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The milling process started in the picker-house, a separate building on the southeast end of the mill. The six "picker" machines could each process fifteen bales a day, amounting to 40,000 pounds of cotton that cycled through the mill every twenty-four hours. First a bale of ginned cotton was brought up on an elevator from the warehouse below-a typical bale weighed between four and five hundred pounds. Jobs in the picker-house were the hardest and dirtiest, and were performed by men. In some mills, black men worked in the picker house, the only part of the mill where they were employed, though at first the Charleston mill apparently did not employ any black workers at all. Workers in other parts of the mill tended to be women, who guided the fiber through machines that cleaned and smoothed the cotton into "laps" or rolls, which were then folded together by machines called "finishers." The "laps" then went into the main building and were formed into strips around three inches in diameter. A belt conveyed the strips to the "railway head," a machine that condensed ten strands into one, preparing them for spinning. In the yarn mill that occupied one floor of the building, the strips were drawn ever finer, wound onto spindles, twisted into various sizes of yarn, and divided into twenty-pound bundles, or hanks. Workers tended each of these machines as the cotton fiber made its way through the system, clearing obstructions, moving empty spindles into place, and taking filled spindles to the weaving area.

Cloth production took up the other three floors of the factory building. Workers started by creating finer threads with more cards and spindles, then running the thread through a trough of liquid sizing, which stiffened and protected the fibers. The thread was dried and wound on large drums before being sent to the looms, where warp and woof threads were woven into cloth. Workers who tended the looms required more training than any of the other operatives, and their wages tended to be higher.

In places where there were many cotton mills, there were generally also plenty of workers who already knew how to run the complicated mechanisms. The finer the cloth, the more intricate the machinery, and the more time it took time to train people to run it. In Charleston, the only similar operation was a bagging factory, where coarse burlap was manufactured and sewed into sacks. Like many other southern mills that lacked a local skilled labor force, Charleston's cotton factory was designed to produce coarse yarns and simple fabrics.

Taking a job in the cotton mill meant enduring difficult conditions and long hours. A typical day lasted from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., with an hour off for midday dinner. Police reports in the Charleston News and Courier told of the many women working at the mill who faced harassment- men often stood outside and "interfered with" women who were walking to work in the dark. In addition, while wages were steady, they were low. As a result, workers were prone to leaving without notice for higher-paying seasonal jobs, especially weeding and picking potatoes, strawberries, snap beans, and other crops on farms only a short walk north of the factory. Truck farming was becoming a major industry for Charleston in the 1880s, enabled by new technologies that made it possible to refrigerate fruits and vegetables during shipment to northern markets. Growers did not need to maintain a year-round labor force; instead they required lots of hands during short intervals when various crops needed tending. Keeping people at their posts when jobs that offered higher wages became available was a constant challenge for factory management.

Rather than raise wages, managers revisited the idea of providing company housing, assuming that workers who lived in buildings owned by the factory could be more easily controlled. After all, a worker who lived on mill property and skipped days or slowed down on the job put her family's well being at risk. Acting on this assumption, the company built a small "cotton factory village" just south of the Almshouse in 1884, erecting twelve two-story cottages made of gray "artificial stone" blocks, arranged along a court that fronted on Drake Street. Rent was fifty cents per room per week. The company also bought a building at the corner of Blake and America streets to use as a boarding house and erected a twenty-room wooden tenement nearby.

But traditional mill towns that provided factory housing were usually located in rural areas where other options for employment and housing were scarce. In a city like Charleston, there were always other options: women could plant and harvest truck crops like strawberries and green beans, clean houses, cook, sew, clerk in stores, or care for children. There were rooms to rent all over the city. In addition, in trying to hold down the cost of labor, the company ensured that factory jobs did not pay enough to guarantee gratitude or loyalty. As more and more cotton factories were built across the South, there were so many openings for skilled textile workers elsewhere that people often left the Charleston mill just when they had learned how to operate the machines. According to the News and Courier, most employees of the Charleston Manufacturing Company were members of the Knights of Labor (KOL), which by 1886 was the largest labor organization in the country. Unlike any other labor group in the 1880s, the KOL actively recruited blacks and whites, men and women. They fought for an eight-hour day, child labor laws, and equal pay for black and female workers. Businessmen rejected these ideas. Though the KOL's goals of shorter hours, equal pay, and an end to child labor were not realized until decades later, in Charleston and elsewhere, the very existence of the KOL encouraged workers to fight for higher wages and safer working conditions.

Employers saw workers' refusal to commit to one company or one source of income as laziness or disrespect; workers saw it as a way to increase their free time and control their own lives. Operatives at the Charleston Cotton Manufacturing Company did not organize a union or go on strike, as workers were doing across the nation in the 1880s-they simply did what they felt like doing, working in the factory when other jobs were scarce but seeking higher wages and better conditions when these were available elsewhere.

Historians often point out that the "task system" used to allocate work to enslaved people on Lowcountry rice plantations influenced the behavior of black workers employed in many industries, including phosphate mining, long after emancipation. Black workers who were accustomed to accomplishing set amounts of work at their own pace pushed back against the idea that they should work regular hours. Significantly, at the Charleston factory, white workers evidently subscribed to the same work ethic.

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Working in the Factory · Charleston's Cotton Factory, 1880-1900 · Lowcountry Digital History Initiative

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The milling process started in the picker-house, a separate building on the southeast end of the mill. The six "picker" machines could each process fifteen bales a day, amounting to 40,000 pounds of cotton that cycled through the mill every twenty-four hours.

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"The biggest portion of the spinners was kids back then. We'd piece up sometimes after the doffing boys who doffed the frames and we'd get caught up." Personal history of Mary Lee Boost . (Byerly, 1986)

In the South, " One mill worker in every four was between the ages of ten and fifteen. No one knew how many workers were younger than ten, because they weren't counted." (Freedman, 1994)

Child labor in North Carolina mills was the direct result of families working and living very near to their wage support system. If the mill provided a school, then younger children usually attended, leaving the older children and adults to work. However, many mills either didn't provide a school or only provided this service for a very short period of time (2-3 months on average). With little choice left to them, families often needed to bring their children to work with them. This included the overseer, to the lowest of adult wage earner. Mill owners did not discourage this occurrence because it created the "helper system". The "helper system" enabled the mill to gain extra production, no matter how small, and in turn provided on the job training of sorts for these children. No pay was ever given to these children. The mill was not breaking the law under the "helper system" and the mill owners were often praised for allowing mothers to be close to their young children (Hindman, 2002).

DOFFERS: This job was usually for boys around the age of seven. A doffer is a worker who removes the spools filled by the spinning machine and replaces them with empty ones. This was often intermittent work that required quick burst of fast paced work, followed by rest (play) times only to be repeated when the spools filled again.

In order to change the higher spools, the boys had to climb on the machines. In order to make the climbing easier and faster, many worked barefooted. Even though they had to work fast, the boys need to be very careful or they could fall into the moving machinery.

SPINNERS: Spinning machines are set up in long rows that a worker

would walk along and piece up any broken ends. Each frame contained multiple spindles, each with their own bobbin to fill. The number of sides a worker was given indicates the number of spools she is to manage. The girls would walk up and down the aisles, brushing lint from machines and watching the spools or bobbins for breaks. A spinner tended to have 6-8 sides.
Usually this job was reserved for girls because mill owners felt girls had more patience to pay close attention to each of the spinning bobbins as they walked their row. Spinners were often allowed short breaks in between their piecing of bobbins and when the doffers came in to change the spools. Rarely, were these girls allowed to leave the mill. The exceptions were when it was the noon hour and if they had permission from the foreman to leave early to prepare the family meal in the evening.

SWEEPERS: This is the job that most boys started with once they "officially"

began working at the mill. Sweepers went from room to room around the mill with brooms in order to sweep up as much of the lint as possible. This job was given to boys mostly because many mill managers claimed the boys did not have the patience that the girls did in order to stand and watch the spinners. The bonus of this job, was the movement and the ability to travel where they wanted to in the mill as long as their job was completed.

By 1900 the census revealed that 25 percent of all Southern mill workers were children between the ages of 10 and 16 (Kemp, 1986).

Lewis Hines wrote about the girl in the picture below as:

"One of the spinners in Whitnel Cotton Mill. She was 51 inches high. Has been in the mill one year. Sometimes works at night. Runs 4 sides - 48 cents a day. When asked how old she was, she hesitated, then said, "I don't remember," then added confidentially, "I'm not old enough to work, but do just the same." Out of 50 employees, there were ten children about her size. The overseer said apologetically, "She just happened in."

$$$$$Pay chart from Glencoe Textile Mills- Burlington, NC$$$$$

While this chart represents only one mill, it is very close to the standard pay scale used by North Carolina's textile mills.

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What Jobs did Children Perform - Child Labor in North Carolina Textile Mills

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"The biggest portion of the spinners was kids back then. We'd piece up sometimes after the doffing boys who doffed the frames and we'd get caught up." Personal history of Mary Lee Boost . (Byerly, 1986) In the South, " One mill worker in every four was between the ages of ten and fifteen.

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The doffers in this picture have to face the challenge of climbing into a machine without falling in and loosing a limb

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Essential Question: How does society respond to challenges?

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Essential Question: How does society respond to challenges?

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As society saw the lives of children, and how they were impacted by working in very dangerous, and serious conditions,
people began to take to take  action. Many strikes began to be held, and everyone
was working together for the rights of children, and for their future.

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Spinners (usually girls) had the job of tending the fibers of cotton onto the empty spindles. It was thought that girls had more patience to pay attention to the spinning of the bobbins. While doffers (usually boys) had the job of removing the full spindles and replacing them empty ones.
Many children worked bare foot so it was easier to climb into machinery.

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A challenge that Doffers had to face was having to reach in huge machines in order for them to be able reach the bobbins or broken threads. They had to be really careful not to slip and fall into the machine and lose a limb.
The also had to work through hot and steamy air which was filled with dust and lint. The air being filled with dust and lint caused diseases to be formed.

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Maggie Miller

During the early twentieth century, the American south was plagued with the social problem of child labor. Young children had given up school in the prospect of earning wage to help their families make ends meet. At the heart of this problem was the textile industry, Historian Hugh Hindman remarks, "In many ways and for many reasons, cotton textiles (and especially southern cotton textiles) became the major battleground on which the social, political, and economic war over child labor was fought," ( Hindman, 153). This problem however had not gone unnoticed. The National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) was founded in 1904 in hopes of combating those who ignored child labor laws already on the books. This effort was helped tremendously by one photographer named Lewis Hine who traveled the country taking raw, emotional pictures of sad, shoeless children that would act as propaganda for the NCLC. In North Carolina, Hine visited various mill towns to see if the laws were being enforced. In 1909 the NCLC summarized these laws in North Carolina:

Age Limit for Employment in Factories, 13 Years. In Apprenticeship Capacity, 12 Years. Age Limit for Night Work, 14 YEARS. Hours of Labor for Children Under 18, 66 Per Week. Employment Certificates, Written Statements of Parent or Guardian. Employers Must "Knowingly and Willfully" Violate this Law Before They Can Be Convicted. No Factory Inspection. Commissioner of Labor has no Authority to Enter a Factory. No Prosecutions Under the Law ( McKelway, 3).

The interesting thing about these laws was that the commissioner has no way to enforce them. These state laws, however, where not being enforced in the south because they were written in a way that made them nearly impossible to enforce. Occasionally they would hire an under aged person, not re-hire them for a season because of fear of legal repercussions, then they would re-hire them.

As mentioned, this problem was mainly a southern one. The worst violations of child labor laws were concentrated along the piedmont,and Alexander McKelway, using data from the 1904-5 Industry "Blue Book," estimated that in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Alabama alone, there were 62,000 under 14; 75% of the spinners were under 14 and only 30 percent of the entire work force was under 21 ( Hindman, 153). These children were subject to long hours, horrible conditions, and often the loss of limbs or other health problems. Brown lung was one of these health problems; the amount of lint on the air caused a condition similar to what coal miners are prone to. Other ailments included tuberculosis and chronic bronchitis ( Freedman, 35). One can see evidence of the poor air quality in these cotton mills with Hine's pictures of children covered in lint.

A boy working in a cotton mill had less of a chance of reaching twenty years of age than one who worked outside of a mill ( Freedman, 38).

The job that many young boys had in these textile mills was doffer. A doffer's duties often provided them with more time to play than to work, with many of the children playing games on company time ( Hindman, 162).A doffer may be seven years old or younger, and had the potential to be promoted to spinner, a higher paying job that was often reserved for girls right away ( Freedman, 35). Hindman explains:

Boys generally started as doffers and sweepers, but many progressed to spinning after gaining experience. Girls were more likely to start out as spinners. Doffing involved replacing full bobbins, filled by the spinners, with empty ones. It was intermittent work involving relatively short bursts of high activity with extended rest(or play) pauses in between ...( Hindman, 161).

Doffers sometimes also doubled as sweepers, a job that included sweeping up the cotton lint in between the doffing runs, but in larger factories, these were two separate jobs ( Hindman, 161).

Boys were most often chosen as doffers probably because they did not possess the patience of young girls. This is probably why many of the photographs of doffers show boys and not girls in the mills. The doffers often went out to play in the yard surrounding the mills. This was often the only opportunity Hine had to photograph them, because their lives were very often controlled by the mill supervisor who had the town and the mill policed. Hine stated:

At noon I saw boys and girls, dozens of them, from nine to thirteen years old, going and coming. Saw a number of very young doffers playing outside at various times of the day. At the evening change of shift I waited close outside the main door concealed in the darkness of the woods. I did not see many go in, but a few were very small . . . I met one boy during the day at his home who said he is working nights and is ten years old (qtd. In McKelway, 3).

The job of doffer may have offered time to play, but was not void of danger. Some of these boys were so short they had to climb up onto the machinery to do their job. ( Hindman, 161). One could easily slip and get caught in the open bobbins and spindles, causing serious injury and perhaps death. Hine reports, "A twelve-year-old doffer boy fell into a spinning machine and the unprotected gearing tore out two of his fingers..."(qtd. In Freedman, 35).One can imagine the psychological effect on these children of loosing a limb or being sick without the company even compensating them. Many of these children wore little protection when entering the mills; they often wore as little as possible because of the heat and most of the boys did not even own a pair of shoes.

Another one of the atrocities pointed out by Hine's investigations is that these children not only worked long hours, but had been doing this for several years. These children would have worked their way up, and by the time they were technically of legal age they would be making much more money than they did when they started.

The mill town was often the place Hine visited first to get pictures when the mill turned him away for fear of legal repercussions. These towns were full of entire families that worked for the mill. The mill towns were very expensive to create and thus created a burden for the people living in these towns. Although the owners may invest in homes, stores, and even schoolhouses, their incentive was to get as many of the villagers working in the mill as possible ( Hindman, 156).Many of the families fell in debt with company stores and other profit centers set up by the mill; this only increased the recruitment of younger and younger workers ( Hindman, 157).These mill towns were usually located near a railroad line and in the case of North Carolina, more than half were within fifty miles of Charlotte ( McKelway, 3). Lewis Hine took most of his photographs here, in these villages built up around the mills. In Gaston county, there were an abundance of textile mills and mill towns. Hine visited Cherryville, Gastonia, and High shoals, all within thirty miles of each other. Also, even though schools were available to many children, they often did not participate. Many of the children interviewed by Hine and others could not even write their names ( McKelway, 9).

The effect of these pictures was the eventual enforcement of child labor laws throughout the south. After these particular photos were taken andthe pamphlet for the Carolinas was produced, the North Carolina labor laws had already been altered. An amendment to the North Carolina constitution said to go into effect in 1910, cut hours down for workers, raised the age of female laborers to 16, and also included some degree of factory inspection for under aged employees ( McKelway, 10). This was the first of many steps to come in the fight to end child labor. Hine's emotional photos created a storm of propaganda that showed the true nature of child labor, and that the consequences are universal. One can assume the NCLC would have never accomplished its goals without these touching photographs.

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Maggie Miller During the early twentieth century, the American south was plagued with the social problem of child labor. Young children had given up school in the prospect of earning wage to help their families make ends meet.

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This picture shows you young spinners tending the fibers of cotton onto empty spindles.

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Child labor connects to the real world because if it weren't for people taking action for their or the children, we would still be forced to put very young kids in working positions. Children all over the U.S would still be getting seriously hurt while working. Now, we have jobs in which at a certain age and with right education anyone can attended.

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This doffer lost 2 fingers due to getting his hand caught in a machine.

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Mill workers have developed tuberculosis, chronic bronchitis, and other respiratory diseases. There was also two doffers under twelve years old who were found with there hands mutilated in the mill.