Mill Floor

For those who worked on the mill floor, the thunderous sound of moving machinery echoes most strongly in their memory. These machines were at the heart of the Industrial Revolution, as they made it possible to produce more textiles with less labor. Following Samuel Slater’s successful textile mill downriver in Pawtucket in the 1790s, hundreds of mills proliferated in the valley; the very first textile mill in Woonsocket was the Social Mill, established in 1810. Other wool and cotton manufacturers followed, and Woonsocket’s economy soon centered on the production of textiles. 

The two machines located here on the floor are the spinning mule and loom. Much like the traditional spinning wheel on the porch of the farmhouse, the spinning mule drew out fibers of cotton, wool, and other material and twisted them into thread or yarn. But the spinning mule was able to produce multiple threads at the same time without the help of human hands, except for one operator that pushed and pulled the wide beam back and forth. Likewise, mechanical looms performed the same task as the hand loom in weaving cloth, but it did not need human hands to move the shuttle from side to side, and multiple looms could be tended by a single operator. Industrialists built mills on the banks of the Blackstone to power giant wheels with its rushing water in order to animate this machinery. However, even as mills moved away from water power towards other sources of energy, like steam, their proximity to the river left the river vulnerable to the disposal of industrial waste, which continues to impact the ecology of the valley. 

But of course, the story of the Industrial Revolution is just as much a story of people. After all, it was mill workers  (the mule spinners, the warpers, the carders, and others) who made the mass production of textiles possible. Rather than growing, making, or bartering for what they needed, these mill workers sold their time to management in return for wages, and used their wages to purchase clothing, food, and other necessities from stores. 

Children had always worked, but work in the factories of the Blackstone Valley was different. The days were longer, children got less rest, and they worked in dangerous conditions. Children were among the first industrial workers in American history. In 1790, nine children between the ages of seven and twelve labored in Samuel Slater's first factory in Pawtucket. After that, children remained an important part of the labor force until the 1930s, when child labor became illegal.  

Although children entered the industrial world as part of the families, management assumed parental authority over the children. Because their own pay was so low, parents needed their children to work and contribute in order to survive. Children handed over their meager pay each week to their parents and hoped to receive a penny or nickel for sweets. They had to work through the long work days for little pay, and the manufacturers expected them to keep pace with the constant operation of machines. Bosses took advantage of a child's small and nimble bodies and used them to perform tasks that adults could not, such as fixing threads below a moving machine. Not all children who worked in the factory were assigned to the mill floor. Some youngsters were trained to do office work as helpers or clerk’s assistants, providing greater chances for advancement.

Children who worked in the textile mills were often called Bobbin girls or Bobbin boys. Their jobs mostly consisted of helping spinners and weavers, but they also swept floors, picked up waste remnants from the machines and helped doff. They also had to clean the bobbins which were covered in grease and unused yarn. These bobbins were often color-coded so they could be easily identified as belonging to certain lots. Children had to sort bobbins according to color and quality with speed and accuracy. These jobs were often used as training periods for future mule spinners and weavers. 

Factories were dangerous places, and even more so for children. The use of child labor became one of the most controversial features of industrialization. By the early part of the 20th century, child labor laws prohibited children from leaving school to work in factories prior to the age of 14. It quickly became common practice for parents and public officials to falsify work permits, enabling children to work when they were as young as eight. This practice was controversial. Indeed, there were numerous unsuccessful efforts across the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries to ban child labor, including a failed constitutional amendment, and a 1916 law that was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1918. 

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 effectively ended this system of child labor. It “set a minimum age for all employment at sixteen, but was set to eighteen for work considered hazardous; children between fourteen and fifteen years old were able to work after school hours as long as it was non-manufacturing or non-hazardous work.”  

 As competition between textile manufacturers increased, they invested in new technology, but so did their competitors. Management believed that the only real way to promote savings was to increase productivity and reduce labor costs. To do this they sped up the machines and forced workers to tend to more machines, or “stretched out” the work. Basically, the workers did more work for the same amount of pay as before. Not only did tension increase, but injuries did also. Management was indifferent to these issues, since they were making a profit. 

Manufacturers controlled what is known as “industrial time,” or the changes in production schedules and social relationships that arose in industrial settings. They set the length of the work day, determined what price workers received for each hour of labor, and how fast the machines operated. Workers no longer sold the products of their labor but rather their time to spend making products. Workers used to base their work day on the seasons and the sun but now their days were controlled by the clock tower and factory bell. Work schedule was Monday-Friday from 6am to 6pm, with an hour for lunch and Saturdays from 6am to noon. Workers would see the paymaster before leaving on Saturday. 

Given this arrangement, the measurement of time became extremely important: workers needed to know when to show up for work, when to take a lunch break, and when they could go home for the day. However, access to time was not as ubiquitous as it is today; during much of the 1900s, most working-class people couldn’t afford a portable timepiece of their own, so they had to rely on the company’s clock or the manager’s pocket watch. But how could workers know that the company’s clock was accurate - that it was not purposefully wound slow in order to steal uncompensated time? Sometimes, workers could pool their money together to buy a timepiece that they could check against management’s time. In Pawtucket in 1828, for example, workers paid to have a publicly-displayed clock on the steeple of the new Congregational Church. 

Men occupied the most skilled positions and kept them in the family whenever possible. Loomfixers, mule spinners, and machinists received the highest wages of the industrial textile workforce. Because they were difficult to replace, their skills gave them power in the workplace. They commanded respect from not only management but their fellow workers, who commonly tipped their hats to them as they passed them on the street. To protect their prerogatives and trades, skilled workers often organized into unions. 

The industrial factory was a hierarchical place. Skill counted, but sex, ethnicity, race, and age also separated workers and set limits on advancements. Men and women, children and adults (often of the same family) found narrowly defined opportunities opened and closed for them. They lived and labored in ways determined by their job status. Men were more likely to secure skilled jobs. A woman's pay was almost always less than a man’s, even for the same work. For example, in 1905, a man earned 9 dollars and 88 cents, a woman 7 dollars and 80 cents, and a child 3 dollars and 96 cents, as you can see in our display for the same amount of work. There were no minimum wage laws at that time. (The gender wage gap persists to this day. Today, for example, white women in the US make 82 cents for every dollar a white man makes.) 

Employers grouped ethnic workers into specific occupations. Factory owners used their discretion to choose who to hire, often discriminating against recent immigrant groups. Those classified as “non-white” had difficulty securing industrial employment at all. Children were at the very end of the scale and at the mercy of the people above them. These divisions made it difficult to organize all workers into one large union. However, they did enable certain groups to identify their common interests and act collectively.

Industrialization changed the way workers worked. Though they continued to use some hand tools, they were more likely to produce goods by operating specialized machines powered by neither humans nor animals. Machines were powered by water, steam, and eventually electricity. Machinists and inventors had substituted these new machines for work usually done by hand. 

In the preindustrial world, workers would draw fibers by hand in order to prepare them for spinning. Now machinists replaced this process by creating a machine called the mule (or spinning jenny) which imitated human hands. Workers instead would tend to machines that spun thread in greater quantities than ever before. Machines couldn't run completely alone; some required human assistance. More human assistance generally meant a higher level of skill necessary to operate the machine, which meant less flexibility for management to replace workers. Manufacturers tried to lessen the need for human involvement by introducing automation and semiautomatic features, fixtures, and jigs. Industrial engineers created discrete stages of production, carefully sequenced to ensure a smooth flow through factories as raw materials became finished goods. As the products moved through this process, workers would add their parts to what would become a finished product.