Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday October 29, 1907
Gaston County, North Carolina – Child Slaves of the Cotton Mills
From The Industrial Union Bulletin of October 26, 1907:
Child Slavery in the South
Gilson Gardner in Chicago Journal.
—–
What about child labor in the south? Is it really true that small children work in cotton mills at night? or are those stories exaggerated?
I came here to see, because Gaston county has more mills then any county in a state that has more mills than any state in the south.
I find: Little girls, of an age to still care for dolls, working all night in the mills, pacing up and down between the long spinning frames, in a jar and roar of wheels. I find bright-faced little American girls, 8 to 12 years of age, toiling bare-footed in the heat and flying lint. These children tell me they can not read the words on my business card, because they have “most forgot” what they learned in the “second reader.”
