Millworker

“ I at once replied that my master had sent me to town to hire myself out for a few weeks, and that I was ready to go with him immediately. The joy I felt at finding employment so overcame me, that all thought of my wages was forgotten. Bidding farewell to the man who had given me my breakfast, and thanking him in my heart for his kindness, I followed my new employer, who informed me that he had engaged to remove a thousand bales of cotton from a large warehouse, to the end of a wharf at which a ship lay, that was taking in the cotton as a load. ”

“ You are dead tired, and mill-work begins so early. Tumble in—God can wait. He has waited fourteen, or eighteen, or twenty years already!
'But you're not all factory hands here. I see a good many lads I know come from the country—from the farms up Kinder or Edale way. Well, I don't know so much about your ways as I do about mills; but I know some, and I can guess some. You are not shut up all day with the roar of the machines in your ears, and the cotton-fluff choking your lungs. You have to live harder, perhaps. You've less chances of getting on in the world ”

“ We have few strikes here; hardly any in my experience of nearly fifty years. The relations between the employed and the employers are almost always of a kindly character. If we had twice as many mills at work to-day in the South as we now have, employé's could be found to take every position except for a time some especial departments of the work.
I have to buy 4,000 bales (1,920,000 pounds) of raw cotton for each of my mills. For the Augusta mill I pay probably fifteen cents per bale to get it from the Augusta market to my mill on the canal—say $600 in all. ”

“ Labor in the Old and the New Industrial Order.—So long as the system of hand-industry was in existence there was no sharp division of employers and laborers into two separate classes. The employer was himself a workman at the loom, the bench, or the forge. He might have as helpers a couple of apprentices who were learning the trade, and perhaps a journeyman or two; but rarely were there more than a half dozen men or women employed in a single establishment. ”

“ There was a rule prohibiting us from leaving the mill during work-hours. We were not supposed to sit down, even though we had caught up with our work. We were never supposed to stop work, even when we could. There was a rule that anyone coming to work a minute late would lose his work. The outside watchman always closed the gate the instant the starting whistle sounded, so that anyone unfortunate enough to be outside had to go around to the office, lose time, and find a stranger on his job, with the prospect of being out of work for some time to come. ”

“ Richards, the Factory Inspector, who by no means took a sentimental view of mill work, had written quite candidly:
A steam engine in the hands of an interested or avaricious master is a relentless power, to which old and young are equally bound to submit. Their position in these mills is that of thraldom; fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen hours per day, is exhausting to the strength of all, yet none dare quit the occupation, from the dread of losing work altogether. ”

“ That meant double effort after I got up, getting in the mill a little earlier on the morrow, a shorter time for dinner at noon. The tasks had to be done in the end, but I took some rest. I hid from the eyes of the overseer, the second hand, the third hand, and the spinners, behind waste boxes and posts, and had spare minutes with a book I had brought in and hidden under some cotton, or with dreaming about “making something of myself, some day.” If I let myself dream beyond the minute, a vile oath would seek me out, and I would hear my Jamaica-ginger-drinking-spinner sneering, “You filthy——! ”

“ By that time the tin mill was on its feet. The town of Elwood had grown from a country cross-roads to a city of the first class. As president of the union, I had steadily gained concessions for the workers. We were getting paid every two weeks. It is not practical to pay oftener in the tin trade. A man's work has to be measured and weighed, and the plate he rolls on Saturday can not be cut and measured in time for him to get his pay for it that week. For the pay envelope is handed to him Saturday noon, and his Saturday's rolling will not go through the cutter until Monday. ”

“ He did not come to work that morning, and when the overseer asked me where he was, I said that uncle had left home and would not be back, so a spare man was put on uncle’s mules.
That day, opened with such gloom, was one of thick shadows for me. The outlook was certainly disheartening. Why should I have to stand it all? It was my wages that were making some of this squalor possible. It was my money that helped purchase the beer. Then the old question obtruded itself: “What other thing can you do? You’ll have to stay in the mill!” ”

“ The other “joiners” and spinners did not try to keep at it. They gave up the work as soon as they discovered how useless it was to try to make a decent wage from the worn-out machines. Only myself and a few poor men who were there because they could not get any better place stayed on and fought the one-sided fight. Every time the machinery broke—and breaks were constant—the machinist grumbled, and took his own time in coming with his wrenches. ”

“ The self-appointed savior of the American working people shrugged his heavy shoulders disdainfully. "That is no matter—it is always easy to find a grievance. When the factory men have walked out, then will come the sympathetic strike of your strong Mill workers' union. All the other labor organizations will be forced to join us, whether they wish to or not. I shall have all Millsburgh so that not a wheel can turn anywhere. The mills—the factories—the builders—the bakeries—everything will be in our hands and then, my comrade, then!" ”

“ So I sold my mill, and built this house with the money. I always thought I'd like tavern-keeping. It's an easy life; and, if rightly seen after, one in which a man is sure to make money."
" You were still doing a fair business with your mill?"
"Oh, yes. Whatever I do, I do right. Last year, I put by a thousand dollars above all expenses, which is not bad, I can assure you, for a mere grist mill. If the present owner comes out even, he'll do well!"
"How is that?"
"Oh, he's no miller. Give him the best wheat that is grown, and he'll ruin it in grinding. He takes the life out of every grain. ”

“ Thus, in wool scouring the lowest average wages paid to machine-operatives in the thirty mills examined was found to be 12.16 cents per hour, and the highest 17.79. Yet the low-wage mill showed a labor cost of twenty-one cents per hundred pounds of wool, while the high-wage mill had a cost of only fifteen cents. One of the reasons for this puzzling situation was that the low-wage mill paid nine cents per hundred pounds for supervisory labor, such as foremen, etc., while the high-wage mill paid only six cents. Apparently well-paid labor needs less driving and supervising than low-paid labor. ”

“ The working people have also thriven as well as their masters. Great numbers of them are known to possess reserved funds in savings banks and other depositories for savings; and there are others of them who have invested their money in cottage buildings, and in various other ways.
But have not the men risen above their lot of labouring spinners? They have. Such of them as possessed skill, ability, and the faculty of organization, have been promoted from the ranks of labourers, and have become mill managers. ”

“ As soon as we arrived my uncle took us to the corporation boarding-house, a dismal brick structure, like a mill, with a yellow verandah on its face. “We’ll have to put up here till the furniture comes,” announced uncle.
The next morning I took my overalls with me and began work in the mule-room. It was a pleasant place when contrasted with the places I had worked in in the city. The overseer did [227] not urge us on so strenuously. There was not that terrible line of unemployed in the alley every morning, waiting to take our places. ”

“ The "long turn" of twenty-four hours and the "seven-day week" I have never heard defended, either in the mill by any foreman or workman, or outside by any member of the management, or even in a public statement. If, by an arrangement of extra workers, it were possible to eliminate these features and still keep the twelve-hour work-day for six days a week, there would, I think, be a certain number of men ready enough to work under that arrangement. I met one man, for example, who said: "Good job, [Pg 151] work all time, no spend, good job save." ”

“ The mill was bound to get me, in the long run. It was only playing with me in letting me out in the sun, the fresh air, and the fields for a while. The mill owned me. I would have to go back!
We tried to live through the winter, without getting word from my uncle, on the money I earned. Occasionally aunt would take some liquor, but she seemed to realize at last that she must not indulge overmuch. One day, growing desperate, I said to her, “If I catch you drinking on my money, now, I’ll leave home, you see! I’ll earn money to buy food, but I won’t earn it for no saloon-keeper, mark my words!” ”

“ When machinery was applied to industry, and mill and factory took the place of the country blacksmith shop; when the workers were divorced from their tools and recruited in the mills; when they were obliged to compete against each other for employment; when they found themselves in the labor market with but a low bid or none at all upon their labor power ”

“ Thus if fifty men, working independently and selling their own produce, produce a hundred articles of a certain sort weekly, and another fifty men, ◆1 working for a [137] wage-paying employer, produce, owing to the way in which their labour is guided and organised, just double the number of such articles in the same time, we shall say that the hundred extra articles are the product of Wage Capital, just as we should say, if the increased production had been due to the introduction of a machine, that these extra hundred articles were the product of Fixed Capital. ”

“ Mill, for instance, says that a large part of profits are really wages of the labour of superintendence. He speaks of “the labour of the invention of industrial processes,” “the labour [142] of Watt in contriving the steam-engine,” and even of “the labour of the savant and the speculative thinker.” ◆2 He employs the same word to describe the effort that invented Arkwright’s spinning-frame, and the commonest muscular movement of any one of the mechanics who assisted with hammer or screwdriver to construct it under Arkwright’s direction. ”

“ Hay and three other workmen were within. They had been figuring up possible and probable profits by the end of the five years, and looked very well satisfied.
"There's a sort of hope and expectation about it," said one of the men, "that kind of stirs and warms a body. And when you come to count lost time, and fluctuation in wages, it makes a pretty even thing, after all! In '73 I worked in a shoddy-mill that had been making money hand over fist,—eleven hours a day,—not a man of us made more than five dollars a week. Some poor fellows with families earned only three. ”

“ Six of us, in one room, by keeping away at noon, could cripple the mule-room so seriously that it could not run, and the spinners would get an afternoon off. Sometimes a group of spinners would hint to us to stay out that they might have a chance. That was my first experience in a form of labor-unionism.
Some of the men we worked under in the mill had a club-room, where they played table games, drank beer when the saloons were legally closed, and had Saturday night smokers, which my [202] uncle attended, and where he was generally called upon to “vamp” on the piano. ”

“ Without organization, the helpless workers were compelled to labor sixteen hours a day.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century factory workers a to be on the job at 4 A. M. and work until dark for a wage that was a mere pittance. A first class mechanic got 50c a day. Laborers worked for three and four dollars a month and board. Women toiled in the cotton mills from dawn till dark for $1.50 a week. ”

“ But could not some inducement be offered to call to this industry a better class of operatives, or to elevate a part of them towards the status of the old-time mill-girls? The factory-operatives of to-day are more like those of England, whom I have described, when the cotton manufacture first began in America. Then, mill-owners and stockholders knew that the daughters of New England would not become mill-girls under existing conditions, and unless they were sure of good wages and of being treated like human beings. ”

“ I told Pat and Harry, and they could hardly believe their own ears; but they urged me to take the chance, for they thought it was a “chance.”
My work—all work in the mill—had suddenly taken on a temporary aspect now, a means to a great end and not an end in itself. I could look on it now and feel that I had mastered it at last. The throbbing, jubilant shout of the victor was on my lips now. I saw past those lint-laden rooms, the creaking, whirling pulleys, and the clacking belts; past them, [285] and everything that the mill meant to me; to a very pleasant new life ahead ”

“ It is probable that a mill, where all hands were interested to do their best, would turn off as much work in ten hours as a similar mill would in eleven or twelve hours, where the hands were indifferent or careless. There are but few linen mills in this country, and probably in none of them is there a superfluity of good hands. We employ one hundred and twenty [Pg 192] women and children. The work is different from that of the men. ”