Working the Shift

Turning raw cotton into cloth required a chain of specialized mill jobs. In the opening room, men unfastened cotton bales and loaded them into cleaning and fluffing machines. Cotton then moved to the picker room for further cleaning and for forming into large sheets, and in the carding room employees oversaw the making of clean, uniform cotton ropes called slivers. Machines rolled and twisted these slivers until they became thinner and stronger. In the spinning room, women tied broken threads and operated machinery that wound the fibers tighter, while doffers replaced full spools. Spoolers transferred yarn from spool to spool, workers in the slashing room coated yarn with starch to strengthen it for weaving, and in the weave room workers threaded the looms according to the cloth pattern while weavers operated them. Jobs depended on age, gender, and race, and pay varied by job, experience, speed, and skill. In 1904, a weave room supervisor earned about $15.00 per week, while a doffer could make as little as $2.40, with most workers earning between $3.00 and $7.00 weekly through either set wages or production-based pay. During the late nineteenth century, mill hands usually worked six twelve-hour days each week, and the eight-hour day did not become standard until 1938. Textile mills relied on a family-based labor system that recruited entire families from the countryside to live in mill housing and work in the mills. Many families in mill villages faced prejudice, especially in urban areas where townspeople called them “poor white trash” and “linthead.” The shift from farm life to millwork was also hard because workers had to match the pace of machines and endure noisy, hot, crowded conditions; on farms they had set their own schedules, but in the mill their time belonged to the owner and work never ended. Some workers saw millwork as drudgery and a robot life, while others found satisfaction and happiness in paid work.

North Carolina · United States