![]() Can she hold still? Can she focus? Fourteen is the youngest a child is supposed to be to work in a mill, but that rule isn't enforced. When Grace starts working in the mill, we worry about her dealing with all those machines that can suck the person in and remove digits or limbs. We see that she is an active little girl, always moving around and completely unlike her orderly older sister who lays her clothes out the night before, and pays good attention to the dangerous work she does. ![]() She will be a doffer (a worker who replaces full bobbins by empty ones on the throstle or ring frames) on her mother's looms. Grace doesn't seem particularly dismayed about the future this is what she is supposed to do, what is expected of her. Her family, and especially her mother, are "counting on Grace" to do good work and add some money to the meager family income. ![]() Grace is on the verge of leaving school to work in the mill. She is in school when we first meet her the "second-best reader" in the classroom. The life of her family consists of working in the mill, using their paychecks in the company store, not having enough to eat, going to church on Sunday. ![]() This is the story of Grace Forcier, a twelve-year-old girl of French-Canadian heritage living in the mill town of Pownal, Vermont in 1910. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |