Child Labor

People usually started working as a spinner, sweeper or piecer in a cotton mill. A spinner’s job was to run up and down a row of machines repairing the thread and fixing the snags.A rough work schedule consisted of getting to work at 6 in the morning, working until 12 noon, having a one hour lunch(dinner) break and starting work again at 1 until 6 in the evening. This went on for five or six days of the week. If you weren’t doing your job at the mill as the overseer expected you to, you could have be fired, fined or given a smaller pay on payday. The overseer could give out different punishments as he see fit. You needed to be able to climb to the breaks in the threads and have small hands to mend them. This was a very fast paced job and you needed to be fast on your feet. It was very dangerous to work in a cotton mill because the rooms were dust-filled, the humidity was around 85% and the temperature was usually around 80-85 degrees. These conditions could lead to bronchitis, tuberculosis, and infections of the ears, eyes and skin. Some chemicals used to lubricate the machines lead to cancers. Also, the continuous noises could lead to deafness.

I don’t believe it was fair for kids during the industrial revolution to work but I think it must have been necessary for them to make money for their families. Children shouldn’t be working now either. I think kids should have be learning and playing at schools or helping out at home instead of working at a cotton mill. There are now estimated to be 200 million children working all over the world today. A majority of child labour is in Africa and Asia. Child labour needs to be stopped, but nobody is sure how to do it. You can’t just take jobs away from kids that are working for money, either for their education or for their starving families. Poverty is the main contributor forcing kids to work at such an early age.

Invention of the Light Bulb

Agriculture Age

Before the invention of the light bulb, people lit their houses with candles and oil lamps. It was potentially dangerous to keep an oil lamp or candle lit. Also, it was expensive to buy oil for the lamps. The light bulb evolved from gas and oil lamps. It progressed to gas and electric powered carbon-arc lighting systems and finally to the light bulb.

Industrial Age

The first light bulb was manufactured by Humphry Davy in 1809. And around 1875, Edison purchased a patent and based his improvements to the light bulb on it. Thomas Edison invented, or more accurately, improved upon a 50 year old idea of an electric lighting system that contained all the elements necessary to make the incandescent light practical, safe, and economical. He did not come up with the idea for using electricity to make light, but he revolutionized the idea. After he discovered the right arrangement of filaments, switches, circuits and such, people started becoming interested in the idea of electricity. It was a step to remove oil-fuelled heat and light from the average household.

Digital Age

Today, lighting is progressing and we have many choices to light our own houses. There are florescent lights, LED’s and still, incandescent bulbs. Neon lights are still used too. They are made of a glass tube filled with different types of gasses. The biggest changes we have made in incandescent lighting are slight differences in the filaments and glass. Some can give off more light; others can save energy because people are worried that we are throwing too many things away such as light bulbs. Light helps us in factories, businesses, stores and in our own homes. Edison’s invention is widely used almost everywhere in the world, but only in the nations that can afford the luxury.

The Future

Plasma, the 4th state of mater could power light bulbs of the future. Already, light is being generated by plasma but it isn’t as practical or efficient as LED’s or florescent lighting. But it looks really neat and futuristic. Perhaps in 100 years it will be more practical.

Pauline’s Saturday

“I call for my hate. It does not answer me. I should like it close by if I need it, but this morning it has left me alone, and I cannot remember where it is.” Page 158 Pauline
 Today is Saturday; thank God! Today we worked only till noon! Today I got to eat a proper dinner after the mill; Pork chops and gravy! And today is payday; I couldn’t wait until Daddy counted out my pennies and nickels and dimes. I think we made a little extra money this time around even though I was a sweeper but also Arlene was working this week.

Mama bought some sugar today too. I loved licking the spoons after she made the cake and I hung on to that pan with the crumbs too. We haven’t had sugar for a week at least in our house. I started to really miss the cakes my sister and mama baked.

Arlene and I brought a cake to Miss Harrell’s to celebrate Aaron’s birth and she was much cheerful. I noticed she looked at our feet to tell who was who but we both wore an old shoe of Josh’s. She asked our names which irritated me at first. But now I feel like I am becoming more like my sister, which I like.

Also we went to visit Jimmy and he was learning to split wood with his left hand; it was proving difficult though. Then I don’t know why, but I agreed to help Arlene with milking widow wades cow. I guess it could be fun?

Twenty seven cents shine in the sun as I made my way to the store. I think I am going to buy jacks, but they cost forty cents! I could put the rest of the amount on the books for next payday but then daddy would know. How would I be able to buy the jacks without Daddy knowing I put the rest of the money on the books?

I see Arlene walk up to the counter, and before I could ask why, she said that “we will have the jacks, paid in full.” and she uses her fifteen cents with my twenty seven to buy the silver jackstones and the red ball.

I smile. It’s the small things this week that have brought me closer to my sister. I hope that this won’t change. I am fine with her staying home with the chores to do, because I know how hard it is for her now. And I think she appreciates it when I go to work too.

“I know from the corners of my own mouth and the sight of her face as I smile back at her, we are alike. We are twins.” Page 173

Arlene’s day at the cotton mill

"Guilt nibbles at me as it did over at Miss Harrell’s" page 133 Arlene.

 I work for pay today, but I know our house is growing cold, the lint is collecting, and the dishes are piling up. I feel awful for not getting the chores done before my family came home last night. I should have had supper ready for them but at least they understood. Miss Bertha asked me to help with Frances’s baby. I was there all afternoon and past supper time, cleaning her house and doing the chores and helping with her child Percy and newborn baby Aaron. I hope they didn't worry about me as much as I think they did.

Yesterday I came home from helping Mrs. Harrell bring her baby into the world to my sister whining again. She had some good news though. She thought it would make me furious, going to work for a day to cover for Jimmy. I saw the hate in her eyes and the jealousy. I was secretly dreaming about his moment for my whole life. Maybe I would make some more money when payday comes tomorrow. I long for peppermints.

Peppermints are what I taste on my tongue, making my way through the cold this morning to the mill. I am not last like I thought I would be, Pauline is dragging her foot along behind me in the snow. Last night, it swelled purple and like a balloon. Today, we both wear an old shoe of Josh's.

I see Margaret pass in her faded red dress made from an old chicken feed sack. Most of our dresses are made from feed sacks too.

Working at the mill is sweaty. The bobbins never sleep and the lint never tires hiding amongst spiders and corners. There is so much that you don't even want to look for it, but I do. Because it is my job now.

I usually do not eat with my familly so I was excited about getting out of the sweating heat and cooling down with my mother and sister today. Dinner was careful; Mom shared her biscuit with Margaret’s mom because Henry wasn’t able to make it with the snow covering the road. Then Pauline gave her entire biscuit to Katie and Margaret, -who didn't have a dinner either- hoping to play a game of jacks with them but they took the biscuit and continued with the game by themselves.

I don’t know what came over me because I had nothing to gain, but I took my biscuit, scored it in half and shared it with my sister.

A day for Pauline

“I am full of hate, and that, I know, is wicked” page 1

My sister limps slowly over to the mill, late with my dinner. I always joke to Katie and Margaret about her foot, hoping if I am funny enough they will let me join in their game of jackstones. And I always see a tiny smile across Arlene’s face. My hate returns and I snatch my dinner pail from her without looking at her again. I bet she smirks about me, and laughs that I must work while she gets off easy. Perhaps she is late on purpose…

The threads control us at the warm and humid mill, with bobbins and spinners and lint all around. But Mr. Godbold likes to think he has a part too, because he controls our pay. I would like my own jackstones, better than Katie’s, but I have not enough money left over after pay day for the 40 cent silver ones at the store.

A stranger entered the mill today, with a camera. We all stopped as he took our picture, puzzled as to why he was there. I wonder why we must work in a mill, why we can’t we go to school. Why we can’t leave it to the adults to work. Mama works three times harder than I. Am I waste of time working here…? I’m just a hazard. At the mill, the constant threat of injury hangs in the air like the lint thrown off by the machines. Jimmy’s thumb was taken off by the spinner today; my foot too was injured from him landing on it, and Mr. Godbold has news for Arlene about a job. I don’t know how she will manage to work with a foot like hers, and I wonder how much of a shock it will be to find out what real work is like.

I know what it is like to work all day in the heat of the mill. But then I come home, limping on my swelling foot, which balloons so that I struggle with my shoe, to a half-clean house with more chores lined up for me. I am eleven like my twin sister but I am the one who works all day. My sister Arlene is slacking off, making more work for me. She is sleeping in our bedroom, I know it. Her hands warm, all curled around the blankets. I know one day, we will catch her sleeping, forgetting the chores, and she will have to spend her days at the mill.

Hate comes boiling and ready to explode from me but I must wait. Today I have news for her. Yes, Arlene, the favoured one will go to work tomorrow. Mr. Godbold says she will take Jimmy’s place as sweeper and learn to work in a sweaty godforsaken place they call a cotton mill. No sleeping in for you.

But she wasn’t in bed when we got home, she wasn’t in the stove room either, nor Josh’s room, nor Mom and Dad’s room. We waited to make supper; we waited for the return of my sister ‘the favoured one’. While I tried not to complain about me being hungry, and the pain in my foot escalating.

A day for Arlene

“I am full of hate, and that, I know, is wicked.” -Page 7

“I cannot fly.
Pauline cannot fly.
In that, we are the same.
Like our mouths and eyes, like the jut of our chins.
Like the part in our hair.
Everything about us is the same.
Only not.” -Page 7 Arlene

Every morning I wake up I am reminded we are not the same, though we are twins. Mama wakes Pauline up for the mill, to go to work, to earn respect and money for our family. And I, staying home alone, take care of the household chores; my little jobs that are not near as appreciated as their honest work. I cannot even pay rent for myself. I long for the mill. And even more, I long to be able to walk normally, like my sister. A monster foot reminds me why I too can’t go to the mill.

Today is like every-other day but I always hope it and long for it to be different. First I make the beds with straight pillows and crisp sheets. I put on my chicken feed dress. After eating I wash dishes. And then the clothes, overalls last, hanging them out to dry. I must get some more ice cold water from the pump out front and gather up kindling for the fire. By the time I am done, my hands too are ice and the sun is starting its ascent in the sky but I cannot feel its rays in the cold of January. I hush the chickens with leftover grits from breakfast. I sweep the floors; looking for lint balls hiding under beds and tables.Then I start the dinner, making for my family, Mom and Dad and Josh and Pauline; perfect Pauline. I make backbone and rice, and an extra biscuit for Dad and Josh and I bring it to them at the mill; I am an unwanted stranger to my unthankful sister with her friends. They giggle at some joke, and I wish to tell them a joke I heard at the store but I think they laugh at something else when I limp toward them; my monster foot? One day, I will be somebody working at the mill, a respected somebody with friends like my sister, Katie and Margaret.

By the end of every day I ache for my bed I share with my sister, ending my day from house chores. I wait for Saturday, payday, a day that might, perhaps, hold some cheer.