A Mule Spinner Tells the U.S. Senate about Late 19th century Unemployment (1883)
Web version: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/27
Q. What is your business?
A. I am a mule-spinner by trade. I have worked at it since I have been in this country—eleven
years.
Q. Are you a married man?
A. Yes, sir; I am a married man; have a wife and two children. I am not very well educated. …
went to work when I was about eight or nine years old… My children get along very well in
summer time, on account of not having to buy fuel or shoes or one thing and another. I earn
$1.50 a day and can’t afford to pay a very big house rent. I pay $1.50 a week for rent, which
comes to about $6 a month. …
Q. Do you have work right along?
A. No, sir; since that strike we had down in Fall River about three years ago I have not worked
much more than half the time, and that has brought my circumstances down very much.
Q. Why have you not worked more than half the time since then?
A. Well, at Fall River if a man has not got a boy to act as ―back-boy‖ it is very hard for him to
get along. In a great many cases they discharge men in that work and put in men who have boys.
Q. Men who have boys of their own?
A. Men who have boys of their own capable enough to work in a mill, to earn 30 or 40 cents a
day.
Q. Is the object of that to enable the boy to earn something for himself?
A. Well, no, the object is this: They are doing away with a great deal of mule-spinning there and
putting in ring-spinning… and it throws the men out of work because they are doing away with
the mules and putting these ring-frames in to take their places. For that reason they get all the
small help they can to run these ring-frames. There are so many men in the city to work, and
whoever has a boy can have work, and whoever has no boy stands no chance. Probably he may
have a few months of work in the summer time, but will be discharged in the fall. That is what
leaves me in poor circumstances. Our children, of course, are very often sickly… on account of
not having sufficient clothes, or shoes, or food, or something. …
And another thing that helped to keep me down: A year ago this month I buried the oldest boy
we had, and that brings things very expensive on a poor man. For instance, it will cost there, to
bury a body, about $100. … Doctors' bills are very heavy—about $2 a visit; and if a doctor
comes once a day for two or three weeks it is quite a pile for a poor man to pay. …
Q. They charge you as much as they charge people of more means?
A. They charge as much as if I was the richest man in the city…
Q. Do you think you have had $150 within a year?
A. No, sir. …
Q. The thirteen weeks and the $16 you have mentioned?...That would be somewhere about $133,
if you had not lost any time?
A. Yes, sir. …
Q. Do you mean that yourself and wife and two children have had nothing but that for all this
time?
A. That is all. I got a couple dollars' worth of coal last winter, and the wood I picked up myself. I
goes around with a shovel and picks up clams and wood.
Q. What do you do with the clams?
A. We eat them. I don’t get them to sell, but just to eat, for the family. That is the way my
brother lives, too, mostly. He lives close by us. …
Q. Why do you not go West on a farm?
A. How could I go, walk it?...
Q. You spoke of fuel—what do you have for fuel?
A. Wood and coal. … I pick it up around the shore—any old pieces I see around that are not
good for anything. There are many more that do the same thing. …
Q. What have you eaten?
A. Well, bread mostly, when we could get it; we sometimes couldn’t make out to get that, and
have had to go without a meal.
Q. Has there been any day in the year that you have had to go without anything to eat?
A. Yes, sir, several days. …
Q. How about the children and your wife—did they go without anything to eat too?
A. My wife went out this morning and went to a neighbor’s and got a loaf of bread… when she
got home the children were crying for something to eat.
Q. Have the children had anything to eat to-day except that, do you think?
A. They had that loaf of bread—I don’t know what they have had since then, if they have had
anything. …
Q. If that loaf is gone, is there anything in the house?
A. No, sir; unless my wife goes out and gets something; and I don’t know who would mind the
children while she goes out.
Q. Has she any money to get anything with?
A. No, sir.
Q. Have the children gone without a meal at any time during the year?
A. They have gone without bread some days, but we have sometimes got meal and made
porridge of it. …
Q. Meal stirred up in hot water?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Is it cold weather down there now?
A. It is very cold now.
Q. What have the children got on in the way of clothing?
A. They have got along very nicely all summer, but now they are beginning to feel quite sickly.
One has one shoe on, a very poor one, and a slipper, that was picked up somewhere. The other
has two odd shoes on, with the heel out. He has got cold and is sickly now. …
Q. What have they got on the rest of their person?
A. Well, they have a little calico shirt—what should be a shirt; it is sewed up in some shape—
and one little petticoat, and a kind of little dress. …
Q. You say that a good many others are situated just like you are?
A. Yes, sir; I should say as many as a thousand down in Fall River are just in the same shape, if
not worse; though they can’t be much worse. I have heard many women say they would sooner
be dead than living. I don’t know what is wrong, but something is wrong. There is an overflow
of labor in Fall River. …
Q. Is there anything else that you want to say to the committee?
A. Well, as regards debts; it costs us so much for funeral expenses and doctors. expenses; I
wanted to mention that.
The CHAIRMAN. You have stated that. It is clear that nobody can afford either to get sick or to
die there. …
Q. Are you in debt?
A. Yes, sir. … I am in debt for those funeral expenses now $15—since a year ago. …
Q. You live in a hired tenement?
A. Yes; but of course I can’t pay a big rent. My rent is $6 a month. The man I am living under
would come and put me right out and give me no notice either if I didn’t pay my rent. He is a
sheriff and auctioneer man. I don’t know whether he has any authority to do it or not, but he does
it with people .
Q. Do you see any way out of your troubles—what are you going to do for a living—or do you
expect to have to stay right there?
A. Yes. I can’t run around with my family. …
Q. You do not know anything but mule-spinning, I suppose?
A. That is what I have been doing, but I sometimes do something with pick and shovel. … I am
looking for work in a mill. The way they do there is this: There are about twelve or thirteen men
that go into a mill every morning, and they have to stand their chance, looking for work. The
man who has a boy with him he stands the best chance, and then, if it is my turn or a neighbor’s
turn who has no boy, if another man comes in who has a boy he is taken right in, and we are left
out. I said to the boss once it was my turn to go in, and now you have taken on that man; what
am I to do; I have got two little boys at home, one of them three years and a half and the other
one year and a half old, and how am I to find something for them to eat; I can’t get my turn when
I come here.
He said he could not do anything for me. I says, ―Have I got to starve; ain’t I to have any work?‖
They are forcing these young boys into the mills that should not be in mills at all; forcing them in
because they are throwing the mules out and putting on ring-frames. They are doing everything
of that kind that they possibly can to crush down the poor people—the poor operatives there.
Source: U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Education and Labor, Report on the Relations
Between Labor and Capital, Vol. 3 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1885), 451–
457.