50 FLIGHT FROM THE CITY 



sewed and knitted the yarns into garments of all 

 kinds. The music of the spinning-wheel and the 

 rhythm of the loom filled the land. Perhaps one-third 

 of the time of men and women one-third of their 

 total time at labor was devoted to producing yarns 

 and fabrics which they consumed. 



In the place of loom-rooms in its homes, America 

 now has thousands of mills employing hundreds of 

 thousands of wage-earners. Many of the wage-earners 

 in these textile mills are children in spite of the cam- 

 paigns against child labor. And the wages paid by 

 these mills are notoriously the lowest which prevail 

 in industry in this country. Instead of healthy and 

 creative work in the homes, we have monotonous and 

 deadly labor in mills. 



A trifle over a third of the production of the cotton 

 industry is used for industrial purposes. It is used by 

 manufacturers in fabricating tires, automobile bodies, 

 electric wire, and similar industrial products. Two- 

 thirds of the production of cotton and nearly all of 

 the production of the silk and wool industry goes to 

 the consumer either as piece goods for home sewing, 

 or cut up into wearing apparel by clothing manu- 

 facturers. This means that only 10 to 15 per cent of 

 the total number of factories and workers in the entire 

 industry are engaged in producing for the needs of 

 other industries. All of the rest are doing work which 

 used to be done in the home and much of which might 

 still be done there. And our experiments with sewing 



