drifting up from the grinding wheel, caused a severe allergic reaction in young Ide. “This created a serious problem,” wrote his nephew Knox Ide, in his memoirs. It was decided by the family that George sell his interest in the gristmill back to the company, and he joined his uncle, diplomat Henry C. Ide, on a voyage by locomotive, steamboat and horse and buggy to the Deep South. They chased the promise of unlimited natural resources to a place called Jacksonville. “George thrived and became very popular with the ‘natives,’ especially the ladies, many of whom set their caps for him…a handsome dashing figure when behind two full-blooded carriage horses,” wrote his nephew Knox. These were the men—visionaries, in recorded history—who held the fate of a people, a people who could be used up and discarded, with more, always more, to take their place.
From the beginning, it was more than industry. The mill, formed from 1.5 million red clay bricks, seemed to grow out of the earth instead of just being built upon it, and in a way it did. The clay was dug from the ground at the construction site, and fired in ovens, right there, into hard, brittle permanence. The bricks rose around a skeleton of massive beams and round, hardwood pillars, all of them hacked and smoothed from giant, ancient trees. It was the single biggest man-made thing most of them had ever seen, three stories of vast, echoing rooms and towering ceilings, a battleship long, and so wide a man could not throw a silver dollar across it. The windows glowed even at midnight, lit by a coal-fired, crackling generator that must have seemed like alchemy in a town still lit by kerosene.
When it ran wide-open, when workers fed trainloads of cotton into its massive, gnashing machines, the mill seemed to take on some malevolent spirit, to come alive. The hardwood floors, built to last a hundred years, trembled and popped under tons and tons of vibrating steel, as billions of tiny scraps of cotton spun off the machines and flew like clouds of gnats through giant, stifling rooms. The separators, designed to rip and tear a 500-pound bale of cotton, were just the start of it. Stretching across the floor were eleven thousand spindles, bolted to the hardwood with iron screws as long as railroad spikes. They did the work of a million old women at a million looms, but screaming, shuddering, cutting and biting. The machines would do the spinning, but had to be fed, fixed, and unclogged when the yarn broke or fouled, and for that, the company needed people brave enough to reach into the spinning, whirring gears. If you were careless, even for a second, it would get you. Over the years, the machines and the people mingled, not in a silly philosophical sense but in a real one, as it took their fingers, hands and arms and pumped their lungs full of cotton dust, until they were each part of the other, metal, cotton, flesh and bone.
The company knew where to fish for such men and women, and knew what bait to use.
Beside the mill, a village took shape, a community of small, solid, decent houses, every one exactly the same. The streets were named just A Street, B Street, and so on, as if these plain people did not require anything else. There would be 136 houses in all, a town within the town. Made of cheap but sturdy weatherboard and roofed with wooden shingles, they were designed by George P. Ide’s new bride, Margaret Rosa Borden, a true Southern belle. She insisted that the roof lines of the little millhouses be designed to mirror the roof lines of their elegant home in Jacksonville—the antebellum Boxwood. In this way, she explained, every worker would share in its beauty.
But inside the red-brick walls of the mill was a netherworld. Women marched home, stunned and ashamed, after the machines ripped the hair from their heads or stripped off their clothes. One man died smoking on one of the mill’s walls after the bosses refused to stop production even as he worked on
From the beginning, it was more than industry. The mill, formed from 1.5 million red clay bricks, seemed to grow out of the earth instead of just being built upon it, and in a way it did. The clay was dug from the ground at the construction site, and fired in ovens, right there, into hard, brittle permanence. The bricks rose around a skeleton of massive beams and round, hardwood pillars, all of them hacked and smoothed from giant, ancient trees. It was the single biggest man-made thing most of them had ever seen, three stories of vast, echoing rooms and towering ceilings, a battleship long, and so wide a man could not throw a silver dollar across it. The windows glowed even at midnight, lit by a coal-fired, crackling generator that must have seemed like alchemy in a town still lit by kerosene.
When it ran wide-open, when workers fed trainloads of cotton into its massive, gnashing machines, the mill seemed to take on some malevolent spirit, to come alive. The hardwood floors, built to last a hundred years, trembled and popped under tons and tons of vibrating steel, as billions of tiny scraps of cotton spun off the machines and flew like clouds of gnats through giant, stifling rooms. The separators, designed to rip and tear a 500-pound bale of cotton, were just the start of it. Stretching across the floor were eleven thousand spindles, bolted to the hardwood with iron screws as long as railroad spikes. They did the work of a million old women at a million looms, but screaming, shuddering, cutting and biting. The machines would do the spinning, but had to be fed, fixed, and unclogged when the yarn broke or fouled, and for that, the company needed people brave enough to reach into the spinning, whirring gears. If you were careless, even for a second, it would get you. Over the years, the machines and the people mingled, not in a silly philosophical sense but in a real one, as it took their fingers, hands and arms and pumped their lungs full of cotton dust, until they were each part of the other, metal, cotton, flesh and bone.
The company knew where to fish for such men and women, and knew what bait to use.
Beside the mill, a village took shape, a community of small, solid, decent houses, every one exactly the same. The streets were named just A Street, B Street, and so on, as if these plain people did not require anything else. There would be 136 houses in all, a town within the town. Made of cheap but sturdy weatherboard and roofed with wooden shingles, they were designed by George P. Ide’s new bride, Margaret Rosa Borden, a true Southern belle. She insisted that the roof lines of the little millhouses be designed to mirror the roof lines of their elegant home in Jacksonville—the antebellum Boxwood. In this way, she explained, every worker would share in its beauty.
But inside the red-brick walls of the mill was a netherworld. Women marched home, stunned and ashamed, after the machines ripped the hair from their heads or stripped off their clothes. One man died smoking on one of the mill’s walls after the bosses refused to stop production even as he worked on
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