Talk:Mule scavenger

A fact from Mule scavenger appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 8 September 2011 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that many children have been injured or died while sweeping up cotton?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2011/September. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Mule scavenger.

Wikipedia

England Low‑importance

	England portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject England, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of England on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.EnglandWikipedia:WikiProject EnglandTemplate:WikiProject EnglandEngland-related articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Human rights Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Human rights, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Human rights on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Human rightsWikipedia:WikiProject Human rightsTemplate:WikiProject Human rightsHuman rights articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Mills Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Mills, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of mills on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MillsWikipedia:WikiProject MillsTemplate:WikiProject MillsMills articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the importance scale.

New article

Nice to see some-oone else who cares about cotton. Now a few points

A few thoughts

I had never seen scavangers refered to as mule scavangers. What does recoup mean? Other forms of wastage. The cotton dust was a fore hazard- but scavanging was more necesssary in the carding room. 12 to 20 % of the cotton became waste of some type Joseph Naismith Students cotton spinning (1896) - para 335-341 deals with this. Legislation in UK was 1819 but in the states it was in the 1920s. You miss the biggest danger- the dust got onto the lung causing disease, stunting growth and causing an early death.

Somewher you mention Cork? Are we talking Flax- weren't they using Jennies for that? JD You mention weaver- but we are talking of spinning. Reference 2 (cotton Times) seems to be poor- omitting items when it doesn't suit, or the language is inappropriate for a ten year old. We do not report the positive- women could work in the mills because they were allowed to bring in their bairns, that the bairnes must work fifteen minutes an hour sweeping- but then had 45 to play. The alternative was to leave then alone at home in an unheated house- and it was warm in the mill. Or up on the fells minding the sheep. Where does the 14-16 hours a day come from- in what year?

Illustrations. I believe the original caption referred to the youngster as a scavanger- not a mule scavanger wasn this Baines 1831. There is a difficulty here self-acting mules only came in in the 1831, and till then the dangerous push stroke was performed manually so the child was in little danger. It seemed to shock the later writers who fantacised a bit- and got confused. The second illustration was from Lowell, where mules were never used- the 12yr old tenter is tending a ring frame and certainly not scavanging. The scandal here is many fold- that there were no child labour laws in the States in 1920. Most child workers were children of former slaves.-- and more

Legislation

You must mention part-timing- the millowner often providing the schooling at his expense. The faith of the millowner- the Sunday School movement are all factors. Basically when a child was too big for piecing (fingers too big) he needed to be literate and numerate to be any use as a worker. About half of the workers in Manchester and Stockport cotton factories surveyed in 1818 and 1819 had begun work at under ten years of age. This needs a reference- what is a cotton factory? Spinning or weaving mill or finishing, which? It is unlikely in 1818 it was weaving- as this was still outworked- see Geoff Timmins on this. The role of cotton in defining the factory acts was critical- and there is room for a lot more wikiwork here.

Conclusion

I am short of time at the moment but I have put this on the watch list. I would really like to extract the truth from the Mary Barton melodrama and tearjerking Daily Fail stuff- I think it is wildly more interest told straight. --ClemRutter (talk) 12:37, 4 September 2011 (UTC)I have[reply]

I very much bow to your superior understanding of the industry and this role. There is certainly more to it and perhaps all of it needs to be brought together in an article such as child labour in the cotton industry. I believe that "scavenger" was the term used rather than "mule scavenger" but it worked nicely to disambiguate it from the other articles. violet/riga _^[talk] 13:17, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I note you are distinguished in your own right- and can actually write in good English which I merely aspire to. As I said, it is great to have someone with experience showing an interest in cotton- there is so much left to do. And there are so many implications. I love the fact that I can tell you the date and even the time that the Industrial Revolution started- none of your fuzzy rubbish here. 10th June 1761, was when the Bridgewater Canal was opened from Worsley to Castlefield, so allowing coal to reach Manchester on the first direct rather than a contour canal- to allow the mills to use steam to refill their lodges- and generate a greater head of water for the waterwheels- but of course this was all lost knowledge- and I think deliberately lost knowledge. (And it will be lost again if I don't document it before my memory makes a final farewell. As to child labour, I have tackled Chimney sweeps which is a bit outside my subject area- but there do seem to have been so many opportunity to keep school refusers occupied. --ClemRutter (talk) 17:07, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

POV tag

I have highlighted some problems. I suggest folk ignore the Robinson popular book, and treat the Daily Mail with the contempt it works so hard to deserve. Go to Baines (1835)(its online) where the illustration is sourced and read Trollope in context. Remember why Cotton Times was published- for students. Then suggest article is moved to Scavenger (Mule-spinning). But we do need to read the new UKP60 text. --ClemRutter (talk) 09:00, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies if this sounds a little blunt- I am in the midst of tagging and uploading some holiday photos from France- and there are too many- and most require that the en:stub is translated first from a fr:stub and those need some cleaning up first! Poke me if you want to growl.--ClemRutter (talk) 16:22, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed this template per #3 in the instructions at Template:POV:

This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:

There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

This is without prejudice to Clem's arguments above, which I'd have no objection to his acting on. -- Khazar2 (talk) 03:19, 3 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified (February 2018)

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Mule scavenger. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 00:10, 8 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]