A typical working day in the mills started with a factory bell ringing at 4 o’clock in the morning to wake up the employees. Within an hour employees had to be at the mills starting work until late in the evening; sometimes 12-14 hours a day. The air in the mills was not circulated causing it to become very hot in the summer and extremely cold in the winter. Company supervisors believed that opening any windows would cause threads to break more often so they chose to leave windows shut tight at all times. Workers were either sweating or shivering by their machines and many of them got sick with tuberculosis and other respiratory diseases.
Lighting in the mills was also a problem because it was insufficient and workers had to strain their eyes to see what they were doing so as not to injure their hands with tools or machinery. This was very important to the employee because if an injury occurred the employee could lose their job and be replaced immediately. In addition, there was no monetary compensation from the company for the injured. It was not until 1922 that most states passed legislation requiring industries to pay compensation to injured employees.
