Figure 1.--Here we see doffer boys at Aragon Mills in Rock Hill, South Carolina, photographed May 13, 1912. Notice that the boys are not wraring overalls like the adult male workers at the mill. Notice the cotton fibers on their knickers. The air in the mills tthe boys breathed was filled with these fibers, an junappreciated healtyh hazzard st the time. Photographs like this had an impact on public ooinion. So we see few iages from the 1920s, mill owners prohibited it. At the time, child labor in the South was not considered anything out of the ordinary. Child labor was not ended in the South until the New Deal when Federal legislatiion prohibited it (1933). Photographer: Lewis W. Hine. U.S. National Archives.

There were many separate tasking involved in the manufacture of spun textiles. The younger children were called 'slubber doffers' or just 'doffers' Slubber was a derogatory term meaning to perform in a slipshod fashion. A doffer was a worker who removed the 'doffs' ( bobbins, pirns or spindles ) holding spun fiber from a spinning frame and replaced them with empty ones. Doffing was a major task assigned to children. The task necesitated speed and dexterity rather than strength. So it was a task often assigned to children who had the added advantage that they could be paid less. Another task was sweeping the mill floors where cotton fibers generated by the machinery accumulated during the day. In the image here you can see cotton fibers beginning to accumulate on the floor (figure 1). The most advanced task commonly asigned to children was spinners. The reader can get an idea of thelevel of oppression experienced by African Americans in the South at the time because you usually see only white children abd adult workers. Such job as you cvan see here were not even jobs that African Americans could aspire to fill. It explains the Great Migration that was just beginning at the time.

Created: 8:57 PM 9/3/2024
Last updated: 8:57 PM 9/3/2024