ndustrial communities were clean and self-respecting, but conditions
depended largely upon the individual in charge of the mill.

As the years went on and more and more mills were built, the demand for
operatives increased. To draw them from the farms, it was necessary to
improve living conditions in the mill villages and to increase wages.
Today the mill communities are generally clean, and care is taken to
exclude immoral individuals. Payment of wages in cash became the rule. The
company store persisted, but chiefly as a matter of convenience to the
operatives; and in prices it met and often cut below those charged in
other stores in the vicinity. The hours of labor were reduced gradually.
Seventy-two became the maximum, but most mills voluntarily ran sixty-nine
or even sixty-six. The employment of children continued, though some
individual employers reduced it as much as possible without seriously
crippling their forces. This was a real danger so long as there were no
legal restrictions on child labor. Children worked upon the farm as
children have done since farming began, and the average farmer who moved
to the mill was unable to see the difference between working on the farm
and working in the mill. In fact, to his mind, work in the mill seemed
easier than exposure on the farm to the summer sun and the winter cold.

Men who were not conscious of deliberately exploiting their children
urged the manager of the mill to employ a child of twelve or even ten.
If the manager refused, he was threatened with the loss of the whole
family. A family containing good operatives could always find employment
elsewhere, and perhaps the manager of another mill would not be so
scrupulous. So the children went into the mill and often stayed there. If
illiterate when they entered, they remained illiterate. The number of young
children, however, was always exaggerated by the muckrakers, though
unquestionably several hundred children ten to twelve years old, and
possibly a few younger, were employed years ago. The nature of the work
permits the employment of operatives under sixteen only in the spinning
room; the girls, many of them older than sixteen, mend the broken ends of
the yarn at the spinning frames, and the boys remove the full bobbins and
fix empty ones in their stead. The possible percentage of workers under
sixteen in a spinning mill varies from thirty-five to forty-five. In a
mill which weaves the yarn into cloth, the percen