Cotton Dust and Poverty

Cotton Dust and Poverty. . Although industrialization brought great improvements to the South, advancements in health and medicine lagged dramatically behind. Without antibiotics, infectious diseases were common and dangerous. Medical care was often unavailable, and employers had no obligation to provide health insurance or worker compensation. Working in textile mills and living in mill villages compounded the health risks already prevalent in the South. , Different jobs within the mill brought their own unique hazards. In the opening and card rooms, cotton dust and lint circulated through the air continuously. For many employees, this brought coughing and lung irritation, which over time led to “brown lung” disease, or byssinosis. Women and men who worked in the weave room faced constant humidity and heat. Consequently, many workers contracted tuberculosis and other respiratory disorders. , Textile machines also proved dangerous. Hands or arms caught in the machine’s belts were easily skinned or broken. Carl Thompson remembers one harrowing incident, “There was one man, his shirt or something or other caught in that belt, and that belt just throwed him to the top of the mill and busted his brains out.” Even workers who managed to avoid serious accidents and illnesses faced constant soreness and fatigue from hours of hard, repetitive labor. , It’s hard to believe, but in them days along about Christmas time the yard men would come in the mill with their shovels and actually scrape up piles of filth where the help had spit all the year long and no attention at all being paid to it. Yessir, plenty of cotton mill folks had TB’s in them days and no wonder. , Wesley Renn West Durham, 1938., Just as working in the mill could prove dangerous, living in the mill village presented a host of health issues. Lacking indoor plumbing and running water, most residents shared wells and outhouses. While farm families used these too, the sheer numbers of villagers crowded into small areas could create sanitation problems. Flies swarmed around outhouses in hot weather and spread diseases like typhoid and dysentery. Diets lacking important vitamins and minerals also caused problems. Due to protein deficiencies, many people contracted pellagra. This disease caused scaly red patches on the skin, diarrhea, fatigue, nervous disorders, and eventually death. In 1916, pellagra affected 16% of mill village households, but was a common problem throughout the South. , Despite these dangers both at work and at home, laws did not require owners to care for injured or sick employees. Rather, those who missed work or lost their jobs due to illness or accident found their only support within the mill community. Workers often took up collections on payday for the families of sick neighbors. Others brought assistance in the form of food. Ultimately, in times of hardship, mill village residents relied almost exclusively on each other for aid and support.