DOCUMENT 19–1: A Textile Worker Explains the Labor Market

Reading the American Past: Printed Page 60

DOCUMENT 19–1

A Textile Worker Explains the Labor Market

Wageworkers had jobs as long as they could be hired. Employers laid off workers during business slumps or replaced those whose jobs could be done more cheaply by a machine or a worker with a lower wage. In 1883, Thomas O'Donnell, who had worked as a mule spinner (operating a machine that spun cotton fibers into yarn) for eleven years in textile mills in Fall River, Massachusetts, testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Relations between Labor and Capital. O'Donnell explained to Senator Henry W. Blair of New Hampshire what it was like to be a working man in the 1880s.

Thomas O'Donnell

Testimony before a U.S. Senate Committee, 1885

Senator Blair: Are you a married man?

Thomas O'Donnell: Yes, sir; I am a married man; have a wife and two children. I am not very well educated. I went to work when I was young, and have been working ever since in the cotton business; went to work when I was about eight or nine years old. I was going to state how I live. My children get along very well in summer time, on account of not having to buy fuel or shoes or one thing and another. I earn $1.50 a day and can't afford to pay a very big house rent. I pay $1.50 a week for rent, which comes to about $6.00 a month.

Blair: That is, you pay this where you are at Fall River?

O'Donnell: Yes, Sir.

Blair: Do you have work right along?

O'Donnell: No, sir; since that strike we had down in Fall River about three years ago I have not worked much more than half the time, and that has brought my circumstances down very much.

Blair: Why have you not worked more than half the time since then?

O'Donnell: Well, at Fall River if a man has not got a boy to act as “back-boy” it is very hard for him to get along. In a great many cases they discharge men in that work and put in men who have boys.

Blair: Men who have boys of their own?

O'Donnell: Men who have boys of their own capable enough to work in a mill, to earn $.30 or $.40 a day.

Blair: Is the object of that to enable the boy to earn something for himself?

O'Donnell: Well, no; the object is this: They are doing away with a great deal of mule-spinning there and putting in ring-spinning, and for that reason it takes a good deal of small help to run this ring work, and it throws the men out of work. ... For that reason they get all the small help they can to run these ring-frames. There are so many men in the city to work, and whoever has a boy can have work, and whoever has no boy stands no chance. Probably he may have a few months of work in the summer time, but will be discharged in the fall. That is what leaves me in poor circumstances. Our children, of course, are very often sickly from one cause or another, on account of not having sufficient clothes, or shoes, or food, or something. And also my woman; she never did work in a mill; she was a housekeeper, and for that reason she can't help me do anything at present, as many women do help their husbands down there, by working, like themselves. ...

Blair: How much [work] have you had within a year?

O'Donnell: Since Thanksgiving I happened to get work in the Crescent Mill, and worked there exactly thirteen weeks. I got just $1.50 a day, with the exception of a few days that I lost because in following up mule-spinning you are obliged to lose a day once in a while; you can't follow it up regularly.

Blair: Thirteen weeks would be seventy-eight days, and, at $1.50 a day, that would make $117, less whatever time you lost?

O'Donnell: Yes. I worked thirteen weeks there and ten days in another place, and then there was a dollar I got this week, Wednesday.

Blair: Taking a full year back can you tell how much you have had?

O'Donnell: That would be about fifteen weeks' work. ...

Blair: That would be somewhere about $133, if you had not lost any time?

O'Donnell: Yes, sir.

Blair: That is all you have had?

O'Donnell: Yes, sir.

Blair: To support yourself and wife and two children?

O'Donnell: Yes, sir.

Blair: Have you had any help from outside?

O'Donnell: No, sir.

Blair: Do you mean that yourself and wife and two children have had nothing but that for all this time?

O'Donnell: That is all. I got a couple dollars' worth of coal last winter, and the wood I picked up myself. I goes around with a shovel and picks up clams and wood.

Blair: What do you do with the clams?

O'Donnell: We eat them. I don't get them to sell, but just to eat, for the family. That is the way my brother lives, too, mostly. He lives close by us.

Blair: How many live in that way down there?

O'Donnell: I could not count them, they are so numerous. I suppose there are one thousand down there.

Blair: A thousand that live on $150 a year?

O'Donnell: They live on less.

Blair: Less than that?

O'Donnell: Yes; they live on less than I do.

Blair: How long has that been so?

O'Donnell: Mostly so since I have been married.

Blair: How long is that?

O'Donnell: Six years this month.

Blair: Why do you not go West on a farm?

O'Donnell: How could I go, walk it?

Blair: Well, I want to know why you do not go out West on a $2,000 farm, or take up a homestead and break it and work it up, and then have it for yourself and family?

O'Donnell: I can't see how I could get out West. I have got nothing to go with.

Blair: It would not cost you over $1,500.

O'Donnell: Well, I never saw over a $20 bill, and that is when I have been getting a month's pay at once. If someone would give me $1,500 I will go. ...

Blair: Are you a good workman?

O'Donnell: Yes, sir.

Blair: Were you ever turned off because of misconduct or incapacity or unfitness for work?

O'Donnell: No, sir.

Blair: Or because you did bad work?

O'Donnell: No, sir.

Blair: Or because you made trouble among the help?

O'Donnell: No, sir. ...

Blair: How old are you?

O'Donnell: About thirty.

Blair: Is your health good?

O'Donnell: Yes, sir.

Blair: What would you work for if you could get work right along; if you could be sure to have it for five years, staying right where you are?

O'Donnell: Well, if I was where my family could be with me, and I could have work every day I would take $1.50, and be glad to. ...

Blair: You spoke of fuel — what do you have for fuel?

O'Donnell: Wood and coal.

Blair: Where does the wood come from?

O'Donnell: I pick it up around the shore — any old pieces I see around that are not good for anything. There are many more that do the same thing.

Blair: Do you get meat to live on much?

O'Donnell: Very seldom.

Blair: What kinds of meat do you get for your family?

O'Donnell: Well, once in a while we get a piece of pork and some clams and make a clam chowder. That makes a very good meal. We sometimes get a piece of corn beef or something like that. ...

Blair: What have you eaten?

O'Donnell: Well, bread mostly, when we could get it; we sometimes couldn't make out to get that, and have had to go without a meal.

Blair: Has there been any day in the year that you have had to go without anything to eat?

O'Donnell: Yes, sir, several days.

Blair: More than one day at a time?

O'Donnell: No. ...

Blair: What have the children got on in the way of clothing?

O'Donnell: They have got along very nicely all summer, but now they are beginning to feel quite sickly. One has one shoe on, a very poor one, and a slipper, that was picked up somewhere. The other has two odd shoes on, with the heel out. He has got cold and is sickly now.

Blair: Have they any stockings?

O'Donnell: He had got stockings, but his feet comes through them, for there is a hole in the bottom of the shoe.

Blair: What have they got on the rest of their person?

O'Donnell: Well, they have a little calico shirt — what should be a shirt; it is sewed up in some shape — and one little petticoat, and a kind of little dress.

Blair: How many dresses has your wife got?

O'Donnell: She has got one since she was married, and she hasn't worn that more than half a dozen times; she has worn it just going to church and coming back. She is very good in going to church, but when she comes back she takes it off, and it is pretty near as good now as when she bought it.

Blair: She keeps that dress to go to church in?

O'Donnell: Yes, sir.

Blair: How many dresses aside from that has she?

O'Donnell: Well, she got one here three months ago.

Blair: What did it cost?

O'Donnell: It cost $1.00 to make it and I guess about a dollar for the stuff, as near as I can tell ... she has an undershirt that she got given to her, and she has an old wrapper, which is about a mile too big for her; somebody gave it to her. ... That is all that I know that she has. ...

Blair: Do you see any way out of your troubles — what are you going to do for a living — or do you expect to have to stay right there?

O'Donnell: Yes. I can't run around with my family.

Blair: You have nowhere to go to, and no way of getting there if there was any place to go to?

O'Donnell: No, sir; I have no means nor anything, so I am obliged to remain there and try to pick up something as I can.

Blair: Do the children go to school?

O'Donnell: No, sir; they are not old enough; the oldest child is only three and a half; the youngest one is one and a half years old.

Blair: Is there anything else you wanted to say?

O'Donnell: Nothing further, except that I would like some remedy to be got to help us poor people down there in some way. Excepting the government decides to do something with us we have a poor show. We are all, or mostly all, in good health; that is, as far as the men who are at work go.

Blair: You do not know anything but mule-spinning, I suppose?

O'Donnell: That is what I have been doing, but I sometimes do something with pick and shovel. I have worked for a man at that, because I am so put on. I am looking for work in a mill. The way they do there is this: There are about twelve or thirteen men that go into a mill every morning, and they have to stand their chance, looking for work. The man who has a boy with him he stands the best chance, and then, if it is my turn or a neighbor's turn who has no boy, if another man comes in who has a boy he is taken right in, and we are left out. I said to the boss once it was my turn to go in, and now you have taken on that man; what am I to do; I have got two little boys at home, one of them three years and a half and the other one year and a half old, and how am I to find something for them to eat; I can't get my turn when I come here. He said he could not do anything for me. I says, “Have I got to starve; ain't I to have any work?” They are forcing these young boys into the mills that should not be in mills at all; forcing them in because they are throwing the mules out and putting on ring-frames. They are doing everything of that kind that they possibly can to crush down the poor people — the poor operatives there.

From U.S. Congress, Senate, Report of the Senate Committee on Relations between Labor and Capital (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1885).

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