Long ago, cotton was king of the South. Textile mills governed small towns in a sort of paternalistic society. Mill workers lived in mill housing and had most of their basic necessities taken care of by their employers. A sad by product of this era of capitalism was child labor which was captured on film by the photographer Lewis Hines, a social reformer of his day. This photograph was taken in 1908 and is a photo of my great grandmother Sara "Sadie" Agnes Lenore Barton (Howard). The photograph was in government archives and her face had been unidentified until it was recently posted in the Lancaster News by Joe Manning. Joe is a history buff working on the Lewis Hine Project and is attempting to identify the children in some of Mr. Hines' photos (http://www.morningsonmaplestreet.com/). The photograph of my grandmother was taken when she was 13 in the Lancaster Cotton Mill in Lancaster, SC. My father's father was her only son to survive childhood. I had no idea that she had worked as a child laborer, I just knew as most people in Lancaster did, that their family worked for "Springs." As of a few years ago, all of those looms have fallen silent. Springs Industries is virtually non existent and unemployment in Lancaster has reached 19%. We live in the town next to Lancaster, Fort Mill, the former headquarters of Springs. Fort Mill continues to thrive due to it's proximity to Charlotte. When we decided to move back to SC after years away we chose a wonderful neighborhood full of fabulous amenities for our children. We discovered that the developer is Clear Springs, a subsidiary of the same textile mill company that put my great grandmother to work as a child. As my children so happily skip through our carefully manicured neighborhood my grandmother's face haunts me. And I remember that the pitter patter of all of the feet that are now welcoming summer were once used to climb onto the tops of dangerous looms to fix the machines that couldn't be reached by larger adult hands. And I'm grateful to the grandmother I never knew and the eyes that look out of a photo, eyes that look much like my daughter's.
Friday, May 29, 2009
When Cotton Was King
Long ago, cotton was king of the South. Textile mills governed small towns in a sort of paternalistic society. Mill workers lived in mill housing and had most of their basic necessities taken care of by their employers. A sad by product of this era of capitalism was child labor which was captured on film by the photographer Lewis Hines, a social reformer of his day. This photograph was taken in 1908 and is a photo of my great grandmother Sara "Sadie" Agnes Lenore Barton (Howard). The photograph was in government archives and her face had been unidentified until it was recently posted in the Lancaster News by Joe Manning. Joe is a history buff working on the Lewis Hine Project and is attempting to identify the children in some of Mr. Hines' photos (http://www.morningsonmaplestreet.com/). The photograph of my grandmother was taken when she was 13 in the Lancaster Cotton Mill in Lancaster, SC. My father's father was her only son to survive childhood. I had no idea that she had worked as a child laborer, I just knew as most people in Lancaster did, that their family worked for "Springs." As of a few years ago, all of those looms have fallen silent. Springs Industries is virtually non existent and unemployment in Lancaster has reached 19%. We live in the town next to Lancaster, Fort Mill, the former headquarters of Springs. Fort Mill continues to thrive due to it's proximity to Charlotte. When we decided to move back to SC after years away we chose a wonderful neighborhood full of fabulous amenities for our children. We discovered that the developer is Clear Springs, a subsidiary of the same textile mill company that put my great grandmother to work as a child. As my children so happily skip through our carefully manicured neighborhood my grandmother's face haunts me. And I remember that the pitter patter of all of the feet that are now welcoming summer were once used to climb onto the tops of dangerous looms to fix the machines that couldn't be reached by larger adult hands. And I'm grateful to the grandmother I never knew and the eyes that look out of a photo, eyes that look much like my daughter's.
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