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How many thousand pens are busy reporting and recording mill life! It is a splendid commentary on the fineness of our social conscience that there are so many champions on behalf of overworked boys and girls. Coming now, to take its place among the multitudes of investigations and faithful records of factory life, is this frank, absolutely real and dispassionate Autobiography—written by a mill-boy who has lived the experiences of this book. So far as can be found this is the first time that such
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Chapter I. A Mixture of Fish, Wrangles, and Beer
Chapter I. A Mixture of Fish, Wrangles, and Beer
THROUGH THE MILL Chapter I. A Mixture of Fish, Wrangles, and Beer MY tenth birthday was celebrated in northern England, almost within hailing distance of the Irish Sea. Chaddy Ashworth, the green-grocer’s son, helped me eat the birthday cake, with the ten burnt currants on its buttered top. As old Bill Scroggs was wont to boast: “Hadfield was in the right proper place, it being in the best shire in the Kingdom. Darby-shir (Derbyshire) is where Mr. George Eliot (only he said ‘Helliot’) got his ‘A
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Chapter II. Dripping Potatoes, Diplomatic Charity, and Christmas Carols
Chapter II. Dripping Potatoes, Diplomatic Charity, and Christmas Carols
Chapter II. Dripping Potatoes, Diplomatic Charity, and Christmas Carols. CONTRARY to his promise, Uncle did not write to us announcing his arrival. In fact, for some strange reason, no letter had arrived by the end of summer. After the leaves had gone and the trees were left stripped by the fall winds, no word had come to comfort us from America. Aunt and I had tried to keep the shop open, but we saw every day that we had not the skill to make it a success. Already, in the minds of the townspeop
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Chapter III. My Schoolmates Teach me American
Chapter III. My Schoolmates Teach me American
Chapter III. My Schoolmates Teach me American IT was an extraordinary excuse that Uncle Stanwood gave for his neglect of us. He disposed of the matter by saying, in his Christmas letter, “I was so busy and so hard put to that I had no heart to write till I had gathered enough money to send for you. I know it must have worried you.” His steamship tickets, however, had suddenly put us in the limelight in the town. “The Brindins are going over!” was the word that passed around. I can imagine no mor
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Chapter IV. I pick up a handful of America, make an American cap, whip a Yankee, and march home whistling “Yankee Doodle”
Chapter IV. I pick up a handful of America, make an American cap, whip a Yankee, and march home whistling “Yankee Doodle”
Chapter IV. I pick up a handful of America, make an American cap, whip a Yankee, and march home whistling, “Yankee Doodle” THE full revealing of the America of my dreams did not come until the following morning. Docks, back streets, stations, and the smoky, dusty interiors of cars, were all I had seen the previous night. When we had arrived in New Bedford, I heard the noise of a great city, but I had been so stupid with excitement and weariness that no heed had been paid to passing scenes. I had
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Chapter V. I cannot become a President, but I can go to the Dumping Grounds
Chapter V. I cannot become a President, but I can go to the Dumping Grounds
Chapter V. I cannot become a President, but I can go to the Dumping Grounds UNCLE and aunt went out that afternoon. “We’re going looking for a tenement,” said uncle. “We’ll be back by supper time, Al. Mind now, and not get into mischief.” They were gone until past the regular supper hour, and I waited for them in my room. When they did arrive, uncle seemed very much excited, and in greeting me he put five cents in my hand, and then extracted from his pocket a handful of crisp, baked pieces which
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Chapter VI. The Luxurious Possibilities of the Dollar-Down-Dollar-a-Week System of Housekeeping
Chapter VI. The Luxurious Possibilities of the Dollar-Down-Dollar-a-Week System of Housekeeping
Chapter VI. The Luxurious Possibilities of the Dollar-Down-Dollar-a-Week System of Housekeeping DURING the remainder of the school year, from March to June, no public-school officer came to demand my attendance at school. “Aren’t we lucky?” commented Aunt Millie. “It gives you such a chance to help out. The instalment men must be paid, and we need every cent. It’s such a mercy that the long holiday’s on. It gives you a good chance.” By this time I had added to my activities that of carrying my u
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Chapter VII. I am given the Privilege of Choosing my own Birthday
Chapter VII. I am given the Privilege of Choosing my own Birthday
Chapter VII. I am given the Privilege of Choosing my own Birthday THE reopening of the public-schools in the fall found Aunt Millie stubbornly refusing to allow me to enter. “I shall never know anything,” I protested. But she replied, with confidence, “All knowledge and wisdom isn’t in schools. There’s as much common sense needed in getting a living. I’ll keep you out just as long as the truant officer keeps away. Mind, now, and not run blind into him when you’re on the street. If you do—why, yo
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Chapter VIII. The Keepers of the Mill Gate, Snuff Rubbing, and the Play of a Brute
Chapter VIII. The Keepers of the Mill Gate, Snuff Rubbing, and the Play of a Brute
Chapter VIII. The Keepers of the Mill Gate, Snuff Rubbing, and the Play of a Brute “THE first question that we have to settle,” commented my aunt, when we returned home with the mill-certificate, “is, what is Al going to work at in the mill?” “It might be well to let him go into the weave-shed and learn to weave,” said my uncle; “after he’s learned, he might be able to run some looms and earn more than he could in any other part of the mill.” “Meanwhile, he don’t draw any money while he’s learni
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Chapter IX. A Factory Fashion-plate, the Magic Shirt Bosom, and Wise Counsel on How to Grow Straight
Chapter IX. A Factory Fashion-plate, the Magic Shirt Bosom, and Wise Counsel on How to Grow Straight
Chapter IX. A Factory Fashion-plate, the Magic Shirt Bosom, and Wise Counsel on How to Grow Straight THE ring-spinning room is generally the center of fashion in a cotton-mill. The reason may be that the ring-spinners, at least in New England, are generally vivacious French-Canadian girls. There were some in the mill where I began work, who possessed an inordinate thirst for ornament and dress. The ring-spinners had clean surroundings and much easier work than their sisters in the weave-shed. Th
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Chapter X. “Peter One-Leg-and-a-Half” and His Optimistic Whistlers
Chapter X. “Peter One-Leg-and-a-Half” and His Optimistic Whistlers
Chapter X. “Peter One-Leg-and-a-Half” and His Optimistic Whistlers BY the middle of the following winter, I had entered fully into all the privileges that were mine by virtue of my labor in the mill. The background of all my privileges was the spending money my aunt gave me. She apportioned me money on a basis which kept me constantly at work. I was given ten cents on every dollar that I brought home. This made me ambitious for advance. It made me keep at work even when I should have been at hom
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Chapter XI. Esthetic Adventures made possible by a Fifteen-Dollar Piano
Chapter XI. Esthetic Adventures made possible by a Fifteen-Dollar Piano
Chapter XI. Esthetic Adventures made possible by a Fifteen-Dollar Piano IT was late in that winter that the trading instinct cropped out in my uncle and aunt. They decided to open a candy-store in the tenement where we lived. For this purpose the landlord was persuaded to allow them to use the bow window for display purposes. The parlor was fitted with a small counter, a large store lamp, and a various assortment of sodas, confectionery and pastry. That was a prohibition year in city politics, a
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Chapter XII. Machinery and Manhood
Chapter XII. Machinery and Manhood
Chapter XII. Machinery and Manhood MY work in the spinning-room, in comparison with my new work in the mule-room, had been mere child’s play. At last the terror of the mill began to blacken my life. The romance, the glamour, and the charm were gone by this only a daily dull, animal-like submission to hard tasks had hold of me now. Five days of the week, at the outer edge of winter, I never stood out in the daylight. I was a human mole, going to work while the stars were out and returning home un
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Chapter XIII. How my Aunt and Uncle Entertained the Spinners
Chapter XIII. How my Aunt and Uncle Entertained the Spinners
Chapter XIII. How my Aunt and Uncle Entertained the Spinners MEANTIME there was poor consolation in my home. Aunt and uncle were drinking every night. Aunt, with the advantage over my uncle, was drinking much during the day. When our dinners came, carried by a neighbor’s boy, they were generally cold, cheerless combinations of canned tongue, store bread lavishly spread with butter, jelly roll, and a bottle of cold soda water, either strawberry or ginger flavor! We knew what that sort of dinner m
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Chapter XIV. Bad Deeds in a Union for Good Works
Chapter XIV. Bad Deeds in a Union for Good Works
Chapter XIV. Bad Deeds in a Union for Good Works AFTER he had been away from home two weeks, uncle sent us a letter from a Rhode Island mill-town, informing us that he had the malaria, bad. Would one of us come and bring him home? There was a postscript which read: “Be sure and come for me either on a Monday, Wednesday, or a Friday. They are the alternate days when I don’t have the shivers.” The day he came home he and aunt patched up peace over a pailful of beer, and there the matter ended, sav
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Chapter XV. The College Graduate Scrubber Refreshes my Ambitions
Chapter XV. The College Graduate Scrubber Refreshes my Ambitions
Chapter XV. The College Graduate Scrubber Refreshes my Ambitions AT sixteen years of age, after three years in a mill-room, and with the unsocial atmosphere of my home to discourage me, I had grown to discount that old ambition of mine, to “make something of myself.” My body had been beaten into a terrifying weakness and lassitude by the rigors of the mill. My esthetic sense of things had been rudely, violently assaulted by profanity, immorality, and vile indecencies. I had come to that fatalist
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Chapter XVI. How the Superintendent Shut us Out from Eden
Chapter XVI. How the Superintendent Shut us Out from Eden
Chapter XVI. How the Superintendent Shut us Out from Eden THE numerous quarrels in which my foster parents indulged, and during which my aunt was not averse to proclaiming loudly from the open windows insulting comments on her neighbors, finally brought a lawyer’s letter to the house in which we were living, summarily ordering us to remove ourselves from the neighborhood. Aunt flew into a passion when the letter was read, and had all manner of sharp criticism for “neighbors who don’t tend to the
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Chapter XVII. I Founded the Priddy Historical Club
Chapter XVII. I Founded the Priddy Historical Club
Chapter XVII. I Founded the Priddy Historical Club ONE of the important items we had overlooked in securing the tenement at the border of the village was a saloon which stood next door to it! A saloon, too, that was the common resort of the village, because it stood outside the town lines! “Never mind, lad,” said my uncle, “we’ll struggle on in spite of it, you see. If only your aunt didn’t have it under her nose all day! It’ll be hard for her!” But there it was and matters could not be changed.
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Chapter XVIII. A Venture into Art
Chapter XVIII. A Venture into Art
Chapter XVIII. A Venture into Art ONCE more we took up life in New Bedford, with the thunder of many mills in our ears, and the short year’s sojourn in the Connecticut village so dim a memory that it was almost out of mind immediately under the press of sterner, more disquieting things. All the foulness of life seemed to be raked up at my feet since I had been in finer, sweeter air. I went back for a few nights to the Point Road Gang. It was composed of the same fellows save that a few of them h
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Chapter XIX. A Reduction in Wages, Cart-tail Oratory, a Big Strike, and the Joys and Sufferings thereof
Chapter XIX. A Reduction in Wages, Cart-tail Oratory, a Big Strike, and the Joys and Sufferings thereof
Chapter XIX. A Reduction in Wages, Cart-tail Oratory, a big Strike, and the Joys and Sufferings thereof IN January of that year forty thousand mill operatives went on strike. I belonged to the union and had a voice in the preparations for the strike. The manufacturers wanted to reduce our wages ten per cent. Word was passed around the mule-room that there was to be a stubborn fight, and that every union member ought to be on hand at the next regular meeting, when a vote was to be taken which wou
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Chapter XX. My Steam Cooker goes wrong. I go to Newport for Enlistment on a Training-ship
Chapter XX. My Steam Cooker goes wrong. I go to Newport for Enlistment on a Training-ship
Chapter XX. My Steam Cooker goes wrong. I go to Newport for Enlistment on a Training-ship I RETURNED to the mill with the feelings of an escaped convict who has been returned to his cell after a day of freedom. My uncle found that he had been put on the black-list, and consequently would not be able to obtain work in any mill in the city. I was allowed to take up a new position as “doffer.” This meant an advance in wages, but I knew that I was not physically equal to it. There was nothing for m
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Chapter XXI. The Ichabod of Mule-rooms, some Drastic Musing, College at my Finger-tips, the Mill People wait to let me pass, and I am Waved into the World by a Blind Woman
Chapter XXI. The Ichabod of Mule-rooms, some Drastic Musing, College at my Finger-tips, the Mill People wait to let me pass, and I am Waved into the World by a Blind Woman
Chapter XXI. The Ichabod of Mule-rooms, some Drastic Musing, College at my Finger-tips, the Mill People wait to let me pass, and I am Waved into the World by a Blind Woman ON my return from Newport I went to work in one of the oldest mills in the city. The “mules” were in a gloomy basement—a crowded, dim, and very dirty place to work in. It was the Ichabod of mule-rooms, with every trace of glory gone. The machinery was obsolete and had to be helped along with monkey-wrenches, new parts, and con
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