Through the mill: The life of a mill-boy

Chapter 2: Note

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About This Book

An autobiographical narrative follows a mill-boy from a bereaved childhood into life worked out in shops and textile mills, detailing household arrangements with relatives, early duties in a fish shop, and the rigors of factory routine. It chronicles attempts at self-improvement through informal schooling, music and art, and participation in clubs and labor actions, including wage cuts and strikes. Alongside episodes of enlistment and small entrepreneurial ventures, the account reflects on how machinery, employer practices, and social networks shape bodily toil, ambitions, and moments of solidarity and hardship in a working-class life.

Note

How many thousand pens are busy reporting and recording mill life! It is a splendid commentary on the fineness of our social conscience that there are so many champions on behalf of overworked boys and girls.

Coming now, to take its place among the multitudes of investigations and faithful records of factory life, is this frank, absolutely real and dispassionate Autobiography—written by a mill-boy who has lived the experiences of this book. So far as can be found this is the first time that such an Autobiography has been printed in English.

Since its appearance in the Outlook, the Autobiography has been entirely rewritten and new chapters have been added, so that the book will be practically new to anyone who chanced to read the Outlook chapters.