"Little girls and boys, barefooted, walked up and down between the endless rows of spindles, reaching thin little hands into the machinery to repair snapped threads.... Tiny babies of six years old with faces of sixty did an eight-hour shift for ten cents a day.... The machines, built in the north, were built low for the hands of little children.〔Nies, Judith. ''Nine women: portraits from the American radical tradition'' Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002; p. 112-13〕