The
Industrial Revolution created growing demand for child labor in the mills and factories, since children were easier to supervise than adults and good at monotonous, repetitive tasks that often required little physical strength, but where small bodies and nimble fingers were an advantage. Children were employed in the mills as spinners, sweepers and doffers, with girls usually starting as spinners and boys as doffers and sweepers. When the bobbins on the spinning frames were full, the machinery stopped. The doffers would swarm into the mill and, as quickly as possible, change all the bobbins, after which the machinery would be restarted and the doffers were free to amuse themselves until the next change-over. On the newer and taller frames, the doffers often had to climb to reach the bobbins.
Great Britain In
Lancashire the doffing boys were free to do what they liked once they had completed a doffing, as long as they stayed within earshot of the "throstle jobber," who would whistle when they were next needed. They were motivated to do the work as fast as possible, since this gave them as long as possible to play. Between ten and twelve boys could handle a factory with about ten thousand
throstle spindles, depending on the amount of yarn being spun. The doffers were usually the sons of poor people, and were small and skinny. They were sometimes called "The Devil's Own" for the tricks that they would get up to. As a rule they would go barefoot except at the coldest times of year. At
Quarry Bank Mill in
Styal, England, near Manchester, a doffer earned 1s/6d a day in 1790, and by 1831 was earning from 2s. to 3s. a day. An overlooker's wage in the same period rose from 15s. to 17s. In
Leeds in the 1830s a doffer could earn 4s. to 5s. In the textile industry in Britain, wages for children continued to rise steadily compared to those for adults during the period from 1830 to 1860, indicating that demand was outstripping supply. In Belfast linen factories in 1890 girls were employed as doffers, earning the equivalent of US $1.43 daily (about 6s. at the time.)
North America , author of
A New England Girlhood, became a bobbin doffer in
Lowell, Massachusetts in 1835, aged 11 In the United States in the first part of the 19th century, although the day was long, the doffers only worked for about four hours each day. Memoirs from writers such as
Lucy Larcom and
Harriet Hanson Robinson describe the long hours, but also the leisurely pace of work and the opportunities for social interactions. In Massachusetts in 1830 a doffer boy earned 25 cents a day. An overseer of rooms would make $1.25 a day, and the superintendent of a mill earned $2.00 a day, considered an excellent wage at the time. In the southern cotton mills it was customary to employ only whites for most jobs in the mill, although blacks had outside jobs and some inside jobs such as firing the boilers. This persisted well into the 20th century. During the later part of the 19th century, working conditions in the U.S. textile industry deteriorated. Immigrant textile workers coming from Yorkshire and Lancashire to
New England found the mills poorly run, with the managers cheating on measurements of cuts of cloth and time worked, and arbitrarily cutting wages without warning. These workers were often skilled, accustomed to being well-treated in their home country, and accustomed to taking industrial action if they were not. There were a series of strikes from the 1870s onward. An 1889 Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Relations of Capital and Labor in Canada recorded a statement by the assistant superintendent of St. Croix Cotton Mills in
St. Stephen, New Brunswick. He said the mill employed some young boys around fifteen years old as doffers, but the average doffer was aged thirty. Wages were from 65 to 80 cents a day. In the summer hours were from 6:30 am to 6 pm, with a half day on Saturday. Winter hours were slightly longer. An employee who had worked in both countries reported that wages were better than in the United States and working conditions better, although the hours were about the same. Doffers in 1887 in a large mill in
Cabarrus County, North Carolina, both boys and girls, earned 40 cents a day. In New England in the 1890s, the doffers, piecers and back boys had their own union, and were not admitted to the
mule spinners' union, even though they often aspired to become mule spinners. Many left the industry rather than tolerate the conditions.
William Madison Wood, the manager at the Washington Mill in
Lawrence, Massachusetts, instituted a system in 1895 where employees gained bonuses for meeting production quotas, as long as they missed no more than one day per month. The effect was that weavers drove spinners to produce, spinners drove doffers and so on, and that workers came in even when sick or injured. Wood then used the increased pay to justify running the looms at ever faster speeds.
Rags to riches A doffer could achieve success if he had enough energy and ability. Stephen Davol, born in November 1807, joined his elder brothers as a doffer in the Troy mill in
Fall River, Massachusetts in 1818. After rising through the ranks, in 1833 he became superintendent of the Pocasset Mill at the age of twenty-six. He drew up the plans for building a giant new mill for the Pocasset company, by and rising to five stories. The mill was unusual for its time in being built as a whole to plans that considered both the structure and the arrangement of the machinery, belts and gearing. From 1842 to 1860 Davol was agent, or chief executive, of the Troy Mill. By the 1870s he was a member of the board of ten different companies. George Alexander Gray (1851–1912) is another example. Gray started work as a doffer before the
Civil War when aged eight, earning ten cents a day in a mill at Pinhook, North Carolina. He had little education, but rose to the position of overseer in the mill, and then was given the job of supervising installation of machinery in new plants. He moved to
Gastonia, North Carolina, where he built the first mill with his own capital. By the time he died, there were eleven mills in Gastonia, of which Gray had been involved in establishing nine. Carl Augustus Rudisill (1884–1979) began work as a doffer boy in
Cherryville, North Carolina, at ten cents a day. He was superintendent of the Indian Creek Manufacturing Company by 1907, and later developed the Carlton Yarn Mills into a major operation. He was a member of the North Carolina legislature from 1937 to 1941. ==Early 20th century==