Early textile mill owners alleviated labor shortages by recruiting entire families for employment. Offering homes as well as jobs, owners created villages of workers from which the mills could draw. Children - sometimes as young as seven - filled the lowest paying, lowest-skilled positions in the mills. From 1880 to 1910, one quarter of the textile mill workforce was under sixteen.
The family labor system blurred the distinctions between work and play for children. Many learned about millwork from their older siblings and parents. Living in close proximity to the mill, children visited family members at work or visited other children there to play. Children often went from "helping" relatives to taking on their own work. Available jobs paid little and required more dexterity than skill. Many children worked as doffers, sweepers, and spinners, earning just a few dollars per week.
Most mill villages provided free schooling through sixth grade, though many children attended sporadically, or for only a few years. A child's income sometimes made the difference between poverty and subsistence, therefore having a child work was often a necessity for mill families.
Opinions on child labor varied. Some mill owners saw millwork as the best education children could receive. Others viewed it as necessary for poor families. During the early twentieth century, the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) launched a campaign to expose child labor conditions. Photographers like Lewis Hine visited mills and captured young workers on film. In 1913, North Carolina adopted a law that prohibited labor for children under twelve. Still, without government enforcement young children continued to work in the mills.
Millwork comprised only part of children's responsibilities in the mill village. With working parents, most children also had chores at home. Those enrolled in school or too young to work in the mill often helped with cooking, milking, and cleaning. Henry rogers recounts, "I had to do the cooking, and the scrubbing the floors, and making the beds, and so forth. Usually when I got home from school my job was to clean the house and cook supper."
Despite the rigors of work, adults often remembered their mill-village childhoods fondly. The sense of community children felt helped shield them from the harsh realities facing their families. Welcomed and cared for by neighbors, mill children grew up with an established support network. According to Hugh McCorkle, his Highland Park village "was a two-hundred headed family. Everyone on this hill, we looked after one another."
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