Hours were long, often seventy-two and in a few cases seventy-five a week.

Wages were often paid in scrip good at the company store but redeemable in cash only at infrequent intervals, if indeed any were then presented.

Yet, if the prices at the store were sometimes exorbitant, they were likely to be less than the operatives had been accustomed to pay when buying on credit while living on the farms.

The moral conditions at some of these mills were also bad, since the least desirable element of the rural population was the first to go to the mills.

Such conditions, however, were not universal.