Men in the Mill Village

Transitioning from farm life to an industrialized way of life was especially hard for men, who had known a degree of freedom and variety on the farm but found millwork tedious, repetitive, and limited to wages for a day’s labor. Men had more opportunities than women to advance in the mill by watching other workers, learning their skills, and moving into higher-paying skilled jobs and positions of greater authority, yet a man’s position in the mill also affected his role at home. On the farm, men and women had separate duties, but men were recognized as the primary family providers, and female wage work in the mills challenged a man’s position as head of the household. The mill structure also threatened male autonomy because, for the first time, these men were working for someone else, and bosses influenced not only work but home life as well. Men often vented frustration with mill authority by moving their families from mill to mill, one of the few ways they could challenge mill owners. Men in the mill village worked hard to provide for their families much as they had on the farm, earning wages in the mill while also keeping livestock, growing what they could in the yards of company-owned housing, and spending free hours hunting and fishing to supplement food bought at the company store. Beyond work, family, and church, the company store was the center of men’s social life, where they gathered late into the evening to drink, discuss family and work, play checkers, and listen to music, with town musicians often becoming the most respected and famous men in the village. These gatherings sometimes fostered drinking problems, fighting among town rowdies was not unusual, and single men were especially protective of the mill town’s borders, sometimes becoming aggressive toward outsiders as a way of maintaining control over their communities in one of the few ways available to them.

North Carolina · United States