Commentary on The Mill,
August 2020
The Mill – new BBC-tv drama written by John Fey. This
mill narrative, set in England, 1830s, shows the horrors of the First
Industrial Revolution as it grew to a monster and why the Luddites rose to
action.
I compare this work with facts I gleaned from new research and
new book, David Dale, A Life by David J. McLaren. Interested in
conditions of mill workers 50 years earlier, 1786-99 in Scotland, at the New
Lanark Mills? I refer you to my four “Dear Jean” letters elsewhere in this blog,
fiction based on McLaren’s work. I write to my sister, Jean, and give her an
account of me and my three kids, we work at the New Lanark Mills.
What follows here with this commentary of The Mill
builds on my ”Dear Jean” letters. With the BBC work, we see the ongoing harsh
conditions of textile mill life. Yep,
textiles. That’s what gets the cred for the birth of the Industrial Revolution.
Why? It was those mills, starting in the 1760s throughout
England and Scotland, grouped under “Great Britain,” that changed the world. It
was the first time in human history that so many strangers worked inside big
buildings. Mill owners had no idea of how to deal with hundreds of people, so
treat them like a herd of working mules. Work them 13 hours a day, seven days a
week, what’s the problem? They can’t live 10 miles away, have to house them on
site, might as well keep them busy… and oh, all those young ones in the
workhouses, those of ‘stout body’ they can lift a load, we can use them. And
use them, they did.
Prior to this massive change, to change sheep’s wool to a spool
of yarn, to take a flax plant and turn it to a spool of yarn – google ‘make
linen’ it was WORK – or turn balls of cotton into a strand of yarn a mile long,
have that spool of yarn get some color (What? No red sheep? No blue flax? No
green cotton? Duhh. In McLaren’s book, we learn how a spool of yarn can be
turned red - YIKES), to make a yard of cloth - yep, that weft/warp loom thing
that makes the very clothes you’re wearing right now, was all done by a few
people. Most usually it was 10-20 men who knew each other and/or related,
working in a shed, fulfilling an order by a guy walking or riding a horse from
far away, the middle man put in his order with the workers, they did their part
of the process, and the middle man would return, get the product then sell that
bolt of material to the dress makers. Clothing was very expensive, most folks
had one set of clothes, often “hand-me-down” clothes, some more prosperous
would have two sets, one set for every day work, one set for Sunday. Then
something happened.
Some clockmakers, and others who had engineering genius, looked
at spinners and looms, and found better ways to get the job done. The birth of
the Industrial Revolution. Things happened so fast, the changes affected all of
Western culture so massively that it wasn’t called the Industrial Evolution.
A worthy thread through The Mill is the truth of
the work conditions, the anger of the workers as we see the Luddites making
their moves, the rise of unions, all fascinating. We meet and get to know a
fellow who has engineering genius. What isn’t brought out is the true
success/tragedy of one early English mill engineer who was from nobody,
nothing, but could see better ways to make machines work. He rose to be the
wealthiest man in the world, Richard Arkwright. He was completely unconcerned
with welfare of mill workers, and became a hated focus of English mill workers,
but the King liked him, became Sir Richard. Really. As you’ll see in my “Dear
Jean” letters, Dale and Arkwright started the New Lanark Mill plan together,
then, for some undiscovered reasons Dale delicately got out of the legal
relationship and still kept Arkwright on the job as mill plans moved along.
Dale became sole owner. Wish I could have been a fly on the wall for those
discussions!
An aside, with the changes starting at this time, the shape of
the human face changed very fast. Prior to 1700s, human skulls had well-aligned
teeth, but starting then, the human skull changed and too many teeth in the
smaller mouth, teeth grew crooked. Just an archelogy fact. Most of us have no
wisdom teeth, last four in back of upper and lower jaw, taken by dentist to
avoid serious crowding. Blame it on the Industrial Revolution. Better farming,
less famine, steady income, more meat, bigger brain, longer life, etc.
With The Mill, as we see young people working, we
follow a group of young women who work together on the mill floor and bunk
together in a crappy room at the mill, they are older teen girls. Their lives are
completely ruled by the mill staff. We learn through Series 1, four episodes,
that these girls are from the workhouse. We get some glimpses of what that
means, one scene is in such a place, yep, living nightmare. The mill workers
have a much better existence by comparison. From really really shitty to
shitty.
I took a deep dive into Scotland’s famous mill, New Lanark
Mills, near Glasgow, with my blog posts “Dear Jean” – four letters 1786-1806, to
my sister who went to the colonies and I’m here near Glasgow with my three kids
and dead husband. I tell her about how me and kids got work in New Lanark
Mills, hired by first owner David Dale.
A Scot historian, David J. McLaren, spent over 30 years digging into
Dale’s life, and I’m grateful for his excellent new book, David Dale, A
Life. His publisher, Stenlake Publishing Limited, did a remarkable
honor with the book, tons of color photos, maps, original source documents,
it’s a worthy book. I bought my copy from the publisher, didn’t want amazon to
get my money. Odd that I worked for some of the Dale progeny in New Harmony,
Indiana, there’s that “degrees of separation” thing.
What is definitely a fact, the early mills had mostly children
workers. Read on.
What we need to consider first is this: in Western Culture, in
the 1700s, childhood was mostly over when that person was 5, maybe 6 years old.
Really. Definitely for the poor, which of course was most of humanity, and
among the wealthy, their 6 yr. old kid was always dressed like a little adult
and expected to conduct themselves as adults. Really. We enlightened 21st
century eyes see the evil of the mill owners to “employ” 5 yr. old kids, any
better that Dale started his “boarders” at 6 yrs. old, harsh, eh? But keep in
mind, this was the cultural norm, kids anywhere that age were expected to work
all day, every day. And I don’t mean your 6 yr. old kid would help neighbor
farmer for the day and come home that night. No. The parent would sign legal
document and kid would go live with farmer, or merchant and live in back room
of shop, or upper-class household for domestic work, for years. Rich kids, especially boys, didn’t have to do
common work, but were taught with intense determination to be proper cultured
intensely striving adults. Most definitely no such thing as a ‘teenager.’ If
that rich lad wasn’t a sea captain by the time he was 20, he was probably a
loser. The Industrial Revolution didn’t start child labor, it just refined it.
As I consider The Mill workers of 1830s, and think
about what I’ve learned from McLaren’s book, here’s one very big difference. In
the 1780-90s, at New Lanark Mills, when a “boarder” turned 16, he or she was
given a new set of clothes, a new pair of shoes, and a “good-bye, good-luck.”
16 was legal adulthood. We see in The Mill that the young women will get their
freedom at 21. Hmm, big diff. I refer you to my “Dear Jean” letters for who the
“boarders” were. Oh here’s another big diff: “boarders” in New Lanark Mills
1786-1799 slept three to a straw mat bed, 75 to a room. The young women we see
in The Mill better count their blessings!
Another aspect implied with The Mill, workers
really struggle with reading, and we learn that London passes a new bill, 1832,
and mill owners have to educate their workers. Well! How about a cred to David
Dale, he took that on with all his working children, 1786-1799, they had
schooling every night after working 13 hours! Ok, they got a 1/2hr. break for
crappy breakfast, and one hour for skimpy dinner, you do the math. But they
could read, do numbers, and write, what we consider a 3rd grade education. When
they were free to go at 16, they had a resume! Add this: no such thing as free
public schooling. Hell to the no. Dale’s parents paid local parish school for
his minimal education. Reading and numbers were an important rare skill, and to
write was even more exceptional. Really. Arkwright could barely scribble his
name.
Another important thread through The Mill is
activists concerned about the slavery issue. FYI, in Dale’s time, 50 yrs.
earlier, the huge issue was Slave Trade Abolition. In the 1780s, some
passionate, angry Quakers and others were traveling through Great Britain and
rousing people to understand the evils of the Slave Trade – NOTE: this is very
different than the abolition of slavery. Check the “Dear Jean” letters. I
wonder if The Mill narrative tweaked history, we see a banner “Am
I not a woman and a sister” with graphic of kneeling slave, the masculine of
this very graphic was a part of Dale’s turn to understanding how these humans
were being sold by other humans like horses. Or, as John Prine sang, “Some
Humans Ain’t Human.”
An aspect of The Mill that I find valuable but
likely not appreciated in current culture, the serious meaning of a handshake.
Even in mid-20th century it held sacred meaning. How well I remember my New
Harmony employer, one of the wealthiest women in the world thanks to her
grandfather’s and father’s success with oil, she let me know once with her
imperious tone that her father and his gentlemen partners did their agreements
with a handshake. Some lawyers saw a way to diminish that gesture as any legal
anything, and her father’s business life caved on this very point. I wrote a
book about my life and work with this woman, she married into the Dale legacy
and brought great wealth to the marriage and New Harmony, manuscript seeks literary
agent.
Something of The Mill that I ponder – in Dale’s mill,
very few men worked the mill operation. Yet in The Mill, we see
men everywhere on the mill floor, working along with the women. In McLaren’s
book, he has documents of New Lanark Mills numbers of workers year by year,
most children, more boys than girls, then women, least few employees – men.
Curious.
With The Mill, we get a fast glimpse of the
Liverpool Workhouse. Maybe BBC assumes all Brits know the backstory? Sure isn’t
given much explanation in this new tv series. What I’ve learned from McLaren’s
research, in Glasgow and Edinburgh, in 1780s, probably much earlier too, was
that there were no homeless on those streets. No! That would mean that City
Fathers weren’t good Christians. Their solution to the problem of people forced
to leave a kid on the curb, or that elder with no family or place to live, or
the odd one mixed up in the head, was to take control, bring them to an
institution, commonly referred to as workhouses, in Glasgow it was Town’s
Hospital, not really a hospital, but a live-in, lock-in horrible residence for
all the above mentioned tragic humans. Keep in mind that with the ravages of
disease, people were dying like flies. You could be fine in the morning, and
dead at night, and family life changed instantly. When the mills got moving, it
was the ideal setting for young hands work, and what a help to the City budget
to get that child out of state care. The state was still legally in charge of
that child, but signed over to a mill. No pay, but a much better living circumstance,
considering.
I ponder another difference about the kids going from workhouse
to mill, in Dale’s years, he paid Town’s Hospital for each child, p. 86 David
Dale A Life, if you want to check it out. In The Mill, we
see the workhouse paying the mill guy for taking a kid. Hmm. You’ll see this
thread play out as the mill guy is supposed to return a kid, which would mean
return the $, he doesn’t, oh yeah, the weird weird scene with the little girl
offering him more than a kiss, weird, BBC doing a Hollywood thing there, but he
keeps that money, more reason to hate the mill cruelty. Spoiler – he gets
busted.
I like how we watch one mill worker, intent on finding her past,
and what truth we learn. That was very well portrayed, harsh reality. That thread
gives a nod to a common death, woman dying while giving birth. Much of this in
McLaren’s research. Dale’s wife, a wealthy woman, died of “childbed.” Too bad
the doctors were still in the Stone Age while the lawyers AKA “Writers to the
Signet” were all dialed in.
Gratitude to the writers, thinkers, crew, actors and timing for
this remarkable piece of history.
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