About the textile mills in New Bedford, early 1900's:
"In order to afford the barest necessities, both parents and their children had to work in the mills. Men held the better jobs at higher pay, but neither men nor women could support a family on a single wage. Children, sometimes as young as ten years old, doffed the full bobbins off the spinning frames, cleaned around the machinery, and did other repetitive, simple tasks. Children learning a skill such as weaving were taught by their parents or other relatives on the job without pay."
About the young sweepers in the spinning room of the Bennett Mill, 1911:
"They called us kids the 'forty-hour kids.' We could only work short until we got to be sixteen and then we could go the full schedule, which was fifty-four hours." Lewis W. Hine: Isherwood
From The Strike of '28 by Daniel Georgianna
Spinner Publications, New Bedford Mass, 1993
Pages 26 and 27
