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See full account of how I tracked down the stories of child laborers photographed in Dallas
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| Rosa Mae (13) and Exie Phillips (10), Dallas, Texas, October 1913. Photo by Lewis Hine. |
Rosy Phillips. Fifteen year
old spinner in a Dallas cotton mill. She was far from "rosy" - thin, anaemic. Prematurely old. Her brother Exie
[?] twelve years old who helps her some on Saturdays. He said: "I can't get a steady job, but I can help her all I
want to." I did not see any others very young. Location: Dallas, Texas, October 1913, Lewis Hine.
"When I saw the picture, I was kind of stunned,
and then I broke down and cried. I never had any pictures of my mother as a young person. So really, that was...well...for
three or four days, I just kept getting out the picture and looking at it." -Beatrice Earl, daughter of Rosa Phillips
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| Rosa Mae Phillips (far right), Dallas, Texas, October 1913. Photo by Lewis Hine. |
Group of typical mill
girls. Dallas Cotton Mill. Location: Dallas, Texas, October, 1913, Lewis Hine.
"The Dallas Cotton Mill was the first expensive enterprise of the kind undertaken in Texas. It was incorporated
in 1891 and capitalized at $250,000. At this time it represents an investment of $400,000. It contains 360 looms, 12,000 spindles
and employs 325 hands when working a full crew. It consumes 7000 bales of cotton per annum. It manufactures duck, sheeting
and drilling, which it sells in various parts of the world. Within the last few weeks, prior to the time of my visit, it had
shipped goods to Mexico, Massachusetts, Seattle, Chicago, Los Angeles; and at other times to South Africa and China. There
are a few more boys than girls in this mill; about 65 per cent of the grown persons are men. This mill, as well as the mills
at Itasca, Waxahachie, Sherman, Denison and Bonham, use coal for fuel instead of lignite, procured from Oklahoma and Arkansas."
"This is the third company since
the organization of this mill, the manager informing me that very few mills in Texas ever paid the original stockholders anything,
thereby necessitating the usual foreclosures, reorganization and the like. However, the mill is prospering now. Last year
it added $25,000 worth of new machinery. With reference to labor the manager said: ‘Practically not a hand have I ever
gotten from Dallas and the farms of this State. We import all our hands from the Southern States east of the Mississippi river,
a great many of them coming from Mississippi and Georgia.' The company owns about thirty cottages, the rents ranging from
$6 to $10 per month; owing to the number of rooms. Water, as at all the other mills, is plentiful and free to the operatives.
Coal for the cottages is furnished by the company at cost. Most of the houses have sewerage connections. One of the largest
ward schools in the city is within four blocks of the mill. The manager expressed himself as being in favor of compulsory
education."
"'The small children,'
he said, ‘not of mill age in the mill village spend their time in idleness and cause trouble to their parents as well
as to the mill and the entire community.' The average man in the mill, I was informed by the manager, makes from $1.50 to
$2 per day. He illustrated the earnings of an average family in the mill as follows: A man comes to the mill with his wife
and four children, the man earning $1.50 per day; the daughter, if she is grown, will earn $1 per day; one son, from 14 to
16 years of age, will make 75 cents per day; the other child, a daughter near the age of the son, will make 65 cents per day.
The total earnings of the father and three children will be $3.90 per day, or $97.50 per month. The mother remains in the
house, where she attends to the domestic affairs of the family. At the same time the family is comfortably housed, protected
from the hot sun and the cold winds. ‘Compare this family's wages, condition and surroundings generally,' continued
the manager, ‘with the tenant farmer, and the difference will be in favor of the family in the mill.'"
"The manager predicts that Texas will be the cotton
mill State of the Union, it being a question largely of population. ‘I would rather pay 10 to 12 cents a pound
for cotton than to get it for 8 cents, because it means more-profit to the country and better times generally,' remarked the
manager. With reference to climatic conditions, he said: ‘The inventive genius of man has overcome the defects in the
atmosphere, if any ever existed.' It is his opinion that we are as well supplied with labor as any of the other Southern States.
-Texas Dept of Agriculture Bulletin, July-August 1909
Continue with story of Rosa and Exie Phillips
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