A Mule Spinner Tells the U.S. Senate about Late 19th century Unemployment

Abstract: Fall River, Massachusetts, mill worker Thomas O'Donnell (who had immigrated to the U.S. from England eleven years earlier) appeared before the U.S. Senate Committee on Education and Labor on October 18, 1883, to answer the panel's questions about working-class economic conditions. An unemployed mule spinner for more than half of the year, he described the introduction of new production methods at the Fall River, Massachusetts, textile factory where he worked as a mule spinner (a worker who tended the large yarn-making machines). These changes allowed the mill's owners to employ children, and they also left the mule spinner unemployed for much of the year. O'Donnell described the sharp decline in his family's living standards that followed and the ways they struggled to make ends meet.

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