Florence- Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with B. M. Ingram
July 7, 2009
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Clint Alley and Rhonda Haygood
Clip 8 of 9
Clint Alley: Well it sounds like it’s changed quite a bit since then down there.
B. M. Ingram: Well, it has. But again, we’re so, we’re just so fortunate here to have the background and the history of what happened and the changes have been positive and again I went back to Walnut Street, and so much of the city has been preserved and that’s such a wonderful place with the neighborhood and friends that live there.
CA: When you first got into business, where were you located?
BI: On South Seminary Street. If you want to go to find my place of business, go up to the college and start at the college and start going south. And look at the beauty of the college and then as you head south, you’re gonna pass Wilson Park and the beauty of the park. You go on and you see the beauty of the Post Office. And if you head on south, and as the beauty degrades and goes down, that, if you will look, the ugliest building in town is where we had the building. And that’s right next to the, to the jail. And Karl Tyree tried to upgrade the city by getting rid of me down there. He condemned, the city condemned the building— rightly so— but the interesting thing, I got a man that had been the building inspector for the city and retired to come look at my cotton gin. And he reported to the mayor and the city commissioners that my building was in better shape than any building on Court Street except for looks. And so I mean it was really built with heavy timbers and everything. And so, strangely, they haven’t condemned me anymore. We try to keep it mowed, but we haven’t, don’t paint it or anything. Tried to sell it to the city. Maybe some of the city fathers will read this and hear this.
CA: Sounds like a good, sturdy building.
BI: Well, they need to tear it down for a parking area is what they need.
CA: What kind of problems did you first face when you got into business?
BI: Well it’s, basically, it would be the same thing that anybody faces. You’re almost crazy if you get into business. When I look back, the problems that you, you have compared to basically my friends that worked over at Reynolds— you need to have a whole lot of cash to run a business, but we didn’t have that, and the people that were working at Reynolds would get a check every week, ah, every month, and we didn’t have that. Maybe our income was once or twice a year. And if we made some money, it looked like we needed to invest it in the business to make it a little better. All of the regulations looked like they favor somebody else. And you have people inspecting, telling you what to do. And then an example of how I almost went to prison was, at the cotton gin, in the fall, we would operate with a crew, one crew, and we would start at daybreak and start ginning cotton, and we would keep ginning until late, late at night, when we got through and so that was kind of routine. The, ah, man, wage and hour people— checked on us, and fortunately they checked on the other gins, too. And we would be working way beyond forty hours a week. And so, right in the middle of the season, we were told that, that we had been working all these people way overtime and not paying them time- and- a- half, and that it was illegal, and that we were gonna have to go to Birmingham for a trial. And so, again fortunately, these other gins had the same notice. And we got in touch as a group, got in touch with some of our senators and they realized the problem. And they checked back, and according to some of the law was, if something was a seasonal business, it didn’t have to pay that, so fortunately, I was notified that I didn’t have to report for the trial and the other ginners didn’t either, they considered this an agricultural type of operation instead of a manufacturing, as such. But, I assure you that we were a number of us wondering where we would be.
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