Through the mill: The life of a mill-boy

by Frederic Kenyon Brown

“Git on yer own side, Sheeny,” Tim used to scream to the venerable Israelite; “I’ll punch yer in the plexus!” and without a word, but with a cowed look of the eyes, the old man would retreat from the property he had been cunningly encroaching upon. Then Tim’s commanding voice could be heard, “Say, Geeser, hand over that copper-bottomed boiler to yer uncle, will yer, or I’ll smash yer phiz in!” But when “Wallop” Smitz brought his rowdy crowd to the dump, it was like an invasion of the “Huns.” We were driven from the dump in dismay, often with our clothes torn and our wagons battered.

And oh, what prizes of the dump! Cracked plates, cups and saucers, tinware, bric-à-brac, footwear, clothing, nursing-bottles and nipples, bottles with the dregs of flavoring extracts, cod-liver oil, perfumes, emulsions, tonics, poisons, antiseptics, cordials, decayed fruit, and faded flowers! These were seized in triumph, taken home in glee, and no doubt used in faith. There is little philosophy in poverty, and questions of sanitation and prudence come in the stage beyond it. “Only bring me coal and wood,” commanded my aunt, in regard to my visits to the dumps, but I managed to save rubbers, rags, and metal, as a side product, and get money for them from the old Jew junk-man.

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 uncle’s dinner to the mill. My aunt always considered this a waste of time. “It takes Al away from his own work,” she would remonstrate with my uncle. “If he has to carry your dinner, I wish he would take it in his wagon so that he can bring back what coal and wood he finds on the street.” When that combination was in effect, she was mollified, for I managed to secure a load of fuel almost every day in my journey from the mill to the house.

This was the first cotton-mill I ever entered. Every part of it, inside, seemed to be as orderly as were the rows of bricks in its walls. It was a new mill. Its walls were red and white, as were the iron posts that reached down in triple rows through the length of it. There was the odor of paint everywhere. The machinery seemed set for display, it shone and worked so smoothly. The floor of the mule-room, where uncle worked, was white and smooth. The long alleys at the ends of the mules were like the decks of a ship. The whirling, lapping belts had the pungent odor of new leather about them, and reminded me of the smell of a new pair of shoes. The pulleys and shaftings gleamed under their high polish. Altogether it was a wonderful sight to my eyes, which, for some time, had only seen dismal tenements, dirty streets, and drifting ash heaps.

The mill was trebly attractive on chilly, rainy days, when it was so miserable a task outside to finger among soggy ash piles for coals and to go splashing barefooted through muddy streets. At such times it was always a relief to feel the warm, greasy boards of the mill underneath my feet, and to have my body warmed by the great heat. No matter how it rained outside with the rain-drops splashing lonesomely against the windows, it did not change the atmosphere of the mill one jot. The men shouted and swore as much as ever, the doffers rode like whirlwinds on their trucks, the mules creaked on the change, the belts hummed and flapped as regularly as ever.

It was very natural, then, that I should grow to like the mill and hate the coal picking. My uncle gave me little chores to do while he ate his dinner. He taught me how to start and stop a mule; how to clean and take out rollers; how to piece broken threads, and lift up small cops. When the doffers came to take the cops off the spindles, I learned to put new tubes on and to press them in place at the bottom of the spindles. I found it easy to use an oil can, to clean the cotton from the polished doors of the mules, to take out empty bobbins of cotton rope, and put in full ones to give a new supply for the thread which was spun.