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The number of textile mills in Georgia increased dramatically during the late nineteenth century. Atlanta Constitution editor Henry Grady fervently called for a Cotton Mill Campaign to rebuild the region after the Civil War and “bring the cotton mills to the cotton fields.” In his vision of the “New South,” railroad lines would link cotton mills to markets in the South and the North.

Northern mill owners and southern entrepreneurs, attracted by lower taxes, cheaper labor, and the absence of a labor union, embraced this vision to establish industry in the South. By 1880, Georgia boasted the largest number of spindles and looms among all southern states. The new mills were larger, multi-story brick buildings increasingly operated by steam-power and full of efficient new machinery that produced yarn, cloth, and other textile products. Many Georgia cotton mills built company towns to maximize their profits and manage their employees. Workers rented homes from the company, the size based on the number of family members working at the mill; bought food and supplies at inflated prices from the company store; attended the mill church; and sent their children to the mill school. By 1900, 92 percent of mill workers in the South lived in company-owned mill villages. Textile mills employed primarily white workers, both adults and children, in the factories. Men obtained higher-paying jobs as supervisors and mechanics, while women and children operated the machines.

In the segregated South, African Americans faced fewer opportunities and lower pay: black men worked “on the yard,” in the cotton house, or in janitorial work, while their wives and daughters could only find employment as domestics in the homes of white families in the mill village.

Child labor is the employment of children as wage earners. It became a serious social problem during the Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom during the 1700s and spread to America as it became industrialized. Children, many below the age of 10, were employed by textile factories and forced to work long hours under dangerous and unhealthy conditions for very little pay. Charles Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist (1837-1839) was written as a commentary on the evils of child labor and exposed the problems associated with child labor to the masses. Social reformers condemned child labor because of its effects on the health and welfare of children.

Lewis Wickes Hine, a northern labor reformer, visited Georgia’s textile mills to document their use of child labor and the squalid living conditions that most employees were forced to endure. Using disguises and aliases to infiltrate the mills, Hines managed to capture hundreds of images of child laborers in Georgia’s mills. Plants in Rossville, Rome, Lindale, and Columbus were especially prominent in his publications. The outrage caused by the photos that Hines took eventually led to Congressional action. In 1916, Congress passed a law setting standards for the hiring of children by industries involved in interstate or foreign commerce. The standards included setting the minimum age for work in factories and mills at fourteen, an eight-hour day, and a forty-eight hour week. The law prohibited nightwork for children under the age of sixteen.

Factory owners were angered because the standards interfered with their ability to make a profit from the labor of their most underpaid employees – the children working in the mills. Families with children working in the mills were also angry because many depended on the children’s meager incomes in order to support their families. In 1918, the Supreme Court of the United States declared the law unconstitutional. In 1924, Congress passed an amendment to the constitution allowing federal laws to be passed to protect working children under the age of eighteen. This amendment failed to receive the required approval of three-fourths of all the states. Finally, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 helped to promote child labor reform. This law declared that children over the age of sixteen may be employed in any occupation except those declared hazardous by the U.S. secretary of labor. Children fourteen and fifteen years old were permitted to work in only a limited number of occupations outside of school hours. This law firmly established the constitutional legality of child labor laws.