The Last generation: work and life in the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, 1910-1960

I learned right away / Valentine Chartrand

Pinching, nicking, and tucking to make both ends meet / Grace Burk

It wasn't difficult to learn but you didn't get paid / Martha Doherty

My father just didn't bother too much with me / Blanche Graham

You had to be on your toes, all the time / Lucie Cordeau

I knew my job and I knew my place / Narcissa Fantini Hodges

I never had a job that I sat down / Mabel Delehanty Mangan

We had to take what come / Diane Ouellette

I went there just to see what it's like / Dori Nelson

On drawing-in, you have to be dedicated / Leona Bacon Pray

The boys used to get away with murder! / Emma Skehan

So the help got cocky, we all got cocky / Yvonne Hoar

They used to say, if you married a mender, you were rich / Evelyn Winters

I'm not an old Greek, I don't eat bread and oil / Jean Rouses.

That's what they used to call them : mill rats / Harry Dickenson

You had to go to work early and get some money / Charles Costello

I started from the bottom like everybody else / Albert Parent

Like we say a big shot in the mill / John Falante

I learned it myself as I went along / Albert Cote

Rigging, that's the heavy work / Henry Pestana

We never thought the mills would close / Arthur Morrissette

Just walking up and down, trying to keep those looms going all day long is a job / Joseph Golas

They used to call them efficiency men, and that was a bad name / James Simpson

We all worked in the mill, and all in the same place / Raymond Gaillardetz

How would you like to make five cents an hour more? / Sidney Muskovitz

I was young and strong and fast and earned twenty-five cents an hour / Henry Paradis.

Never screamed before; never have since / Nicholas Georgoulis

I can take it; I can stand the grind / Del Chouinard

I won the respect of all my mill people / Fred Burtt

Unions were few and far between / James Ellis

There wasn't an inch of his body that wasn't black and blue / HubertLaFleur

They never saw the sun / Cornelia Chiklis

I'd think of my mother in those wretched mills / Roland Bacon

They were very, very hard on people in those days / Mary Rouses Karafelis.